Adventures in Renovation

Everything is moved! Thanks to my Dad, my brother John and especially his friend Charlie. What a big help. Thank you all. I didn't realize how much it was weighing on my mind until we were done. What a relief!

Afterwards we celebrated with burgers at The Golden West where we debated the best way to divide up the floor space upstairs. Everyone has a different opinion on that issue. There's a lot of things I COULD do if I had all the time and money in the world. But as it is, I'm leaving it pretty much unchanged to make everything simpler.

John says I should have the entire top floor open. I would love to do that but it would essentially make my house a no bedroom house. And for the sake of resale, I think it would look better on paper to have a two bedroom house cost $100,000 rather than a one bedroom house. The biggest reason to divide the rooms is for ferret proofing. It's nice to be able to keep the ferret (and the ferret smell) from your clothes and bed.

I'm looking at building a transom-like window in the wall that separates the bedroom so that light from the bay window will extend to the center of the floor. I made a sketch in photoshop to get an idea of what that might look like (see photo to the left). Another very cool option would be to go with sliding Japanese shoji screens. I really like this idea but I'm afraid the ferret will infiltrate these screens too easily. Plus, eliminating interior walls makes for more difficult wiring. The plans keep changing but it's time to start framing next. I need to decide!

Posted by at 2:57 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Here is a picture of everything I own stuffed into a 10 x 10 ft room. This week I have to move everything out and find a place for it in my new dusty house so it won't be in the way too much. But that's better than paying a mortgage and rent on a storage space at the same time. To my family: Happy Thanksgiving... now let's go move all my crap.

Posted by at 12:20 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

So last Thursday I finally pulled up the rest of the linoleum tile. Man, what a bitch that was. But I had to do it that night because there was a community dumpster in my neighborhood that day. I was afraid to dump "building materials" in the dumpster, but when I got there of course there's already tires and plaster and who knows what else in there so I didn't feel that bad about it. Now I just need a few more boxes for the big pieces left.

I've been pulling up nails from the floor for days. Check out this photo. I'm almost done. The question is what am I going to do to the floor when I'm done to hide all the holes. If anyone has any idea of what the best way to do this is, I'm definitely looking for suggestions. Should I fill the holes, sand the floor and hope the stain stains the wood filler too? Or should I fill the holes after I stain and try to match a tinted wood filler with the color of the stained floor? Either way, I'm thinking of staining the floor a dark color to hide it better. But would it be weird to have a different floor color upstairs as downstairs? I think I can pull it off.

Posted by at 5:24 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Every time I take some thing apart in this house, all I find is more screwed up stuff. Last week I took down the wood paneling ceiling in the basement because it was sagging and so i could get to all the electrical and plumbing. But that only made things look worse. It's a total mess of wires going everywhere down there. Not much is secured to anything either. And more stuff keep trying to fall on my head: the other day it was a hammer that tried to kill me when I pulled down a panel of masonite that was nailed up to the ceiling. Free hammer. Woo hoo!

Posted by at 4:50 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

So I was reading thru my Terence Conran 'Ultimate House Book' today and I came up with a brilliant way to fix those weird protrusions in the wall in my house: turn them into built-in bookcases. The way the house was built there is a skinny brick vent that goes up the walls behind there. Whoever built these houses made that part of the wall wider for aesthetic reasons. It kind of looks like a fireplace should be there or a mantle of some kind at least. But their hollow walls on either side of the brick vent.

It would be great to knock out the plaster on either side, expose the vent/chimney thing and fill that space back in with built in bookcases that go floor to ceiling. Not that this is anything I can worry about now of course. It'll probably never happen. I'm still worried about things like water and electricity on the second floor. But if I had all the time and money in the world... Well, I probably wouldn't even live in Baltimore if that were the case.

Anyway, I love my Terence Conran book. I drool over it.

Posted by at 6:29 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Yesterday I installed a new faucet on the kitchen sink. His name is Alsvik and he's from Sweden. Now there is one shiny thing in the middle of all this total crap. It's probably pretty premature to get excited about it because I'll have to disconnect everything again when I replace the counter top and remove the cabinets to put down the flooring, but still it's really cool looking. Next I have to replace all the galvanized steel pipe that leads up to the bathroom on the second floor with copper. Also, it's getting about time to do some framing. After I remove the rest of the linoleum I have to build the half wall that'll run next to the stairs and put back the wall the previous owners removed upstairs for the master bedroom.

I met my other neighbors yesterday. They're way cool. Already they're going to give me some blinds for my big living room window. Her daughter is the head of the Woodberry neighborhood association and is going to write a letter to whoever threw all the trash into my dumpster. And last night I heard the distinct sounds of someone playing electric guitar in the basement next door. Specifically, the distinct sounds of Metallica's 'Enter Sandman.' Woodberry rocks!

Posted by at 1:11 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Upstairs before and after the walls were knocked down:

Posted by at 1:05 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

All this wood came from the wood paneling and drop ceiling upstairs. Almost all of it fit in the dumpster. The image on the right is what I couldn't fit.

Posted by at 1:04 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Who needs a gym membership when you have a house to renovate? The good thing about a gym membership is you get to rest. The good thing about home renovation is you see results right in front of you. Like a great big pile of trash you made. Hmmm...

I'm impressed. Vicki and I did a really good job filling that dumpster. We got almost all the wood from the first floor in it and all the wood paneling. I'm also pissed tho that if it weren't for my neighbors' contributions, I would have gotten all the trash out of my house. All of it! Now tho I'm going to need help from someone in a pickup truck or cut lots of 2x4's up and pile 'em in my truck.

I spent two hours raking the crowbar across the wood floor pulling up linoleum tile. My arms hurt a lot now. But it was the only way to do it. I'm not even done. There are two layers of linoleum on top of masonite that was hammered into the floor. And there are so many @#$?! nails! It blows my mind.

I guess the question is, do I pull them all out and fill in the holes with wood filler before I refinish the floor or do I hammer them all in and not worry about it? I'm sure the sander wouldn't do well running over all those nail heads tho. If it weren't for the crowbarring I wouldn't even have to refinish the floor. The floor is beautiful. It's hurts me to do it.

Boy I hope this blog doesn't become totally whiney.

Posted by at 12:34 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

So what's next? Well initially I was real into the idea of exposing some brick walls. I love exposed brick. But after all this plaster mess, dumpster hijinx and the fact that the best plaster walls in the house are exterior brick walls, I just don't think I have the heart to do it anymore. I'm sure it'd be great for my resale value but that's just too difficult and too superfluous to tackle right now. I don't even know which wall I'd do it on. Apparently the reason that became a trend was because it was more expensive to fix the damaged plaster than just leave it exposed.

There's too much other stuff to worry about, like putting up another ceiling in the back two rooms, insulating the upstairs, redoing all the electrical and replacing the galvanized pipes to the bathroom. Then there's the drywall, the floor sanding and figuring out what to do about my back wall thats rotted away on the addition. Don't even get me started on that wall. I just got an estimate on that from a general contractor and it's about twice what I thought it might be.

One deadline I need to try to meet is I'm going to have to clear out my storage space by December 1st or I'll be paying rent on that on top of my mortgage. No thanks. But thankfully I'm only working on one floor at a time. That's a really big relief. Big big relief. That and the fact that the basement need almost no work at all. I might just end up unloading the storage space and putting it all in my basement. We'll see.

Posted by at 5:34 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

This has been one real crappy weekend.

Saturday I had a dumpster dropped off outside my house so I could finally get some real progress made. Well, I've been making progress all the time but everything seemed to be held up by not being able to throw anything out. I just kept making big piles. Then after they yelled at me at the dump for trying to dump bags of plaster, I finally caved and put down my $350 for an 18 yard dumpster.

So Saturday was pretty good. It was very therapeutic to smash walls with a sledgehammer after we lost the election. I yelled 'Fuck Bush!' through my respirator as it rained plaster. And it was a lot easier to dump trash cans of plaster than try to bag them up. It was still back breaking and toxic-ly dusty but it had to be done.

The first bit of strange trash someone threw in the dumpster was a box that said 'infectious waste' on it with a big red biohazard symbol on it. It was all taped up and I didn't feel like opening the infectious waste so I just put it out on the sidewalk and was going to call 311 about it.

Then before I left that night I found another couple bags of clothes or something in my dumpster. Both times people threw things in, I was just inside the house. I turn my back for a minute and boom! more trash. I felt like I needed to have someone standing outside watching the dumpster so no one threw anything in it. Maybe I shouldn't have had the radio on that loud. Right then I should have at least pulled a tarp out of the back and covered it... Hindsight it 20/20.

So the next afternoon I stoll up to the house, climb up the dumpster to take a quick peek and just froze in shock. Then there was the cussing. Then the disbelief and then more cussing and kicking things, etc. etc.

The dumpster was about 2/3 full of other peoples random trash. Mattresses, a TV, doors, chairs, porno magazines, you name it. It was full of trash. I mean full. I just looked at that and thought, "I'm screwed." The entire first floor of my house was full of wood, paneling and other debris. Up until this point I was wondering how I was going to manage to get it all in there. But now...

One of my neighbors told me she saw the people throwing all the stuff out there. They were clearing their house out. She said it looked like a line of ants.

That really killed my spirits. And after being tired as hell from killing myself for 9 hours, I just wanted to cry.

Thats when Vicki came to the rescue. After a few days of standing on the sideline saying "I wish there was something I could do to help" I finally broke down and told her if she really wanted to help, go to Lowes and buy a $50 respirator and I'll pay for it. She was a tremendous help. Hudge! Everything went faster and she had more energy because she was fresh.

Everyone has theories about what to do with the trash in the dumpster. Should I call the cops and complain? Go track down the perpetrators and ask them to remove their trash? Dump the stuff back on their lawn? Dump the stuff across the street and call in an anonymous complaint?

But when it came down to it, the fact is I couldn't wait for any of those solutions. I need to dump my plaster and wood in it right then. I just pulled some of the bigger bulkier items out and stared back to work. After they pick the dumpster up tomorrow, I'll call 311 and have the city deal with it. That way when the cops come out, I won't get a citation for a dumpster without a permit.

So right now I've managed to do everything I wanted this weekend mostly. All the interior walls have been stripped upstairs. A lot of wood has been removed from the first floor. The bathroom has been taken apart. And I've started to rip up the linoleum on top of the wood floor. I'm really amazed at the how good the floor looks underneath. They laid down a layer of masonite before they laid down the layers of linoleum so the floor is well protected and it doesn't even look like it needed covering up. It's a perfectly beautiful floor under there. It's a real pain to pull up tho because they nailed about ever 5 inches. That's like 9 nails per square foot and might be roughly 10,000 nails for the entire floor. Ugh! Then add all the nails that held in the wood lathe to the stud for the plaster walls and I'm gonna get real sick of pulling nails.

Posted by at 5:15 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

So I've decided to start writing everything down. After 3 weeks of this constant roller coaster, it occurred to me this would make a good story to read later. There is just so much going on and everything is constantly changing, I've got to make more of a record than a few digital photos and videos. This should be a good complement to all the visual stuff. Plus it'll be easier to keep other people updated with my progress. And... this will give me something else to do while I'm sitting on my butt in front of a computer all day unable to work on the house.

Also, if anyone is reading this other than me and you want to respond on any of these entries, just click on the word "comment" below the entry.

How 'bout that election, huh?

Posted by at 12:16 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)