Bathroom

There is one bathroom right now, and it's not bad sized compared to the house.  Trouble is with the vanity.  That sink was built for a "little people" family and reminds us of that scene in Alice in Wonderland where she drinks the growing formula and ends up with arms and legs sticking out the windows of rabbit's home.

In order to get a reasonable vanity in there, the door will have to move toward the wall opposite the vanity.  We'll be tearing into most of the walls anyway, so fingers crossed that there are no vital house parts in that little section of wall we would need to move the door into.

Basement & Store Room

The basement might have been dug out after at least part of the home was built.  It has a low head clearance and the stairway down is a bit of a squeeze.  We're thinking about putting a laundry area at the base of the stairs where the furnace and water heater are.  Jenn will consider it if I commit to making it creature-free and usable.

The entrance to the store room is a little hidden.  In fact, the first time we looked through the house we missed it completely.  A shame since the store room accounts for a good chunk of the square footage in the home.  That's the entrance just to the left of the furnace.

The store room has a dirt floor and some structural supports that were added fairly recently.  There is a load bearing wall and it looks like there were some footings poured under it (hopefully).  We're going to finish digging the floor down and leveling it out for a concrete floor in the store room.  We're also planning to build a bathroom into the area of the store room just inside the door (the section on the side of the load bearing wall that has the drain plumbing).  We'll probably need to work out a way to hook in tub and toilet drainage.  Cast iron drain pipes.  Woohoo.

That window that you see leads up into the garage and is probably the only way for us to get concrete down into the store room.  Once the floor is poured, we would like to brick that window in to seal up the store room from all the varmints that are used to wintering down there.

Down to the Dungeon With Ye

When the kids first found the doorway leading to the basement, their first question was "are there any dead bodies down there?"  We're still not sure.

The stairway leading downstairs is host to at least four undiscovered species of spider.  At least we think they are spiders.  Do spiders have 12 legs?

The stairwell is unfinished, with a few slabs of plywood and wallboard tacked up to dimish the dungeon appearance.  Personally, I like them.  Bwahahahahah.

We want to be able to finish the stairwell so that it is at least safe and somewhat appealing.  The stairs will always have to be steep, but at least we can make them even.  Right now, that first step is a doozy.

The Heart of the Home

Walking back to the kitchen from the family room, you pass through a doorway that I barely fit under.  Good thing I don't have any more hair up there or I woudn't fit.

The kitchen has all the latest.  Plywood cabinets, blue speckled laminate counter-tops, 1950's gold appliances, brown carpet floor, and an old non-functioning chimney down into the dining area.  The word 'sledgehammer' keeps coming to mind.

Family Room

The roof has been leaking for a while, so there is some mildew damage in the corner of the family room.  When all my sisters and mom walked into the house, their noses spotted the bad smell and identified it not just as mildew, but something along the lines of pet wee wee. Carpet is going to have to go.

The floor looks like it falls off a bit toward the south wall of the family room and kitchen (that side of the house was extended about 5 feet out at some point).  There are general flatness issues with the floor in several places.  We may need to watch a few "This Old House" episodes to learn how to jack up and level a floor.

The south wall extension is supported by a beam that runs the length of the family room, with posts at the ends and a couple in the middle.  The middle posts are a bit of a nuisance and really break the room up.  We'd really like to pop that beam out and replace it with a steel I-beam that won't require any interior posts.  Going to have to bone up on some of my old engineering coursework to figure out what kind of beam we need.  Or I could just call someone that really knows what they're talking about...

Garage

The house has been built as a series of additions over a bunch of years.  The latest addition was a garage that might just fit our van with a bit of prying.  When they added the garage, they decided to go ahead and leave the existing windows that were on that wall, so there is now a window from the garage to the master bedroom and a window from the garage into the bathroom.  The bathroom window has since been covered on the inside with a tub enclosure, making for a very intesting set of features to the house.  We're thinking we really do need to pop those windows out.

Lovely Roof and Chimney

The roof has several spots that are going to need work.  Much of the work on the house was pretty patchwork and happened over a period of years.  There is an old chimney coming up from the main level of the house that is no longer connected to anything and is so detriorated that the inspector said it could easily just fall over.  We'll be knocking it out (we'll just turn the sledgehammer over to the boys and let them take out some frustrations).

There are several other parts of the roof that have strange humps and bumps, and the gulleys and saddle points in the roof appear to be slathered with tar to help prevent water leakage rather than using any flashing.

Saggy Garage Roof

Evening of Day One.  We decided to document the transformation of the house as it transitions from ugly duckling to beautiful swan (OK, at least a mallard duck).

One of our biggest concerns is the condition of the roof.  The roof over the garage (which was an addition to the original house), is sagging badly and looks like it does not have enough support in the rafters to support the winter snow load.  The garage has been leaking, as well as some other parts of the roof.  Bathroom ceiling (which is adjacent to the garage) has a severe leak that we got to see in action during one of our walk-throughs of the house during a nice rainstorm.

The garage rafters look like they were just stick-framed in without any webbing, just a single board running from the existing home wall to the to plate of the outside garage wall.

The Adventure Begins

Day One.

The adventure begins. We got the house keys today (finally!) after a 3 day wait after signing all the paperwork.  We are now the proud owners of a 3 bedroom, 1 bath cute-cottage-in-the-making.

It's always nice to have a good crop of dandelions to give some color and contrast to the yard.