"WHAT A MESS!"

These are the words that emerged from my two-year-old's mouth as she wandered over to my computer and glanced at the pre-renovation house photos on my screen. Spoken from the heart and with great emphasis and concern, just as I was pondering an appropriate title for my next blog entry. That 'bout sums it up! Thank you for your creative input, little one. Tomorrow is going to be ice cream day!

Join me for a tour of the upstairs front unit of our first historical renovation!

The kitchen area was enclosed, and we decided to remove a wall to add a breakfast bar dining area and open it up to the living room. You can see the teeny tiny doorway to the old kitchen here:


The antiquated knob-and-tube wiring and old rusty plumbing throughout the house had to go. Unlike most people who "renovate" today by tearing a house down to the studs and rebuilding with new materials, I decided to preserve the plaster walls, original wooden windows and decorative woodwork that made me fall in love with this circa 1885 house in the first place. Check out the old pipes and wiring in the original kitchen:


Next came the demolition of the wall between the kitchen and the living room. Notice my handsome husband with an expression indicating he is thinking, "I just finished knocking down a huge wall with this sledgehammer. You want some of this?" Except his clothing is way too clean for him to have just finished demoing a huge wall. Not to mention he is actually holding a flimsy plastic broom handle and not a sledgehammer.
Kitchen Before (during demolition):


To safeguard structural integrity, we installed a header above the area where we removed the portion of the wall. With the wall gone, there was so much more light filtering into the rooms--instead of only one little window in the kitchen and two in the living room, removing the wall allowed for three exposed windows full of natural light!

We also raised the breakfast bar from counter height to bar height by added a custom wine rack on top of the cabinets and below the counter top. It was a unique feature, plus it added a little extra storage in a small kitchen where every little extra bit of storage space makes a big difference.

Kitchen After:


Since this is a relatively small apartment (roughly 650 square feet) we had to make the most of the available space. So, we moved the bathroom door from the original access point inside the kitchen, where the refrigerator is now (I don't think it would have been possible for the people who lived there before to fit a refrigerator inside the kitchen and still be able to open or close the bathroom door) to a new point of access with a door from the living room. This made it possible to add a compact fridge in the kitchen and allowed extra space for for cabinets. Plus, it just made more sense to be able to access the bathroom directly from the living room.

View of Kitchen/Bathroom Area Before:



Kitchen/Bathroom Area After:


Here is yet another view of the kitchen/bathroom, as well as another awesome pose for dramatic effect, courtesy of my dear Brian. What is he pretending to measure with such a look of consternation? Dust? You can see where the original doorway to the bathroom used to be--Brian is peering through it:


Bathroom After:



Living Room Before:


I know what you're thinking, and yes, all of that gorgeous furniture came with the house! As did the bonus nude photos in the dresser and the burned-bottom crack spoon in the corner of the bedroom! We also found some other unmentionables...let's just say the back door was swinging wide open when I came to look at the house the first time, and the house was rumored to be a squatter's haven and popular hangout of ladies of ill repute. The couch had to go right away. I'll leave it at that!

Living Room After:



Bedroom Before:


Bedroom After (view #1):



One of my favorite features of the place, since the very beginning, were the five ornamental fireplaces throughout the house. Each one is unique in design, with different carved details on their surfaces. I also had a great appreciation for the antique moldings and extra tall floorboards, and wanted to restore them to their original splendor. To preserve the historical charm of the house, we had new wood milled to match the old wood details, to replace areas of molding and floorboards that were water damaged, broken and otherwise beyond repair.

Bedroom After (view #2):


Since houses in 1885 were not built with closets (people liked to use bulky trunks and armoires back then and probably had a total three outfits each) we added closets in all of the bedrooms and utilized the high ceilings for extra storage above the closets.

Bedroom After (view #3)


Luckily, the heart of pine floors were in relatively good shape. A few boards needed to be stabilized or replaced here and there. The floors had layers and layers of paint on them, and gummed up and fried two drum sanders, according to the professional who we hired to refinish them. I'm glad they followed through, despite their equipment failures and frustrations, because they did a fantastic job and the finished product was impressive. The floors are just gorgeous.

I need to finish digging up and scanning old photos for the other two units, and will post more before/after images shortly!

Well, hello there Blog!

So nice to meet you. My name is Lindy and this blog has been a long time coming! Finally, I am starting a blog to document all of the many projects and various happenings in our lives. The looming closing for our next renovation project (hopefully in the next week or so!) gave me the kick in the pants I needed to start writing and documenting our progress. I don't want to jinx myself by writing too much about it before it is actually legally ours, so more details about renovation #2 later!

For now, let's take a little historical walk down memory lane...

I should have started blogging a long time ago during our first historical renovation (did blogs even exist back then?) The first rehab was a brick Italianate triplex, originally built in 1885. The house that was the result of lots of blood, sweat and tears...and years.

LOTS of blood. Let's all have a moment of silence for my poor step-dad's nearly decapitated fingertip that was the result of a wayward saw. While you're at it, why don't we have another moment of silence for my husband's thumb, smashed and split open by a three-hundred-pound cast iron stove landing on top of it. And while you're in a somber mood, please pray that the ugly scarred dent in my shin disappears. The one that was caused by me falling into a heating vent hole. The one that has been uglying up my shin for six years with no sign of fading.

LOTS of sweat. Think endless hot and humid southern summer work days with 110+ degree temperatures, with no air conditioning, no windows, electricity or running water combined with stinky paint, dust, chemical fumes, and grimy bodies sweating to the oldies, hands swinging tools.

LOTS of tears. Think lengthy process of buying a dilapidated old house from a felon in jail who had no legal rights as a felon to sell a dilapidated old house, contractors that were no shows, contractors that stole money, break-ins and missing tools, failed inspections, rotten beams, leaks in brand new ceilings and water damaged brand new walls.

LOTS of years. It took seven years from start to finish to complete the renovations. Seven years! About six years longer than what my just-out-of college-and-naive-silly-stubborn-I-can-do-it-all-myself self thought it was going to take.

It was a true labor of love. Actually, it was all labor until it renovations were completed, so now that the hard work is done, we can safely call it love.

Here are a few exterior before/after photos of renovation #1.

BEFORE: Yes, this house was jacked up! And I mean that literally.






AFTER: Aaaaaaah, much better!




Was it all worth it in the end? Yes! Comparing photos of what the house looked like before to what it looks like now, the transformation still amazes me!  We have wonderful tenants who appreciate the architectural details that we so painstakingly preserved, and they have made their spaces lovely and their own. We learned so much during the renovation process and would do so much differently next time to save time, money and resources. Did we say we never wanted to do it again, not in a million years? Yes! But will we do it all again? Yes...next week! And we will do so many things differently. The next home renovation will be a piece of cake. Really. Really? Well, let's hope.