Let the renovations begin! Again!

We finally closed on our latest investment property today. After having lost the usage of both of my computers on the very same day--my little ones managed to break my laptop (thank goodness for warranties!) and just mere hours later, my ancient desktop monitor went kaput on its own. After several weeks of being pitifully computerless, I now have a new hard drive in my laptop so that means I am back in the blogging game!

And, without further ado, here is our latest renovation project:

It's the charming little fixer-upper on the far left, on the end. Do you like it?

Me either. And I'm just kidding, we didn't buy that one. Got ya! It is actually slated to be demolished any day now. Unfortunately, it is well beyond repair so the city has decided to take it down. While I never am happy to see a historical home suffer such a plight, rather than be lovingly restored to former glory, I admit, I am torn because we certainly benefited from its existence in its current state. We got a fantastic deal on the house next to it because really...who in their right minds would want to buy a house with a neighboring house that's considered to be the #2 most blighted house in the whole area?   http://chpn.net/news/2010/03/31/the-10-most-blighted-houses-in-church-hill_12915/

We would! But only because we discovered, through some virtually effortless google searching, that the blighted house next door was slated for demolition. I'm pretty sure that most other potential buyers took one look at the dilapidated house next door and hollered, "NEXT! THIS IS NOT IT. KEEP DRIVING!!!" at their realtor as they toured the neighborhood in search of their next cozy city dwelling. So that little tidbit of insider knowledge allowed us to get a great deal on a fantastic fixer-upper in a convenient and charming neighborhood!  But first I had to confirm with the city that it would indeed be demolished in the near future, since we hope to rent our house out in the next couple of months and didn't want an eyesore next door to scare potential tenants away. Indeed it was confirmed to be on the schedule for demolition, and we decided to put in our offer, which was accepted.

So, will I be sad when the blighted house is torn down? I will feel bummed for the loss of a historical property that could have been an asset to the community if only someone had not neglected it for so long. I think it is a shame that nobody cared about the house enough to sell it to someone who would care for it if they couldn't or didn't want to care for it themselves. But on the other hand, it needs to be taken down for safety reasons (it looks like it could fall onto our property if someone were to sneezes on it), and I admit that another major benefit is that our property is going to have an awfully nice new view with a big open lot next to it.

So, we bought the one next to "the blight". We purchased the 1,464 square foot, circa 1900, tan and white attached row house, which looks much better on the outside but still needs a great deal of work.

Lucky for us, some of the renovations have been completed already by the previous owners, like updated electrical and new drywall and windows, but there is still much to do! To give you an idea of some of the projects in store, we plan to knock out some walls to open it up inside, I'm particularly eager to remove the wall separating the kitchen and the living room, and we'll add a breakfast bar with seating where the wall used to be. We're going to add a second full bathroom upstairs, add duct work and a new HVAC system, repair leaky areas in the roof and resulting water damage in the ceilings and walls, replace rotten porch posts and soffits, add interior closets and a laundry area, repair trim, paint the walls and hang new lighting and refinish the heart of pine floors. All with the goal of turning it into a fun and hip place to live for some lucky tenant!

The best part of this project for us is that for the first time, we have hired a general contractor so we don't have to do all of the hardest, dirtiest, most dangerous and often most frustrating work ourselves. Brian and I still plan on taking on smaller projects, but we look forward to having someone else manage the renovations and the sub-contractors, and handle the many "renovation surprises" that arise once the demolition and construction begin. These days, with two young kiddos taking up much of our free time (Free time? Who am I kidding? What is that?)  we just don't have the time to rehab a house from the ground up ourselves, so we are looking forward to the planning and design aspects of the project, and leaving the hard manual stuff to the professional contractor.

We do plan to tackle the overgrown forest of weeds in the back yard this weekend.

Yikes! I hope we don't get lost in the underbrush. I'll bring my cell phone with me, just in case. Wish us luck!

"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.