Old kitchen demo - outside stairs demo - 8-7-06

The old kitchen for apartment #1 is becoming our breakfast room so everything has to come out. First I took out the stove, washing machine and bottom cabinets:


The cabinets came out next, I dont recomend taking a 12' long cabinet down by yourself. After seeing the flooring under that carpeting I'm surprised it didnt go right through it...

The 2 doors that were behind the cabinets had been closed off since 1955, it was pretty cool to be the first to open them since then. They still have the original stain on them too, awesome!


The door on the left goes to the laundry room, the one on the right goes to the bathroom.

I want to stop and appologize right now if it seems like I'm rushing these posts... because I am. I have 2 months of work to catch up on! If I dont hurry I'll never get them caught up...

Ok, the next project that needed my attention was the hideous outside stairs. They had to go. they were installed for the upstairs apartment.




The little addition in the background coming off the side of the house is going to be our breakfast nook.



I was reading the DevilQueen blog the other day when I saw a picture of John's shin with a big bruise on it. I just had to laugh (not at him of course) when I saw it because it reminded me of my little "mishap" while demoing the stairs. If you're real squemish you may not want to scroll down to see it...








This is what happens when you miss what you're aiming at with a framing hammer. Actually it didnt hurt near as bad as is looks...

Demo work begins - The bathrooms - 8-6-06

On the 6th of August I kicked it into high gear. I began by demoing both bathrooms upstairs. It was pretty nasty work, especially the guest bathroom that had been a kitchen. I swear that the people that lived here must have cooked fried chicken EVERY night. Everything was coated with years of grease. I tore out all the cabinets and about 4 layers of linoleum. the wood floors are nice wide plank pine, I'd really like to be able to keep them but I dont think it will be possible. there is a slight slope to the floor that I'll need to shim up first. I'm afraid that the floor boards will shatter when I try to take them up



Next came the master bathroom demo. first I removed the closet that was added at one point. Then came the linoleum. There were about 6 layers of linoleum on the floor. You can actually tell the decade from the design, the first layer was 80's, then 50's, 30's then some that were indistinguishable.


Once all the linoleum was out it was pretty obvious that the flooring was shot, so it had to come out.

Then I tore out all the old cast iron plumbing in preperation for the new cpvc that the plumbers put in.

I then moved downstairs to the bathroom in what will become our kitchen. I dont know about you but a bathroom in a kitchen doesnt sound too appetizing to me... so it's coming out. the inside walls will be removed and the remaining space will become a breakfast nook.

closing/work begins... - 8-2-06

We closed on the house on August 2nd. After the closing we came straight over to the house and pulled up that ratty gold shag carpet in the parlor.



The house had been abandoned for a couple years so there was a lot of mold in the house. I would get a severe headache in the house after just a few minutes it was so bad. the first thing I bought from Home Depot was a respirator, a great investment.





Here's the girlfriend removing the 3 million staples that held the padding down.




Looks a lot better already...

We then set the parlor up as our temporary bedroom:



Our dumpster arrived on the 5th and it was time to get to work...


The first thing I did was tear the old carpeting out of what will become our kitchen:



The carpet padding was totally rotted and stuck to the floor. You might notice in the picture that there is a section of the floor in the middle of the room that's not painted. The entire house is like this, it appears that they would just lift up the edges of the rug to paint the floor.

Nursery / Guest Bedroom 2

Here is what will become the nursery:





and here is the second guest bedroom:

Guest Bedroom 1 / Bathroom

Ok, let's get this tour over with so I can start showing you some progress...

Here is the guest bedroom:



The entrance to the guest bathroom is in this room. this would actually be the master bedroom because of that, and the double window but it's smaller than the one across the hall.

and the bathroom:




The guest bathroom was a kitchen for the apartment upstairs, there was an awesome 1938 Magic Chef stove in perfect condition in here.

Master bedroom/bath

The master bedroom:



We're going to build a sunroom off the living room (the living room is below the master bedroom) and build a porch above it. The window will be replaced with an old french door to access the porch.

The master bath:


The master bath opens on to the main hall next to the staircase. It is right behind the master bedroom at the back of the house. I had thought of closing this door off and opening it to the bedroom but I've scrapped that idea. It has a beadboard ceiling (that needs a LOT of work, they stipled the damn thing...) and an awesome 5'6" clawfoot tub.

The upstairs hall

Here is the upstairs hall:




The upstairs has been abandoned a lot longer than the downstairs. There was a calendar upstairs from 2001 but I seriously doubt anyone has lived up there for 15 to 20 years.

There were washer connections at the top of the stairs and a hot water heater in front of the master bathroom. All that is gone now. We've put a set of attic stairs in next to the staircase and ripped out the dropped ceiling at the back of the hall.

The jury's still out on what to do with the plaster ceilings upstairs, almost every one of them are sagging. The slats that the lathe is nailed to are pulling loose from the joists. I want to try to save them but dont know if I'll be able to pull them back up to the joists without destroying the plaster.

If anyone has any ideas on the best way to fix this please let me know. I'm staying away from sheetrock as much as I can. the problem is there are no plaster masons anywhere near here. the closest one I can find is in Savannah. Cost is another issue...

Floor plan

I wanted to post a basic floor plan before we head upstairs. This is a very basic floor plan. I do have a full set of plans for the house that I had to draw just to be able to get the place but I'll get into that later.

This plan shows the layout from when it was apartments.

The Back Hall

Here is the back hall:





The first pic was taken after we cleaned. I love the heartpine floors in the place, they're awesome!

The big piece of wood in the last pic was used to block off the first floor from the second floor.

The Study

Here is my study:





The door to the front porch was the front entrance of apt. #2, I'll be converting that back to a window.

I'm planing on building built-in bookcases and some type of rich wood paneling from reclaimed wood.

This is the room that has the wall that needs to be moved. the built-in cabinet to the left of the fireplace will have to come out for me to move the wall back to it's original place. I'm probably going to move the cabinet to under the staircase in the back hall.

When I move and reframe the wall I'm going to to move the doorway to the center of the wall and enlarge it for a pair of french doors that I got from an old farmhouse that was being torn down. These doors will mirror the parlor french doors on the other side of the foyer. Here are the doors:

The Living Room

Here is the living room:




The 2 closets in this room have already been removed. Right now we are using it as a storage room for all of our reclaimed wood. I love the pass-through to the study to the left of the fireplace. there are 2 small closets in the pass-through, the inside one will be used for my servers, networking equipment and a media panel for CAT-5, cable, phone, and audio.

The Laundry Room

Here is what will become our laundry room:



This was the kitchen in Apt. #2. It's a great room for a laundry room. this room appears to have been added on the teens or 20's. Another 4' at the back of the room was added on later, probably in the 50's when the place was converted to apartments.

The Breakfast Room

here is the breakfast room:



As you can see it's last use was a kitchen for apartment #1.

Apartment #1 included the foyer, backhall, parlor, dining room, the new kitchen, and this room.
Aprtment #2 included the study, living room, laundry room, and the main downstairs bathroom
Apartment #3 was the entire 2nd floor but fom what I can tell the individual bedrooms might have seperate efficiencies at one point.

More of the tour to come later

I'll post the rest of the tour later tonight and then start the posts of the progress of the last 2 months. Work on the house has halted for the week due to the fact that I have to go out of town for work for a few days then to my girlfriends grandparents for a day or two after that so hopefully that will give me enough time to get caught up to where we are currently.

The Kitchen

Here's the kitchen:




Not much to look at huh? It looks totally different now. I've removed the 2 bathroom walls (and the bathroom) and the 2 closet walls to open the room up.

This apears to be the first addition to the house(probably late 1800's/very early 1900's), it was built as a kitchen though it was turned into a bedroom in the 50's when the house was converted into apartments.

The bathroom that you see in the 3rd pic looks like it was a pantry or closet at one time and only 1/2 the size, the room was extended outside the house to be converted into a bathroom. We removed the bathroom and the 2 interior walls as mentioned above and are turning it into a breakfast nook.

The Formal Dining Room

Here is the dining room:



What you cant see from the pictures is the ceiling that's precariously bulging downward by at least 18" in the center.

In the second photo is the door leading to the kitchen, or at least what will be the kitchen soon (and what once was the kitchen...). The door is a swinging door, pretty cool.

The Parlor

Here is the parlor:




It still has the original pocket doors (leading to the formal dining room) and french doors (leading to the foyer)

This room along with the foyer and the formal dining room were "renovated" some time in the 70's. The original plaster walls were covered over with drywall and the "lovely" gold shag carpet was nailed down over the red oak floors. The red oak floors were installed sometime between the 20's to the 40's as near as I can tell. They were put in the foyer, parlor, formal dining room, and the study. The rest of the house is heart pine.

The Foyer

Here's the foyer.



When you walk in the front door the parlor is to the left and the study is to the right. The doorway at the back of the room will be extended all the way across and the door itself will be removed.





In the first shot you may notice that the wall on the right is crooked. When the house was converted into apartments in the 50's this wall was moved, closing in the foyer to increase the square footage of the room on the other side of the wall. It was built crooked because of the windows next to the door on one end, and a built-in cabinet in the study on the other end. I will be tearing down this wall and putting it back in it's original place. I'm hoping to do this next week.

Wow! an update!

Well I guess I need to sit down and update this thing, it's not going to get done by itself. Yesterday was our 2 month anniversary of closing on the house. A LOT has been accomplished but we still have a very long way to go. Once I get caught up on all the progress I'll try to keep this updated as often as possible.

We're now living in the house while we renovate it. It can be a bit trying at times to say the least. We still dont have a working tub, if all goes well it should be in by this weekend. We finally got a working toilet and sink in this week. I'm working as fast as I can on the downstairs bathroom now. I'm hoping to have it completed (minus patching the plaster) by next week. In the meantime we've been going to my mom's for showers.

Our temporary kitchen is in the study, we've been getting by on pre-preared and microwave foods... yum. The kitchen is not as far along as the bathroom, I think I still have a few weeks left to go on it before we can move all of our appliances into it. god I cant wait for that day, if the quality microwave food doesnt kill me first.

Well I guess I'll start out by giving a tour of the house as it was when we closed. I'll go room by room. I wont have time to get to all of the rooms right now but I'll start with the foyer, parlor, formal dining room, and the kitchen. I'll be in Savannah tonight and tomorrow for work so I'll have plenty of time in my hotel room tonight to post the rest of the tour.