We Have A Project House (First Post - picture heavy, sorry)

Here is the view from our living room through to the kitchen of our 'Project House'. Not the real, real house which is also a soon-to-be project house, though. We had a good opportunity to obtain this house as a short sale. Our intentions are to fix it up enough to comfortably live in it while we renovate our real, real house which is conveniently 3 houses down and across the street. The cabinets that you see suspended from the ceiling on the left made my brain bleed every time that I had to lay eyes on them. I hated them. I hated them almost as much as I hate chemotherapy (which is a lot, ask anyone I work with). Thank goodness I married a man who doesn't want me to die, so he let me take them down.

 

Husband also has let me have free reign in the house in regards to paint. YES! We started out with some lovely red trim (left). I am not a fan of red... being from Nevada (small town Nevada, at that) my only experiences with red paint inside of a house were with Mona's. Mona's was the local cat house, lady-of-the-night-place,  oh you know - it's Nevada, prostitution is legal there. Anways, Mona's was one of the local places and happened to be just kitty corner from one of my friends' houses so we could sneak a peak in the doors and everything was painted red. From that moment on, red paint inside a house = whorehouse. Needless to say within a week of obtaining keys, that red trim was covered up. 

Here is the only shot of the bathroom floor that I managed to obtain. A bit blurry, but I think you can get the idea. It wasn't original tile or we would have found a way to make it work. We ripped it all out because the floor felt 'soft' and was bouncy. The tile came up very easily, the mud they must have used dried before the tile even set, so that was kind of nice for us! We found the underlayment wood below. GROSS.

 

Nasty nast nasterson. If only by looking at this wood, you think that it is not sturdy - you would be correct. Stepping on it was a whole different story. Very floppy. The wood piece surrounding the toilet was broken into two - so this explains why the toilet flopped back and forth, side to side. I couldn't imagine having the toilet fall over while sitting on it... that's what was about to happen if we didn't fix it.

 

 

Mike is sitting to evaluate the craphole that we have just found ourselves in. Literally. All he had to do was pull on the two pieces of wood surrounding the toilet flange (?) and it came right out. LOL, so glad we decided to fix this.

 

Oh hello, Arizona dirt! Flooring all torn up and we have beautifully preserved floor joists! Yay! Total score. The two small pieces of plumbing at the top left are the old, abandoned cast iron hot/cold water feeds to the sink. The big one is the current waste from the sink.

 

Another view of our joists and the toilet flange - is it called a flange? I don't know what else to call it?! I guess I could call it the toilet parascope and everyone would know what I was talking about, right?

 

 

Lilving Room photos while painting... Getting there!

 

 

Here is the view of the center foundation curb underneath the very middle of our house. Looks like the people who came in to put in the 'modern copper plumbing' chiseled out a pyramid out of our foundation and now it has started to sag here. The walls literally are hanging from the ceiling. Gaps big enough for me to slide my fingers between the floor and the walls exist in the middle of this house. Well... NO MORE! We had an expert come in, jack up this foundation and cement it back the way it should be (while preserving the copper plumbing). I'll ask Mike if he took a picture. I somehow missed that. The house feels so much more sturdy now though and cracks have been put back together. Yay!

 

We decided to go with tongue and groove hardwood flooring. You can see where we added support joists to disperse weight and provide more support as we did NOT use a subfloor. Sure the company recommended that we use a subfloor, but we did not. We felt that it would be fine for multiple reasons.

1.) Our current house is tongue and groove (80+ year old flooring without underlayment and it is just fine).

2.) This floor area is 5.5 x 6  - incredibly small

3.) We added extra joists in both directions for support. It is probably the most stable part of this house. Come on over and we can prove this! LOL

 

I'm only 5'3 here's another view of our joists. Very close together.

 

 

and some more shots of the flooring support.

 

 

Finally took down those ceiling mounted cabinets! Yay! There is now a ginormous hole in the wall which was there before we took the cabinets down. You can see brick ...... I hate seeing brick in these old houses, for some reason it always freaks me out. No lathe on this exterior wall.

 

 

Mike turning off the water supply. Someone had moved the sink from underneath the window to that corner cabinet he is working in. We'll be moving it back to where it belongs. That exterior wall has been so messed with. Ugh.It looks like a warzone behind and underneath that cabinet. That will be some work not to ruin this house any further in that particular area. Poor house :(

 

 

And we have a hole in the floor. There was originally a wall here that separated the kitchen from the living room which someone took out and put in some super ugly cabinets. Mike and I really want this home to feel as original as possible (the reason for the wood flooring in the bathroom) and also the reason that we are going to be putting the way back - not exactly where it was, but pretty dang close. We are trying to maximize space in this tiny kitchen so it will be about 12 inches wider (where that blue tape is to the right of the broom). Wall goes up on Thursday! Progress, progress, progress!

And that is where we are at for now! Mike and I hope to finish the bathroom floor tonight, maybe add the wainscoting within the next week and then we can put the mirror up, as well as the toilet and sink back in place! I'll be painting and cleaning tile for the next bit after that! Once the bathroom is finished, we will start working on the flooring and cabinets for the kitchen. We are thinking hard wood for the kitchen as well (leaving the current sub-flooring -yes, we'll use sub-flooring in the kitchen because it is a larger area and will be holding some heavy things (fridge & stove etc).

We are on the look-out for a vintage apartment-sized fridge/freezer combo.

We just bought an apartment (mini) sized stove just like the one above. It is perfect for this house! Have a fun story about this. So Mike and I load up in his pickup to drive to Tempe to look at this vintage stove. We decide to buy and homey helps us pack it up into the bed of the truck. We remove the metal supports for the burners, a few knobs and whatnot that we don't want to lose en route to the project house and off we go. We arrive at the house and see that the top vent has blown off. OMG. I was mad so we decide to re-trace our steps. YES, 35 miles of retracing steps including 20 on a freeway looking for a 2.5 x 5 piece of shiney vented metal. Yeah right, we must be crazy. Well, we end up returning empty handed so I hop on ebay and what do I find? An original piece (not repop) for $20 plus shipping. Moral of the story is: Take everything shiney off of your new toys before you drive them home OR just try ebay before you waste your time looking for something that you are never going to find.