Three months and counting

We have cabinets! We have HVAC ducting & a furnace in the attic! We have a painted house! We've worked multiple 12 hour days! I'm pretty sure we're still having fun.

Remember Bruce who helped us early on? He gave me Sadik the Cabinet Builder's contact info and two months ago John and I met with Sadik to discuss kitchen cabinets. We decided that we would keep the upper cabinets but replace the doors and have new lower cabinets built. Sadik is the man! He went the extra mile more than once. Not only did he build us beautiful cabinets that accommodate our huge kitchen sink (that I love!), he installed them, the sink and our Ikea countertops. In fact, he took the two 8 foot pieces of countertop home so he could cut them for the sink, glue the pieces together and sand and water-seal the bottom of the countertops so that we could install them when he brought them over. He even put on the hinges and handles we bought, surely saving us some marital stress.

John testing to see if the sink really weighs 150 pounds. 

Sadik the Cabinet Builder

We had the HVAC system installed which is very exciting and such a tease since it's in the 90s! Can't wait to turn that baby on. We'll wait for that, however, until all the drywall is finished. Speaking of drywall, we went ahead and had two walls of the the middle room sheet rocked. We miss the wood wall a little bit but since the kitchen is on the other side of this bedroom wall, I think it's the right thing to do to muffle noise and abate cooking odors.

A covered AC vent. 

Wall between kitchen and bedroom. 

We spent all day July 4th working on the house. When we were leaving the house around 8:30, we had to maneuver around traffic getting into the neighborhood to park for the fireworks. I can't wait to walk to the fireworks next year!

Happy 4th! 

Well, Painter Rey is wrapping up the paint job. Not sure how I'll spend my days now or who I'll talk to but anyway...we have a painted house! Yippee! 

Primed

and painted. Still needs a little color but we're getting closer. 

Have I mentioned that the whole time we've been working on our house, this bad boy has been going up next door? It's for sale. Who wants to be our neighbor? 

Nearly three months in...

It's a good thing I have experience in endurance events, because this house remodel is a similar process. Every few hours of work preps you for the next work session and contributes to the goal. Every action is based on the results of previous work. And then there's the fatigue. But we push through.

One thing I've learned is that we have to keep moving forward with whoever or whatever trade is ready, even if it doesn't match my original timeline, within reason of course.   For example, we hired the house painter to start even though I thought that would be last, you know, the "icing on the cake" as our painter says. Our painter is our neighbor Rey - Reynaldo - Rey-Rey - King Rey. We've spent many hours together over the past two weeks as he has prepared the house to paint. He's a true 78704 Austinite full of old neighborhood stories about the "speed freaks in the 70s" house, San Francisco Joe's house, he showed us where he was an extra in Clint Eastwood's A Perfect World in a scene filmed one street over from ours, tales of surfing in Central America and many, many more. Stop by sometime and I'll introduce you. He's probably at our house right now!

He's doing a fabulous job on the prep work for the house and we look forward to see the final result in another week.

Meet Painter Rey

Meet Carpenter Rick who helped us on numerous jobs. 

Meet the new Maggie & John. (We did, in fact, watch this recently.)

What have we been up to otherwise? Pulling out chain link fence, visiting my new favorite store McCoy's Building Supply, replacing rotten wood siding around the exterior of the house, getting a windowsill milled to replace the rotten one where the window AC unit was, and tearing down all the sheetrock in the back room to hopefully get rid of the animal odor.

Step 1: locate all the rotten wood - which was made easier because of Rey's prep work scraping the house.

Step 2: Go to McCoy's to find wood siding. 

Step 3: Prime siding

Step 4: Replace siding

I love demo days! See all that drywall? It's about to be gone. 

Gone. 

Home, sweet, home. 

See all pictures here

Weeks 7 & 8

Lots of action in the house. Carpenter Rick and John built a wall to divide the large back room into two rooms - a bedroom (with a full closet!) and an office/laundry open area outside the kitchen. I'm excited for this open space. At our last house, I found I didn't need a full size room for an office, but I did need a desk. This will allow both of us a working space without using a full room.

new wall looking from mini-office into bedroom with closet! 

looking out from bedroom

All the walls have been scrubbed, and the door frames have been scrubbed inside and out. We've taken off all the trim and cleaned both sides. Without going into it too much - because I fear that none of my family & friends will come visit - let's just say that it was necessary to clean both sides of the trim. Did I mention that we found one final rat's nest? We did. Just nasty. At first I thought the plastic bags stuffed under & into the wall holes were the result of people trying to keep pests out, when, in fact, it was the rats keeping the people out! Plastic grocery and food bags, a kitchen dish cloth, papers all used to make a nest. I'd google it to learn more, but I don't want to see any more images.

last rat's nest

We continue to paint the inside of the house, and we've hung some of the doors back up after cleaning and painting them. It's nice to see the place brightening up bit by bit. It's also nice to clean up the house after a work day and sweep up all the sawdust and scraps. Every time I sweep, as the dust fills the air and I can see the earth through the holes in the floor, I think of Dorothea Lange photographs and a black and white picture of my great grandma standing on the porch of wooden house in the early 1900s. I also think that I need to start getting bids on refurbishing the floors.

cleaned, primed door

one of a few holes in the floor

The electricians started. They pulled out all the old wiring and had to cut a few plug and smoke detector holes to bring the house up to code. The first day the youngest of the fellows was under the house drilling holes for wires and when he came out, he said, "I think y'all have rats" and held up a rat skull. (!) I replied that, "yes, we did have rats." He was excited to keep his treasure.

early stages of new wiring! 

Speaking of treasures, I cleaned up and painted the mirrored medicine cabinet from the bathroom. When I removed the medicine cabinet from the wall, I discovered a pile of used razor blades behind it. At first I was spooked and creeped out but realized that the slit in the medicine cabinet was used for razor blade disposal all those years. I had initially put the cabinet in the trash pile just because it was one more dirty, rusty, old thing, but later pulled it out knowing that it, like the house, just needed some tlc & Lysol.

painted medicine cabinet with slit in back

Next up - electric inspection, more painting and Neighbor Rey gets started on painting the house

see all pictures here

Weeks 5 & 6

We've had three roofers out to help us figure out what to do with the flat roof over the back room that was an addition in the 1950s. There are soft spots on the roof and water stains on the ceiling. Luckily, after all the rain we didn't have puddles on the floor. We decided to remove the sheet rock and insulation in an effort to track down the leak and, as far as I'm concerned, the more we remove out of the house, the more the bad smells and any lingering musty juju goes away. I'm all for it.

I had a gut feeling that I needed to get one more opinion, so we met with another roofer. It's likely we'll replace the back roof, get better insulation and won't have to worry every time it rains.

We got on a roll and decided to remove even more sheet rock in the living and dining rooms. All I could think was, "How many more tacks do I have to pull out of the wood?" In the end, though, it's worth it. We're liking how it all looks.

To top off our productive week Carpenter Rick finished finished the trim around the opening between the living and dining rooms, so we can really start to see our living room coming into shape. We also started priming the kitchen and doors. Seeing visible changes is keeping our energy up - for the most part.

I've had to tackle several of the things that I've been putting off - the nitty-gritty scrubbing and reaching into the floors of dark closets to pull fabric off the walls. I keep thinking every little step we do now, is one less step we have to do later. It all needs to be done. As I was removing shelves from the bathroom closet I thought about how we're undoing what someone else put a lot of thought into. The front part of our house is built well, and I know grandpa thought all these little things through - the coat closet bar that can't fall out of the grooves because of the shelf above it , the bathroom shelves, the kitchen shelves and cabinets. And here we are undoing it. And, some day, someone else will undo the things we did. Unless they just tear it down like the one around the corner and the one next door.

Next up - electricity and more painting!

Week 4

Not too much to report this week.
We had two dead trees removed. One was a deteriorating half-tree directly outside the back door and the other one the arborist called a "minor emergency." Fortunately, I got two chairs and a mini-table out of the deal.

I had to make a visit to our POD to retrieve some tools. We've been borrowing tools - thank you David and Grant! - from family and friends and it was time to get our own as our tasks increased. The PODS are stored in a humongous nondescript warehouse in Pflugerville. They require 24 hours notice and when you arrive you see your POD in the corner of the parking lot.

Last August we closed the door on the very packed POD and I was a bit hesitant about opening it now, wondering what was going to fall on my face. Nothing did. I pulled out our tools and a few within-reach items like our water filter and vacuum. We've been fine without all our stuff, of course, but there was something comforting about seeing all our crap stuff and knowing that we'll unpack it in a few months in our new home.

We're still exploring the flat-roof leak over the back room. There is evidence of a leak in the ceiling, but we didn't see drips after all the rain so that's good. Maybe the roof was fixed and the previous owners chose not to repair or paint the drywall and tacked cardboard on the ceiling to cover the hole instead.

Carpenter Rick started his work this week - moving a door by closing one doorway up and making a new doorway between the middle and back rooms, closing another doorway and enlarging the opening between the living and dining rooms.

closed up doorway with recycled shiplap between kitchen and middle bedroom

enlarged opening between living & dining

in the process of closing door on left and building doorway on right

It was one of those weeks where I vacillated between being excited about the small progressions and needing lots of breathers as I realized how much more work there is to. When I feel like that I grab my orange Home Depot bucket and pick up trash in the yard. It's progress poco a poco, little by little.

House Week 3

So much, so much!
On Monday Jose and John cleaned out the attic while I was shopping at Home Depot (again!) for lead safe respirators, because we managed to become thoroughly freaked out about lead. (So much so that John got his blood tested. His lead results were less than 1 and you don't start worrying until it's 25. I think we're okay.) After I got back to the house, I waited until they went to lunch to go through all the treasures from the attic. I now have several more mason jars with lids, a few old mayonnaise jars - they're a great size for storing too many dry garbanzo beans - and some vintage clothes. (Don't tell John.) There was also a ton of junk, a few old coffeemakers and a toaster, and two fake Christmas trees and decorations. After rifling through the goods, it was time to get back to work and more cleaning. We scrubbed baseboards, cabinets and windows.

My new shirt. Come and knock on our door; We've been waiting for you...

We met with Bruce The Bungalow Doctor, or Bruce Bungalow as I like to call him, about some changes we want to make including closing up two doorways and making a new doorway between the back two rooms. I think he was more excited than we were! He is passionate about these old homes and his work, so it's a good match.

On Wednesday Joel & Carlos, the plumbers, started their work to re-plumb the house. They are nice, quiet and move fast. Luckily, no big plumbing surprises were found and we'll be wrapping up this phase soon. We'll wait to install sinks, commode, dishwasher, etc. until all the painting and dry wall work is done. In the meantime, I've been googling bottom-freezer, french door stainless fridges and am very excited.

Saturday we had meetings planned with a window guy and an electrician starting at 9am and then planned to work a full day.  We made the mistake of running that morning in the humidity, so during our meetings John was yawning and I kept trying to find a seat on the step-ladder to rest. We were beat! We pushed our work to the next day.

Saturday night there were major storms and a tree fell inches from my car where we are staying. It was around 2:00 am and John and I heard the tree falling and I jumped out of the bed and yelled "come on! come on!" trying to run out of our bedroom where I was certain a tree was about to land. This all happened in seconds, of course. Luckily, the tree managed to fall between two cars in a parking lot.

Backing out under the tree. Not dangerous at all. 

Despite the long night of storms and the felled tree, I was pumped to get up and start pulling down the cardboard-like wall covering in the bathroom so that we can put up bead board or something purty like that. I got to work with the wonder bar and tried not to break too many pieces of trim...or tile. But, it wouldn't be a normal day in the Savage household to not break something. In the end John and I each accidentally broke some tile. A little spot of glue will fix it right up. We hope.

bathroom before

bathroom after

Working in the kitchen, John first took down one of the two little walls. We were going to call it a day when we decided to take down the second half-wall with storage to open up the kitchen. We were hesitant because we'd lose the storage space and grandpa who built the house put in a lot of thought and effort. In the end, though, I'm so glad we did take it down! Not only did it open up the kitchen, we found a rat's nest between the bottom of the cabinet and the floor. Nasty! Once we saw that we knew we had to take out the bottom kitchen cabinets because who could say for sure those weren't as nasty. We'd been debating all week about taking out the cabinets and this made the decision for us. Fortunately, they weren't as bad.

kitchen before

rat's nest

demoing in lead mask

kitchen after - see small window on left

We were both totally done at this point and ready to go home. Then John got fired up to create a window in the wall to let more light into the kitchen from the back room.  It's a work in progress.

Next up - get the two dead trees removed and figure out where the roof leak is coming from!
See all house pictures here

House Week 2

We started the week off strong as the foundation work started and John's friend, Jose, from Home Depot helped us one day. John and Jose removed nasty tile in the back room, kitchen cabinet doors, more sheetrock and cleaned. While cleaning, they found a newspaper from 1948 and some baby rats, which sounds shocking, but no-fear Jose scooped them up with some tile and got rid of them. I'm just glad I wasn't there at the time.

Instead, I was at Home Depot strolling around with my shopping cart like it was HEB. I searched high and low for a magic tool to remove the strings around the tacks on the shiplap. I've probably purchased at least 4 different tools and when each one didn't work, it took the wind out of my sails. Good thing Home Depot is so awesome about returns. The project seemed so daunting. Just when I didn't know what to do I found a 4" tack puller. I knew this tool and some tweezers were my last resort.  Luckily, they worked. Thanks to Kelly who came over and helped me with the task!

The neighborhood is great - we met some more neighbors who gave us turnips from their garden and told us how relieved they were that we weren't going to tear down the house. Over the weekend, I could hear the reggae fest from Auditorium Shores. Rasta. Rasta. Rise up! Rise up! 

We continued working trying to get rid of the odor in the house. We used a solution of hydrogen peroxide and baking soda with a touch of dish soap and an enzyme treatment from PetCo . Did you know they sell rats at PetCo? I told them I have some for free at my house.

We discovered that the attic had not been emptied after all. I'm certain there are lots of treasures up there, but I'm too scared to clear it out myself should I encounter the mama rat or any other rat. We also discovered a ouija board tucked in a closet corner. I think it was being used to cover up the rat holes.

Next week - plumbing starts!!

holes for new piers

I see storage space. 

Toilet shopping. The step before appliance shopping. 

See all house pictures here