There's nothing like a couple of good contractors

While we were both dealing with the Flower Show, our contractors have been making progress.  Actually, they are almost done.

Our plumber has been wonderful.  We are excited to announce that we now have heat throughout the house and running water to all but the 1st floor bathroom and laundry room.  He got the 2nd and 3rd floor radiators up and running a couple of weeks ago, finished the baseboard radiators in the addition after that.  On Thursday, I arrived just as they finished up with the under-floor radiant heat for the rest of the ground floor.

The radiant heat is fantastic, it heats up quickly and is really comfortable at relatively low temperatures.   We are looking forward to walking around barefoot on a warm floor.  For now, it helps dry the floors when we mop.  We get nice dry stripes where all of the water lines are (sorry no photo yet).  The rest of the water should be up and running this coming week.

Simultaneously, our general contractor has been working on a laundry list of random jobs.  He too should be done this week.  Here are some before and after shots of what he's been up to.

Before:  The Cellar Stairs

Unfortunately you can't see the big crack across the entire width of the top step.  Maybe it cracked because of the sketchy supports?

After:

Before: Laundry Room Floor

After: Laundry Room Floor 

Porcelain 2" hex tile and soffit to enclose the water lines. The fin pipe floating about is a baseboard radiator that will be placed on top of the soffit and covered.   Apparently the tile was really fiddly to work with because they weren't properly spaced on the mesh.  It needs a good clean, but we're really happy with how it looks.

Before:  Front Porch

Rotten columns and peeling lead paint.

After:  Porch with a new paint job, as well as new gutters and columns (still to be painted) 

In addition we no longer have a door opening six feet above the stairs in the third floor stairwell.  We have a solid wall there now.  We'll figure out another way of getting furniture up there.  We also have a new ceiling fan in the dining room (we'll figure out lights at some point) and new railings where required.

On our end, we really haven't gotten much done.  We have started several things haven't finished any of them.  We'll update again as we complete some of them.

Update on the nasty fridge:  The township picked it up last Friday.  We're glad we cleaned it out since we were required to take the doors off.

This house waits for noone...well, maybe the Philadelphia Flower Show

Well, we started our blog to document our house adventure and then promptly dropped off the radar.

What's up with that, huh?

Well, the Philadelphia Flower Show has a way of throwing a wrench into the works of even the smoothest running life...especially when both of us are involved with it.  Kathryn has been coaxing all of the plants into bloom for the (award winning) Temple University display over the past six months--everything looks amazing; while Tom swapped his horticulturist hat out for his old cabinetmaker and framer hats (yes, in order to wear both concurrently).

We have both been pulling long hours and are quite tuckered out, but it has been worth it as the Flower Show this year is a great one and we have both been part of making it happen (so come and visit us there if you can).

Anyway, things are going well with the house--we have at least partial heat as of yesterday, and the tile is laid in the laundry room...in other words, both contractors have made LOTS of progress.  It looks like we'll be able to wind down from the Flower Show by moving (ugh).

We hope all of you are well, and expect to hear more from us after the dust has settled from this year's Flower Show.

All That You Can't Leave Behind (or Can You?)

Since there is still no heat, and therefore no water, we have mostly limited ourselves to dealing with the junk the previous owners left as well as cleaning up the yard.  After work on the day we closed, I stopped by our local garden center and used the gift card I'd been saving for a year and a half to buy our very own leaf rake and then proceeded to put it to work.  I got the leaves out of the basement stairwell and away from the side door - they were piled two feet tall in each.

There was also a pile of fence sections that they never got around to putting up.  Tom took those to Meadowbrook for Flower Show construction. 

After dark we moved on to the trash.  We wanted our general contractor and plumber to be able to get to work as soon as possible so we started with the basement.  The last people to live here must have had all sorts of projects for the house that they never got around to finishing and also must have left in a hurry.

There was a whole pile of bead-board and then piles of toys, clothes, closet parts, tile, lumber and trash.

It seemed that they were part way through trying to finish the basement - thank goodness they never got to drywall since the framing job was one of the sketchier things we've seen in a while.

It's hard to tell from this, but there was about a 2" gap between the bottom of the studs and that concrete ledge.  Also, notice the orientation of the studs.  We would have been stuck with a finished cellar with outlet boxes sticking half-way out of the walls.

To top it all off they left a non-functioning refrigerator in the cellar - still full of food (we'll come back to this later).

After getting a lot of trash out and ripping down most of the framing during the week, Tom's parents joined us for a Saturday afternoon and helped us haul most of the rest of it out (Thank You!!).  The bead-board went to one of Tom's co-workers, and the stray lumber - including everything we took off the walls - went to Meadowbrook, again for Flower Show construction (they were looking for reclaimed lumber so that worked out well).  Our shop-vac got quite the workout as well, cleaning up flaked off parging, plaster dust and a large quantity of centipedes.  In just a few hours, our cellar was beginning to look much better (still no photo - sorry).

Last week, while I was waiting for Aqua (the water company) to show up and turn the water on at the street, I decided to deal with the exterior trash.  We had thought that the trash cans were overflowing with 2 year old trash.  That wasn't entirely true.  One of the cans was overflowing with trash, the others just looked like they were overflowing because the trash was floating in rainwater.  Thank goodness I've been dealing with a lot of bog plants at work lately, so the smell wasn't too much of a shock. 

The bonus of dealing with the trash was finding 8 or 10 bags of leaves that are now nicely composted.  I added those to the garden.

Now back to that refrigerator.  The photo doesn't come anywhere close to showing the full extent of the nastiness, so I didn't take any chances with it.  I suited up in Tyvek, my spray boots from work and respirator and went to work.  

Three contractor bags, half a bottle of Clorox Cleanup, and a roll of paper towels later the fridge is empty and (mostly) clean.  Tom could smell the bleach up on the second floor.  I couldn't smell anything because of my respirator, but I did start to wonder if I was using a lot when my eyes started to get a little irritated.  I also went through a whole bunch of Lysol Disinfectant Spray for good measure.  Now we shouldn't have to worry about the township trash collectors holding a grudge against us for the next 20 years.  Also, that was the last of the truly nasty jobs (that we are aware of) so now we can move on to the fun - tearing down, ripping out and rebuilding.

Beginning

We closed on the house and the work has begun, so we thought it was time to start a blog.  If you care to, you can follow along and see what we hope will be great progress.  If you don't care to, at least we will have some sort of record of all of the crazy things that we'll be up to in the near future.

A brief history of the house:

Built in 1935, it is a sort of converted colonial with 3 floors, 3 or 4 bedrooms (depending on if you count the finished attic) and 3 baths.  At some other point in time it must have been beautiful, the layout is very nice and there are beautiful details under all of the layers of paint and dirt.

Currently, however, it is a bit of a mess.  It has been sitting vacant for two years after what seemed to have been a quick and angry exit.  There is no heat because somebody bashed all of the radiators on the ground floor.

It was never properly winterized (they just let the water drain onto the floor), so we aren't entirely sure what surprises await us with the plumbing.

The previous inhabitants tried their hand at painting but clearly didn't know what either drop cloths or painter's tape were.

They also seemed to think that nobody would notice if they didn't paint behind the radiators (did you notice?).  The kitchen is terrible - we hope to completely redo it as soon as possible - really? barn siding?

The closets are unusable because of freakish ideas about framing.

Then there are things like the porch that's middle support sways with a good gust of wind (sorry - no picture).
We rolled some repairs, such as the heating and things required by FHA, like the porch, gutters, replacing the very sketchy basement stairs  into the mortgage (otherwise there would have been no way we could have gotten this house).

We're pretty sure that the piece of barn siding on the right side of the photo is an integral part of the structure of the stairs.

  All of the rest we plan on doing ourselves (or with family members or friends that we can persuade (or con) into coming to help us).  We're excited to get to work.  We may have to live in what feels like a construction zone for a while, but we're pretty sure it will be worth it.