Tag: renovation

The contractor is concerned about the party walls. I’m not too keen on them either, as it seems I could remove the mortar with a toothbrush it’s so sandy. The walls won’t be a problem he guessed in the next 20-30 years. But after that, who knows. How the heck do you fix a wall you share?
I really don’t believe this house was built that well to start with. There have been a couple of problems I found that I’m not sharing on the blog, for various reasons, that relate to the fact that mine was built for poor laborers by a single landlord. There were shortcuts made evident when walls were exposed. There are other things that make me wonder if the 1870ish landlord got these houses built fast and cheap.

On an intellectual level I knew he was going to take out the walls and investigate what was up with my house. I was not prepared on an emotional level for what I saw. Now the contractor was as giddy as a schoolgirl and very proud of the work done, when showing me the results. Work, that seems to me went a little, ok very overboard.
Weren’t we keeping the plaster, and that other thing, and what the hell did you do with my ceiling?
On an intellectual level I see the importance of taking out the drywall of a wall. A wall that was hiding the fact that the upper portion of my stairs were not supported by anything. Sort of like the hole in the wall that wasn’t supported. You can see the hole, or better the chunk of wall ready to fall through the floor, in the back of the room near the doorway. There was other crap hidden under stuff, like the bathroom floor was near rotted.
On an emotional level. Different story. Which is why my renovation eye-witness may be spotty in the future. What I felt standing alone in a gutted room I was not prepared for the weight of all that just happened and what is to be, sinking in. That and the sound of the wall chunk shifting.
I just don’t want to see my house until it is in a more hopeful state. I don’t think I want to even go near it, but I have to because the mail forwarding hasn’t kicked in yet.

Well I was planning on a whole angst-ridden piece about what kind of floors I was looking to put in for Friday’s posting. The problem or the source of angst was one of the moral quandaries I had with my choice of flooring. I thought I was being all good and wonderful by choosing bamboo flooring. Then I read a Treehugger article about how bamboo is filled with formaldehyde, made under poor working conditions, isn’t local and thus requires a fair amount energy to get to the East coast, etc, etc, etc. And despite my desire to do right and and go for the more expensive cleaner (working conditions, older farms that don’t deforest, etc) bamboo flooring, I just can’t afford it. And there is a lot I can’t afford, where doing the right thing just falls to the wayside because simply put, I don’t have the money for it, particularly when crap like the hole in the wall appears, sucking money from one thing to fix this other thing. Good Lord knows what else I may find that is a budget killer.
Well the floors may be a non-issue. Apparently, I have some heart pine floors. Heart pine, that can be kept, buffed up and made nice. Maybe. It was a small portion of the floor. When the whole of the floor has been revealed, then maybe, hopefully, keep your fingers crossed & pray, the whole thing will be worth saving and I don’t have to worry about bamboo floors. If not, maybe maple from the USA.

I have shown the hole, the one in the load bearing wall, to a few folks.
Auntie, who came by with the camera to take pictures that she can’t seem to email to me, just said, “Oh.”
IT looked at the hole as well as a lot of brick I exposed and he expressed concern about the mortar in the party walls, remarking that there was lots of sandy mortar. Sandy, sandy mortar.
Lastly, I was able to get a contractor to look at it. After a string of cursing and tearing away the hanging plaster, he expressed disbelief in the idea that someone thought they could get away with hiding this. Well it’s gonna add to my construction costs. Lucky enough, there was a steel beam that could support the wall already supporting the floor of the kitchen. However, walls and part of the ceiling in the basement may need to be exposed to deal with the problem. And maybe a wall in the kitchen. Two places I thought would be free from construction, so I didn’t bother packing up those rooms. Now I have to.

Forgive me, O Lord, for the sinful thoughts that welled up in my heart, for desiring to hire a hit man to deal with a certain Nigerian contractor, and place in my renovation budget. May the murderous anger that fills me be replaced by charity and forgiveness. And I ask, may I not find any more like surprises that trigger these thoughts in the first place. Amen.

I haven’t mentioned him in a while because dang it, I moved on, and I just attributed many of these things to nameless ‘crackheads.’ Yet, I am going to say, and warn all who read this posting, if you meet up with a Nigerian contractor named Sunny, don’t let him anywhere near your house. If you buy a house that was recently ‘fixed’ or ‘renovated’ by this man, tear everything down to the party walls and the joists. Why? Because this man’s ‘work’ is dangerous.
I’ve begun part of the demo in the house and while whacking away at sections of drywall I discovered something that makes me afraid to sleep in my house. Sunny, being the contractor who ‘renovated’ the house for sale had a false wall near the part of the house that meets up with the kitchen.
I had gathered that the false wall was built to hide the radiator pipes. Yes, that and something else. There was a big crack hidden behind the wall that I’d seen the top of and figured I would fix in this renovation. This week I pulled back more of the drywall and discovered that big crack jagged down to an enormous sized hole about 2 feet wide and 1.5 feet from the floor. This hole continues through the floor revealing the joists and the drywall for the ceiling of the cellar.
Unfortunately I haven’t gotten a real camera yet and my Palm camera can’t get the lighting right so I’ll have to describe this. Start about 4 feet from the ground with a crack in the plaster. Go down about 1.5 feet and increase the size of the crack creating a 1/2 gap in the crack. Three feet, make the gap 1 inch. Then from there open up a big hole, where near the top you see a brick hanging loosely. Behind most of the plaster surrounding the hole, nothing. At the bottom of the hole you will see joists, wires, and three bricks sitting on the ceiling of the basement.
The reason for the murderous thoughts was what the big hole meant. Above the wall that sits between the 1 floor kitchen and the main structure is an exterior brick wall. I’ve always wondered what was keeping up that brick wall seeing that the basement didn’t continue that wall….. Apparently, nothing! Nothing is keeping up that wall! That wall being my bedroom wall, the wall that my bed leans on. Sunny’s cheap ass slap dash crackhead work put the structure of my house and possibly my life in danger. I. Was. Livid!
I can forgive the superglued plumbing, the unsecured plumbing, the wiring that makes no sense, the toilet encased in tile, the poor paint job, the crooked windows, and the nasty textured paint, but this, no.

When I first moved into the house I was excited to do a little fixing here, a little fixing there. Then I hit what I called the 3rd year slump, which basically boils down to “I’m tired. I don’t want to do this anymore.” And that’s why I’m paying people to come into my house and fix it.
Well this weekend I helped a gal from my church (and reader of this blog) do some demo work in her new house. She’s recently come from a church sponsored trip to New Orleans where the group demoed some houses damaged by Katrina. Everyone I’ve spoken to who have come back from there raves about the work and seemed to be energized by it. So that same post-New Orleans energy was in the air, as well as lots of dust, as we whacked at her walls, knocking down Sheetrock and plaster.
With the right tools and extra hands, this knocking at walls business seems, dare I say it, fun. Also the brick behind the drywall and plaster looked beautiful. I know the case is not the same back at my house. We got a workout swinging the hammer, chiseling the plaster and whatever that stuff under the plaster happens to be. The process took me back to the new homeowner excitement of trying to imagine the space as something wonderful, once all the demo and construction has been done.
She’s saving some money by doing the demo work herself. I could save money by doing my own demo as well. When I came home after knocking the plaster off her dining room wall, I felt the desire to demo something in my house. So I pulled up a little carpet. But then I realized I didn’t know where’s my crow bar and my utility knife is a bit broken, and I needed to shower, and I wanted to take a nap too. But I still got a little of the demo-your-house bug. I want to take apart carpet and demo some walls, the easy stuff, before the serious work of building and fixing starts.

How to keep a parking space clear, crazy lady failed to keep moving. After I typed up the posts I got ready to head out and just kept hearing her, expecting the loud incoherent babble to die down as she moved down the sidewalk. When I got outside, she had parked herself on B & IT’s porch to smoke a cigarette. B&IT were out so I gathered it was up to me to remove this interloper from their property.
I asked her to to move. Nicely. Babble, babble, “call the police then.” I responded, “OK, I’ll do that,” and went inside to call 311. I described the woman as mentally ill to the dispatcher. Maybe ‘crazy’ would have been a better word as I am not a psychologist, never took a psych class, so it was just my layman’s opinion. The dispatcher questioned me about the ‘mentally ill’….. Anyway, I described how the woman was acting, yelling at people and so on.
I waited about 5 minutes, keeping an eye on the woman from my 2nd floor window. She looked up at me and more babbling. I saw a police cruiser come down the street and when I saw him, she finished her cigarette and got up from the porch. I figured I could leave now. The officer stopped the woman and talked to her. When I came out, I asked the officer if he needed me. He asked if I had called it in, I said yes, and he said no. I went my merry way and prayed that the crazy lady would get the help that she needed to be less crazy.

On Renovation 2007: Postpone? I am going to move forward. I picked contractor #1 as we found a way to make it more affordable and he said he could do the project later in fall. But he’d really, really, really, would like to start as soon as possible. Really. Electric and plumbing permits, as far I understand it are up to the plumbers and the electricians. I’m not putting in new outlets. The newest electric thing would be the AC. The contractor also suggested reusing some things like my toilets (provided you can get the one encased in tile out without breaking it) and one bathroom sink to cut down on costs and keep things out of the landfills. Keeping the bedroom light fixtures, the radiators, and we’ll go around later to pick out what stays. The carpet goes.

As of this morning I’m thinking of postponing the project till Fall. Maybe during Spring and Summer I can deal with the permits, getting rid of stuff, some demo so that certain things won’t be a complete surprise, and work on the garden. I am determined to do this project this year, that’s the one thing I’m certain of, even if I’m getting cold feet about a bunch of other things. One of the reasons I’m mentioning the renovation and my thoughts on the blog is so that I have some pressure outside myself to get this thing going. But I woke up this morning and I just did not feel good about my choices, where I am in the planning, and a bunch of other things. I can’t postpone too long as I can hear the house moving and slowly falling apart and that needs to be addressed soon.
Let’s see what I feel like tomorrow, after a good night’s sleep and church.