I retired in July and moved home from across the country. My furniture arrived on Sept 30th and it became obvious immediately that things were not going to work out as were. The orginal plan was to live in the house for a year and then do a full renovation. The idea was good and it could have been done, but......... The furniture fit but I would have been really uncomfortable for a year, so being the flexible person that I am, I made a quick executive decision that the renovation needed to be done NOW!
At first, I was thinking, maybe just a bit here and then I could take a breather and a few months later do something else. As I began to get serious about what I wanted to do to the house, I realized so many of the things were intertied that doing it in bits and pieces would just not be practical. So it was all or nothing.
I knew who I wanted to do the work, so I got in touch with him and told him I needed help. He came over and we spent a couple of hours going over the existing structure. He's great to work with. My knowledge of construction is limited at best, but I know what I want the end product to look like, so he tells me just to keep talking and sooner or later he'll see the same vision I do.
He agreed to start work on November 9, but circumstances ended up interferring with that and we actually started on the 16th.
So here's what I'm starting with:
The house is a two-bedroom, one-bath that was originally built in 1963. With the carport it's about 1,100 square feet. The kitchen is original and hasn't been updated ever and with my love of cooking that just wasn't going to work. It's also, in reality, a four room house - the two bedrooms, a living room and the kitchen. The bathroom was more a closet space even though it did contain a small bathtub, a sink and a toilet. I could literally stand in the middle and touch both opposing walls at the same time. Not to put too fine a point on it, but sitting on the toilet could become a real adventure in flexibility.
So the 16th arrived and work began. As with all building projects, destruction had to take place before construction could start. I think Builder was afraid that the mess generated would overwhelm me, but it takes a lot to panic me. I just accepted it as a fact of life and let it go.
The first to go was the small add-on room that was being used as a laundry. It had been added to the original stucture sometime in the 70s and was in pretty bad shape. It hadn't been put together all that well, and wear and tear was showing. Even if I hadn't been redoing the whole house, that would have had to go.
Next it was the concrete.....and more concrete........and more concrete..........and more concrete. What we thought was a thin floating pad that the laundry room was sitting on, turned out to be a foot thick slab with rather interesting fill items. Then when they starting digging out the addition crawl space, we ran into more concrete. Apparently, when they laid down the slab they took all leftover concrete and spread it out from the end of the carport. Over the years it had gotten covered with dirt and we had no idea it was there.......unfortunately.
So, two weeks have expired, interrupted only by a holiday and hunting season. The concrete has been busted, the crawl space has been dug, the carport roof is propped up, some of the siding is off and a good portion of sheetrock in the south end of the house has been removed.
Tomorrow it starts again. The plan is to measure off the walls and dig in the footings. I'll be posting more as it goes along.
Herbs, I am so excited for you! Can't wait to read and see more as the project moves along. I know it will be awesome when finished.
ReplyDeleteThis is cool. Do you have a contractor doing all the work? What is the finished product going to look like? I am thinking something around 1800 sq ft with a pool for the dogs.
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