From Hovel to Home

We don't know much about our home's history.  I've never been interested in looking at county records to see how many times it has changed hands.  The little I do know about it has been gleaned from the neighbors and the MLS listing.  After months of working on the house we've come to realize the the MLS was not entirely correct.  According to the county and the MLS the house was built in 1953 which matches a note the builders left on the bathroom framing.  But after months of working on the house it has become clear to us that part of the house is much older. We think that the original house was build in the 20's and only measured 16'x32'.  We're guessing that in 1953 the area was starting to boom and the old house was torn down so that only the cellar and floor remained.  A new house was then built over the old cellar and the newly poured north crawlspace.  The 1953 house would have been a 2 bed/1bath and measured roughly 930 sq.ft.  ...

We had planned to spend Memorial Day weekend mudding and taping the sheetrock in the garage.  But with our snowy/rainy weather and no garage door it was just not going to work.  We abandoned any plans of working in the garage and tackled a completely different project: the bathrooms.  Since we now have a finished bathroom in the basement we can finally rip out the upstairs bathroom. The whole house we disgusting when we bought it, but the upstairs bathroom was especially cringe-worthy. We had a lot of mold to contend with on the tub, the floor and in the walls. If you've eaten recently or would like to you shouldn't look at this next picture. Dead mice, mold and I won't even talk about the toilet. We pulled up five layers of flooring and found mold between each layer. We didn't have time to build a new bathroom before moving in so we did our best to get this room functional. We ripped out all the flooring and subfloor, put down new plywood and stick-on vinyl t...

Replacing the garage roof made a huge difference in the interior of the garage. The new ceiling is nearly 9' tall and the 20 x 20 space feels larger without the posts and beams in the way, but the interior still has a long way to go.  We finally got around to insulating. Our walls are 2x4 but R19 insulation was on sale and cheaper than R13 so we opted for the thicker insulation. On Friday night we bought sheetrock and hung the ceiling.  Luke managed to get half the ceiling hung before I even got home from work. Of course all work was supervised by Loki.  She loves any excuse to climb a ladder. The walls needed a little more planning than the ceiling.  Whoever built our garage used 8' studs with a single bottom plate and a double top plate so the wall height ended up being 8'4" after the ceiling sheetrock was hung.  After a little debate we hung the top row of sheetrock.  (A certain Malamute decided to lunge in front of the camera) The we got...

I am pleased to report that our window saga has a happy ending.  The guy we got our windows from was very understanding when we explained our predicament.  He still had a half-dozen windows left and let us trade for a smaller one.  So we don't have to look at this forever. It did not take long to install the second window And the garage looks a lot more complete.  In fact, these windows don't look like they belong on a garage.  Our neighbors probably think we are converting it into an apartment. We still have to trim them out with 5/4 board.  Maybe tomorrow.