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House: Before
A friend who just bought a new house and will renovate it extensively invited all and sundry to a "before" viewing this weekend, with the following:
"It's a big old four-square built in 1904 that was divided into apartments in the 30s, has been vacant for about 8 years, and is a complete disaster--it needs new plumbing, wiring, kitchen, bathrooms, paint, etc.....in short, it's our dream house! ... Keep in mind that there are currently no working bathrooms and that small children should be closely supervised. If this doesn't sound like a great time to you, feel free to wait until our move-in party, at which we'll be offering not only food and drink, but running water as well!"
And it was all true. Grand scale - 12 foot deep porch, 12 foot ceilings, pocket doors, multiple fireplaces, most with original tile and one with what looked like an original etagere or something (I probably have the wrong word). Strangely narrow and unimpressive staircase, which is in fact original, and then, oh, the horrors. Many rooms - bedrooms, stairwell, dining room - have immense plywood "closets" built in (because, of course, the house in its original state had almost none). Pocket doors nailed shut. Crumbling plaster walls covered in fake wood veneer, dated 1970s. Shag orange carpet, dated ditto. Hideous 1930s wallpaper, yellow. Bathroom fixtures currently lying about the living room. Nothing at all in the "kitchen" - no cabinets, no appliances, no fixtures, just a pipe coming out of the wall. Owner assures us the plumbing is "an absolute rat's nest" and is all coming out. I don't think there is any central heating at all. Owner tells a story about the complete off-kilterness of the foundation - it looks like they built the house bigger than the foundation by mistake, so they just shored it up with a 10 by 10 beam out of an old barn. Et cetera.
Now, mr. flea and I harbor some house renovation fantasies. He is surprisingly knowledgable about the strangest things (spent a gleeful hour at 5:30 am yesterday discovering things wrong with our bizarre and antiquated furnace). I can handle mess and hard work. We wandered around this house, carefully not falling into the holes in the floor, and looked at each other and said "This house is Way Too Much House for us."
I think the owners will be okay - the fellow is an architect and is doing his own subcontracting, and they are continuing to live in their existing house while the work is going on. And they apparently have scads of money, which of course is what the house needs most. (We spent a portion of the afternoon thinking "why don't we have scads of money?" and answering "Sad addiction to graduate school, and also, no rich schmancy parents.")
"It's a big old four-square built in 1904 that was divided into apartments in the 30s, has been vacant for about 8 years, and is a complete disaster--it needs new plumbing, wiring, kitchen, bathrooms, paint, etc.....in short, it's our dream house! ... Keep in mind that there are currently no working bathrooms and that small children should be closely supervised. If this doesn't sound like a great time to you, feel free to wait until our move-in party, at which we'll be offering not only food and drink, but running water as well!"
And it was all true. Grand scale - 12 foot deep porch, 12 foot ceilings, pocket doors, multiple fireplaces, most with original tile and one with what looked like an original etagere or something (I probably have the wrong word). Strangely narrow and unimpressive staircase, which is in fact original, and then, oh, the horrors. Many rooms - bedrooms, stairwell, dining room - have immense plywood "closets" built in (because, of course, the house in its original state had almost none). Pocket doors nailed shut. Crumbling plaster walls covered in fake wood veneer, dated 1970s. Shag orange carpet, dated ditto. Hideous 1930s wallpaper, yellow. Bathroom fixtures currently lying about the living room. Nothing at all in the "kitchen" - no cabinets, no appliances, no fixtures, just a pipe coming out of the wall. Owner assures us the plumbing is "an absolute rat's nest" and is all coming out. I don't think there is any central heating at all. Owner tells a story about the complete off-kilterness of the foundation - it looks like they built the house bigger than the foundation by mistake, so they just shored it up with a 10 by 10 beam out of an old barn. Et cetera.
Now, mr. flea and I harbor some house renovation fantasies. He is surprisingly knowledgable about the strangest things (spent a gleeful hour at 5:30 am yesterday discovering things wrong with our bizarre and antiquated furnace). I can handle mess and hard work. We wandered around this house, carefully not falling into the holes in the floor, and looked at each other and said "This house is Way Too Much House for us."
I think the owners will be okay - the fellow is an architect and is doing his own subcontracting, and they are continuing to live in their existing house while the work is going on. And they apparently have scads of money, which of course is what the house needs most. (We spent a portion of the afternoon thinking "why don't we have scads of money?" and answering "Sad addiction to graduate school, and also, no rich schmancy parents.")
no subject
Our "new" (built in the 40s, new to us) house needs work, and we've been hemorrhaging money, but nothing like that. We did see a fantabulous Victorian when we were house hunting that sounds like what your friends have here. If we were in the trades and/or had scads of money, we would have scooped it up in a heartbeat. But it was covered in aluminum siding on the outside, and veneer panelling and shag on the inside. The plumbing and electricity were hazardous, and every update any owner had ever done was completely wrong for the period, the style, the neighborhood, and none of it seemed particularly sound, either.
They're lucky they can swing living in their old house while they fix up the new old house. I'm jealous, except I know how hard it is to get even small renovation projects complete anywhere near on schedule or on budget.
It sounds fun, but it also sounds hard. I'm tired of hard.
no subject
Every time I think about finishing off my attic, which really isn't all that big, I have some of the same feelings. It's tough when you're doing it on your own.
And they apparently have scads of money...
Yeah, that helps a lot.
no subject
Not, mind you, that I know anything about renovating. But if I were with someone who did, and could tell me "here, go sand this floor. here, this is how you put a tile down, now do the whole floor", I could totally do that.