The Estate of Things

This week at the Indiana project its all about the exterior.

Repairing those cedar shakes…

The carpenters named that unsightly shelter that once housed the steps to the cellar door the “dog house”.

Well its gone now, the cellar door was removed and the hole sealed and dirt filled in to the cement hole.  I am so glad that thing is gone, I hated it and it was sort of inhibiting me from seeing progress.

Dog house trashing the view, well actually the dog house isn’t the only negative in this image

Dog house gone

The underground oil tank was pumped out last week and my Dad dug it up with his backhoe. He had tons of fun doing that. I think its therapeutic for him. The tank was about 6 feet long and 45 inches in diameter. It should go to the salvage yard soon.

The rain drove the carpenters inside for part of the week.  While inside they removed some original flooring from the master bath and other areas of the house to patch the reading nook upstairs, the master bedroom and the closet in the master bedroom.

By reusing the original wood we hope to save money in material and we like reusing materials original to the house.  We will not however, save any cash in the labor department.

The floors are oak downstairs and yellow pine upstairs.  I’ve noticed in other remodels of homes built before 1940, that the more expensive wood was used in areas where guests were more likely to see it–oak being the more expensive of the two in this case.

As a side note, oak holds up a lot better to doggie toenails than the pine floors I’ve lived with in the past.

Looking forward to window installation possibly next week?!?

My friend Joel has a beautiful doll of a girl roommate named Aubrey and she is a genius. They rent a Spanish bungalow in West L.A. (total score… full on 3br 2ba house, exposed beams, an amazing backyard and studio out back. I’m gonna show you pics!)

Aubrey is a genius because she has a really fun ceiling, and she painted the room grey with a complimentary dark grey above and I love it. Don’t you!?

Here’s some more pics of the home, so you can salivate a bit. It’s affordable too. Affordable like less than $1000 per month per person.

I love the art deco tile that you run into in LA homes.

Sunbeam & Beams!!

Nice chairs. (Sarah must be wondering, but they are not Joel’s. They are the previous tenants)

What’s up trellis?

“Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall”

The wall separating the kitchen from the dining room was removed, one of the best decisions that has been made thus far in the project.

Stage 1, Before

Stage 2, Cabinets, plaster removed

Stage 3, wall is gone!

Kate and I have been talking a lot about what to do with the dining table and 4 chairs that her mother gifted her. The apartment is close to 100% empty and so we really don’t need to prioritize replacing it with the desired tulip & wingback combo (or whatever might be more desirable.) Looks like we have another project on our hands. I do love spray paint.

I was initially inspired by the upholstery on this chair at Downtown but I got over it when Sarah told me that she was not a fan of this chair.

So, we hit up some fabric stores today to see what we could find. The trip to Sew L.A. (in Silverlake) was a beautiful one. Sew L.A. is a fantastic resource for fabric made familiar by your favorite Etsy sellers.

I was hoping for a Chiang Mai, and thinking we could make a quick impact without too much effort. I probably wouldn’t normally have thought to go this route without the prod from Jamie’s recent addition to Furbish Studio, seen on iSuwannee.com.

(thanks Apartment #412 and Rowdy from Furbish Studio for the images)

After a quick stop in the coffee shop across from Sew L.A. I saw the green crocodile upholstery on the chairs there, and I couldn’t get it outta my mind, so the kitschy cute styles at Sew L.A. were no longer an option. In my single sightedness, we hit Sunset blvd toward downtown on the quest for croc.

The garment district was pretty awesome, starting first with Michael Levine Inc. After a few snaps with the camera, I was asked not to take pictures inside. (my apologies that I can’t visually share with you the awesomeness. You’ll have to come visit.) They had all of the novelty fabrics that Sew L.A. had and soo much more. (but not the right crocodile or chiang mai). All in all - a great day - though I came home overwhelmed and empty handed. Let me know if you have any ideas that I should be considering for a table make-over.

Not the right crocodile, but getting there.

Kate doesn’t know what Toile is. We’ll help her.

Checking in with the Indiana project…really I don’t check in, I should actually pitch a tent out back because I’m there so much.

This week there are different sub-contractors running all over the house.  The HVAC will be roughed in and should be complete by the end of the week. This was a significant unforeseen expense. The house has an existing oil furnace and we are changing it over to natural gas, this required all new equipment.  We knew that we had to extend central a/c to the upstairs but we had no idea that we would upgrade the entire system and switch fuel types. This was a blow to the budget and we had to make some adjustments.

Plumbers will begin their work this week.  The plumbing rough-in is expected to be complete by the end of this week. I spent most of last Friday afternoon learning about drop-in acrylic tubs and doing some price comparison.

Electrical rough-in is almost complete, the absence of a concrete kitchen plan has delayed the electrician’s work.

The windows were measured last week. The window installation is now 3-4 weeks away, this will result in the largest delay in the project thus far. I cannot move on to the next level until the entire rough-in and framing are inspected and the house cannot be inspected unless the new windows are in.

This week the carpenter will continue to repair the exterior. Some of the shakes needed to be replaced or added where windows were deleted. When the vinyl siding was installed all of the molding around the windows was trimmed down and the original wood brackets were also cut.  All of those are being repaired to look as they did when the house was built.

Hi Friends.
Today I have a question for you. (Specifically you Sarah! What do you think?)

When you are a renter and you would like to make updates to your home to make it more enjoyable, and you know that you’re ideas are in good taste and will more likely improve the quality of the home - is it better to ask for permission - or forgiveness!? I’m thinking about my new and tiny kitchen.

This is what I’m working with. (thanks iPhone cam)

Sarah added the image below to her Tiny post, about small kitchens. It gave me a bit of vision for the kitchen in my LA rental. Obviously, I cannot replace tile or reconfigure the appliances (as much as Kate would love to be able to). But, I believe I can replace hardware and paint the ceiling. Also, there is a lot of wall space over the sink that needs to be treated with some special attention. Should I be thinking metallic?? What kind of light fixture needs to hang over my sink? I can get those real tall cabinet pulls from Ikea for a price that I like, and I know a boy that might be down for painting the cabs a nice GLOSSY clean white….

In the last couple of days the vinyl siding was stripped away entirely. Vinyl was stripped from the soffits to reveal exposed rafter tails. The cedar shakes can see the light of day again.  We found the receipt for the siding job in the house. The vinyl siding was applied in 1980 for $6000.00, materials and labor.

A huge development this week and a total change in plan. We’ve decided to relocate the steps to the basement. Currently the basement door is in the kitchen, inside of a wall that separates the kitchen and the dining room.  This is that wall.

We are going to move the steps in to what was going to be our half bath.  The new basement stairwell will be off the living room. 

The kitchen in it’s current state.  The old window was deleted, four new windows have been framed in that will line the exterior wall, you can see the first two.

The place is still pretty torn apart.  It will be exciting to go there this afternoon in hopes that the kitchen wall is gone.

I got the permit that I was complaining about.

and I kindly invited the inspectors over for a little pow wow and to take a look at the framing job in progress. They liked what they saw, they were cordial and answered my questions. Score!

I know all of you want to know where those pumpkin orange drapes came from and those wood shutters that are hung unevenly and stained from nicotine and tar. The sources are; somewhere in a 1950s curtain vortex and Phillip Morris

More to come on the Indiana project later today.

Good Morning and let the venting begin!

Who put the poo poo in the construction/remodeling process? Local city officials like those sitting down at planning and inspections, that’s who. Bureaucrats who live some times happily, most of the time unhappily under a mound of forms and are so ingrained in a process or code that seems to serve no one.

I know, I know those bureaucrats are someone’s mother, daughter, niece or father. That doesn’t mean that I can’t dislike their process and sometimes along the way not like them very much. Trust me I talk to bureaucrats all day long at the “real job”, I have lots of pent up disdain and for totally justified reasons.

OK so I live in an area that is referred to as the Sandhills in North Carolina, adjacent to golf mecca (Pinehurst), its a collection of small towns.  Although the downturn in the housing market has slowed things down here and selling prices are down and it is very much a buyer’s market, we haven’t suffered as much as other areas of the country.  The point is that the housing market isn’t booming here, meaning these compliance officers like planning staff and inspectors aren’t that busy.

In applying for a permit for the Indiana project, we first filled out an application. Then we had to submit drawings of the major renovations and the fixtures because they need to figure out how much to charge us for the permit.

The planning person calls me and says:

Planning: “we need to see a drawing of the structure on the lot so we know how the house is positioned on the property.”

Sarah: “don’t you have access to the GIS property lookup on the county government’s website, its pretty fancy now they just updated it. There are layers to use, you can see the topography and everything”

Planning: “oh those satellite pictures aren’t accurate, we can’t be sure that those measurements are accurate”

Sarah: “so you want me to go out and physically pull a measuring tape across the lot lines?”

Planning: “yes”

Sarah’s dream question: “What the hell do you folks get paid for and why do I see county employees out surveying?”

So I drew it. Went to turn it in to inspections, planning person says no not yet, you have to go see the Erosion Compliance office because you’re building a deck and a front porch. So we play along. We submit our erosion compliance form, the secretary says the inspector won’t be back until Wednesday and he won’t be able to get back to you until Friday (my thoughts–because he’s so busy and all). But we say thank you and hand over our form.

The erosion compliance inspector calls today and says we have to install silt fencing along the front and the back of the property! Why because we’re gonna dig some holes for porch footings, we could potentially flood the river with mud that is miles away or we’re going to erode the land away. Yeah…not so much.

So I guess we’re just going to ask the Erosion Compliance person if he happened to even get up from his desk and go out there and look at the property or did he just say oh lets make them intall silt fencing.

This is what sucks about renovating.

Interesting property for sale in Raleigh, NC (Isuwannee’s stomping ground) on 828 Runnymede Road.  This house was designed by Frank Harmon. Its listed at $899,000. I think what I like about this house the most is the exterior design.