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the_siobhanAxel and I bought the Once and Future Gin Palace on July 1 2003.
So here's the thing. When we first moved into the Gin Palace the plan was simply to add insulation, maybe replace some of the dodgy wiring and then drywall it up ourselves. We figured it would take a while with just doing bits and pieces on weekends but that gradually we would get it all done.
Boy were we kidding ourselves.
I have a couple of shots of the top floor from when we first moved in. (By the way, these have all been posted before so feel free to skip if you have been following along at home.)
The top floor bathroom.
A view of the front room on the top floor looking towards the front of the house. We didn't know it at the time this picture was taken, but that entire area above the window is one great big wasp nest.
I don't have pics of the main floor from when we first bought it, but the living room and dining room had been walled off and turned into bedrooms. (The previouis owner was renting rooms.) So the first thing we did is have a party and hand our friends a bunch of sledgehammer and prybars.
The top floor again. Looking into that same front room from the hallway.
Looking towards the back of the house from the hallway. That was originally a kitchen.
That bathroom again - this time from the front room.
The former wall between the bedroom and the upstairs kitchen.
We stripped that top floor right back to the brick
And here is a shot of that wasp nest. We were lucky in that it was discovered (by virtue of Len getting stung) a couple of weeks after the party. Otherwise the festivities probably would have ended very abruptly.
So we ripped out everything on the top floor, but on the ground floor we elected to just take out the wall between the two rooms.
The hallway facing the front of the house
View from the back room to the front on the ground floor.
View from the front room to the back on the ground floor.
And that's the point when things came to a grinding halt.
We were trying to figure out what we could change in the top floor, so we called in a couple of contractors to get estimates on various things. And one guy pointed at one row of posts and told us it was a supporting wall. The next guy pointed at a different row of posts and told us that one was the supporting wall. And the third guy told us our houses didn't have a supporting wall at all upstairs, because it was too narrow to need one.
So I called the city and said what the hell. And they sent me a very nice building inspector who walked around our entire house and told me what was holding up bits of other bits and what was not. And then when he got to our basement he squinted at the back wall and said, "Why did you take out the support beam?"
Um...
So when we bought the house one of the things we knew about up front was that we would have to replace the 1970's model gas furnace. Seriously, the thing was bigger than our bathroom. In the time since the sledgehammer party we arranged to buy a new one which was much smaller and more efficient. So when all the extraneous duct work was removed, it revealed a hidden hole in our basement wall. And we thought, huh? Wonder why there's a hole in the wall and went on about our day.
Turns out it used to be filled by a big wodge of wood that held the house up.
Look waaay back. See that black square on the back wall?
And blown up.
Everything stopped. Because it turns out that putting a brand new support beam under a house is a titch expensive. Instead of following the original plan of gradually finishing the upstairs, everything else was put aside while we started saving up money/paying down debt for stage II.
Fortunately we had a bedroom and bathroom in the basement, so we treated to top floor as a big cold attic for the next several years.
Tomorrow: Stage II
So here's the thing. When we first moved into the Gin Palace the plan was simply to add insulation, maybe replace some of the dodgy wiring and then drywall it up ourselves. We figured it would take a while with just doing bits and pieces on weekends but that gradually we would get it all done.
Boy were we kidding ourselves.
I have a couple of shots of the top floor from when we first moved in. (By the way, these have all been posted before so feel free to skip if you have been following along at home.)
The top floor bathroom.
A view of the front room on the top floor looking towards the front of the house. We didn't know it at the time this picture was taken, but that entire area above the window is one great big wasp nest.
I don't have pics of the main floor from when we first bought it, but the living room and dining room had been walled off and turned into bedrooms. (The previouis owner was renting rooms.) So the first thing we did is have a party and hand our friends a bunch of sledgehammer and prybars.
The top floor again. Looking into that same front room from the hallway.
Looking towards the back of the house from the hallway. That was originally a kitchen.
That bathroom again - this time from the front room.
The former wall between the bedroom and the upstairs kitchen.
We stripped that top floor right back to the brick
And here is a shot of that wasp nest. We were lucky in that it was discovered (by virtue of Len getting stung) a couple of weeks after the party. Otherwise the festivities probably would have ended very abruptly.
So we ripped out everything on the top floor, but on the ground floor we elected to just take out the wall between the two rooms.
The hallway facing the front of the house
View from the back room to the front on the ground floor.
View from the front room to the back on the ground floor.
And that's the point when things came to a grinding halt.
We were trying to figure out what we could change in the top floor, so we called in a couple of contractors to get estimates on various things. And one guy pointed at one row of posts and told us it was a supporting wall. The next guy pointed at a different row of posts and told us that one was the supporting wall. And the third guy told us our houses didn't have a supporting wall at all upstairs, because it was too narrow to need one.
So I called the city and said what the hell. And they sent me a very nice building inspector who walked around our entire house and told me what was holding up bits of other bits and what was not. And then when he got to our basement he squinted at the back wall and said, "Why did you take out the support beam?"
Um...
So when we bought the house one of the things we knew about up front was that we would have to replace the 1970's model gas furnace. Seriously, the thing was bigger than our bathroom. In the time since the sledgehammer party we arranged to buy a new one which was much smaller and more efficient. So when all the extraneous duct work was removed, it revealed a hidden hole in our basement wall. And we thought, huh? Wonder why there's a hole in the wall and went on about our day.
Turns out it used to be filled by a big wodge of wood that held the house up.
Look waaay back. See that black square on the back wall?
And blown up.
Everything stopped. Because it turns out that putting a brand new support beam under a house is a titch expensive. Instead of following the original plan of gradually finishing the upstairs, everything else was put aside while we started saving up money/paying down debt for stage II.
Fortunately we had a bedroom and bathroom in the basement, so we treated to top floor as a big cold attic for the next several years.
Tomorrow: Stage II
wow
Date: 2012-01-27 12:06 am (UTC)Re: wow
Date: 2012-01-27 02:33 am (UTC)Re: wow
Date: 2012-01-28 08:00 am (UTC)Re: wow
Date: 2012-01-28 07:47 pm (UTC)