Day 100 Update

December 3, 2012:  It is hard to believe that we have owned the house for 100 days now! It really has been a back-and-forth of "I can't believe its only been 100 days..." and "OMG its been 100 days, we need to be done NOW!"  So what have we accomplished you might ask? We have:

*Replace underneath structure of house - Danny Clark and his guys had to come back a 2nd time and replace the sill under the dining room, and rebuild the brick structure around the AC duct coming in because it was not done properly by a previous owner. By this point, the old beams under the house are replaced, and there are a couple new beams supporting the house in places where there was not support before. 

*Re-framed termite damaged walls - That handy-dandy-hubby of mine is pretty much a pro at framing out walls now! He sistered in new studs to the termite eaten ones in the dining room and the living room. He also re-framed out the window in the dining room, and found the source of the water intrusion!

*More is always better - The 1bathroom upstairs was split into 2, so there is now a master suite, and a hall bath for guests. Berzad our tile guy did a phenomenal job!

*Dream Kitchen - My amazingly beautiful kitchen is installed, finally! The granite is beautiful, and the custom cabinets to fit all of our needs (and all my cooking and baking wares) are beautiful! The farmhouse sink is more than I could have ever dreamed of, now if only the knobs I ordered, which are on backorder, would ship out!

*Plaster repair - Over 88 years our house has settled, and so has the plaster. We had some major plaster repair throughout the house where overtime it had peeled away from the lath, or buckeled under pressure.  We also had a couple of the new walls get a texture treatment called Orange Peel to blend into the original plaster. And one of the biggest improvements is the ceilings were smoothed out! They look amazing!

*Knob & Tube no more - This is a huge one, the entire house was still on the old Knob & Tube wiring, which is not a huge deal, its just not up to code wiring by today's standards. Because we took off all the baseboards in the house, we were able to replace all of the wiring to updated Romex up to modern electrical code, and split up some of the circuits in the house.  Now the entire upstairs and a few random outlets downstairs are not on 1 circuit. 

*Window Reglazing - When you buy a RAP house, Riverside Avondale Preservation, you are not allowed to make improvements to the outside without board approval, this is to maintain the historical integrity of our neighborhood.  One of their big things is windows... Well all of our windows were painted shut from the inside out, so after watching Norm Abrams and ripping a window out of the wall, we figured out how to reglaze them so they can open once again!


But most importantly, we turned the house over to our flooing guy! He will spend 2 weeks sanding all of the hardwood floors, then stain and seal them with 3 coats. This is a huge step in the process, and something that has to happen before we can move anything into the house. There are still a lot of other jobs around the house that need to get finished, such as painting all the trim and walls, but that is something we can accomplish once we've moved in. The date is set and moving day is December 22nd!! Just in time for Christmas!  Here is a sneak peak of the floors mid sanding:

The Kitchen Demo

To be 100% honest, the kitchen was not that bad... There were a few things that could have been changed to make it a decent kitchen and give it a face lift (ex. counter tops, sink, cabinet hardware, maybe paint the cabinets...) But we got to thinking about it, and while the cabinets look nice in the picture, they are just from a big box store and actually weren't constructed that well, and did not utilize the space at all.

We knew the tile had to go, and in order to get all of that out, we had to take out the bottom cabinets, which is really the half way point on the whole demo...

 

Since we were not in love with the kitchen, and rather than trying to live in the house through a complete kitchen gut, we decided to go ahead and go back down to a blank slate now!

 So we started gutting the kitchen and getting the tile up and out. We found some interesting things along the way... The kitchen was an addition in the late 1970's adding another 285 sq feet to the house, and making a wonderful large kitchen in the process!  However, when the tile was put in at some point, someone put down particle board on top of the plywood subfloor, then put down Hardi Backer then the tile... There is also french patio doors out to the deck and there was water damage at the sill...

So as you can imagine, the particle board a good 3 feet into the room around the door was just trashed from the water, and was popping the tiles up as well. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 We had quite a few friends and family members help us out with this demo, it was quite the labor intensive endeavor.  So thank you to everyone who worked VERY hard to get all of this mess out of the house, it looks so much better now! Then we pulled out the old cabinets, and we are actually able to use most of them elsewhere in the house. There is a whole corner section and the the uppers to match out in the garage for storage and Dan's work area. Then we have a few that will go into the laundry room for my craft storage area! 

 

We had decided we wanted the hardwood floors to extend into the kitchen and flow through the entire house. Alex, our flooring guy did an amazing job matching up the new wood to the the original hardwood floors. 

 

Now, if you have ever done home renovations then you know there comes a point where you stare at your calendar and think, 'how on earth is this all going to fit together nicely, and what has to come first?'  We have found our selves in this conundrum a few times by now.  The hardwood floors are not ready to be sanded and finished because the walls and ceiling need to be fixed first...

The kitchen can't go in until the floors are sanded and finished, and they are done now... We can't paint till the walls and ceilings are done, but want to be done before the floors get sanded, but then the dust gets everywhere...

Ahh! Its a logistic nightmare. But we came up with a solution!

 

 

Alex came in and sanded and put down 1 layer of stain on the kitchen floors. This seals and protects the floors enough so that the cabinet guys can come in and install our kitchen. And boy do they look beautiful!  What Alex will do when we have him back for the rest of the house is buff these up for the 2nd and 3rd coats so they flow into the rest of the house refinishing.  Stay tuned for the Kitchen Install update!!
 

The Bathroom Project...

When we bought the house, it had just 1 full bathroom upstairs. The linen closet was an odd configuration, the floor tile was the cheapest big tiles that Home Depot had on special buy when they were installed, the shower tile did not match at all, the toilet we decided was rated for midget use only, and the vanities were a kick away from falling over.  With a room that is 10' x 11' we decided that we could make this into 2 bathrooms!
 

 

 

 

So I started to demo work and tackled the ridiculous linen closet. Boy was that thing built to last! It was wood construction covered in sheet rock with enough drywall screws to fill the sink! I also started tackling the tile flooring and discovered beautiful hex tile underneath! Unfortunately it was not in great condition, but we did try to salvage it.

 

 

 

Realizing that in 1 day I only removed the top layer of tile, and part of the linen closet, I decided quickly I needed to call in the big guns....

Mom and Dad came down to visit for the weekend, and went straight to work! Basically what I did in 1 day, Dad and Dan did the rest in about 2 hours!  We discovered that the hex tile was missing in a lot of areas, and uncovered some structural issues, and then decided to take the room back to the floor joists.

We have no idea what the original layout of the house was for this bathroom. As you can see in the picture above, there was a window where the shower was. At one point it was a small one, then a larger one was put in, and now the window is further down the wall! And in case you were wondering, there was one on the back wall as well that we found when we went to put in the shower for the master bath!

The next step was to build the great divide. Dan and Garrison, one of our Navy friends, worked on putting in the structure when they weren't flying one day.  We left the floor exposed so that our plumber, Chris, could come in and have easy access since we were doubling what we had before!

Now these pictures might be a bit dark, I apologize, but they are of the rough finish on the bathrooms!  The first two photos are the hall bathroom, there is a tub in here. Then the master bathroom will have a walk in shower.

Now this is just the rough finish on the bathrooms. We found an amazing tile guy who is a master mason from Bosnia, Berzad, and he started this week working on getting my beautiful tile in!  Stay tuned for updates on the tile, here is a little sneakpeak of what we selected: 

Let the rehabilitation begin…

Since our house was a rental property for a few years, there were quite a few corners cut to achieve “quick fixes,” so much so that we are shocked the house isn’t a circle! So we started brainstorming over a glass of wine, and came up with a list of projects we wanted to do, and it looked something like this:

· Strip all of the painted trim back down to the wood

· Rip out the carpet upstairs

· Get rid of the tile on both fireplaces

· Strip wallpaper upstairs & downstairs

· Get rid of ugly textured ceilings

· Take the paint off the walls back down to plaster

· Repair plaster in all rooms

· Demo current linen closet in Bathroom

· Take out ugly tile in Bathroom

· Look into making 1 bathroom into 2 bathrooms

· Demo TERRIBLE tile in Kitchen

· Gut entire Kitchen & put in new cabinets and counter tops

· Repair termite damaged hardwood floors

· Put new hardwood in Kitchen

· Refinish all hardwood floors in house

· Demo laundry room floor & put in tile

· Repair foundation issues

· Replace structural beams w/ termite damage

· Put new insulation in Attic

· Add ceiling fans to bedrooms & family room

· Fix ALL electrical problems (knob & tube in attic)

· Repair all windows & restore window sashes

And the list kept growing! Little do we know that once we started projects they would not only become bigger, but also would spin off into other little projects. We set out initial move in date for October 31^st, 2012 and got straight to work ripping stuff out the Saturday after we closed!

Original Listing Photos

Below are the photos from the original listing.  As you can see, the house looks great and is quite charming! But lets keep in mind that these were taken in early 2011... The house was not in this condition when we took over, and the termite damage is not evident in these pictures.

 

 

Home is where the Navy sends you…

Most of you know the back story of Dan and me, but for those who don’t, here is a quick information dump that lead us to this point…

After what seemed like an eternity in Corpus Christi, Texas, Dan became a Designated Naval Aviator and we received our marching orders to finish training in Jacksonville, FL. Now at the time, neither of us knew anything about Jacksonville, other than it’s the home of the Jaguars. Yay, we get to trade the Falcons for the Jags! Not an upward movement, but we’ll take it. And we certainly did not anticipate falling in love with the city in such a short time span.

The way the P3 world works after training, is you can go to 1 of 3 places; Kaneohe Hawaii, Whidbey Island Washington, or stay here in JAX. After some VERY VERY long weeks of waiting, filled with trepidation and sleepless nights, I finally got a text from a few of the other wives of Dan’s coworkers asking if we knew our orders… Wait, they are in? Well they were, only Dan was flying at the time… How convenient! So about 3 texts later saying “you call me first when you land,” he finally touched down and called and we FINALLY heard those magic words: “You got your 1^st pick.”

Which all leads us to where we are now—restoring our old 1924 American Foursquare 3 bedroom 1.5 bathroom house with 2,000 sq feet in the historic district of Jacksonville known as Avondale.  Back in July I woke up early one morning like I always do, and we had been keeping up with the real estate in the area, knowing if we got orders to stay we would like to purchase a house within Avondale. Well that morning was particularly special. A house that I first saw while we were back in TX but had gone off the market had been re-listed. It was like Christmas morning in the Baker household, for me at least! I am pretty sure Dan was more alarmed at how excited I was than his excitement towards the house.  But that didn’t matter, the contract had fallen through, and I was determined to talk to our realtor and see that house within that week!

The funny thing was that 2 nights before the listing, we were outside in the downpour from Debbie that left our streets flooded and 11 cars floating into our neighbors front yards, drinking with Belinda, our realtor who is also our next door neighbor, saying “we are just looking right now, but we will let you know when we might be ready to look at something.” Little did we know it would be later that week!

Now do not worry, I have not forgotten that the reason the house was back on the market was because the contract fell though. In fact we did some digging and it had fallen through 3 times! Ahh! So we made an appointment to walk through it that Sunday, and our game-plan was to be thorough and speculative; there had to be a valid reason why it was back on the market again and listed for $90,000 less than their original asking price!! Before we walked through the house, a white envelope showed up in our mail box containing the most recent home inspection. The inspector found “extensive termite damage” and “major structural issues.” Dun dun dun… So we decided to walk through with the mind set of ‘why we should not buy this house.’ After looking thoroughly and having a structural engineer in to give us a quote, and a new home inspection report done, we felt comfortable and decided to place an offer! 

We submitted an offer that next week with our realtor, Belinda, and made it contingent on us getting orders to stay in Jacksonville. So if we did not get JAX then we would walk away from the deal. A little worried that they were not going to accept the offer, we waited, and then they came back and were absolutely fine waiting a month for us to get orders! We finally got our orders in mid-August and closed on our new-old place on August 24^th. Now it is time for some renovations to get underway!