Note: This isn’t the last house post but it is for a while. I’m finally moved in and have already started working on additional projects to make the house more of mine than it already is. I thought it would be fun to compare before & after the remodeling!
For those just tuning in, this was a foreclosure. I lived across the street from the home for almost 3 years and never spoke to the neighbors. They didn’t seem interested in being a part of the neighborhood. I observed the sheriff’s office coming a few times, they had tried selling it and some friends looked at it and came away saying it’d take way too much work and money for a house that’s going for that much money (over 150K). Heather and I moved out of my place and intel a 12 month rental half an hour further from work. We did not like the place at all. It was mouse infested, weak insulation, too far from work and the owner was uninterested in helping us with anything. We actually put a little money into it just to make the house livable. Nothing major. Only a month after living in the rental, Heather had me weigh in on buying. I didn’t plan on buying any time soon but we looked at the place we live in now a month later (May). I received the keys in October and it took until March to finally move in…almost a a year later. The entire foreclosure had to be gutted.
Luckily, the last owners did two things for me. New roof and they lifted the house and poured a full concrete foundation with drainage, insulation (foam board) and a brand new furnace. All that was left for me was to completely re-do the main living floor which involved tearing down walls on the inside and outside, new doors, windows, adding stairs (no connection to the basement before), new floors, appliances, fully rip out all electrical and plumbing, add I-Beams to 4 spots int he house and some spots of new vinyl. The last necessary task is to repaint the outside and re-do all of the exterior stucco. In a year, we plan on pulling all of the dry-wall off and adding a water sealing wrap and affixing new vinyl the right way as it was done in a way before that does allow water to leak directly onto the exposed wood. (which is why the whole front wall of the house had to be re-done at a cost of $2500 during construction). Photo below:
Exterior:
Before:
Wall Comes Down:
After: (New Wall, Windows, some new vinyl and supports)
Quite a big transformation but there’s still a lot of work to do. The vinyl will need replacing at some point. The addition of solar panels, window reconfiguration, etc. Lots of changes.
Let’s move to the interior. Starting with the living room to kitchen transformation. The kitchen was in the rear of the house with just a small window. You can see in that night shot early on of the rear, we had 3 windows in the rear and now only one. We also subtracted a window from the kitchen. Well, the left rear window was kitchen, middle was bathroom, and the 2 on the side were the living room.
Before:
After:
We moved that back wall forward by 2 feet, ripped out the center wall, added more support, straighter the ceiling and roof line (which took away the ability stand upright at the front windows) and moved the kitchen into where the living room used to be.
Front Door:
New door with the addition of stairs.
Standing in the front door:
Again, stairs on the right, a wide open living room
Here’s another photo standing to the right of the front door:
Old versus new Kitchen is hard to do as I didn’t take any photos of the old kitchen but I do have a video that shows a screen-grab below of the kitchen. I didn’t snap a photo of the bathroom as I couldn’t even fit in there. Your butt would be against the sink while you were peeing and it was the only bathroom in the house.
Kitchen:
Now:
Bedrooms:
Basement is harder to document as it’s not finished yet. Right now, there’s just a lot of stuff in there:
Before:
Now:
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If you have some time to kill, here are before & after videos of the work:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uxAG9fGiKVw
This playlist has every house update from October to today.
Finally, here are 249 photos that capture everything from start to finish – https://www.flickr.com/photos/adamjackson/albums/72157674686992063
Porter Approves:
