Today I did my interval jogging.  It was supposed to be rainy today and I thought I could squeak it in before the rain came.  Ooops.  Wrong.  I was about 1/3 of the way through when it started to sprinkle. I figured I would be sweating anyway, so I decided to just finish it out.  And what do you know? I didn’t melt! Today was 90 second jogs interspersed with 2 minute walks.

Felt like fall, so banana custard oats for breakfast it was when I got back!

Topped with maple cream (thanks mom and dad!!) and some toasted pecans.  Good stuff.

Today proceeded to be a dreary and rainy day.  I won’t bore you with my other rainy day eats today.

We are ready to do the downstairs floors now.  Some people were wondering what was wrong with the carpet.  Well, let me show you just a few of the 139 reasons I hate this carpet.

First off, I don’t care for carpet that much as it gets stained and dirty – even with a rug cleaner it never looks new.  When we bought this house, it had a cheap makeover done on it (and a pretty shabby job in a lot areas, too), so the carpet was fresh and new.  It was Berber carpet, which I really don’t like, but it was new, so I didn’t complain too much.  The upstairs carpet was a cheap gray industrial carpet (so, so, so ugly) and we got rid of that right away and put in laminate.  The downstairs we have lived with for 6 years.

First off, there were no tack strips put down and the carpet was not stretched to fit the room. So, you can see along the baseboards where is doesn’t fit and is unraveling.

Bonus? Cat toy!  Pixie loves these strings and makes them even longer.

There are also many spots in the carpet with cuts in them.  I think they just cut this carpet on a roll, so the knife went straight through multiple layers.

This is in the middle of the room – and it is not a seam.

Another one of those cuts. They are all starting to fray, too.

The padding was also poorly done.  Here is an example (with a poorly cut corner, I might add).

See the missing padding?  There are spots like this around the downstairs when the carpet dips down because of no padding.

Then there is where someone didn’t cut the size right and just cut a strip of carpet to fit and stapled it down.

Klassy.

Anyhoo, I could go on, but that’s quite enough.  Now we start the transformation! My only worry is moving the piano.

There actually are wood floors underneath the underlayment, but they are really widely spaced boards and not really a true hardwood floor, so not usable.

Guess this is turning into a rehab blog LOL!

Thanks for all the compliments on the flip house!  Like I said, I would still do it if rehabber financing was still available.  There is one other part of the flip I wanted to mention that I had done that was pretty neat.  But first up, breakfast!  I had some of my figs from Trader Joes!  My first time eating fresh figs.  I had them on some oat bran.

I like the figs.  I was sort of expecting them to taste like a fig newton, but they didn’t really.  More fruity and a little juicier.  John didn’t like them and said they were mushy – pffft.

On the flip house, there was one other thing I had someone else do – and that was refinish the tub.  

I had ripped everything out of the bathroom except the tub.  There was wallpaper under the tub surround, too.  What the hell?  I pulled platoons of wallpaper out of this house.

See that rotted floor? That had to be fixed with some new wood pieces.  Anyway, the tub was cast iron covered in porcelain and had scratches and gouges in it.  Plus it was an icky kind of beige color.  Doing a Bath Fitter installation was not in my budget and the thought of taking it out was too frightening.  Plus trying to put a new tub in?  No thanks.  So, I decided to have the tub reglazed.  I used a company called the Tub Doctor. I think that is sort of a chain with independent contractors? Anway, the cost was $400 to do the tub.  I was told to get the bathroom all finished except no caulk around the tub.  So, I did the floor tiles, installed new sink and toilet (not hard, surprisingly), painted and put up the new surround.

Here is the difference between the old and new tub.  This tub was clean here. You can see how scuffed the porcelain is.

After:

Amazing!  They can do any color, too, but I chose good old white.

The only thing I had to do after that was to caulk the tub and the surround.  They also do tile (like wall or countertops).  We are going to have our tub refinished with the tile surround as well next year when we redo the bathroom.  Why get rid of a functional tub and have all that hassle?  Again, another thing worth having done by a pro.  So don’t overlook this possibility to have an affordable alternative when doing a bathroom remodel.

Okay – as promised, here are some pics from my first flip house I did a few years ago.  These pictures were on an old computer and I realized that I haven’t looked at them in over a year!  It was fun going through all of them again.  My apologies for the length of this post, so you may want to come back when you have time to read it (if you are reading it at work!)

This was a foreclosure house and had gone up for auction. I attended the auction to check it out, but the bank won the bid (the only bid, really).  It then went on the market and I went over the my real estate agent friend.

Some of the pictures of the house: The living room.

 There was wallpaper on all the walls in this house.  And it was absolutely filthy, too.  Some of the rooms were still filled with junk as well.   This is the dining room.

Applebees lamp, anyone?   The floor tile was pink, too (why??).

The kitchen:

While the cupboards were a little charming, there was about 8 inches of space from the bottom and the counter, which means you could not put any appliances on it.  And you should be glad you couldn’t smell this place.  Pet urine.  Not to mention the surprise in the kitchen, which is where a good bit of odor was coming from.  I opened up the pantry (just to the left of the above picture) to find this:

Seriously, if you were in here, you couldn’t close the door while using the toilet.  The term ‘pantry toilet’ has actually become part of our inside joke vocabulary from this project 

Nice of the listing agent to say this was a 1.5 bath house, too.   🙄

The upstairs bath:

The linoleum around the toilet was sagging from rot and there was mold everywhere.

There were beautiful hardwood floors in all the rooms.  Or at least beauty was possible.

This house was really the ideal flip candidate.  Most of the work was just cosmetic.  It had great structure and original woodwork, plus cool glass knobs on the doors.  I finagled with the bank and got the house with the stipulation they remove all the junk (which they did).

I did the majority of the work myself.  I had a room by room breakdown of what I wanted to do and had priced it out so I could stick to my budget.   The only things I had done by someone else were the roof, sanding down of the floors, some new electrical outlets and removal of the pantry toilet cast iron waste pipe.

I spent a *lot* of time just cleaning up the place.  Once the carpet was removed, wallpaper was stripped and all the woodwork was cleaned, it smelled so much better.  I also noted that underneath the pink tile floor in the dining room was hardwood, so I ripped up all the tile and under layment.  That was the most physically difficult day.  I was so sore and tired from that.  I had to do it myself to keep on budget!  I was obsessed with my budget.

The most emotionally difficult day for the flip was me trying to sand the floors.  Keep in mind there were 3 bedrooms, the living room and dining room that needed sanding.  There were years and years and years of varnish buildup, so my rented floor sander was clogging up constantly after going a few feet.  I was in tears because I couldn’t get the job done and I didn’t know what to do.  It would have cost a mint to have the whole house refinished.  I think I called John several times that day in tears.  After making some phone calls, I was able to find a company willing to come out and just sand the floors down for me for $1000.  I would have spent probably that much in sanding disks, not to mention many days of frustration.  They got in and out in 2 days.  They were also nice enough to lay down the initial coat of poly and resand it (must have felt sorry for me).  That first coat raises the wood grain up and has to be sanded down again prior to using the poly for the final coats.   The things you learn.

My first real moment of “What did I really get myself into” came after gutting the kitchen.

The sink faucet it still hooked up here because there was no shut off valve in the piping, only the master shut off for the house  (I had that added).

Scary, eh?  Well – the transformation was wonderful.

Living room:

The dining room:

The kitchen (I even managed to squish a dishwasher in there):

Tile countertops.

Granite would have been nice, but the roof cost a good amount of money and I had to swap things out in my budget.

The upstairs bath:

The project took about 3.5 months (my budgeted timeline was 3 months).  I stayed very close to my budget.  I was only over by a few $100.  The house sold in 2 or 3 months.  I can’t quite remember now.

I still can’t believe I did this myself!  It is one of those things that I am most proud of having done.  I was waaaaay out of my comfort zone and I did so many things that I never thought I could do.   Girl Power!!!

I did one other house and then the housing market fell apart.  I really wish I could still be flipping houses, but the financing market is terrible for flippers right now.

I could have talked tons more about everything, but I don’t need a novel.  Thanks for reading!

And yes – I am for hire 

A side post today.  I am patting myself on the back.  Just ask John about how proud I am of my work! Here is the porch in all its glory.  This was pretty much my project to do.  John replaced the 2 rotten boards (thank you!), but left the rest to me.  Not only did I do the floor, but I noticed peeling paint on the front wall, so I just went ahead and scraped and painted that, too.  It ended up taking almost 5 weeks to finish (work, biking and life getting in the way… )

Before:  We were testing a light versus dark color there.

The porch had multple layers of paint.  Instead of scraping those up – whoever just painted right over, which just is a crappy thing to do because it peels back up again.

There was (in order from top coat down) a grey color, blue, white and on the front porch some of that awful glued down green felt.  They painted right over that.  Quality work, I tell you…

Lovely, eh?

So, I used a heat gun to scrape up the layered stuff.  I didn’t try on the single layer of paint because the surface of the wood was a little friable and would scrape off with the paint, so I only got off the loose stuff on the rest of the porch.

After scraping:

It always looks worse before it gets better!

All done!

from the doorway:

The front part of the porch.

Here is more where you can also see the wall that I painted.

Looking good for a 100+ year old house!  Next big project is the inside flooring!

You know Wednesday is usually bagel day, right?  Not today.  We had an early wakeup call with this:

7:30 am and the beginnings of a new driveway for us.  This was supposed to happen in August, but the guy called and basically said “Can I come tomorrow?”.  I am glad, actually, because I hate the driveway.  I mean really hate it.  When the city redid the road and sidewalks a few years ago, they had to rip up the ends of everyone’s driveways.  So they repaved up to that – which looks totally stupid.

Then the rest of our driveway looks like an abandoned parking lot, complete with grass growing in the cracks.

I used to pull that stuff out so it wouldn’t actually look abandoned, but stopped since we were going to get it redone (and it was driving me nuts, I tell you).  We thought about repairing it ourselves and did work on it a bit, but then just decided to pay someone else to do it.

I retired upstairs to one of the bedrooms to work.  Still a bit noisy, but thank goodness we got the new windows, which helped block out sound.

They actually got the old driveway removed very quickly.  It looked so much better just like this!  They were able to maneuver that little thing around in a very narrow space and didn’t even mess up my shade garden!

After lunch, more heavy equipment and noise.  Ugh.  I found in the past that it is too hard to work from someplace else and I am actually better off at home and dealing with any kind of noise issues.  Then they were finished with the whole thing by about 3 pm.  Yay!

Now I am not embarrassed by our driveway anymore!  We can’t park on it for 3 days, though.

The day certainly seemed long.

Downtown Glens Falls is doing a weekly thing called Take A Bite to showcase the downtown restaurants.  We went last week and decided to go again. John and I biked there tonight and met my folks downtown.

Participating restaurants have tents set up with small portions of their dishes for $5 or less to sample.

Plus there is entertainment.  This lady is walking on machetes.  Ummm… ow?

She also is a sword swallower and one of the few that actually do that in the US.  That had to be an interesting conversation with the school guidance counselor.

I had a crab cake:

Plus some yummy mac and cheese!

Then I was going to get a brownie, but the place we went had just 1 left, which John got.  So, we went to a little cupcake stand where I got a cupcake bite.

Really a single Lori bite, but my mother told me to take 2.  

It’s a fun time. It only lasts from 5 to 7, which goes by really fast.  It’s a good chance to try some restaurants that we otherwise have not.

It was getting cloudy on our ride home.  I think rain is in the forecast for tomorrow.  I also am noticing the days getting shorter.  Evening rides have to happen earlier and earlier.

It’s time to unveil the renovations!  I shall forgo the food today and do the reveal.  Here was the room before.  Probably hard to picture, but it was a long rectangle with the laundry area on the right and the pantry shelves on the left.  The only plumbing in this area was the washer line and drain.  There was the dangling light fixture as the only lighting.

The old pantry area with all food in view:

Demo:

Descending into the bowels of hell:

General chaos:

Framing:

Plumbing in:

All that work the we did by ourselves!

Here is that same wall today:

The laundry/ half bath room:

View into the pantry area from the laundry room:

Pocket door into the laundry/bathroom:

I love my pocket door!

I want every door in my life now to be a pocket door.

The pantry:

Hooray!  No one has to see my food anymore!

I still can’t believe we did this all ourselves.  I renovated 2 houses, but the new plumbing lines and all the electrical wiring was new stuff for me.  And it passed inspection, too!

The materials cost about $1800 and permits/inspections were about $200.  I know we will at least get double that back converting the house from a 1 bath to a 1-1/2 bath, plus a closed in pantry.

Productive weekend on the homefront.  No so great on the eating front.  The weather was kind of yucky for biking. Saturday was cold and kind of drizzly.  Sunday was a little sunnier, but really windy.  I don’t mind biking in cold so much, but I detest biking in strong winds.

We had our usual Sunday bagel:

Both of us were up too early.   Always spells snacking later on.

We did have a nice leisurely breakfast and talked about or vacation plans for 2012.  We don’t really get a long vacation this year, but I am going to start saving up now for a nice vacation for early 2012.  Disneyworld!

We got a lot done on the rooms.  They are now 2 separate rooms. We can now officially  call them the pantry/entry and the half bath/laundry.  This included skim coating and sanding the walls.  John really hates doing that, but I don’t mind so much.

We also got the ceiling painted in the pantry room.  It looks so much better just doing that, too. Amazing what a coat of paint can do (haha – I just corrected coat of pain).  We are now into the part that I find fun and rewarding. Tiling has begun. Note the tile isn’t this dark, it is just the lighting.

Again, we have to work on this a little oddly for space reasons.  It is annoying to have to move stuff around to work, but you do what is necessary, right?

I will be glad when this is done and we can have the house back to normal.  I am hoping another couple weeks ought to do it.

Pixie will also be glad to have her bathroom back to normal.

Thanks for that link, Shelley!

Lunch time!

This was a chicken burger from the smokehouse.  They do a mix of breast and thigh, so the burger doesn’t get dry!  Topped with some buffalo wing cheese, hot sauce and a drizzle of blue cheese.   It was * good*!

Tiling of the pantry area – view from inside bathroom:

We went out for some coffee for a break

Cookie dough has entered the house.  I never buy girlscout cookies, but I do buy cookie dough when my nieces have a fundraiser.

They are portioned out into individual cookies, which is nice instead of a bucket of dough, but I will just eat plain dough balls.  And did.  I think someone was trying to be as wheat free as possible this month.  Was that me? You wouldn’t think so…

More painting to do tonight and some relaxing.  We got so much done.  Guess that will happen when no biking.

I did eat like I would have had I biked 40 miles.  Fighting the tired snackies.  Oh well, Just back on track again tomorrow.