Octopus evicted

 This thing has lived in my basement for nearly 100 years (95 to be precise). Today it got the boot. Bye, bye, you monstrosity.  I failed to take a photo of the creature intact. Here's an image of another similar one to give you a realistic visual 

And the beast is slain

Evicted!

Exterior motives

It has been quite awhile since I last posted here.  Time has a way of slipping by when you are in the thick of busyness.

Here are some outside photos of the house (mostly, but not fully completed).  Quite a difference from when I first bought it.  It is a continual work in progress.  I have yet to do anything significant on the inside, so no pictures of that to be posted here yet.  Here and there I have shared some on Facebook, but the interior is still pretty disorganized and not nearly to the point where I wish to go plastering pictures of my messy house all over this blog. lol.  I am not, by nature, a great housekeeper.  I much prefer the outside work.  (Though I despise sun worshiping for the sake of tanning, I do love being out in the yard and even being inside planning my future plantings.  Oh, and I like walks when I can manage to eek out the time to take them.)  Plus the outside color of my house is so cheery that I brightens my mood to see it at its best on a sunny day.

I think my contractor and his brother (the both of which did the majority of the work, though his son and son-in-law joined in now and then) did a most phenomenal job of it.  I am so pleased with its outcome so far.

The side porch you see with the weeds growing up around it is on the south side of the house.  As you might notice the upper enclosed balcony was removed and the door from my master bedroom replaced with a window.  The lower part of that porch structure has been demolished since the taking of this picture and rebuilt with pressure-treated lumber which has yet to be painted since the lumber had to cure (or something like that) for a minimum of 6 months before painting.  A set of stairs was also added leading toward the direction of the backyard.  Initially, they started to scrape the paint since they thought they could just paint over the existing wood, except for installing the new set of stairs at the back of it.  But it was found that the supports were too rotted at the bottom from lack of upkeep in protecting them from the elements, so it all had to come down and be rebuilt.

You can see half the south-facing exterior and the access to the basement are not painted in this picture.

Back Among the Living (Space)

Now that the frightening part is over, let's continue on our tour.  Up and away...

This the set of stairs leading up from the landing.  I have such a cool idea for these steps and the few below this landing.  But it will have to wait awhile.  And, I am giving no hints.

The view looking down from the above stairs.  I have yet another cool idea for that window which I hope to accomplish soon.  I've got the supplies.  Just waiting for a chunk of free time to accomplish it.  I think it will turn out very pretty.  Oh, and that cute little window seat I've got plans for too.  Isn't it an adorable little nook.

This is the view toward the back/west side of the house.  I wish this hallway were less narrow, but, oh well!  Notice how the woodwork up here has not been painted over.  I am in a dilemma about painting over woodwork.  I like both looks but it pains me to cover up such beautiful wood.  Well, right now it is so-so from years of careless dwellers.  Even the picture rail has paint slopped on it.  So my choices are paint over all of the wood or strip/stain and refinish.  Ugh!  The latter would be SO labor-intensive.  And if I were to pay anyone else to do it, SO expensive.  already I will have to have the floors done.  They are in bad shape.  The wood is ok throughout, more or less.  But the finish is shot through the whole house.  It definitely needs something.  The other concern I have is how the sanding and fumes of redoing the wood will effect us the inhabitants, human and cat alike.  Poor Oreo, my little asthmatic, might suffer.

Here's the view to the front/east side of the house.  My daughters room.  Yes that is vinyl you see on her floor.  We all hate it, of course.  It's just plain ugly and it bad shape.  But that is not a pressing redo.  There are other things that need attention first.  Since this picture the room was redone.  The walls toward the exterior of the house and the one you see toward the right side of the picture were demolished (below the picture only) rail to the studs, insulated, dry-walled, mudded and repainted.  And the ceiling plaster was either patched or removed and redone with drywall, mud and paint.

Some more pics of her room.

The plaster on the ceiling of her closet has partially fallen away due to moisture getting in from the improperly flashed room around the chimney.

The following are of my son's room.  There was little done to this room in the first phase of renovations.  That tile you see will probably be a pain to removed.  Incidentally, the floor below the vinyl in my daughter's room is wood but not good the kind to just finish.  I am thinking of laminate wood flooring for her room and his.  Again...not a pressing redo on those.  One redo that IS important and I would like to accomplish next year is the insulating of the walls adjacent to the exterior of the house, like was done in my daughter's room.  That is priority to minimize heat loss.

And hear is the master bedroom.  It also lacks insulation in the walls.  Rectifying that is a priority after my son's room.

See the door with the multiple glass panes?  That led to an enclosed balcony for which there was not sufficient $ in the budget to renovate and was in such disrepair from water damage that it could not be salvaged.  Alas!  It would have been wonderful to keep.  Now there is a window in that space where the door was and a roof over the bottom porch below.  :( It was a sad moment to lose that balcony.  But the upside was that once the window was installed the paint color couldn't be matched in my room and I ended up with my whole room repainted (pretty much the same color, which I happen to like).

The main part of the bedroom has this little nook off the west end of it.  On the other side of the wall to the right is the full bath.

Said full bath.  The ugly adhesive floor tile (poorly installed to boot) was replaced by a piece of new vinyl flooring, hand-picked by yours truly.  I like it because it looks like sand and goes with the beachy/waterfall theme of the my shower curtain (not yet put up in these photos).  The bathrooms and kitchen will be the most expensive renovations and those are years away yet, as far as I can see.

The last space for today's post is the spare room/craft room/multi-litter box room for my now THREE cats!  The walls below the picture rail were redone the same way my daughter's room was (actually before her room).  The reason the spare room was redone instead of my son's first should be apparent in the photos but if not, it is because the plaster was in such bad shape as not able to just be patched.

Like that fancy rope door handle?  I have a spare door left behind by the former tenant that has hardware on it that matches the other hardware on the doors.  But it is rusted right onto the door it is attached to.  I have to find a way to get it off of there without damaging it or the door.  I have ideas for that door.

That vent and the visible plumbing fixtures are now gone.  I was told that the original homeowner's son took care of her and she lived primarily in this room.  Hence the plumbing fixtures for a sink that had been in the room.  So both the north bedrooms have insulation now in the walls toward the exterior of the house.  Yeah!

Well, that wraps it up for today's post.  

Onward and downward

Here is the creepy-ass basement.  No further description is needed but to say that what you see was AFTER most of the crap left by the former tenant had been cleared out.  It was packed FULL of all kinds of junk.  Mind you, even with the junk gone, it is still creepy to me and going down to do laundry creeps me right out.

Ugly ducking

As renovation budgets go, mine is not what would be considered substantial, but I am so pleased so far with what has been done that I am itching to show some reveal pics here.  But, good things come to those who wait.  (Boy, do I know about waiting for the good to arrive! lol)  So, in recognition of the anticipation that comes with waiting for such good things.  I thought I would show you some of the worst pics of the property.

Here is the back porch.  What you cannot see is the support beam that goes the whole length of the porch under the floor boards that the contractor recently discovered was so rotten it just crumbled when you touched it.  And also not visible in the picture, which you will be able to see in the pictures of the house from the back yard, is the roof of the porch being held onto the porch by hand clamps.  Nice!  Needless to say the roof had to be redone.  The water and snowmelt that had made its way into the porch through the leaking roof had trickled down the corner that you see in the right of this pic and collected beneath the floorboards rotting that support beam.  Who knows how long that had been going on!  Good thing he found out about it!

Here's the back of the house with a view of the outside of the back porch.  On the right of the porch roof you can see one of the two clams that was holding the porch roof corner to the porch.  Also the general condition of the back was pretty poor.  Several pieces of siding needed replacing due to rotting.  The beam I mentioned above is behind the white piece of wood that goes horizontally along the bottom of the porch just above the stairs.  The basement entrance is the shorter structure to the left and the stairs are all rickety going down to the basement.  That door and the stairs to the basement are being replaced.  At the bottom right corner of the picture you can see a very small amount of the heaps of junk the former tenant left behind for the former owner to get rid off.  You'll see more of that lovely mess.  Most of that pile came out of the basement alone and that isn't even all of it.  Incredible!

A different angle

That balcony-over-porch structure on the side of the main structure is being altered (as I write, in fact).  It is not structurally sound.  The top part is coming off (too bad, would be a great place for a morning coffee and some reading) and the bottom is being renovated, but will be made to match the existing exterior features.  Nothing tackier than a porch that looks like it is just slapped onto a beautiful old home.

More to come on my little ugly duckling in another post.

Charm Outweighs Defect

Moving on, this is a view of the walk through to the kitchen and half bath (both through left door in photo below) and the to the hallway that you see to the left of the fireplace when you first enter into the foyer (through right doorway)

The half bath is so handy when the main one upstairs is occupied.  It isn't anything fancy but it serves a vital purpose with 3 in the household.  It is presently doubling as a broom closet since I have nowhere to put those kinds of things in the kitchen for handier access.  And on the ugly kitchen...

Entering the kitchen from the dining room, that half bath is directly on the left in this little hallway and the fridge space is directly to the right.

You can see the door to the back porch on the left in this photo

The basement door is to the right

Standing in the space where the range goes you see the door to the porch on the right. (I do like that the original transom window is above the door.

And from this same spot, the basement door on the left 

How do you like the medical office cabinetry look?  Blah!  But it will have to suffice for the time being.  I could have gotten some cabinetry that was rather nice from a friend of my sister's who is remodeling the kitchen in her house, but I had to be prudent about spending money unnecessarily.  Lord knows I have spent plenty in this venture already.  Yet, I am trying to make wise decisions and not be too frivolous in my spending.  I treated myself to some garden things, just a few small things like a planter and some flats of annuals, a grape tomato plant, some shepherd's hooks, a bird feeder and seed for my feathered friends.

Except for the kitchen, and more so the basement, I love this house.  The basement is just plain creepy no matter how much you clean it.  I'll save that experience for you for another post. But over all, the house's charm outweighs it's defects.  :)