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September 7, 2003

Labor Day Weekend

We began the weekend with a house that showed a lot of potential and ended the weekend with a house that we could almost live in.

 



 

 



 

 

The Back Porch

One of the appealing details of the house are the porches upstairs and downstairs on the back. The porches have access doors in 5 places, although 3 of the doors are currently boarded up. There is also a window from the middle room on each floor onto the porch. The top porch needs support and roof repair eventually.

The porches were covered in strange refuse when we found the house, and there is still a bit to be cleared out. We made huge progress this weekend, though. The upstairs porch is half-enclosed, and this enclosed piece was literally filled with rubbish, including old clothes, mattresses, food stuff, kid's books, pieces of wood, a microwave, and a window-unit AC. There were 4 large, wet, rotting, stinking trash cans full of stuff in this pile. There was a very bad smell. This was easily the nastiest space that I have ever been in. This area has now been emptied, although it will be a long time before it feels clean.

General Cleaning

There was a great house sweep. We pulled out 2 bags of dust, dirt and leaves. We also pulled the linoleum up from the upstairs kitchen and bathroom. This and growing familiarity are making the rooms feel almost livable. Almost.

There was also a mysterious dog pen along the back that is now gone. The mystery was it's use -- there wasn't any sort of gate. I had to clip wires to get into the space to even begin to tear down the inner fencing unit. It was a weird and creepy experience.

We also uncovered more of the brick walkway that runs beside the house. It doesn't seem to be missing too many bricks.

The Arch!

The most fun project of the weekend was uncovering the arch between the 2 front rooms on the second floor. We'd been curious about the arch since we noticed the outline in the wall (see the first picture to the right). We hadn't necessarily intended to clear out the arch this weekend, although we did want to get it down before we moved in and we were thinking that it would be good to have the arch open before we started refinishing the floors.

The actual demolition began Saturday with pulling out all of the excess cable TV and phone line running through the upstairs. I noticed then that the baseboard on the arch wall inside the little room was loose, and on Sunday we used that as a starting point. Once we pulled the baseboard out it was a matter of pulling out the drywall from one side and then kicking the other side out. The supports (made of random wood and fence pickets) came down easily enough.

We noticed once the arch was down that the wall under the arch and the baseboard had never been painted. The original wallpaper is still there and the baseboard is stained a dark brown. That the arch was built using drywall and at least one modern 2x4 makes me think that the arch wasn't filled until at least the 80's. This makes me wonder how long the house had been in its original condition before being so abused.

With 5 windows, the front room is really bright now, and there is a difference approaching the front of the house down the hall.

Posted by john m at September 7, 2003 2:58 AM

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