Here Comes the Sun

Finally, a sunny day and no rain. The roof is finished. My sister and I left at 2 today after doing some kitchen work and the roofers were finishing up the back. I am extremely happy with the job.

My sister worked on the kitchen ceiling. She brought an 8 ft. ladder from home in order to get up to the tiles and rip them all down. She was not satisfied to wait until it was time to move the scaffolding into the kitchen. She just had to get the ugly out of the kitchen. The room feels much larger now with the ugly fireplace 70's remodel gone and more available space. Happy Day!

I'm on a mission to bring home all cabinet doors to redo them in the garage. I worked a bit on the kitchen floor. I found advice on the internet regarding the old leftover linoleum and glue which involved heating it up with a blow dryer, but that did not work. I had to stick with the paint stripper to loosen it up. It is my goal to find a better stripper to make that job easier because it takes a couple of hours to clean off a square yard of floor.

Tomorrow we are cleaning up some of the yard and removing an old fence that has fallen over.

My sister is also committed to trying to get a few more things into that dumpster before it gets picked up on Monday.

Almost all of the ugly is out of the house. It's time to start thinking about the beauty part.

OH, I picked up three more windows that came in from my order. This group arrived faster than the first two. Rick the roofer is also going to install the windows. The windows will make a huge difference.

Making Progress

I hung with 'The Beast' today. It was a pretty sunny and mild Sunday. I admittedly didn't get there until noon, and was surprised that Rick was working on the roof. Since it rains during the week and the weekends are sunny he feels he has to make hay while the sun shines. I ain't mad at him. As you can see he is rolling with the shingles. Perhaps two more days and he will be done, however one doesn't really know what those two days will actually be.....depending on which two days aren't filled up with rain. It's actually raining now.

I didn't realize it was raining this evening until I decided to go outside with Pearl (the Great Dane puppy.) Thus, I had to get the umbrella out because Pearl does not like to get rainy wet. This is Pearl. My sister calls her Pearlie T, with an emphasis on T for trouble. She is really a good puppy though. Pearl is almost a year old. She will have a birthday next month. Perhaps there will be no roofing tomorrow if it continues to rain.

I am tired of October rain. (So is Pearl).

Anyway, at the house today, Rick also started working on a porch roof to align and be in sync with the sunroom. He seems to have understood my vision for it and I am happy with his construction. If the weather cooperates he is going to put the rubber substance type roofing material on the porch and sunroom.

I believe it is going to look a lot better than the ugly aluminum siding piece of porch roof the previous owners had stuck up there in their attempt at some type of renovation.

For some reason I am enthralled with the sunroom. I scraped off the rest of the ugly bamboo/ivy leaf wallpaper that had been hiding under the ugly paneling for probably 30 years. Of course there was wallpaper out there because someone 100 years ago loved some wallpaper. I am ready to start making something pretty. I may be ready to drywall underneath the sunroom windows and fix the plaster wall next to the sunroom windows. I am attempting to determine whether I can sand down the hardwood floor cleanly enough to allow for a new stain to be pretty. If the hardwood is totally shot from the leaking out there I will probably do a ceramic tile floor.

I swear I will never wallpaper anything ever, ever, ever. To think I used to like wallpaper and border. Yeeeccchhh.

Worker Bees' Sleepover

My sister and I spent the first night in the house and kept "The Beast" company. There is no heat functioning yet, (on schedule for next winter), but we had a portable heater in one bedroom and I cheated by bringing my electric blanket. I offered to share half with my sister but she likes her house to be a cool 60 degrees at night even in the winter and does not like blankets. I was warm and toasty. I believe it got down to around 37 or 40 degrees outdoors the night we camped out. We did not hear a mysterious, deep voice ...in the house.... in the night ... say, "GET OUUUT!" so we figured the house loves us.

Spending the night at "The Beast" was very productive. Not having to drive an hour to get back home was great and it allowed us to work all day, plus get up and continue with the tasks the next day. We pulled down most of the sunroom ceiling, which was leaky and icky. I removed the rest of the carpet from the main staircase. My sister, "el Destructo," ripped off all the ugly paneling in the back stairwell. OH, we also ripped out all the carpet, ugly bathroom paneling and vinyl tiles that were in the upstairs bathroom. The bathroom is totally naked now and ready for redo. We succeeded in removing the entire Franklin fireplace structure, (and it was a gas burner....NOT a wood burner), and removed most of the structure they had built around the original chimney in the kitchen. The last job we accomplished was ripping all the ugly carpet and linoleum off the kitchen floor.

Rick the Roofer told my sister.... "go ahead, toss all that stuff in the dumpster," when she asked him if we could use the dumpster for all the crap we had yanked out of the house that was in the garage. The offer to use part of the dumpster was probably the reason we worked so hard to get all the other stuff out of the house I wanted to remove. I sure hope Rick can fit the rest of the roof shingles into the other half of the dumpster because we used a really good half of it up. If not, the roof will cost me a few more bucks, OY.

I'm not mad though. Using the roofer's dumpster will be a lot cheaper than ordering one later. His dumpster cost at 475 for the whole load is much cheaper than mine would have been per weight if I had contracted with my waste management peeps. So, it all works out.

So, after three good working days we got a lot accomplished. My sister is such a worker bee. My sister thinks destruction is fun and she takes few breaks.

I probably won't do anything on the house again until next week Wednesday. My bestest friend, Willie passed through today from Little Rock and is on his way to Chicago to check on his mom. He and I may drive out to "The Beast" so I can show him the roofers' progress when he comes back this way tomorrow. But, I am not lifting another tool until Wednesday. My sister's enthusiasm wore me out.

Roofers and Door

Yesterday the roofers began, even though it was raining on them, off and on, a tad. Today they made a lot of progress. They have the plywood and roll paper up on two portions of the roof. They had to tarp the other side of the portion showing in the picture due to running out of time today and it is supposed to rain tomorrow. This October freaky rainy weather is playing heck with the roof project.

The guy in the woodsy camo hunting jacket is Rick the Roofer and in charge of the youngsters up on the roof. He is 50, and according to his work crew, can do EVERYTHING in the world of home improvement. He cut all the branches off the tree that was touching the house so I did not need a tree trimmer after all, and even cut down the ugly evergreen that was overgrown and right next to the back porch. I have learned that all you have to do is say, "Rick, can you...........?", and he will say, "Sure thing," and he will "get er' done." Rick says that he has been doing home improvement since he was 15 years old and can do it all. Good enough for me. I am keeping Rick's number on speed dial.

While the roofers roofed, my favorite and only brother in law pulled the Franklin fireplace out of the kitchen. I thought it was a wood burner but he discovered it was a gas fireplace. Thus, I had to shut off the gas, which I wasn't using yet anyway, and then cap off the pipe after he yanked the fireplace out of there. One of the youngsters who was on the ground and in charge of hauling the shingles to the dumpster was kind enough to help my 72 year old brother in law get the fireplace out of the house and in his truck. My brother in law is going to find someone out in the wilds of southern Missouri who may be in need of such an object d' warmth so that it does not go to waste. Removal of the fireplace has made the kitchen appear much roomier already.

After my brother in law left for home around 2 p.m., my sister helped me pull the dropped ceiling out of the sunroom. Also, after yanking that out we discovered a glued on tile ceiling, a plaster ceiling and some funky styrofoam insulation that had to be yanked out.

OH, and my sis and bro brought a set of their scaffolding which we set up in the dining room. After my sister leaves and I am alone, I will work on cleaning the walls in the dining room and fixing slight cracks, holes etc., in the plaster. The scaffolding will be such a BIG help. My sis and bro in law are the greatest.

OHHHH... and before I call it a day......here is a picture of the front door before I spruced it up. (I did this weeks ago, and was actually my first act of love for "The Beast." Well, I DID put that brass plate behind the top lock before taking the "before" picture.

The door is actually pretty cool because it is super thick and all REAL wood. The screen door was pretty funky due to it being ugly silver aluminum (as screen doors have a tendency to be), and pretty pocked from age. I took the screen door down, cleaned it, sanded it, and painted it with Rustoleum "Hammered" Black. The "hammered" paint gives it a pretty cool nubby look. I liked it so much I painted the door trim and the front door with it, too. I don't think the front door is as nubby as it should be, but eventually I am going to put another coat on the front door and the trim around the outside. I also replaced the doorknob and dead bolt with black ones and used brass trim behind them which makes me happy.

As a final touch I used Gallery Glass Art Paint, and gave the glass in the door a little stained glass effect.

Ta Da!

Finding a Roofer

Did you know you can sign up on the Home Depot website to schedule free estimates for large projects such as windows and a roof? Unfortunately that does not mean you will get competent estimates. Home Depot sent out a salesperson who appeared to know what he was doing. He was a young fellow who measured all the windows and the roof area. He informed me that he did not have enough time to complete the estimate and he wanted to take it home to use his computer software, etc. SURE, I assured him. I was in no hurry. He was supposed to show up at my house the following Saturday with the figures. No show. I get an email with an apology telling me he had a hectic week and he would get the figures together and notify me shortly. Never heard back from him and when he was doing the measuring he mentioned he was moving to North Carolina in two weeks. Thus, NO estimates from Home Depot. Oh, well!

No, I did not call Home Depot to complain. He was a young fellow and in this economy I did not want to complain and cost anyone their job since he was transferring to NC. I figure there were enough roofers around for me to find one that would get the job done and tell me what was required. I just moved on.

I called another local roofer who advertises on local TV. He even has a zippy tune they sing in the commercial. Well, this yahoo never shows up to give the estimate either. He called with an excuse telling me his secretary overbooked him. He requested I call the company to reschedule but, I just moved on. Oh, well!

So, I just go to the local hardware store and ask for roofer recommendations. They were happy to oblige. They were even happy to come out and measure all my windows and bundle them per room so I could order a room a month. I have a seemingly competent roofer now scheduled to being tearing off the 5 layers of shingles and cedar shakes as soon as we are sure there is no rain in the forecast for at least 5 days in a row.

I've chosen the architecural shingles. They are so much more attractive than the plain, ordinary 3-tabs. I wanted a red roof until I discovered red is special order and much more expensive thus, I am going with onyx black. It will be sharp once finished.

Rick the Roofer is going to give me a new front porch roof to flow evenly with the sunroom. This was a deal maker in choosing him for the job.

I am roof excited.

Let's all cross our fingers for no rain for awhile so Rick the Roofer can begin, take care of business, and finish.

The Aventure Begins

So, what to do now that I am retired? Why not buy a huge, 120 year old Folksy Victorian home in a small Southern Illinois town for the purpose of complete renovation? It will be an eventual retirement home to live in and relax in, and ramble around through all the space, and remove myself from the hustle and bustle of the mall laden big cities.

The Adventure Begins

I found "The Beast" in March, 2009. He was listed for 29,900. Normally, when I venture out to actually look at a house it NEVER looks like it does in the realtor.com photo offered up by the agent. Usually, in person, the under 30K, in need of renovation, homes are totally awful, or the neighboring homes are horrible, or there is some other deal breaker that sends me away from considering the property. However, "The Beast" actually looked better in person. I waited to make an offer and continued to peruse all other properties in the desired areas until the school year was over and I officially retired. I decided that if "The Beast" was still available when I was ready then it was a sign he should be mine. In May, the price dropped to 24,900. According to the realtor, there were folks showing an interest and looking through him, but no one making an offer. Needless to say, he was still waiting for me in August, causing me to make an offer and purchase "The Beast" for a steal at 16,800.

I figured everyone else looked at "The Beast's" hideous 100 yr. old wallpaper, tons of carpet needing removal, 6 layers of roofing material, and windows needing replacement and could not see the potential beauty in "The Beast".