OMG! Pictures of Progress

Just found some "Before" pix of our first big house renovation project: an abandoned house with beautiful bones that had spent the last 30years of its 115 year old existence being totally neglected. As we revisited these photos, we are both gasping in horror. How easily we forget the details of certain trauma... I will spare sharing with you the full extent of our pain, but will post here enough for you to see what "lovingly renovated" means.


This tour will take you from the first floor, through to the attic. Its a three story brick twin whose ceilings are all about 9 feet, or more (including the basement and the attic). The guts were completely removed, yet we preserved as much original detail as possible, including the trim, wood floors, stained glass, pocket doors, claw foot tubs, etc. Everything that could be recycled was recycled, from bikes to metal to gypsum. Still, we hauled over 26 tons of debris and personal effects out of that place. We also did things like furred out the walls and added non-toxic insulation (soy-based and sprayed in with non-toxic materials).


When we acquired it, it had been un-inhabited for nearly 15 years (some renters stayed their after the owner died), yet the utilities were still "live", including water and electricity! (you will see scorch marks on the walls at the switches). The back corner (in the kitchen) needed to be rebuilt, and the roofs over the bays had been leaking for decades. And I really can't explain what was going on in the bathrooms, except to say that it was the usual stuff that you have to watch out for in a bathroom--only that no one watched out for that stuff for a while.


The single mom that last lived there with her very young children had moved only two doors down, where they still live today. And, I have to admit, that fact has been the most curious and difficult thing to reconcile during this process, because Mom didn't even want her boys' hand made mother's day cards or their birth certificates. Its possible that the boys may want them some day, so I haven't been able to throw them away yet and I have been trying to develop a relationship with the one who still lives with Mom. He seems like a nice kid, maybe just a little "un"guided.



The before pix will be followed by the "after systems replacement and drywall" pix for whatever particular room is shown.
Have fun!

1ST FLOOR




Kitchen





2ND FLOOR
Hallway
This ceiling is where a street cat had given birth to her kittens. As I was taking down the plaster, I saw what looked to be two rats staring down at me. It was two newborn kittens--so new that they were still pinkfaced and had not opened their eyes yet. Dead ones, live ones, fertile ones, newborns--found 'em all in this house. It didn't take Momma-cat long to reunite with her babes after we relocated them to the back yard and designated the area off limits to humans and debris. They were gone in a couple of hours.


Back Bedroom
Guy with the flashlight is the structural engineer. A great guy with an even better laugh.


Middle Bedroom
This room has one of the bays in it that I mentioned earlier


3RD FLOOR
Back bedroom-also with bay windows. When we removed the king size mattress you see on the floor there and pulled back the wall to wall carpeting under it, the floor was actually gone already, leaving us to fall, with the dusty remnants of the underpad, between the floor joists to the second floor below. And there you have it, a wonderful justification to pressure the architect to deviate from her dogged adherence to "maintaining the architectural integrity of a 115yr. old house". In other words, an opportunity to do something more modern and creative.






Looking down from the attic


Now, that wasn't so bad, was it?