The Renovation Of A Building Into A House Would Be Interesting

Moving is never fun as I have learned from eighteen moves to twelve different cities in my life.  The good thing is that when you are done, it didn't seem so terrible.

After a Thanksgiving consisting of several trips back and forth between Irving, Texas and Wynnewood, Oklahoma all of our belongs were in their new location.  Most in the eight storage units and the rest that we needed to get by on from day to day in our new abode. Marshell was retired, I wasn't.  December is always a busy month in decorating as everyone wants to totally re-do their homes for Christmas.  Getting settled quickly was at the top of the list.

This is where the fun begins.  From the first tour through the building our thoughts were that this would be an easy remodel. There was no real plan of action since we had a roof, electricity and plumbing. Upon moving in the realization came to us that there was a lot more to do than we thought.....or wanted to think about in our speed to move in.  Let's see, no kitchen and no shower. 

Below is a drawing of the downstairs layout and a picture of the structure we referred to as the "hut".  Everything drawn in red was not original to the building, Black lines are original walls and the yellow are the windows.  The windows measure twelve feet long by ten feet high and the ceiling is nineteen feet with the original tin ceiling. Since the hut had a sink we decided it would work as a kitchen for now.

The most pressing issue was putting in a shower. The little powder room tucked behind the kitchen/hut only had  toilet and a sink with no room to spare.  Off to the hardware store to find a small inexpensive shower.  Managed to get one that seemed to be made out of cardboard for very little money.  Marshell removed the sink in the powder room and the shower just barely fit.  Not pretty but it did solve the problem.  In the process of hooking up the shower he discovered that the sink the previous owners installed in the hut drained straight down into the basement.  Nice - guess it worked for them.. So Marshell got lots of plumbing practice hooking up the shower and the sink. Was great to have a shower until we discovered that there was no hot water.  Another trip to the hardware store for a small hot water heater.  More plumbing practice.

The building had separate HVAC systems for the upstairs and the downstairs.  The one downstairs was definitely old enough to vote and may have been close to Social Security.
There were many trips by so called heat and air repair people over the course of the next few years until we found a neat guy who actually knew something. One who came out to fix it actually agreed that cleaning the coil might help but we should buy a new one since he needed the money. Another had a new fan motor hooked up backwards. Never a dull moment!

The kitchen/hut actually worked out pretty well once the sink did not drain into the basement and we had hot water. Although we had the stove we got with the building and one in storage it did not seem logical to hook one up since we were uncertain as to what the plan was for the downstairs. So I became a pretty good cook with a hot plate, a toaster oven, a microwave and a vintage Westinghouse roaster.The toaster oven was pretty good at baking six Christmas cookies at a time.

With all of the comforts home, I went to work on all of my customers needs and Marshell got to work on the demolition of the upstairs. As we lived in the building, now with plumbing what could happen but the sewer lines stopped up?  One plumber in town to call and he was working a some other project at the time.  Nice.  No toilet and no shower.  Our neighbor in the office next door came to our rescue.  She had an apartment behind her building that was empty and gave us a key so we could use it while we waited for the plumber.  It was a really good little walk - or run - depending on your need around the corner and down the alley in the dead of winter. But at least we had that! The plumber showed up a week later and replaced all the lines from the building to the alley.

In walking around in the kitchen you could feel movement in the floor.  That did not seem to happen in the rest of the downstairs so we called a foundation person.  A very nice young man came out and announced that the entire back of the building had no support.  Guess it disappeared sometime in the course of a hundred years.  So on a snowy Saturday morning he arrived with a crew and placed 240 halite blocks and six twenty foot beams under the floor to support the building. The back part of the building came up three inches when he leveled it.  Guess we were lucky it did not just collapse.

The rest of the downstairs was filled with our television, my worktable, our extensive vinyl record collection that could not go into storage and the great futon that was our sofa/bed for the length of time it would take to complete the upstairs. For the moment we had all the little minor inconveniences repaired and we were could start noticing other things we missed before.

Everyone has a different skill level, a different idea of what quality of workmanship and materials are and it was a commercial building.  It is not nice to complain about other people's work but......let's just say the previous owners were not craftsmen.  Looking closely at the downstairs there was very cheap bead board paneling for the wainscoting, 1 x 4's for the baseboards, 1 x 4's around the arched windows that were barely attached and the floor looked like they applied polyurethane in places with a rag mop.  Maybe a our time estimate on completing the building may be a little longer than we thought.

Next week is a look into the demolition of the upstairs.  Please leave any comments or questions you might have.