Things are happening around the Bungalow Project. But in the meantime, I got sick so I haven’t really felt like posting.
Siding has begun. The rear dormer and one side have been completed, but the siding crew has also encountered the joy of illness and it has slowed things down, so it’s just taking a little while. Hopefully within a week I can post photos of a refreshed bungalow with nice, clean white siding! I am happy to report that the 4 over 4 didn’t cause it to look too much like a cape, like I had feared. It just looks clean and well-kept now. And the way they wrap the windows adds depth, so they actually look better then original.
Drywall is continuing. One room is completely hung (dormer bedroom), others are coming along. We took what I call a “future us” approach to hanging it, attempting to do the full or easier pieces first, then going back to fill in the rest. I am also getting a drywall lift for the ceilings so they haven’t been done at all downstairs, and only in one room upstairs. We did find that by walking up the stairs, then bringing the sheet partly into the bathroom, then down the hall into the dormer room, we could make the corner into the pink room. So yay for getting full sheets upstairs!
The floor is also out of the "kitchen bedroom" and it's beginning to look less like a kitchen and more like a bedroom.
This is the "peach room"
Kitchen
"kitchen bedroom"
Actual kitchen
Dormer bedroom
There are still what seems like a million things to do. Some are smaller, like finishing removing all of the various hangers for curtains and blinds (some are stripped screws that will require more work), and some are huge, like kitchen cabinets and bathrooms (floor tiles, walls, ceilings, new fixtures).
In the beginning I was hoping to hit the market in February, but old houses hide all sorts of “problems” that need to be resolved and take time (like things not being built for drywall-plaster and lath didn’t require studs to be perfectly straight and 16” on center). It seems whenever I cross an item off the to do list, a couple new ones take its place! Such is the nature of a project like this though. It is tiring, that is for certain. Future Projects might involve a little more bidding out to subs-or at the very least mixing in some that don’t need quite this intense of a scope of work. As tiring as it is, mentally and physically, it is also fulfilling. There is something indescribable about seeing this house reborn. I have slivers in my fingers and my thumb seems to be swollen today from using snips to de-nail lath to use as shims, but if I can make it through this project, I will feel like I finally did something with my (work) life. I know for some people, fixing and selling houses (flipping) is all about the money-they decided to do it because they had nothing else to try, or because they saw some show and figured they wanted in on the cash, but it’s so much more than that to me. I know I didn’t keep every single original feature (like the bath sinks), and some I kept aren’t exactly as they were (ie the built in), but when this house is done, I will be able to step back and say that my helpers and I did THAT. We brought this house back from the brink and made it into something amazing. The people helping me with this deserve a huge gold star for their efforts. This place has been nothing short of a challenge from the get-go, although I will say it has a great personality. It just FEELS warm and welcoming. The future owners will probably never give a second’s thought to what went into hanging the kitchen cabinets or fitting the drywall, or the late nights and long weeks (ok, MONTHS) of work it took to make that house their home. And I guess that’s the point, that they don’t have to. They just better take care of it this time or I will beat them with a stick lol (ok, not really, but I will get rather exasperated).
