Sunday, May 3, 2015

#1426 the fixer upper

In January MT and I expanded our real estate "empire"  by buying another house. It has been difficult for MT to find houses to buy. He spent a lot of time last year looking and putting offers on all sorts of houses before finally getting his offer accepted on this rambler. I didn't even see it before we signed the paperwork. Our realtor, Bruce, assured me that the place was a "real shithole." He quickly added that he knew that MT could make it really nice and we would get our money back out of it.

MT has been working on the house steadily since January. It is not close to being ready to rent or sell, but progress is being made. It really was a shithole. MT has had to tear down walls and level out floors and basically gut the place. There were maybe five bedrooms and two bathrooms. I say maybe because one room didn't have a closet or a window, so it doesn't really count as a bedroom although someone did probably sleep in there. I say he has leveled out floors because the original house had been added onto on each end and there were steps up and down into the various rooms.

I should have started taking photos of the place when he started working on it in January to document the progress, but I'm lazy and I didn't do that. I did take the camera over yesterday, though and took about 20 pics of the various rooms. I thought it might be fun to show you some of the photos and to update the progress every week.

I won't show you all 20 pics today. That would be overkill. I think I'll focus on the kitchen today because I know he was working in that room this weekend, so you'll be able to see some changes when I take photos next week.

MT took out all the cabinets, cupboards and appliances. He took out the flooring which was an ugly linoleum. He has had to move some of the electrical outlets to get the plug-ins for the appliances where he needs them to be so everything works will with the new cabinets. He and T put up the new cabinets.

This first shot shows the long view into the kitchen from the future dining area. The wall that you see on the left is about a foot thick. It used to be an outside wall before the addition was built. MT took out part of the wall to expand the opening to have a nice open area from the dining room to the kitchen. You see all the can lights in the ceiling? MT put those in. The only light fixture in the kitchen had been over the sink. You can still see it toward the back of the room on the left, near the corner. MT will be moving that light eventually.

The upper cabinets have been attached, but not the lower units yet. He is just placing them in their approximate positions to get an idea of how it will look. The walls will be painted and a backsplash installed, plus a new tile floor will be done.
The cabinets were custom ordered. I think he said they are maple. They look nice. In the corner is a lazy Susan unit. We have a couple of those units in our kitchen and they are a good storage area. The stove will go in the open space you see there on the right. The sink will go on the right at the end of the photo.

Here's a better view of where the sink will be. You see how there are some shorter cabinets there in the middle? I think the sink will go under those cabinets. The refrigerator will be down at the end.

Today MT was texturing the ceiling in the kitchen and probably doing other stuff as it caught his attention.

MT is a hard worker. All the work he has done on the house has happened after he puts in an eight or nine hour day at his job. He usually works on the house a couple of hours a night Monday through Friday and then most of the day on the weekends. T has helped him a little, but for the most part, MT is there by himself, listening to music or books on CD and figuring out how to get it all done. He's pretty amazing, I think.


2 comments:

emtes said...

Wow that is hard work. I hope it pays off in the end. I like the cabinets!
Looking forward to see more and how the house will turn out.
Love you
Mia

Kteach said...

Oh man that is a lot of work!!!
Good job Marty :)