Upcoming Plans - This Place and More!

I haven't wasted any time on getting started with the next small project around the house. It's nothing too exciting - last fall sometime I started stripping the paint from the left garage door and eventually finished it this spring or early summer. Now I'm working on the middle door. It's moving along much faster thanks to everything I learned with the last one. I'm also working on one panel at a time instead of trying to do it all at once.

This Friday we close on another rental house downtown. This one is not in a historic area but was also built sometime around 1920... my guess is no earlier than 1915 / no later than 1925. Based on the neighboring houses, it looks like one of many George Trescott built (his foursquare pattern like the one on President St is easier for me to spot) and he was active in the Rose Garden area this one is in. For whatever reason I never bothered to take a good picture from the street so these will have to do until Friday.

Here's the front porch, including a visitor who decided to come along to the inspection. It's pretty typical of bungalows in the area.

This is the living room - immediately to the left when you enter. I'll most likely change out the light above the fireplace but leave the fan alone for now.

The dining room - also with a fixture that will probably be changed out soon. The flag does not convey.

The kitchen. Small, but most importantly it's already been redone so I don't need to do much here beyond cleaning up.

The bathroom. To the left is a space for a stacking washer / dryer. They're all over Craigslist so it shouldn't be difficult to find one.

Facing the rear of the house from the deck. Nothing too exciting.

The back yard is surprisingly large for such a tiny (.08 ac?) lot.

The side of the house... nothing exciting going on here either.

Foundation - DONE!

It's been too long since I posted anything, but I've been busy.

Over the last couple of weeks I finally raised beams #2 and 3 into place, which means that the foundation in the 2002 addition of the house is finally reinforced. It's nice to not have to crawl around underneath the place for a change. That means that I'm ready to move on to a lot of other activities now.

I was originally going to move straight into redoing the living room and kitchen and then progress on to a couple of smaller things, but I learned something this summer. It's hot here. Really, REALLY hot. Outdoor activities like pulling out the endless number of weeds from the landscaping near the house and doing anything that involves movement is horrible. If I start on the living room and kitchen now I'll wrap up just in time to start the outdoor stuff in the hottest time of the year. Instead, I'm going to paint the house, take care of the landscaping and the other two garage doors before working indoors.

What this really means is that I'll be working on this stuff off and on for maybe 2-3 months if I take my time. It may not be the most interesting stuff to post about, but it's better than occasional updates with pictures that look like I took them from inside a cave. Speaking of, here are a few from the foundation work.

The red is from a marker - not because something bad happened.

The bottom of the joists aren't all even with each other, probably due to the moisture that built up from the insulation that's now gone. They're cupped slightly and I made shims to take up the difference between them.

This is the third beam in place. The sad thing about all of this is that I didn't use a drop light until the very end. I was just carrying a small flashlight with me. I also did all the nailing by hand, except on the last beam when I bought a framing nailer. I'll get loads of use out of that when we start moving walls around.