Turning a House into a Home

In early 2009, I moved my family into a beautiful 1940's brick house. There's 3 bedrooms (actually more like 2 bedrooms and an office with a bed in it...), 1.5 baths (I refused to even consider any houses with ONE bathroom… You know, the wife and a 6 year old girl who’s just going to be spending more and more time in there… maybe I should have got a house with 2+ baths…?! We’ll see. There's a nice large living room, a glassed-in sun room / patio in the back yard, a front porch (complete now with rocking chair) with a porch swing (generously left behind), and -oh, yeah- there's a cinema in the basement! In the biggest room in the basement, the previous owner (PO) had painted a whole wall white, put up red curtains around it, and on the other end of the room is a digital projector hooked up to a surround sound receiver with speakers. All this was left behind when we moved in! All I added was my dvd player and voila! Instant cinema! He'd even left a futon on the small stage at the back of the room beneath the projector!

So far pretty much EVERYTHING I’m doing is a first for me. I got some experience helping/watching my dad finish a couple basements (lumber frame & dry wall), and helped my pastor demolish & restore the interior of the parsonage (a bunch of general household work & painting), so I’ve got a little idea on how to do things, and enough sense to know when I need to consult with Youtube, friends and relatives for advice. As far as my tool collection goes, it’s growing at a nice affordable pace, and when I’ve needed more sophisticated (expensive) tools like circular saws or the such, I’ve got with relatives & friends who have them and are willing to let me borrow theirs for the brief amount of time I need them. As convenient as this is, however, this just doesn’t stop me from wanting my own big tools… It’s a guy thing. You never know, what if I need to cut some lumber to length at 3am? You JUST NEVER know!

One quirk I’ve realized about this house is the interior walls. I’m used to drywall. My parents’ houses were all 2x4 frames covered over with drywall. This house is the same, except they’ve added a 3/4” thick layer of a VERY coarse sort of drywall-cementboardy-crumbly stuff. Because of this, drilling any holes has been VERY difficult! The drill bit sometimes travels sideways about 1/8” before it really digs in, making plotting the holes VERY challenging, especially when it’s for something I want to end up level! So far, however, a combination of brute strength, fast learning and determination have helped me succeed.

The projects I’ve faced & successfully completed so far are:
- painting the kids bedrooms,
- putting together NUMEROUS pieces of Ikea & Target brand furniture
(hutches, medicine cabinets, tables & chairs),
- replacing most interior door knobs, curtains & curtain rods,
- renovating the outdoor clubhouse,
- painting and renovating the upstairs bathroom (floor is in-progress),
- replace old ugly lights and ceiling fans with new lights and ceiling fans,
- install smoke detectors throughout the house
(the PO had one at the top of the basement stairs [with no battery],
and one at the base of the main staircase, and that’s all)
- and MANY variable jobs like using a wood chisel to get a door to close without sticking, or building up a door hinge with pieces of plastic so the latch engages the latch-hole… things like that.
- And there was one project that taught me a lesson I won’t ever forget…

more on this later, in a blog post all to itself...

The projects I’m looking at doing some time soon are: (as I complete these jobs in the future I'll come back to this paragraph and make links to posts about the job getting done. If the job is not a link, it has not been done yet!)
- finish the tile floor in the upstairs bathroom,
- make a hollow stand for the downstairs bathroom vanity,
- take down wood paneling and install drywall in downstairs bathroom,
- install new medicine cabinet in downstairs bathroom,
- possibly relocate downstairs bathroom entrance
and create extra closet-space in the process,
- finish front patio
(railings & balusters, replace arch fascia, bead-board ceiling,
install lighting, install a mailbox instead of the heat-thieving mail slot),
- get the water softener to work,
- lay down new coating on garage & sun-room roofs,
- have breaker box brought into better working order,
- replace ugly drywall in garage & paint it,
- run better electricity to garage,
- improve garage door openers
(we have two garage doors: one has no in-garage button
and only opens & closes from use of car remote,
the other has no car remote, and only opens and closes
from use of in-garage button),
- finish the inside of two closets upstairs,
- possibly finish the attic,
- improve front yard landscaping,
- put vegetable garden in back yard,
- plant fruit trees & bushes.
[in the basement we have a movie room with a media room behind that, a laundry room, and a man room – tools & gun-cleaning, and there’s a storage room at the end of the man room, we call this the cave]
- run lighting into “the cave”,
- have sump-pump installed in corner of man-room
- everything else I forgot to mention

Since I started this blog after having already done a lot of work, the first few articles will be of projects I did when we first moved in, then the rest I will post as I'm learning. This should be interesting!