Could someone please send me the link. I tried Marilyn’s on my iPad and it didn’t work.
Done!
You can tell that the deco gave the owners joy. It’s a very personal house - they didn’t keep worrying how it would look to buyers down the road! I like the shout out to the iconic Ruby’s Diner - including a Coca Cola dish towel. Both of the locations I’ve been to in the past are closed.
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It didn’t work!
Thanks everyone…I have the link now.
I actually like that house…but ew…what hideous interior decorating (except I like the Betty Boop bathroom). Looking forward to seeing new floors, and walls…it’s a great space! Looking forward to the transition!
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I like the house too. It does need to have the rugs, wallpaper, and curtains removed and the light fixtures changed out, but otherwise it seems quite nice.
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The link didn’t work for me either – @thumper1 could you send me the link that worked for you? Or whoever sent the working link to @thumper1 send it to mr too? Thank you!
What am I missing? All that work and only 25K??
It is called CB magic! 
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It’s an adorable house from the front! Updating the interior will make it really special, IMO.
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Just realized there’s a putting green in the back yard (I tracked down the house on Zillow). That explains the golf ball exhibits in the family room!
I assume there’s a culvert behind the house like the one across the street, but presumably the rats did not move in here. The owners clearly loved their home.
I’m going with the fun aunt vs grandma’s house vote. Or maybe grandma was fun too. Whoever llved there had good vibes in their space.
LOL–I’d probably just move in except for the wiring. (and the rug running up the bar which probably kept the party crowd from kicking it with their feet.)
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Missed the golf balls in the living room, I guess I was concentrating on the multiple violins, viola,cello, piano arrangement. There was probably some beautiful music made in that living room before the party moved to the aloha room for Mai Tais ! It is a fun vibe but I wouldn’t want to live in it.
Thanks for taking us along!
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We have finished up the first phase of work. Turns out there is a lot more wallpaper than expected. There are layers of wallpaper with layers of paint in between! In the turquoise rooms it appears that they faux painted over layers of wallpaper. So, in my estimate I had assumed that was just a painted room that needed a new coat of paint. Nope, hours of removal!
This is what we have accomplished so far:
Popcorn removal on ceilings - unfortunately the builder just sprayed the popcorn on raw drywall so now the drywall is gouged and scraped. We will need to go through the entire house and apply a skim coat of drywall mud / sand in order to smooth out the ceilings to get ready for painting.
Wallpaper removal - 90% complete. The bathrooms are a nighmare
Changed all switches and outlets to modern outlets. The house has old wiring and the outlets are not grounded. The owners though changing to new outlets would solve the problem but I had to explain it is the wiring, not the outlets. The wiring in the house has only 2 wires, hot/neutral. It does not have a grounding wire. In order to ‘ground’ the outlets properly you have to rewire the whole house.
Install new laundry plumbing and cleaned up garage electrical. The Sellers managed to break the old cast iron drain pipe when removing their washer and dryer so we tore it all apart and put in a nice ABS drain box with proper shut off valves, etc.
Added two recessed lights with switches at each end of the hallway
Added 4 recessed lights in living room ceiling. This room was old school where you turned on a switch and it only turned on a table lamp somewhere.
New owners actually came in over the weekend and removed all the flooring themselves! Usually owners tell us that they want to do something to save money. I give them a full list and it never gets done. They had Dad and Brother helping and got it all done!
BIG ISSUE - We tore off the hallway bathroom toilet so that the owners could remove the vinyl flooring. Oh boy!!! a jungle of roots coming up from under the foundation surrounding the toilet drain. We cannot tell if this is just an issue of roots surrounding the pipe or a much bigger issue of roots inside the old pipes. This is going to require tearing out some of the concrete foundation and getting to the ‘root of the problem’
I loaded some photos, including yucky photo of toilet issue
Cost to Date: $5,000
The owners have decided to update their main electrical panel, rewire family room (because whoever built it just tapped into existing living/dining room circuit and it is overloaded and unsafe) and add new circuit and wire out for future AC. That is going to add about $3,000 to our budget
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Yes, there’s a nice fake grass putting green installed in back yard with about 5 holes. I didn’t even notice it until I was out back yesterday. There’s gnomes on the tree trunk, a little doll house thing on top of the old tree stump with miniature characters
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Looks better already! Minus the roots under the toilet!!!
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We’ve finished up another week at the Grandma House. I’ve loaded a couple of photos, especially the funny stuff decorating the yard.
Here are the surprises this week:
The builder finished the drywall walls and then went to town spraying popcorn stuff on the ceilings. The popcorn stuff was sprayed directly onto raw drywall. They never finished the top of the walls and the popcorn covered a ‘gap’ between wall and ceilings. Now we have to tape around the top of the ceilings and mud in the corners. This is a labor intensive time consuming process because run drywall corner tape around top of walls, mud, wait to dry, sand in crevice, another coat of mud, wait to dry and try to do a nice final sanding in all corners.
The back of the kitchen counter where the carpet was removed is bumpy and full of old glue. The owner had a great cost effective idea. We will reuse the cheap thin paneling pulled out of family room, glue on a piece and get it painted up. Have to add trim pieces around it.
The wall adjoining kitchen and back addition is still a stucco wall! Prior owners had it covered with Hawaiian mat stuff. And, there were two big holes in the stucco where it appears that the kitchen sink was connected to an outdoor sink and they capped off the plumbing. Long discussion on most cost effective solution. We had to frame in and drywall the big holes in the stucco and now we are going to skim coat two coats of mud over the stucco. It was too expensive to tear off all the stucco and drywall the wall. Because it is now an interior wall it doesn’t need insulation.
Luckily the roots around the toilet pipe were isolated to the exterior of the pipe. This means that the toilet had been leaking for years and water going down below the foundation! Note to self, pull off toilets now and then and put on a new wax seal
We’ve purchased all the new flooring for the house and owner wanted to get 150 extra sq ft for changes when they save enough money for kitchen remodel. Cost (my wholesale price) was $2.39/sq ft for this
We have analyzed the electrical requirements in the house and needed to pull a new circuit for the family room. The old main panel outside the house is already crowded and does not have room for any new circuits. The original house panel is rated about 100amp. We don’t know why, but there is a brand new meter on the house with new 200amp wiring coming in from the power pole. So, new 200amp panel now going in. Discovered there is a national shortage of 200amp panels but I found ONE in stock in Texas and that is being shipped in.
Spent to Date : $14,000 (includes flooring and electrical panel/wire )
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Another week went by and we are barely keeping up with the amount of skim coat, mud, sand, mud, sand and priming of all the ceilings and walls. And today, the owners have decided they want all the hall cabinets painted. I explained that it is a big job trying to sand and prep those cabinets!!
New main panel goes in today.
We ended up having to trim up all the windows, doors and pass through in the back addition. When we took off all the paneling it became obvious that the doors and windows ‘protruded’ a bit and everything needed to be trimmed up for cosmetic reasons. Also, the prior owners just ‘added’ the room to the back of the house and never covered up the eaves off original house in the ceiling. So we had to meticulously install drywall and trim to cover the old eaves. It was a lot of work and ended up costing about $3,200 to get it all done. Unfortunately about $1,000 over my original estimate because of the trim work required
When the upper cabinet was removed above stove area we discovered that the hole for the stove vent wasn’t even centered over the stove. So we had to move hole and patch up the ceiling. Then we had a big microwave and had to go over to the little desk area in the existing cabinets and hack up that cabinet to install the microwave. It does not look pretty, but we do not have any touchup paint for the painted cabinets so there is nothing we can do.
Today we are finally going to finish sanding all the ceilings and walls. We have to do all of that before we can start priming because the amount of drywall dust everywhere is overwhelming. It all has to be cleaned up before we can start spraying the ceilings and trim and then finally get to painting the walls.
Owner has selected Sherwin Williams Snowbound for wall color.
I had scheduled a painter to come help us get all the painting completed but he never showed up and is not answering calls. It is impossible to get subcontractors to show up now because everyone is so busy. But that guy is not getting any work from us anymore. He just went dark. At least be honest and say ‘No, too busy’ when I call up and try to schedule.
Cost at $20,000 now and they have added about $4,000 to original scope and we went over $1,000 on back addition room so I think we are at $34,000 now
New photos added
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Looks like a lot is getting done!
I hope you add a 100% nuisance fee to any change orders such as painting the cabinets. Contractors we’ve dealt with are firm about charging far more for items adding during the process due to the impact on scheduling for everything else; that’s if they will even consider any changes or additions.
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