Home Renovation Thread aka the reason I have been missing....

clevrname

Well-Known Member
1,584
241
Well everyone, December 5th we closed on our house, and to this day, still do not have a kitchen. However, we have gotten a lot of work done. So i'm going to start from the very first day we saw the house and my partner and I decided we wanted to buy it.

PS. Sorry for the crappy iphone pics.

First picture as we pull up to the house with our realtor.
82ff608b.jpg


When you walk in, living room with a pass through window to the kitchen.
d941745e.jpg


Here is the ginormous living room:
66f1ee2f.jpg


Walking into the nasty *** kitchen area(we knew this was gonna have to go):
83e58af7.jpg


No appliances and shitty particle board cabinets:
dc293477.jpg


The dining room with doors going out to the sunroom:
6dca9582.jpg

da0b0e3c.jpg


Can you say Green? We knew this would need some serious work:
ab5006e0.jpg


Another picture of the DEN:
671e43a1.jpg


Bedrooms:
ab13eadf.jpg

b272cc33.jpg

9e66b62b.jpg


Master Bathroom, which we found out in the home inspection neeeded a new Shower pan:
5270fd95.jpg


The work has begun: First: get the master shower fixed so we have two functioning bathrooms!
7c6b3f4b.jpg


And we move in two days after work starts :(
e667c07d.jpg


Getting rid of the NASTY ceiling tiles in our Den, and going to sheetrock everything, as you can tell everything isn't exactly good and secure above the ceiling tiles:
0ac07605.jpg

0ed913a6.jpg


Still managed to get a Christmas tree up. We had to hang some plastic in the background because our french doors were being installed and plaster gets EVERYWHERE when you cut it:
2150087c.jpg


French doors installed!
ac101c61.jpg


Kitchen is torn out, we covered up that walkway, and have gotten the new tile floor down. Cabinets on the way!
13958200.jpg
 
Master bath shower is Fixored!
f8014e78.jpg


This is the den. The carpet has taken some getting used to. The sample they brought us was just a tan, and said nothing about checkers. The Walls have gotten about 4 coats of primer on the hideous green paneling. However, it just needs to hold us over until around June when we tear the paneling down, insulate, and install sheetrock.
980daf03.jpg


Better picture of the Kitchen, the night before cabinets!
5c2b0326.jpg


Rut, Roh!
81072596.jpg

c910d126.jpg

f0542a91.jpg



And THIS is as far as we have gotten in the past month. With work, school, and this, I dunno if life could get anymore stressful! I will be adding more pics as we complete more things :)
 
I love seeing this kind of stuff. Nice work,.. I'm excited to see how things continue to progress. Are you doing most of this work yourself?
 
Well the type of mortgage we did was a 203K. The house was foreclosed on and sat for about a year before we bought it. Therefore, the bank was requiring that kind of mortgage. With that mortgage, you're allowed to take out extra money for renovations on top of your mortgage and it all be one payment.

For instance. Our house was $159,900. We secured the house for that price with our offer, we're taking out an extra $31,000 for all of the renovations. Therefore, our total mortgage amount is $190,900. With this type of loan, the bank requires a licensed contractor to do all of the work, so they have someone to blame if anything goes wrong. So no, we are not doing all of the work, but we have done quite a bit of it.

And our appraisal came in the other day. Once the house is done, the appraiser said $230,000 will be it's worth. $40K positive equity FTW!

And last but not least, the countertop guy is coming today to make a template for the granite. Hope to have it all installed by this weekend!
 
totally understand the situation. Keep taking pics, and update the thread when you get a chance. Years down the road you can look back at all of the changes.
 
Congrays and nice work! Did you think about openning up the wall where the pass through is at?
 
Congrays and nice work! Did you think about openning up the wall where the pass through is at?

yeah, unfortunately, it's load bearing and we didn't want to have to pay the money for the support. Plus the way it is, it keeps things divided up nicely. We're going to use the front room as a formal living room.
 
ah.....I missed the "Licensed Contractor" thing in your big post. That makes a big difference in the budget eventhough it is not a super hard thing to do. Guess I have done too many of those with my dad also, lol.
 
The kitchen will always be the first impression of a house. Nice work.
 
Thanks everyone,

Appliances were installed today. Countertops should be here Thursday!
 
Looks great!! Thanks for making this thread! I'm really looking forward to more progress pics/posts :D
 
Thanks everyone! I'm hoping to get some more Thursday when we get the countertops in.
 
How's the trash can placement going....lol


A total pain in my ***. It was a fun project. Difficult and tedious, but due to my perfectionism (is that a word?), a pain. Once we figured out how to go about measuring and drilling, it just took some thought and got it done. 3 hours later, mind you.

It's really cool seeing all of this laid out in once place and seeing the development. Thanks for posting, Josh!
 
Back
Top