Thanks for following our progress at BADrenovations.com
My wife, Lauren and I (Tony) purchased our first house in September of 2012. Its a five bedroom, two and a half bathroom brookfield colonial, two car garage and a partial basement totalling 2600 square feet of living space. While that all sounds lovely on paper, the visual appearance is pretty rough. But in order to fit out budget in any of the areas we were looking, we had to go for the fixer upper.
We moved in over labor day weekend with the tireless help of our amazing families and friends. It didnt take very long before we started turning small projects into BIG trouble. Lauren and I got a crash course in home ownership, and we finally got to find out if all those years of watching HGTV paid off.
I will periodically post pictures and rambling details of our progress, destruction and/or horrific misadventures with the house, as we make our way through the process of turning this run down house into the home of our dreams (or possibly our nightmares).
It took a while to get around to fixing up the yard. I hate to admit we let it really get away from us for a while. I guess having young kids will do that to you.
For years we had wanted a front porch, or at least the look of one. The overhang is less than 4 feet deep. Its a tight fit, but in the end, it works well.
At the time the house was built, aluminum wiring was the standard. Years later, it was discovered that this was a big fire hazard. With the help of an electrician friend who was willing to work for booze, we slowly but surely replaced every inch of aluminum wiring with copper. There was an incredible amount of sheetrock work to do after cutting access holes to run the new wiring. We also replaced the meter panel, load center, and added a gen panel and inlet.
With our first baby on the way, we wanted to quickly spruce up the middle bedroom next to the master, and turn it into the nursery. I dont have any before pictures, but the room was in pretty good condition to start with.
As Lauren and my second anniversary approaches, we deicded our gift to each other would be a new dining table. We fell in love with an antique Farmhouse style table and bench in an antique store out east in Greenport. We decided to take a shot at recreating the look and feel ourselves.
The previous owners had not opened the pool in eight years. It had been holding water at the time we had our home inspection. Sometime between the inspection and when we took posession, the liner let go. We knew it was going to be in rough shape. We finally took the cover off, and what do you know....
We decided to start a new section on the site for the finish work going on in the dining room, even though its fairly closely related to the kitchen and beam. The plans include adding a tray ceiling, pot lights, ceiling mounted speakers, crown moulding, chair rail and picture frame wainscoting. But first and foremost, I need to get the tray ceiling framed out and sheetrocked so we can stop bleeding out heat now that the cold weather is upon us.
We have finally turned a corner with the kitchen reno, we are decidedly into construction rather than destruction. The major stuff is done, and we are starting the process of turning an empty unfinished room back into a kitchen.
Well, Its finally here. The Kitchen Renovation. This will obviously be the biggest and most expensive of all the renovations, and will even encompass other sub-renovations like the beam from last week.
Even before Lauren and I had an accepted offer on the new house, we knew we would be tearing down the wall between the kitchen and the dining room. Unfortunately since this wall runs directly under the second story exterior wall. This means the wall carries all the weight of the second floor joists, kitchen ceiling joists, exterior walls and both first and second story roof load - making this wall extremely load bearing. With a span nearly 16 feet in length, this is not something you want to ballpark. An architect and family friend - appropriately named Bill Wall - was kind enough to work up a quick set of plans and spec the beam out for us.
Although not exactly a renovation or anything noteworthy, I needed a place to put all my tools while I work on the rest of the house. It was great seeing everything layed out after having it all in storage for so long.
These pointy arches were possibly Lauren and my least favorite aspect of tyhe new house. We couldnt wait to get rid of them. We considered doing curved arches, but finally decided that going squared off was a better look and would hopefully stand the test of time - unlike these beauties.
We had a weekend without anything on our plates, so we decided to do a quick $300 renovation on the downstairs half bath.
We have ceramix tile and marble threshold ready and waiting to go in, but we've found ourselves tied up in other projects for now. We'll eventually return to adress the ugly linolieum.
When we first moved in, I promised Lauren that I would give her one finished room for her to escape to - a sanctuary from all the clutter and debris from demolition and renovations of nearly every corner of the house. We had barely moved in and unpacked when we ripped right in, after less than a week of owning the house.
