More on flooring

Er, well, a few posts back I posted about the laminate stuff that we put down. A few weeks later, I really like it -- we were discussing what kind of floor's going down in the new bathroom, and if we can find a design we like we're probably going to go with more of the same line. 

Advantages: 1. Scoffs at water, 2.looks great, like tile. 3. Feels soft and somewhat warm, unlike linoleum, vinyl, or tile. 4. actually has a lower finished cost than other alternatives, despite being a more expensive material., 5. 25-year guarantee., 6. easy installation and a very forgiving process. 7. crazy easy prep -- sweep and you're done, unless you need to pull carpet. 8. cuts with scissors or a carpet knife. 9. mine turned out REALLY cheap because the size of the pieces allowed me to work around islands and such -- so I ended up needing two fewer boxes than estimated. 

When we were looking at it, we also looked at some laminate wood that looked really great. I seem to recall that the Dupont line is a) awesome and b) on sale right now. 

A Tale of One Kitchen

Kitchen before and kitchen after. 

Sweating the Small Stuff

We do a lot of little stuff.  I promise to upload some commentary on the big stuff, but really the majority of work that we do is small stuff.  

Specifically, we've only done a few things that cost more than $2,000.  Specifically, we did the drywall and plaster work that we had to do to get into the house, and that was about $3,000.  We bought all new appliances for the rental-side kitchen and that was about $2,500.  But the majority of stuff has been small, very small.  In fact, we've really spent nothing but our time in a lot of cases.  

We have now spent weeks stripping wallpaper, a task made worse and more complicated by the fact that the victorians wallpapered everything, and they generally wallpapered over old wallpaper.  So we have wallpaper on the walls and ceiling up to six layers deep.  Many implements are sold to make this better, and we tried using dissolving solution.  But we finally just bought a steamer.  It made the process both faster and less dusty, but still very slow.  

Another thing we did was use orange oil on most of the wood.  I know most people would call this "cleaning," but I don't think anyone had done any such things in our house in over a decade and what should be beautiful wood was looking pretty dry and awful.  A few liberal slatherings with oil and we had lustrous, gorgeous wood.  Of course, given how dry it is and the length of time before we did this, we'll be doing it again.  A lot.  

My dad also managed to break a few windows open -- some had been painted shut.  He and Chris also installed the original shutters, which are blackout shutters and were mercifully left in the attic by whatever idiot thought it was a good idea to take them down.

Chris did a ton of small electrical work -- which, of course, is why I married him.  (not really, honey)

And we installed a lot of lights, since the prevailing fixtures were decidedly 70s trailer park.  In the parlor, the light cost a mere $42. Crucial difference between Lowe's and Home Depot, as far as I can tell: Home Depot really sells the hell out of clearance items. We got two and the other will go in our bedroom. 

Economics

A lot of people look at our house and assume that it is bleeding us dry.  And that could be true, and sometimes seems like it is with the much higher utility bills that we're enjoying in Pennsylvania.  However, a lot of incentives and particularities are making our situation pretty economically feasible.  

First, while I wasn't thrilled that we had to delay our closing initially, I was thrilled to discover that between our original closing date and our actual closing date we became eligible for these lovely Homeowner's Tax Credits from the U.S. Government.  Thanks, Preznit!

Second, our house is a duplex, as well as has a detached carriage house, and that creates a lot of advantages.  We can, of course, rent out one side, and we will be doing so as of April 1th.  We also get to depreciate not only improvements to that side of the house, but utilities and other things relating to the administration and improvement of the shared environment. If both units are rented at market rent, we actually will cover our mortgage entirely.  So, not too shabby.

Third, we are eligible for a wider variety of incentives than we would be eligible for either as owners of single-family property or as owners of commercial property, allowing us to potentially take advantage of both.  More on this later, as we attempt to balance our desire to restore our historic home with our desire to be as environmentally responsible as possible.  

Catching Up...

Boy, have we been busy.  In fact, we've been so busy that I haven't posted anything to this blog in forever.  I actually got my tags today, which I suppose makes me an actual Pennsylvanian.  And I will set immediately to bringing everybody up to date on what we've achieved 'round these parts.  

Personally, I celebrated a birthday, started and am settling into my new job, and the family has been settling into what I suspect is harsher than average weather.  

As to the house, we have been gratified to discover that things are neither better nor worse than they initially appeared.  On the one hand, we could have a house where we don't really have any work to do, which wouldn't have been our goal, and on the other we might not have any money left.  So...I suppose everything's good.  Just wait for updates.

Kitchen and Bath

At this very moment, we are awaiting the arrival of the wrecking crew to get started on the bathroom tear down and renovation, so we can rent unit one and move into unit two. I am full of trepidation. 

So...what we're doing. We originally had a tiny, tiny "bedroom" (not legal -- it's roughly 9.5' X 12') adjacent to aclosetlike hovel of a bathroom (12' x 5', with the bath tub, sink, and toilet in line -- the sink is garbage and tiny, and the tub has a weird offset. but we might be able to reuse the plain jane toilet) with a dropped ceiling. We're now turning these two into a) a second-floor laundry which opens off the hallway by means of bifold doors and b) an L-shaped bathroom in which the original bathroom now only contains a vanity and toilet and the prior bedroom includes only the tub/shower combo and a closet. 

Complicating matters are issues like having to work around a dropped ceiling and sheetrock sheathing. Oh, and the fate of the kitchen hangs in the balance, as well. Well, sorta. If we do well, budgetwise, then I can really do a lot to the second-unit kitchen. If not, I'll be repainting and replacing the floor and sticking appliances in it and moving on. 

So, um, wish us luck! And does anyone have suggestions for places to buy fixtures? 

Happy New Year!

Happy New year, everyone. Thanks to my awesome family, we are watching football and hockey while simultaneously working on a million home improvement projects. We just finished, substantially, plunking down the new kitchen floor on the rental side -- it's made of this stuff, which was really not too bad to install, even over non-square floors. I repainted the rental side bathroom, we demoed the permanent side bathroom, and we're working on painting the middle rental-side bedroom after a monster wallaper-stripping project. Whee. 

On the flooring stuff, a surprise to us was that the stuff I installed actually ended up being MUCH cheaper than just replacing the cheap crap that was there previously and damaged. We went into El Home Depot with the goal of pricing flooring, both for the living room and kitchen. We originally planned to basically replace cheap crap with equivalent cheap crap. But the cheap crap we had was going to be VERY expensive to replace once we got past installation and related supplies (installation being a necessity for garbage you can't really install yourself unless you're very, very patient). So I think the estimate for replacing cheap, glue-backed vinyl in sheets with the same stuff was about $580. Replacing with cut-your-own heavy vinyl tile was only $350. So the flooring guy at Home Depot saved us some buckage and we ended up with a much nicer end result. 

I still haven't decided what to do with the entryway/living room, though. 

Today we'll finish the painting, I'll replace the 80s faux oak cabinet in the rental side bathroom with a sleek new mirror, we'll think about adding lighting on that side, hope to make a dent in painting the middle bedroom on that side (it's now primed), and we'll possible install shutters and replace kitchen trim and install shutters in the bathroom in place of the hideous 90s forest-green mini-blinds.