Counting down the weeks

[alaneer]

Today marks the fourth week at My-house-in-the-woods and there's still much to do. The pool demolition is in progress, and it goes slower than I, or they'd anticipated it. The damned thing is built twice as thick and massive as the code calls for, (workers told me) and so it takes more time to cut it to pieces.

The bathrooms are getting re-tiled,

Comments

[mariness]

We're doing/have done the same, basically

[alaneer]

Fewer headaches sounds good, as I get one almost every day. I put in LED lights for the ones that were burnt out, and will be replacing all as needed.

You have to give me the company's name you're using for the solar. That is, if you recommend it.

Wow - a methlab, that's something. This house didn't have any of that, but I've never seen a filthier house in my life. I had it professionally cleaned initially, but I will still have to go over several times to get it clean.

[mariness]

My brother is still researching.

And yeah, this house was absolutely filthy when we moved in -- although the others we looked at were also pretty awful. But the core of the house was in very good shape, and fixing it wasn't quite as much as I feared it would be.

But it was filthy enough that we just redid nearly all of the floors instead of trying to clean them. -- except in the area that was very, very badly "transformed" from the garage, and the tiled kitchen, since the tile could be cleaned. I really don't know what if anything can be done with the "floors" there since they slope (among other problems) but one step at a time.

[alaneer]

Ah, same here, redoing the floors instead of trying to clean them. The bathrooms and bedrooms were awful, but the LR has hardwood so I'm keeping that.

Could the sloping be fixed by pouring extra concrete over it and then tile it over?

[mariness]

We could, but just thinking of the effort involved makes me cringe -- first I'd have to get everything out of that room (which includes lots and lots of books), then do the concrete pouring and the tiling, and I'm just not sure the resulting room will be worth the effort. (It only has one normal wall, and that's actually the worst of the walls.)

What I'm mostly planning on doing there right now is adjusting the furniture to handle the slope, covering the horrific linoleum with rugs and giving the place a steampunk look to divert attention from the floor and the fact that the walls are never going to match. We'll see how this goes.

[alaneer]

Ah, yes, the moving of things here and there. It is the reason I opted for not bringing my furniture until I made the house livable. But that too, has a downside; I never thought I would miss my sofa and wing chair and bed and table, etc..

[mariness]

I hastily add that the floors and the walls in the rest of the house are fine :) And you can't tell now which of the bedrooms was used to grow marijuana :)

[alaneer]

Of course, as they would have to be by building code.

I figured you got rid of the weed :)

[mariness]

A grand total of 0 people think that the AC was properly permitted - it was installed very oddly, although the actual cooling unit is fine. And there's an entire second house in the back that was definitely not properly permitted :) Although much that was, to our surprise, decently built. We just haven't gotten around to doing anything with it. Eventually -- although in that case the chief problem is that to turn it back into a proper second house/guest house we will have to get proper water permits this time :) (The bathroom fixtures and incoming plumbing were torn out.) And the second problem that turning a 400 square foot house into a two bedroom place was not the wisest move. Apparently the previous owners put bunkbeds back there, but still.

But the back house is a low priority until my brother isn't travelling as much. Right now he's just using it to store things.

[alaneer]

I hope you will have no problems getting the proper permits once you're ready to tackle the back house.