Tuesday, March 23, 2010

Rehab 4470 – We got the cabinets out and the kitchen wall down


We made good progress this weekend with the kitchen. The cabinets came out easily and were not glued to the wall like the last house (thank god!). Sean helped me take out the sink side and Jan and stove side. Removing the tile backsplash was a whole different issue. We had a couple of problems with the sink base and have to cut off the main drain.  The cabinet bases were also separate from the base cabinets.
Once the cabinets were out what seemed like an easy task of snapping the back splash tiles off and scraping off the glue resulted in the wall board being torn up so much I finally just cut the sheetrock out. We should have done it from the start and it would have saved 2-3 hours of fooling around with the tile.  It also gives the electrician a little more room to work when he moves the switches.  We are going to keep the undecounter lighting that was installed under the old cabinets and install it on the new cabinets.

Lou the electrician came by and we talked about the electric wires in the wall between the dining room and the kitchen. He determined, after crawling around the attic a bit, that he would able to relocate them and expects minimal wall repair to be needed. That was good news. The other good news came from reviewing the blueprints with brother in law Mike over the phone and coming to the conclusion that the wall between the dining room and the kitchen was NOT load bearing.  Once we got through those decisions out came the reciprocating saw and down came the wall. I also cut the wall down to 34.5” to make it flush with the new cabinets when they installed. All in all not to bad of a job with minimal wall repair needed once the electric gets rerouted. The effect we think will be dramatic and really make the kitchen pop once the granite goes in. It surprised both of us how much more open the kitchen looks even with wires hanging down from the ceiling.

The kitchen as you can see also has wallpaper (and the bathrooms) and the genius that put it up did not size the wall in advance. This means the wall is damaged in trying to get the wallpaper off. Jan got an estimate for someone else to do it and it came back at $1200 – ugh! So we consulted with Gene the paint guy at the local Lowes store. No magic wand it seems. Gene did however give us some tips to paint over it.

• First cut or remove any areas that are coming off the wall

• Spackle the seams and parts that were cut out

• When the spackle dries sand it flat repeating as needed

• Then prime the walls with oil based primer – this is key as latex may dissolve some the paper

• Texture as desired (I’ll use Billy’s machine hopefully)

• Then paint with latex color of choice

We’ll report how that technique works in a future blog.

The other good news is we sold the stove, dishwasher, and cabinets on craigslist in less than 24 hours. With the money we can pay someone to tear up the existing tile in the entryway, kitchen, and hallway to make way for the 20 x 20 porcelain. We also got the bamboo flooring on sale from Lumber Liquidators @ $1.79 sq ft. All in all a good week..

Happy rehab..

Tuesday, March 16, 2010

Rehab 4470 - Paint and Tearing it Out

After a couple of months Jan finally closed on the latest rehab property while I was out of town.  In the first week she painted the living room and den and pretty much got the doors down, verticals in the trash and valences out.  Along the way she found a new painting tool that took hours off painting the den when cutting the paint back from the ceiling.  She chose the tan color we've been very successful with in the past.  The picture shows the living room with patio sliders to the right and door to the master bed room to the left.

After a week of painting we spent a week on vacation and returned on Saturday all rested up.  Since I had been out of town for several weeks I had a need to spend some time at the house on Sunday to contribute.   I started on the Master Suite where I removed the carpet and tack strips.  I was happy to see that the carpet pad was not glued down like the last house.  From there it was into the toilet room to rip out the old tile, closet to rip out the carpet and then finally the linoleum in the master bath which after I got it half out realized I should have just tiled over it.


From there I decided to get some fresh air and start ripping out the landscape in the front yard.  After trying several times to crank up the chainsaw I gave up and we called it a day.  After all it was the last day of our vacation and we needed one last cocktail this time by our pool.

Monday, March 1, 2010

Rehab 4470 Starts on Monday

We close on the next home renovation property on Monday.  We received the HUD 1 last week with no real surprises and have already set up the utilities transfer and insurance.  There's a walk through on Monday morning and assuming the house has not burned down we'll close in the afternoon.  Then the fun starts to get the property back on the market in 8 weeks.

With this renovation we have the following plans so stayed tuned for lots of pictures:

Master Suite
  • Bedropom carpet replaced with wood (bamboo) or tile (20")
  • Wall paper removed from bedroom and bath
  • Millwork around Sliding glass doors in bedroom
  • Paint throughout / gloss white on Trim
  • Linoleum removed from bath and tiled (20" tile)
  • New vanity in batch (96") with granite counter
  • Ceiling fan in Bedroom
  • Tile replaced in WC (20")
  • Windows trimed out with Millwork
Living Room / Den
  • Carpet replaced with hardwood (bamboo)
  • Paint throughout / gloss white on Trim
  • Millwork around sliding glass doors
  • Windows trimed out with Millwork
  • Ceiling fans replaced
Kitchen / Dining Room
  • Wall between kitchen and Dining Room cut down to counter height.  Electic moved.
  • Wallpaper removed in dining and kitchen
  • New kitchen cabinets with granite counters and new sink
  • Tile kitchen backsplash
  • New Stainless Steel appliances
  • New light in Dining Room
  • Possilbly replace kitchen and dining room tile (20")
  • Windows trimed out with Millwork in dining room
  • Paint throughout with gloss white trim and baseboards
Bedroom
  • Bedropom carpet replaced with wood (bamboo) or tile (20")
  • Paint throughout with gloss white trim
  • Trim out window
  • Replace ceiling fan
Hallway Bath
  • Replace linoleum with tile (20")
  • Remove wallpaper
  • Paint throughout with gloss white trim
  • New vanity with granite
  • Picture frame mirror
Exterior
  • Replace rotted wood
  • Paint Exterior including soffits
  • Remove all current landscape before painting
  • New plants and outdoor lighting upgrade following paint
  • New house numbers
  • Replace entryway tile (maybe)
  • Fix / Replace broken screens
  • Seal driveway