Monday, April 25, 2011

More "before"

Ok, so continuing from the previous post. Turn around from that beeeeyootiful shower/tub combo, and you see the gorgeous other side of the guest bath. Mmm.. yeah. Oh yeah.


Now step out into the hall, and look up. Oooh... pretty! And they're all through the house, yessss.


Across the hall from the bathroom, to the west: another bedroom. This one will be Grandma's room. The carpet here is salvagable, phew. Dontcha love that lightswitch?


Exciting shot from a little deeper inside the room:


Grams announced that (a) the room doesn't need to be painted, (b) she doesn't want curtains but only wants blinds, aaaaaaaaand (c) she likes these closet doors. Hi!


Ok, moving north down the hallway, again to the west side, is bedroom #4. The carpet was pretty dirty, but it has cleaned up pretty well so far. I need to clean it a couple more times, until the water is coming out a little less squidocaustic.



The closet doors are off-track and busted up.


And there's no door handle! Look how nice and clean that door is. ....Not.


Aaaand here's what happens when you open the windows on a breezy day and one of your doors is doorknobless. Needless to say, there's no assembly left in that hole now. (TWSS.)


Almost every room needs some sort of drywall patch... this is an especially big one.


There's a linen closet at the northernmost end of the hallway. Again, no shelving.


Now to your right (east) is the lovely paneled master bedroom, with its not-hardwired ceiling fan and its boarded-up window. Ooooh, jealous??


These closet doors are also off-track and busted up.


And here's the master bath (the navy walls are a lighting trick). This bathroom is going to be gutted to the studs, too. We're also going to close off an exterior closet that houses a furnace (one of two) and the water heater, insulate the hell out of the closet, and put an interior access door to it in the master bath. The door (to the outside of the house) didn't even have a lock on it before closing. I can't believe the water heater is still there!


The vanity is outdated but doesn't seem to be in terrible shape... until you look inside. Lotsa water damage. Vanities ain't cheap, people!


There's a hole cut into the wall behind the toilet. Someone was nice enough to stash a plastic bag and a water bottle in there for me. Thanks!


Linen/overflow clothes closet in the bathroom:


Tub and shower combo. Apparently I neglected to get a shot of the end of the tub where the lip that's supposed to go behind the shower surround is instead in front of it.


Looking south down the hall towards the kitchen:


Another shot of the wood-burning fireplace in the living room:


There are three windows in the living room, and each one of them has some sort of paper wasp nest(s). We found one guy in action:


(He's dead now.)

At the south end of the living room (which is on the east side of the hallway, not the west, as I said in the previous post), the "before" shot of the carpet grunge:


And a "during" shot:


I've already cleaned this carpet twice (these shots show the first time) and will probably do it at least twice more. The water was still coming out dark brown on the second round. Ew. But it looks decent enough that I'm not going to put laminate down here--I'm going to take that savings and put carpet in the two back bedrooms, which were worse than I remembered and which didn't clean up well.


Oh yeah... speaking of the back bedrooms....


So there was this.


What does it look like to you?


Yeah.... that's what it was.


Blooood!


All over the back hallway wall and ceiling (and on the lightswitch and fuse box), on the wall and carpet in bedroom #1, and on the wall, ceiling, and carpet of bedroom #2. Really, really gross. And sad.


Moving on to more nonsensical things... more black Xs, on every single panel of the inside of the garage door. Ok....


It's not for sale anymore!


Me in front of the house:


So, there's lots (and lots and lots) of work to do, but I'm so excited to keep working and see progress.

2 comments:

Erika S. said...

Wow, Jane! Congrats! You sure have your work cut out for you, but I know you will have a lot of fun!! lol I can't wait to see more "after" photos!!!

sweet jane said...

Thanks, Erika--me neither! Hahaha. One day at a time... a good way to live.