Old House.....During

Or perhaps more appropriately titled,

"What the heck were we thinking????"

It was such an adventure leading up to the purchase of this house, I kept asking Jim, "Do you still want to go through with it?  It isn't to late to back out.........But I really, really want this house."

Just getting the water and the electricity turned on was an adventure in automated voice directory hell.

Yes, I said hell.

3 days of it to be exact.

Anyway, let the pictures begin!!!

 Is it possible for this pool to clean ever again??

We will see.

 Bill and Mark doing what they love best......

sanding,

sanding,

sanding,

and sanding.

Followed closely by.....

staining,

staining,

 staining,

and more........

staining!

 The roofers!!

We put a new roof on the house and the portable.

The portable had damage from a tree limb.  Also very gross inside because of rain damage.

Mold is not your friend.

 You can never have to many pictures of yucky pool water.

I think it may have been possible to walk on the water.

 Hours and hours of wallpaper removal.

Piles and piles of wallpaper.

Some bright spark had put the wallpaper directly onto the drywall and didn't texture the drywall first.  This makes removal very difficult.

Never put wallpaper directly onto untextured drywall.

On second thought........

After this experience........

Never Wallpaper......EVER

 In the hallway they had wallpapered directly over the original wood.

 Yucky, gross, very disgusting bathroom.

There is also a 2nd yucky, gross, very disgusting bathroom.

I would drive home if I had to use the facilities.......

 Sam hard at work.

He loved peeling off the wallpaper and dropping down the stairwell.

 Ceiling

In some of the rooms the wallpaper started to come of very easily.

Why?

There was more hideous wallpaper under the hideous wallpaper.

The original layer did not come off easily.

Cue psycho music and watch Sally-Ann run screaming down the street.

This is where we got Jaimie, wallpaper removalist extraordinaire to step in.

This is where Sally vowed to ban all wallpaper.

 The house across the street.

Not sure why this is here.

Next project??

HA HA HA HA HA.......

HAH!!!!

 Wallpaper, wallpaper........layers and layers and layers

 New roof

 The original wallpaper!!!  An exciting find.

 I actually preferred it to the wallpaper used to cover it up!

 This is what we found when the wallpaper was removed from upstairs.

This is also where we discovered that 1/2 of the house had insulation and 1/2 didin't.

1/2 of the house had been redone with dryall and 1/2 had not.......

 Remnants of original wallpaper

 Roof going on.

There is a huge fan in the side of the house - the ladder has it covered.

It is being removed.

 New windows.

Loved the old windows - original to the house.

Just to rotted and to expensive to restore.

 A hint of the new color......

 The stairs were a real pain.

But, my hubby indulged me.

Originally it was planned to have hardwood floors throughout.

But........

the floors are so uneven it would have been a major, major project.

Upstairs the floors slope quite a bit well, a lot.

That is a future project.

Everyone assured us that they were quite safe as they all jumped around and the entire house shook.

Very scientific this house inspecting stuff!

 No more huge big fan, venty thingy

 Original plan was just to "freshen" up the bathrooms.

Nope, there was no amount of "freshening" to appease me......

New toilets, new floors, good-bye gross smell........

 Yep, the verandah was out of there as well......

Sam LOVED playing with the caution tape.

Light at the end of the tunnel?????

Well, there you have it.

A mere taste of the adventures in fixing up a house built in 1880.

Are there things that we wanted to do differently?

Yes.

But, compromises had to be made.

We found a lot of things that made us scratch our heads.

Why did someone take one of the inside doors and make it a door on the outside of the house??

No pool pump?

Wallpaper??

The hot water pipes were cut?

Layers and layers of wallpaper??

This house was a tea house and a restaurant at one stage.....

why such a tiny, tiny sink in the kitchen?

Oh, my list could go on.

But, stay tuned for the AFTER photos.

Sally-Ann