Introduction

Welcome to my new homeowner blog, I’m sure you’ve seen lots of other blogs, this is just another one 🙂 I plan to share here the fun and misery of new home ownership. A quick description of the home is as follows:

Property Age: The home on this property was built in 1889, which makes the home, at the time of this entry, about 110 years old.

Condition:

Property: The property in the developed area has been somewhat maintained, though it shows signs of abandonment, the developed area is in ‘ok’ condition however it will require a lot of hard work, money, and time to make it something which I am proud of. I am currently in the process of restoring some lawns and doing other improvements to the property, but I can tell already that it will be several years before things are under control and where I want them to be.

Lot: The lot is about 1 acre in size, about 1/3rd of it has been developed for ‘human needs’ meaning that it has been developed into lawn and living areas. Although it has been poorly maintained due to the previous owner moving to another state. The other 2/3rds of the lot are young woods, I doubt most of the trees are over 20 years old, however many the larger ones are obviously much older. At some point I believe this to have been part of a cleared farm property which has overgrown in the last few years. The lawns are in terrible disrepair, but are in the process of being revitalized, I will post additional posts to show the progress on work already started in these areas.

House: The house itself was built in 1889, and is ~1800 square feet. It has seen better days. The living area consists of terrible, livable and not-to-bad rooms. Many of the walls are still plaster and lath. The home has 9 seperate ‘rooms’ although it has 7 primary rooms as listed below.

First Floor: Kitchen, Living Room, Dining Room, Mud Room, Auxillary Room

Living Room: Recently rennovated. Pella double hung windows, 1/4 sheetrock / drywall, new carpet, fresh paint

Dining Room: Rennovated in.. the.. 70’s!? This room has wood paneling on the walls, a boarded up fireplace(chimney removed from the attic up) and a non-functional outside door (has been additionally nailed and secured to prevent it from being an entry point) This room has the original wood flooring and with no sub-flooring whatsover. If you leave the basement lights on at night, you can see them through this floor. This room also has very old single pane windows, possible original since the glass int he panes is sagging(rippling).

Kitchen: The kitchen is a relatively new addition, town documents showed it as still an ‘unfinished addition’ for some reason and the updates were sent to them to show it as finished. The kitchen has a vaulted ceiling and 2 high quality Pella double-hung windows and a decent L shaped work area with the sink, dishwasher, disposer, stove, fridge and cabinets. The floor appears to be ceramic tile which was placed before anything else, it runs under the cabinets, dishwasher and stove. There is a small section on the side of the kitchen which has been covered with hardwood floor and two small lighting fixtures for use as a ‘breakfast nook’ I guess. The ceiling in this area is not vaulted, and is under the bathroom.

Mud Room and ‘auxillary’ room: Near the rear entry are 2 smaller rooms, one is the mud room, which also has the washer and dryer, and in the back of that room is what I call the ‘auxillary room’. I’m assuming it was the kitchen before the kitchen addition.

Second Floor: Master Bedroom, Guest Bedroom, Unused Bedroom, Linen Closet, Bathroom

Master Bedroom: The master bedroom as with most of the second floor was done in a hurry. The windows are replacement windows which only include tracks and the panes. While they are double pane they are inadequate because they are very thin glass and allow the noise of the highway(20-30 feet away) to easily penetrate the room. Additionally the drywall is 1/4 inch thick, and there is no apparent insulation in the walls. This room tends to be very noisy during the day due to passing traffic and will need to be modified. Additionally this room has a fairly large closet but the heating ducts run up a chase in the middle of the closet limiting its usefulness to quite a large degree. Plans are to 1) Replace the windows 2) replace or overlayer the drywall 3) insulate in an effort to reduce the noise.

Guest Bedroom: The guest bedroom was done much in the same way as the Master Bedroom, although there is no carperting in it. At this time it is empty and unused, but has received new paint to improve it’s looks. Its final goal is to bed a guest bedroom which is nice and quiet. The priorities are the same as the Master Bedroom.

Unused Bedroom: This is a very small room, at one point it was used as a kids room judging by the cute paintings over the wallpaper and other things. Scraping of the walls show evidience of MANY layers of wallpaper one beneath the other. The previous owner had start drywalling over the original plaster, but only the ceiling is done, and it’s with 1/4″ sheetrock. This will be torn out and replaced with insulation and 1/2″ or thicker sheetrock to turn it into a usable room. On the floorplan it is above the mud room and auxillary room.

Linen Closet: This room is in a small hallways between the stairway and the bathroom. A closet was made with 2 bi-fold vented doors. The hall it is in has a casement window on the wall opposing the linen closet. This closet will propbably be removed in an effort to enlarge the bathroom.

Bathroom: The bathroom is mostly finished, the tub is pretty standardized and has premolded walls on the 3 sides. At the ends of the tub an unifinished closet has been built to one side, and on the other side a chase has been boxed around which contains plumbing lines and vents. Unfortunatelty there is no screening for this side so bugs can traverse from the basement to the attic through it, and also take visits to the bathroom as they deem fit. This is high on the priorty list to resolve and it should be cheap with some screening stapled to the back of the chase access panel which has slat vents along it’s entire height. Otherwise the bathroom is moderately well finished, though the paint is flat. The bathroom also has a casement window which is similar to the one in the linen closet hallway, and also on the same wall.

Attic: The attic is in poor shape, I guess. There is very little insulation over the ceiling, the chimney for the furnace has started to subside and crack where it zig-zags to the center of the roof. (this is a priority fix before the winter) The siding is in bad shape as light can be seen comming through in various areas, also there are some animals living in the attic as well. I intend to use a ‘animal friendly’ have-a-heart trap to catch these and release them outside, once I find how they are getting in. It should make for interesting photos as well.

Basemnet: The basement is a somewhere between a crawlspace and a ‘walkspace’. The home is built on a bluestone ridge, thus the basement was dug into the bluestone. It’s quite like moving through an old mining tunnel when doing things in there. The basement has the Oil Tank, Oil Furnace and the Electric hot water heater and a multitude of spiders. They were vacuumed out during the winter, however I try to leave them alone if they stay down there, to help control any other insects. I figured if they can freak out a big guy like me, they probably scare the microscopic crap out of all the other bugs which might want to infest the basement and help keep things in check.