Anatomy of a Remodel: Week 14

We're still slaving away at the duplex while our remodel house sits idle.

I spent two days clearing 40 inches of leaves off of the lawn before the snow hit.

 

Being outside gave me the opportunity to take a closer look at things. Here's the tree the renter's two oldest boys started on fire three years ago when playing with matches. It also melted the neighbor's fence. They were nice enough to staple cardboard over the burn spot.

Lovely green marker artwork on the siding. This siding is 45 years old, and we planned on replacing it next summer, but in the meantime, we will need to paint over the offending spots.

All of the outside lights, front and back, are missing the bulb cover.

We've uncovered more interior damage, too. The curtains have some serious damage. Somebody loves scissors as much as crayons. I guess we're getting new curtains.

The new doorknobs have paint all over them. Apparently the renters helpfully painted over the doors because they had crayon décor on them.

Unfortunately, most of the doors STILL have crayon showing through the paint and will need to be sanded and repainted. If I'd known these kids were so obsessed with covering their world with art, I would have invited them to one of Grandma's special art days, and demonstrated the beauty of using paper. 

Remember how they painted one of the bedrooms bright blue, then restore it to the neutral tan? I noticed today that all of the outlets in this room were painted over with bright blue paint. Sigh.

 I also noticed they managed to drip paint over several cabinets in the kitchen.

The nearly new sprayer in the kitchen has been broken.

At some point, they replaced our nice, not inexpensive bronze light fixture in the kitchen/dining room with a uber-cheap white one. I'm guessing they broke the one that was there.

The handle to pull up the stopper in the tub is broken and missing.

The white moldings I so carefully and neatly painted with a perfect edge now have wall paint on them.

Things were so bad Hailey and Makayla came over to cheer us up. This is the place they were living in five years ago. They were much less destructive.

They had a grand time using Grandpa's lumber to make a slide on the staircase.

Pretty fun!

Makayla fixed the corner of the patio that had broken off (due to a settling old septic tank). She let Grandpa help.

Makayla is also the one that noticed this little unpleasant surprise: the sliding glass door used to be double-paned. It's now single-paned. She noticed the broken glass shards along the door frame.  Our fine renters obviously broke out a layer of glass and forgot to mention that to us. They also managed to bend the track and the door is virtually impossible to open.  I must say, this is a new one for us. Can we agree someone's not getting their damage deposit back?

Onto more cheerful progress. Here's a close-up of the hideous weeping mortar of the downstairs family room fireplace. Somehow "weeping" seems appropriate for the duplex at this point, but we're going to fix that.

Stan spent much of Saturday framing it to cover with drywall. Notice that the piano and tv are gone--we gave them 24 hours to remove them and surprisingly, they complied.


Stan also hefted all of the old carpet out to the curb. The carpet installers charge an extra $39 each time they take a load of carpet up the stairs.  This family room is 16' by 30'', plus the bedroom which is 11' by 12'--eight trips worth of carpet to haul up the steps.

I got started on painting the molding. It takes 2 1/2 hours to paint all the molding in the basement. It's going to need two, maybe three coats.

I think it will be awhile before we're up and running at this place again.