House Blog, Part 2

Ok. So we bought the house. Here's what we bought: 

What you are seeing is a 2800sqft rancher with a daylight basement. It was built in 1965 (50 years old when we bought it). I believe it was originally a single family home, but it was remodeled some time in the Carter administration and turned into an illegal duplex. The upper floor was a 2 bedroom, 1.5 bath unit and the basement was 2 bedroom, 1.5 bath unit.

As you can see from the video, the 2 front doors were separated by that ugly partition so that the right door kept you up and the left door sent you down. Both tenants shared the back yard. (Watch me take out that partition below if you'd like) When we bought it, the original owner (who lived in California) had had enough. He had just paid to have the basement disinfected: a tenant put baby wipes down the toilet and flooded the downstairs with sewage. Gross. That was all cleaned up but the drywall was removed from about 3 feet from the floor throughout most of the downstairs and both of the downstairs bathrooms were pretty much unusable in the state they were in.

According to my new neighbors, this house was definitely the biggest negative about this neighborhood. It was a revolving door of strange tenants. There were noise violations, drug busts and other unmentionables on this property. Everyone was thrilled to hear that we were going to convert it back into a single family property.

I went in to this with the idea that we were going to do a few cosmetic things, change out the ugly carpeting, and possibly remove a couple partition walls. What we've ended up doing is gutting the whole house and replacing everything but the electrical wiring and framing. It's been a huge learning experience for me and I've really enjoyed it. Stay tuned for part 3 of this series where I start demo work on the basement.