This Old House, re-revisited...

(This is a copy/paste job done from my old 360 blog, but since some people have been asking questions about the house I thought this might answer some of those, plus I just really liked this blog)

This old house, episode 1

Welcome to the first edition of This Old House, in today's episode we take a look back on the house that Karen and her husband Mr. Karen bought four years ago. Pictured above is the happy naive couple posing in front of said house after purchase. Some background info on the house. It was reposed by a bank and sat unoccupied for several years prior to their purchase. The house had been home to several homeless people and wild parties as evidenced by the internal damage to the house. As said before, they were young and naive when they made the purchase. They no longer wanted to rent but couldn't really afford much in the way of housing. They thought it would be a fun and exciting project to undertake. I mean who doesn' t love a fixer-upper?! Little did they know what was in store for them.

The house is a 1 bedroom in what has been referred to as a shotgun style house. (one room right after the other in a straight line) It sits on approximately 1/3 of an acre in the city limits of Tulsa. Let's get on with the home tour shall we?

First we have the livinroom painted in a breath taking dusty rose and forrest green with matching wallpaper. Featured in the far right corner is an enormous bookcase/fireplace that sits upon a raised section of tile in forrest green. Along the right wall the floor is no longer attached. One can bounce upon the floor because the joist haven rotted out. One window along the far right wall is completely busted out. It is of course a double pain window which is quite expensive to replace.

Here we have the far left side of the livingroom. Here we see what appears to be remnants of a sliding glass door. It now stands as a giant hole in the wall. Not featured in this picture is the forrest green tile that marks the entrance into the kitchen or the forrest green carpet that adorens much of the livingroom.

Next we move into the kitchen that is painted forrest green with light wood panneling along the bottom half of the wall. On the far left side of the kitchen we notice the frame of what used to be a sliding glass door. If you look closely however, you can see the remains of the sliding glass door shattered into a million pieces on the floor. One should also note the carpet that was glued upon the kitchen floor and hence has lots of nice ridges. We can also not forget the hole that was knocked in the wall just past the sliding glass door.

Here our lovely model Mr. Karen shows off the other half of the kitchen. Note the bright pink tile in the background. Behind Chris is the giant planter window that has to be boarded up because it was completely busted out. Not pictured is the mold and mildew behind the counters because of a leak in the sink. The floor is also completely rotted out underneath the cabinets. It felt much like a trampoline when one stands there.

Here we have the family viewing the small space otherwise known as the bedroom. Note that the window behind Karen's mother is busted out, like every other window in the house. The carpet in the bedroom is green, to match the rest of the house obviously. The bedroom features a slopped roof that Mr. Karen can barely fit under at it's lowest. Unknown to the Karens at the moment of the purchase is that the flooring in the bedroom was rotting out and actually slopped in the same manner as that of the roof.

Next we move onto the bathroom. The linolium in the bathroom was the only thing holding up the toliet which was clogged with something unmentionable. The bathtub was covered with an insane amount of mildew that would not come off no matter what product was used on it. The towel rack on the far wall was not actually screwed into the wall which a distraught Karen found out the hard way. The mirror was bespeckled with some unknown substance that was dared not questioned. The floor was by far the worst in the bathroom. One was risking your life by even going in there.

This was the backyard. The Karens actually had no idea how far their property went back until they spent several weeks clearing out the brush. One of Chris's siblings, and Karen's dad both came down with nasty poison ivy in the effort to clean this up.
And thus concludes our first tour of the house of the Karens.

Join us next time won't you?

Bedroom photo blog, part 2

Beware: This blog may take forever to load. Crap load of photos to follow. But I promised destruction so here you go... (my captioning will probably suck as Husband took most of the photos and I have don't understand all the technical stuff he found)

Floor, post carpet.

Post carpet, again.

Post carpet, duh.

Our hallway, after the tiles were removed. (Looks like crap eh?)

A close up of previous photo.

The rest of the hallway.

Apparently the jerks who owned the house before us knew the floor was falling so what did they do? Put down wooden spacers and laid a new sheet of plywood on top. Don't fix the problem, hide it!

Wooden spacers... ugh.

First cut that went all the way down.

More spacers, and Husband's tools. (Love the pitch fork!)

Picture out of bedroom into the hall.

Another spacer/tool picture. Can you see the hole in the floor? Husband didn't do that, after the first layer of plywood was removed... it was there. ugh!

Crap piping and rotten wood picture.

I think this was supposed to show how low the original floor had sunk.

Husband's junk pile, middle of day 1. (I actually took that one)

Again... I don't know.

He likes repetition.

Taken from inside bathroom doorway. Husband fell through this part of the floor.

Termite damage (?) from the section of floor Husband fell through.

The bridge he laid for me to get to the bathroom. I was terrified of dying.

Same section of flooring minus my bridge.

Rotten wood that we found once the floor was gone.

More rotten wood.

Where a joist used to be... Notice the crumpling cinder blogs underneath.

Mas rotten wood.

The half floor joist that we found intact. This was the only thing holding up our bedroom.

Up close.

Aren't Husbands knee pads awesome? lol

Random bricks and rotten wood.

Shot from the bedroom towards the hallway.

Our backdoor... and the huge drop off.

The hallway.

Husband had to cut off sections of the drywall to see if anything was actually holding the walls up. Sadly... do you see anything?

Same story in the bedroom.

The door that was to our hall closet. Husband decided we needed a new one. I won't argue.

Husband fitting a new joist into the hall.

Laying a joist in the bedroom on top of our cinder block wall.

The rebuilt joist under our backdoor.

Rebuilt joist for the hallway.

Husband trying to fit a vertical joist under a section of wall.

So there you have it. All the photos taken thus far in the great bedroom remodel of '08.
Oh... Husband and I got a great deal on some 5/8"(inch) bamboo flooring! We bought enough that we taken out our crappy/cheap laminate flooring and do the whole house in the same thing. I'm so happy, no more carpet!!!! Yippie! The tankless water heather though is another story.