Hoarders

Apparently the people who lived in our house before us had a serious hoarding problem. To make a long story slightly shorter, the old couple living in the house were not married to each other. They both had kids with different people before they moved in together and apparently the step-siblings did not get along. The house was owned by the lady and when she died, I bought it we bought it (sorry, still getting used to being married) from her kids. They were stalling us for a while, saying they were going to have an estate sale to make money off all the stuff that was left there. So, I made them a deal, I increased our offer, on condition they leave everything in the house and we close within 30 days, they accepted. We didn't end up closing for well over 90 days and they took a lot of stuff out of the house in that time. We wanted the house, so we put up with them not honoring our agreement.

Finally, we closed on the house and we thought that was the end of the story, we were wrong. A few days later, a neighbor approached me and told me that he was friends with the son of the man who used to live in the house and the son wanted stuff from the house that belonged to his father. Most of the stuff left behind was junk, but there were a few handguns that I found hidden and some tools that I wanted. The legal situation was tricky and if they decided to sue, it would've taken a lot of time and money to fight them. Additionally, the guns had been reported as missing to the police department, so I couldn't register them in my name. We decided that the best option was to make a deal with the son, we would give them the guns and some of the other stuff that obviously had belonged to his father, on condition that they leave us alone, they agreed. So, I spent a over a week packing up tons of stuff that I didn't want (and a bunch I did want, but didn't want to fight over) for him to pick up.

Spending all that time going through the junk and packing stuff up, kept me from actually getting any work done on the house, but on the plus side it got the house a lot cleaner and less smelly. I was happy to get them off my case and ready to get working on the house, without any more distractions. Would that it were that easy. One night I got a voicemail from the lady who sold us the house. She remembered that there was something of her mother's in the house that she wanted. I called her back today and told her that I hadn't seen it and if it was there it was not where she left it, it was probably boxed up with all the other stuff and I don't have time to go through it now. She said "well, if you see it and know it doesn't belong to you, please return it". I was shocked at her gall and didn't know how to respond. Fortunately I had an important business call come in on my work phone, so I said "gotta get this call, bye" and hung up. While I was on the business call, she called me back and left another voicemail "If there's a cane in the house, I want that too, it has a lot of sentimental value". So much sentimental value that she didn't bother taking it in the three months she had to take whatever she wanted? I don't particularly care to keep either of the items she asked for, but WTH?! How long am I going to have to deal with these crazy people and their demands? I think our only option is to turn down their requests and ignore them for now on. They got their money, they had their time to take what they wanted, all we want is to be left alone, is that too much to ask?

I thought this was the and of the story, once again, I was wrong! I got a call from one of the lady's sons, telling me he thinks there's cash hiding in the house somewhere, b/c otherwise the step-siblings wouldn't be so upset about not being allowed in the house after their father died. A few days later, I received a subpoena (what a stupid word!) to testify in a lawsuit between the step siblings and I was ordered to being documents relating to my purchase of the house and what I found in the house. I accidentally missed the date I was supposed to testify and when I called the lawyer to apologize, I was informed that the case was settled already and they don't need me anymore. Nice of them to let me know!

Hopefully this is the end of the drama, although if I do find cash, I won't complain!

Here's some pictures of the contents of the house.

What was this used for?

Just a small percentage of the garbage they left us. 

Wonder where this gun is hiding!

Progress

Garbage from two weeks ago

Last week's garbage 

Sometimes pictures say more than words. As you can see, we threw out a lot of garbage (the "sanitation engineers" probably have horrible nicknames for me by now) the last two weeks, which means we've made lots of progress. Unfortunately my laptop broke, so I haven't been able to write about all the work we've done. There's still a lot to do before we can even move in, but the smell is going away and it feels like we've accomplished a lot. Hopefully, I'll be able to post more updates soon.

If I haven't made it clear, I have a lot of work to do on this house and I don't have a lot of time to do it in. I set out with a plan: Get rid of anything that smells bad, fix up the bedroom and bathroom, move in and do everything else later. It sounded easy, but shockingly it hasn't been quite so simple. You've already seen how fun the wallpaper removal was and that was done relatively fast. Carpet removal should've been one of the easier jobs, but as it happens, it's been the biggest hold up. The den and kitchen both had carpet padding that rotted and stuck to the floor underneath it. Attempts to scrape it with commercial floor scrapers were futile and I was forced to move on to other projects.

I did a lot of research online and none of the solutions I read about sounded like they would work for me. I contemplated a lot of solutions, ranging from the semi-rational (cutting out the sub-floor), to the ingenious (lighting the padding on fire and letting it burn off), but none sounded quite right to me. Worst of all, I even considered hiring someone to do it for me. In the meantime, I moved on to the top floor, painting the master bedroom and removing the carpet. While removing the carpet in the master bedroom, I had to remove the metal strip that covers where the carpet connects to the next room and I had an idea. What if I removed the strip between the den and the foyer, maybe there would be a way to get below the tile and scrape from there? With little hope, I removed the strip and inspected the floor beneath it. The tiles were the old kind that people used to use in their basements (probably with asbestos, but I'm pretending that's not a possibility) and didn't look like they'd come out easily. For the second time in my life, I was wrong. Using the floor scraper. I was able to remove all the tiles, along with the carpet padding, in just a few hours.

When things go right, they go right and I was able to get carpeting removed from two more bedrooms, the stairs and the dining room in just a few more hours. Unfortunately, the kitchen situation is a little worse. There's also a tile floor under the carpet padding, but unlike the tiles in the den, these won't come up so easily. I've been able to remove a few tiles, with a paint scraper and my hands, but it's time consuming and not all tiles come up. It's also very messy and difficult to breathe in there.


Update: I managed to remove all the carpeting on the lower level and I've moved onto other projects for now.

The illusion of progress

Our situation is getting desperate, my wife and I have been living in my parents house (albeit their second, empty house) since early July. It's a perfectly nice and comfortable house, we have plenty of privacy (usually) and so far it's rent free, so I'm not complaining. It's quite tempting, in fact, to simply unpack all of our boxes in this house and live here. Realistically, we don't want to take advantage of my family (any more than we already have) and it would be nice to know where all of our stuff is. It's getting tiring spending hours looking through boxes in our garage for some small thing we need that we haven't had in 4 months.

With that in mind, I decided to put all my effort into work that will let us move into our house, even if some areas of the house will still be unusable. The most important room for us, is the master bedroom, so I figured I'd start there. Originally, we planned on knocking down a wall to make the room bigger and double the size of the bathroom, while also adding a walk-in closet. In the interest of speeding things up (also to avoid collapsing the roof by removing a load-bearing wall), I decided to leave the walls where they are now and just clean the room up.

I primed and painted the ceiling and walls (finally something I have experience with), which came out looking pretty good, in my extremely humble opinion. I might add pictures later, if I can figure out how to make them look good. Then I pulled out the carpet, which was shockingly easy, for once. The wood floor underneath the carpeting looks like it's brand new, but we might have it refinished anyway because the color is a little ugly and it would be nice to plug all the holes from the staples and nails used to hold in the carpeting. All that's left to do now is clean, or refinish the floor and install new molding. Finally, I think, we're making some progress. Then I think of what's left to do and it feels like I've done nothing at all.

List of things that need to be done before we can move in:

1. Paint three more bedrooms, two bathrooms and hallway (some drywall needs to be replaced first).
2. Replace tile floor and shower in master bathroom.
3. Replace vanity, sink and toilet in master bathroom.
4. Remove carpeting in three bedrooms, hallway and stairs.
5. Clean or refinish wood floors in three bedrooms, hallway and stairs.
6. Install molding in all rooms.
7. Prime or paint ceilings and walls on the main floor of the house.
8. Remove carpeting from living room, dining room and kitchen (project currently stalled in living room and kitchen b/c the carpet padding is rotted onto the subfloor)

I think that's about it. So, I have a lot more to do and no time to do it in, but hey, I've got my master bedroom done (almost) and I'm going to enjoy that accomplishment, small as it may be! 

Wallpaper sucks!

I told you in my last post, that the next post would be about wallpaper removal. I don't want to be a liar, so I will in fact write about it, even though I have other things I'd rather be writing about. The reason I don't want to write about wallpaper removal, is that it sucks, plain and simple. Don't do it! If you're looking to buy a house that has wallpaper, look for another house. If you already bought the house, burn it down! Ok, perhaps I'm being too dramatic. You can still buy a house with wallpaper and you can even get rid of the wallpaper, but before you do it, read this post!

Before setting off on this seemingly easy task, I did a fair amount of research. I read articles from the "pros" and watched countless YouTube videos, which led me to believe that the job would take roughly 2 minutes and 30 seconds per wall. There was a lot of conflicting information on the best way to actually remove the wallpaper. There are two different methods that are recommended and many variations of those methods. Method One: Chemical spray. The way this works is, you use a wallpaper scoring tool to make lots of tiny holes in the wallpaper and spray the wall with a wallpaper removal solution (you can buy several different kinds, or make at home). You let the solution soak into the wallpaper for a bit and then scrape it off painlessly (yeah right!). Method two: Steam. For this method you need to rent a wallpaper steamer (roughly $30 a day) from a tool rental company or hardware store. You fill the steamer up with water, let it heat up and run it over the wallpaper and voila the wallpaper jumps off the walls (with a little help from a wall scraper, of course).

I started off with method one. My wonderfully helpful wife went to the hardware store for me and picked up a spray bottle of "world's best wallpaper remover". I followed the instructions to the letter and went to scrape off the wallpaper after the appropriate amount of soaking time. I tried three different scrapers that I had in the house and none of them were able to scrape more than a tiny amount off. I sprayed again and scraped again. I found that despite the instructions to wait 5-15 minutes before scraping, the only way it worked is if you scraped immediately after spraying, while the wallpaper was very wet. Even with this method, it took about a half hour to scrape a 1SF space. Not impressive. I tried another brand of wallpaper removal (how can you get better than world's best?) which did no better.

On to method two. I rented a wallpaper steamer from an evil big box hardware store (not kidding, they are the devil and their name rhymes with Home Depot) for four hours, which should've been enough to do the whole house if the YouTube videos were to be believed. I filled it up to the fill line with water, turned it on and waited and waited and waited. I left for a half hour and when I came back it was making noises like it was ready, so I started holding it up to the wall, but no steam was coming out. Another 10 minutes of waiting and finally it was actually ready to use. I started with a one foot section and held the steamer over it for 10 seconds (you don't want to hold it up too long, or it will ruin the drywall). I tried scraping and only a small amount came off. Another 20 seconds of steaming and I was able to scrape a whole foot off at once. OOPS, I forgot something important. Before doing the steaming, I peeled the top layer of the wallpaper off by hand. The steam doesn't always go through both layers, so it's best to take off the easy layer and use the steam for the glue layer (if you have one, if you don't, you don't need no steamer or chemicals (pretend I wrote this at the beginning of the post)

In four hours with the steamer, I got the wallpaper off the majority of the walls going up the stairs to the second floor. I went back and rented the steamer for a week. In spite of being too busy at work and sick I managed to get 95% of the wallpaper in the house removed and only got charged for returning the steamer a couple hours late. At this point, all I need to do is clean the walls, patch and sand them before I can begin to paint. Doesn't sound so bad, right? I may not have mentioned that steam is hot as ... steam! and it has a way of burning you even when you follow the instructions perfectly. I only got one really bad burn, but it was bad and it hurt like heck. Then comes the worst part, the mess. The top layer isn't too bad, you can roll it up and throw it out. The glue layer, however, is a royal pain. It comes off in small, wet pieces, which stick to everything, harden and makes a huge mess. Fortunately, my wife is not a slob like me and she cleaned up most of the mess, until I banned her from working there, b/c of allergies (more on that later). One of the cool things about this job was seeing what was under the paper, in several places you can see the writing on the drywall from when they built the house, instructing them to cover it with wallpaper. I wanted to cross it off and write "paint, for God's sake, you idiots!" in the hopes that they might somehow travel through time and see that and decide to listen, or something like that.

Conclusion: It may be smarter to replace the drywall, rather than remove the wallpaper. Barring that, I'd suggest hiring someone (not necessarily a professional, just a helper) and having them deal with the steaming and scraping. If you must do it yourself, go to the closest convenience store and buy yourself a 6-pack of beer, you're going to need it. Plus, alcohol and dangerous equipment are proven to work well together.

As I always say, why finish one job when you can do a hundred jobs half way? With that in mind, I started another project, before cleaning the walls. The next project is carpet removal, which can't possibly be as bad as wallpaper right? Wrong. Wait for it, I'll post the details at some point. I'm thinking I should include the time the project took and the cost in each post. I will try to do that at some point, if I can find the time.

Now for some pictures:

The ugliness has fallen!

Wallpaper steamer.

The dark stuff is the glue that needs to be removed.

Some instructions for the construction workers, I can't really tell what it says.

The hardest part is the part closest to floors and ceilings, there's a special edge attachment that helps.

Hello World!

And with this extremely original post title, starts my blog, welcome! I want to start by explaining the intended purpose of this blog, but don't hold me to it, I'm not good at following rules. Here's what you need to know:

Last month, my brother and I both bought houses down the block from each other. The houses are quite similar, both are around 1,830SF and  built in 1964  (my house is actually 14SF bigger, so I'm winning already). My house hasn't been updated since it was built, the carpeting that covers all the floors and the wallpaper that covers the walls, seem to be originals. Even the appliances seem to be several decades old. His house has had updates done and doesn't have the ugly 60's look, but still needs work to be be considered a nice, livable house.

We're having a competition of sorts (one may even refer to it as a "war" ;) , although we hope it won't be violent) to see who can fix up their house, nicer, cheaper and faster. I intend to post pictures and details of all the projects I attempt on my house and on other interesting things about the house. Perhaps my brother will write on his projects as well, although I'm thinking that with his lack of education it might be better if I write the posts for him (hey, it is a war, I can be mean. I'm actually just kidding, he could probably write just fine, if he wants to).

I'll start off today with a couple pictures of my house, so you can get an idea what we're working with.

An old picture of the exterior of the house, from the front.

A recent picture of the front, note the newer roof and bad landscaping. 

Looking down the stairs from the upper level. That wallpaper is everywhere!

My modern kitchen, complete with carpeting that's worn through to the sub-floor.

The first project I've started and the topic of my next post is, shockingly, wallpaper removal. I will try to post fairly often, but please don't hold your breath, it's dangerous!