IF THESE WALLS COULD TALK...
Hey, I see you made it!.
Come on in and have a look around...
Front Porch: It’s allergic to paint, I think. Everywhere. The concrete steps have more cracks than NYC and seem just as dangerous. The lattice work is broken in some places. We’ve ripped up all the dead ferns, bushes, and “flowers” growing out front and laid down beauty bark for the winter. Hopefully we’ll have something up for spring. There is a rather large hole (about 6” by 12”) in the eave of the porch. The end nearest the driveway seems to have dropped to about 6”-8” below horizontal. This is not good. Kinda like a lazy eye.
Foyer: This is not the first room you wanted to see coming in. The wall paper was nasty, and about 5 or 6 layers of faded paint coved the wood. The light fixture circa 1970 was putting out enough light to pass for a lightning bug. Nice. Hardwood floors need to be refinished, but look halfway decent.
Half Bath: Not bad at all. There is a pocket door here that needs some paint and hardware, but overall not a bad room.
Living Room: The wallpaper will have to stay for now, but needs to go eventually. It never dawned on me, but I think wallpaper is like a BIG band-aid. I’m so scared to peel it off. It looks like there was a border about halfway up the wall, but it’s gone now, with beautifully done gobs of glue and paper left hanging in places. Two walls are painted, but there is a large, unpainted area in the corner, and I have no clue what was there that prevented this from getting paint. Perhaps a shelf. Or just the remnants of an idiot trying to paint. The existing thermostat is ugly, huge, and pisses me off. It’s circular with some contraption over it, and when you want to turn up the heat, you hold a button down while it cranks the round part. Like I need a button for that. Was it too hard to turn, but easier to press? This room has a beautiful ceiling fan and light with a dimmer. The floor is in pretty much the same state as the foyer, with some cracking in the wood.
Dining Room: This wallpaper is sooo bad. The light fixtures look like wagon wheels (there are two), and there are four false beams on the ceiling. Looks like 12” stick-on tiles for the ceiling, so eventually I think that should go. This room has the same wood flooring seen elsewhere, but some previous owner/idiot stripped about an 1/8” of the wood and left it that way, with big swirls dug into the wood. The floor seems to be in bad shape, with some splitting and warping. There also seems to be sagging between the kitchen and dining (more in a minute).
Kitchen: The first thing I noticed (after I moved in of course, even though it’s painfully obvious) was that the wall dividing the kitchen from the dining room has a small pass-though cut out of it. I like how it opened up the two rooms, but this proved to be a bad thing. This wall is a bearing wall, which means IT HOLDS UP THE SECOND FLOOR. Well, it did. The wall is tweaked a bit, and the ceiling in the dining room shows obvious sagging. This is also evident upstairs (see upstairs).
On the immediate opposite side of this wall there are wall cabinets framed into a soffit. The construction is SO terribly poor it’s amazing they’re still up as the difference measured up from the floor is, oh, something like 6” to 8” from the left side to the right side!!!
And for some reason there is a 6” diameter hole cut into the bottom of one of the cabinets. Moving toward the extreme right, the refrigerator, which is beautiful, stands at the top of the basement stairs. There is no door for the basement, and it’s a tight walk to get from the kitchen to the basement or foyer. The stove is against it’s own wall, with no cabinets on each side and none above, and no vent fan.
The cabinets against the exterior wall where the sink is are okay, but do show signs of rot around the sink, with some serious problems near the dishwasher. Huge window above the sink. Big fluorescent light in the middle of the ceiling.
Computer Room: This was a porch at one time, I’m sure. You can see your breath out there in the winter, just like a real porch! There is a definite slope to the floor, and it’s cold as hell in there. Outside the only framing at the bottom of the house in this area is particle board. Unpainted and rotting. This needs to be replaced SOON. One of two rooms where carpet exists, it is very stained. The walls have two large cracks in the wallboard, and this scares me. I imagine sitting at the computer, when suddenly a large “SNAP” occurs, and here I am, sitting in the yard. During the house inspection, the inspector told us the roof above this room was old but would last another 3 to 5 years. Time flies, of course. It started leaking within a month of moving in. Let’s put it on the list, and move the computer to the other corner. The wall paper has to go, and the windows are too small for my taste.
Back Porch: Every time it has rained in the last 25 years, the water has funneled through, built up, and converged on this porch. The T&G wood flooring buckled, so to fix this, it has been covered with sheets of plywood. Luckily this isn’t any old pansy wood flooring, so it went and made that plywood buckle, too. This is also covered on the sides with sheets of particle board which has taken on considerable rot. Under this mess are two house jacks doing something, but I don’t know what. Holding something up, I’m sure. Or maybe trying to help the floor buckle even more. So many coats of paint need to be here. Oh, who am I fooling? I need to have wood here first. There’s also an outside light here, but as far as I can tell, the only way to turn it off is to unscrew the light bulb. And I’ve learned to use a glove for this chore.
Basement: Actually, the basement is great. We did have a problem in December when the overflow valve on the h/w heater went and about 20 gallons of water hit the floor, soaking nearby carpets and a box. There are many sheets of paneling on the ceiling, and some carpet parts on most of the floor, but other than this, the basement has great potential. Oh, the landing needs some paint. And reinforcing, too.
Enter the Second Floor
Email: klrbones@hotmail.com
