Lol, Wall paper makes me say very bad words too! Yep on the last house we had to did footers in a shale hillside for the covered deck, that meant a trench 42 inches deep and 18 inches wide and 44 feet long, we dug it with digging bars, shovels, madaxes, and the kids, at one point we had four teenagers chanting kill the old people! Then we hand mixed and poured the footers complete with sono tubes for the posts. So ya think maybe that is why the kids moved so far away?lol Seriously it was a lot of fun, frustration, and learning, found the tables for sizing steel beams, computing air flow, code flip charts, at one point we moved a wall 17 inches just because it would look better, and then we changed a 6 foot picture window to a 10 foot window including operable sidelights, and moved the opening (in a bearing wall of course) 20 inches farther down the wall. Nothing like setting a 4x4 temp wall in your living room just to hold the front of the house up, and sleeping with a large hole in the wall! But when we sold the house is sold for 4 times what I paid for it. And it was some of the most fun…
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From: DoIt_Yourself@yahoogroups.com [mailto:DoIt_Yourself@yahoogroups.com] On Behalf Of Jan Flood
Sent: Friday, January 27, 2012 12:49 PM
To: DoIt_Yourself@yahoogroups.com
Subject: Re: [DIY] Up to my armpits in projects.
I'm with you Bill, I wouldn't mind having an old house to fix up. I think some of the best times we've ever had (and maybe the worst too - ask my kids about Wallpaper Words :) have been working on old houses. I don't this I'm this ambitious anymore and my husband doesn't even like me to get this look in my eye but I'd like to have a new project to work on. I've found two over the last 5 years that I thought we could make into a wonderful home but DH figures he would get most of the work and is't crazy about the idea, LOL.
On Jan 26, 2012, at 3:15 PM, Bill Chmelik wrote:
I told my better half that I thought we needed a new project, maybe fixing up an old house, we turned a 980 sq. ft. rancher into a 2700 sq. ft. 3 story with a 44x16 covered deck, then we moved south bought an old block shotgun that had been added onto 3 or 4 times, ripped out 1/2 of the additions(and rebuilt them as one), completely rewired(the ancient load center burnt up one Saturday night just after we moved in) and replumbed(we broke up the slab, moved water heater, tubs, and toilets), added a 16x14 kitchen(with red walls and a pine t&g ceiling), took out block walls, leveled a slab so that I could put down laminate, and we did it all except the shingles, and 3 rooms of dry wall, you don’t want to see an old fat guy trying to nail down shingle, and I found a great drywall guy that charges less than the scotch I need after I do drywalling, so not only does it look good, it saved my liver! Rebuilding/remodeling is not rocket science, you can find loads of help on here, in books, and there are even code flip charts you can get that give you the basics for plumbing and wiring. The best piece of advice I can give you is, try it, if you don’t understand some aspect ask, but above all have fun(and take lots of pictures)…
Jan Flood
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