House Restoration: A Different Kind of Cleaning

And you thought your house was bad...welcome to home restoration 101. Well, actually this is home restoration 102. I'll explain that in a minute. Meet Erin, Chris' girlfriend. Chris is our 26 year old son who works for the local cable TV station. She is scraping some really disgusting paper sticky stuff under layers of carpet and sub floor that were covering hardwood. Go figure.

The outside of the new old house situated on a half acre in Danville. Thankfully not in need of as much work as house number one, which cost $35,000 and that tells you something about how much work it needed...The old old house (circa 1850) is in town. That was home restoration 101. But it is great to hang out and work together.

So now double house restoration is in full swing, and since I got tired of my mess, which is just clutter, I joined them in their mess (which is on a whole different scale) today and we had a wonderful time! It became a family affair. Howie, Tianna, Nicole and two friends joined in too. I think Erin was really very pleasantly surprised that we came and stayed such a long time. It was hot, but I really enjoyed being with them and helping in a project that is important to them.We ripped out carpet, took the crow bar to the sub floor and started pulling out nails and clips; way too many of them. Next will come panelling and dropped ceiling. The plan is to strip down the place to the original floors and get the ceiling and panel out of there and then put up dry wall. The bathroom floor is completely shot, and the kitchen is very retro vintage 70's. Ugly.

The first house still needs work. Right now the exterior brick is being scraped and then the entire house needs to be primed and painted. There is still a fair amount (IMHO but what do I know, I am not the primary restorer, that would be Erin) of interior work to be done on house number one. So yes, you followed that correctly, there are two houses currently being restored. That is Erin's love, Chris will stick with Sportscasting, that is his love.

But it was really great to be a part of the demolition today. Tianna was a big help also, she's a real worker. Nicole and her friends weren't too interested...but there is a great playground across the way and they went back and forth and everyone was happy.

On to panelling tomorrow! But the ceilings are high, there is beautiful original trim and hardware on the doors, and it's a good thing some of us are visionaries, or we'd all be depressed.