Crooked House Renos - The Basics: Safe and Warm

Chris and I really don't want to be slum-lords with our little downtown cooked house, in particular we want it to be safe and warm. Those two things turn out to be very expensive. I have to keep reminding Chris that we've only owned the house for 10 days, so this is a lot of progress.

After tearing out the nasty mouse nests in the attic the electrician got a good look at the wiring and the initial price doubled. On the up side, there's no aluminum wiring. On the other hand, the wiring is so old it has decayed fabric on it and we were informed that there are no grounds on any of the outlets. After realizing how unsafe it all is, we were very happy that the tear out went without incident.

We're installing a vent in the bathroom, so it won't continue to be moldy and manky; making the hood vent in the kitchen vent to the outdoors instead of into the attic, again dealing with mold and mank in the attic.

The attic - at the dawn of time when the house was new, it was obviously used as living space, but no longer.

The garage, with the moldy drywall gone

The yard, with me checking out the views

Hallway with the flooring gone and the washer dryer moved

We have a plumber replacing all the piping in the house, which was to deal with the fact that the sewer line wasn't sloping properly. Any one who's tried to fix one thing, knows that you need a permit for replacing plumbing. Once you need a permit you are going down the road of having to fix everything related to the plumbing. So, the permit reads; "replace plumbing in entire home", which ,incidentally, includes a new hot water tank. The water in all worked fine, but wasn't up to modern building code, so now instead of a small thing to ensure the sewer leaves, we've had to pay for re-plumbing the entire house. There is a whole other rant here that has to do with the perfect standing in the way of the good when it comes to building permits and requirements for upgrading an entire system when there is nothing wrong with it and the direct effect this has on the stock of affordable housing in Canada.

Oh, and we are salvaging the copper pipes for their re-cycling value.

Bathroom partially torn out with the plumbing exposed

The bathroom again, partially torn out

More bathroom tear out

The garage making itself useful

Back of the house with supplies

Part of the 'lipstick' , the new bathroom vanity with the white tiles proposed for the back splash

Then there was the removal of the old wood/oil burner/boiler that used to heat the house until it packed in a few years back. That was fast and dear.

What's left you may ask? The lipstick. Things that you can actually see like a whole new bathroom and flooring. Which of course was another building permit because when the boys tore out the bathroom fixtures they discovered that what insulation there was in the walls wasn't doing much. That means all new insulation in the bathroom. When you watch those home improvement shows you realize that all most people care about is the lipstick. They don't like the flooring or the paint colour or the drapes. None of them seem to care a whit about whether their house is properly wired, warm, vented and whether the roof will collapse next Tuesday. From that Chris and I have taken the lesson that if you are fixing the foundational elements of your home, you've got to put the lipstick on so people believe you.

That's our plumber's assistant getting down to work in the basement/crawlspace

Basement crawlspace with plumbing stuff happening

Copper torn out for salvage

More salvage copper

Plumbing in action

The new plumbing, not near as pretty as copper, but supposedly better

There's the nice slope to the shit pipe we needed

Safe and warm. Who would have thought it would be so hard?