BellaOnline Forums Home and Garden Home Improvement Lots of work to do

I just re-mortgaged my house and will be starting a bunch of jobs to bring this place up to standard. My house was built in 1900 and is really showing its age.

There have been several upgrades over the years and some of the work now is to actually finish what wasn't finished then.

Major job is a complete reno of the bathroom. I've always disliked the bathroom but the other jobs were more important at the time.

Next job is to repair the floor where the sunroom (added 20 years ago) joins the diningroom and to recover the whole floor in both rooms.

Next is painting - inside and out.

I am also having a sidewalk put in. The front of the house just has a gravel sidewalk and that is what was in the back too, but the gravel has long since disappeared and it is now just mud.

I have already pulled the old rotting steps off the front of the house and rebuilt new steps. The back steps also need to be done, but not as badly as the front, so those might wait until next year.

I also started pulling wood panelling from the back porch walls, planning on painting - but found the walls were in horrible shape under the panels. The thought now is to remove the walls completly so they can be insulated properly and have drywall put up then then paint. I have already put a new floor and a new door in that room, so then it will be finished.

Today, I removed everything from the walls in the livingroom and diningroom, washed and patched everywhere and was going to prime and then start painting. But then I started to think that if I'm going to properly insulate the back porch which is exposed on 3 sides, I really should do the same in the livingroom which is also exposed on 3 sides, but is much larger. These walls are lathe & plaster and this could get messy.

I don't know for sure that there is no insulation in these walls though. Does anyone know how to tell - other than ripping them apart to see? My heating bills are high and I'm thinking that I should be able to save some money by getting this done properly. Of course, then I should maybe think about the bedrooms upstairs too.

This was a bit longer than I planned. I'm just not sure what to do next or if there will be enough money available to insulate properly after the other jobs have been done.

Mavis, we are having our walls blown in. The guy that gave us an estimate said they would be able to tell if there was insulation (our house was built in 1907...no insulation at all) in the walls. They are going to make a little hole in the outside walls of the house and fill the walls and then plug the hole.

One way you might be able to get a look at the walls is if you pull out your windows. Ours have the pockets for the weights and I had to take the windows out to repair the sash cords. You can see straight up and straight down and there is nothing. Our bills are bad too...our house will only cool to about 82 in the summer and the bill is horrible.

Tearing out the lathe and plaster is going to be a big job, especially so if the lathe and plaster is in good shape.

Sounds like you are going to be a busy girl!

Thanks Connie.

It took me awhile, but I've decided to forget about the insulation for now and get the rest of the work done first. If there is money left over I will contact an insulation company to get an estimate. I'll probably have it blown in from the inside if I do though because it would be easier (& less expensive) for me to plaster and repaint the inside than to get someone to fix the outside afterwards.

Now I'm back to painting!

Hi Mavis!
Golly, girl � you have a LOT going on there! I absolutely love old houses, but have never owned one, so I�m at a loss to give you reasonable and rational advice about the insulation.

However, I just read a great book about renovating old houses that you might want to check out of your library. It�s called �Renovating Old Houses� by George Nash and if I had an old house, this would be my renovating bible! LOL Here's a short review I did on it if you want to read it -
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Thanks Donna - I may just take a look at that book. I don't have an attic here though. The house is a story & a half, so the 2nd floor has the sloping ceilings. Maybe I should see if I can just have insulation blown into the ceilings from the inside.

I have that book, it is a good one. I think you will enjoy it.

When they blow the attic in they go through the inside. Our previous house we had it done in and all there was was a crawl space. If you do the wall insulation the guy that gave us the estimate said they would patch the plugs.

The bathroom reno started today! They have already gutted the whole room, removed the wall into the next room, removed a sub-floor. They cleaned up before leaving and will be back again tomorrow to start putting things back together. This is supposed to take about 3 weeks.

The sidewalk guy phoned me and he should be showing up to do that soon but he didn't give me any day in particular. Sidewalks are kind on "on the side" jobs so if they are close by with a big job, they will come over to do mine.

I've been working on the livingroom walls in the meantime. I have a lot of furniture in here, so I move everything away from one wall, paint it, move everything back & then move everything away from another wall. I only got a wall & 1/2 painted today, but I have things cleared away from another wall so I can do that tomorrow. I'll have to wait for next weekend to go any further though.

Sounds exciting Mavis! I would love to redo our downstairs bathroom. It has horrible wallpaper that has huge roses on it. So is your bathroom going to be a lot larger?

Its not actually going to be any larger, but a larger area will have a full ceiling. I have a story & a half house so the upstairs has sloping ceilings. The floor area was actually quite large and that will now be smaller because they are going to build storage in the area with the lowest ceiling. The wall is moving out about 3 ft, but I'm losing about 4 ft on the other side.

LOL - I'm not sure if that makes any sense at all.

They have alread done more than I expected because they removed the old, old cast iron stack and replaced it with a new PVC one and they have replaced all the cheap plastic waterpipes with copper.

They have made friends with my dogs (Chester was easy, but Dakota gave them a bit of a hard time), so now they can go down the basement when I'm not home to work on the water pipes. I had to move Jewel's cage (African Grey Parrot) into a room that they don't go though because she was starting to get upset from all the lumber & supplies going past her cage.

Must be exciting to see things happening, Mavis. How long do they think it will take to get the whole bathroom completed?

Donna