Living up north

Really Only A Few Block North

A Holiday Update

Dec 25

Posted by adambez in Uncategorized | No Comments

I hope your holidays are treating you as well as mine have so far.  I’ve lucked out, as my work decided to close up shop the week before new years, so I ended up with Dec. 24th – Jan. 3rd off.  Those 11 days are a very welcomed break.  To add to that, my brother who lives in Scottsdale, is in town for the entire time I’m off of work.  I have nothing specifically planned, so it’s going to be a lot of hanging out and working on my house.

Anyways, I’m sure a few (very few) people noticed this place was gone for a while.  I got a little aggressive at the wrong time with this place.  I really wanted to host this on my own so I had more flexibility to make it look and work like I wanted.   I did this the beginning of November, then I moved out of my friends Nick’s house and into mine with out internet.  So long story short, I didn’t follow through on what I needed to do to make this place work.  I finally found the time to do this yesterday, and it wasn’t nearly as hard as I thought it would be.  So here I am again, I’ll get some updates on my house on here soon, because it’s change quite a bit since the last posts.

In the last month I’ve painted cabinets (lots of paint), had them installed, had appliances delivered and carpet installed in my bedroom.  It’s not there quite yet, but come the end of next week it will feel much more like a home then it ever has.  I’m very excited just to have something that feels like home, as I haven’t really had one since I moved out of my apartment in mid September.  The one thing that I’m looking forward is to not have to eat out every meal.  Don’t get me wrong, I probably enjoy eating out more then the next guy, but it’s getting quite old.  There’s only so many place you can go and it’s becoming expensive.

My Christmas haul this morning was very nice.  I’ve got much that is needed to stock my kitchen, knives, toaster, cups, mugs, plates, bowls, pots, pans, and towels.  Oh and my brother got me a Toddy cold brew coffee maker and my dad got me a new Dewalt cordless drill.

Well, now that this site is back up, I will get back to posting regularly.  Expect a post with a bunch of house photos soon.

Happy Holidays

When in doubt, put your friends to work

Nov 13

Posted by adambez in Minneapolis | No Comments

We’re almost done with painting, my mom is going to finish it up tonight. She’s too good to me. I will be sanding and finishing the floors this weekend. It’s my first time doing that, so it’s sure to be an adventure. I think I’ll be able to figure it out though. I will have the cabinets in next Thursday and hopefully will be able to move in next weekend after I get back from watching Iowa kick shit against the Gophers.

I will leave you with a sight I’m sure most, if not all, of you have never seen, but Deutsch knows how to do manual labor.

Please disregard the construction mess

Nov 5

Posted by adambez in Uncategorized | 2 Comments

Doing a bit of editing of my stylesheet here. I’m a bit of a novice, so it’s not there yet, but I’m getting there. In the meantime, here’s a video from yesterday of the sheetrock all hung with the initial taping done. Looking pretty good.

The poor quality pictures I promised

Oct 27

Posted by adambez in Demo, Home Remodeling, Kitchen Remodeling, Minneapolis, Minnesota, New house | 2 Comments

 

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See why I'm having the electrical replaced

 

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The Cabinets are gone (why do I feel the need to capitalize the word cabinets?)

 

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The next few I just took pictures of the dust in the air.

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Dust.

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More dust.

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Where'd everything go?

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Tore this sweet deck of this weekend.

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Found under deck: parts of previous deck, 3 empty handles of brandy, refrigerator parts, bowling ball, etc

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Deck all gone, we salvaged the stairs so that door is still useful.

 

 

 

 

Now the fun stuff

Oct 26

Posted by adambez in Demo, Home Remodeling, Kitchen Remodeling, Minneapolis, Minnesota, Uncategorized | No Comments

As I’m sure you’ve noticed the past two weeks have been dedicated to tearing apart my house.  So far we have taken the back bedroom, the kitchen and the back entry area all down to the studs.  With the help of a good friend (and another guy) the decrepit deck is now a thing of the past.  All of this destruction has overfilled one large dumpster to the point where I think I will need another one delivered this week.  The demo has provided some very nice surprises, most importantly the gain of about 14″ in ceiling hight in area just beyond the kitchen.

But really who am I kidding, the demo portion is the boring part of this whole process.  This week we get to start putting the house back together, and it’s going to be a busy one.  All week I have the plumber, electricians in to do their things.  Wednesday should be crazy, the glass block windows are being installed in the basement, the new windows in the kitchen will have the necessary framing done, and the drywall will start to be installed.  It may actually look like something that you could live in soon.

If all goes well, I think I am going to be refinishing the wood floors next weekend.  I’ve never done this but my friend Jay says he’s done it a few times and my neighbor said he and his brother could help too (his only payment needed is beer!!).  As things are laying out now, I may be able to move in next week, which would be a perfect birthday present.

Well I was going to leave you with some pictures of the process, but I forgot my camera this morning.  I’ll try to get some up tomorrow or maybe even tonight.  This picture is sort of what my house looks like right now.

My house...

My house... (note: this is not really my house)

Down to the Studs

Oct 20

Posted by adambez in Demo, Home Remodeling, Kitchen Remodeling | No Comments

Even though I’ve spent the first two weekends of homeownership in Iowa and Wisconsin, I have made some amazing progress towards moving in.  I could really use a weekend where I can just get at it, it looks like the upcoming weekend will be it.

About a week ago I was so close to painting the walls in the back bedroom, but ran out of time Wed night.  Thursday, with the help of my mom and uncle we decided that I should re-Sheetrock that room.  My mom had actually pealed a bunch of the paint off in the back room only to discover a layer of paint covering about four layers of beautiful wall paper.  So as it stands now, with the help from my mom and some good friends, we’re almost all the way down to the studs from the kitchen back.  I have been getting bids this week to have that all Sheetrocked, mudded and taped.  It will be nice to have that all new.

More Kitchen sans upper cabinets, looking into back bedroomKitchen sans upper cabinets, looking into back bedroom.  That is the chimney in the back.

10 days, all gone.

10 days, all gone.

I have electricians scheduled in on Friday, so I have to have the remainder of the drywall and cabinets out before then.  I’m also thinking that I am going to add to the insulation in the attic.  There are some ridiculous incentives for that stuff right now, hopefully I’m not too late.

As I expected, I keep finding new things every turn and every wall I tear down.  Nothing has been too bad yet and there isn’t much left to go,  so my fingers are crossed that we’re all good.  This weekend with the help of some friends, we’re going to tear the decrepit deck off the back of the house.  It’s a bit of a mess right now, but I think my neighbors will thoroughly enjoy the changes.  The dumpster is close to the point where I should probably close the door and start throwing stuff over the side.  Hopefully I’m close to moving in, I’m working to get in by November….  There are a lots of things to happen before then, but I think it’s doable.

Yep, I'm a Homeowner

Oct 13

Posted by adambez in Demo, Home Remodeling, Kitchen Remodeling | No Comments

It’s took 117 days from the day I made my initial offer, but it’s done.  I finally closed on this place Friday, so it is officially mine.  So to celebrate, like most good homeowners, I bolted and went to Iowa for the Iowa vs Michigan game Saturday night.  Had a great time by the way.  6-0, who would have thought.

I got the work started on Sunday, did some needed cleaning of the bathroom, changed the toilet seat, yes I know this is all very exciting.  Then the real fun started, the demo.  So far in a little over two days I’ve pulled enough crap out of this place to fill what looks like a quarter of the enormous dumpster that showed up yesterday.  It’s mostly filled with sweet wood paneling that was so popular a long time ago.

Dumpster 2nd day

This place has been quite amazing.   As far as I can tell none of the previous owners liked to take anything out when they would remodel.  Nope, they just build on top of it.  The typical wall (inside to outside) in this house goes like this: studs, old drywall, few layers of paint (pretty normal so far), then anywhere from what seems like 18-20 layers of various patterns of contact paper, then for good measure, they throw a few layers of that sweet aforementioned paneling.

The ceiling in the back of the kitchen, really I guess it’s the dining room, has a the ceiling structure, then dry wall which is painted, then a drop down to a square panel ceiling, then another further drop down to another square panel ceiling, which has had a knockdown applied to it.  All in all, they’ve lowered the ceiling I would say about 8 inches after adding all these layers.   I’m really just making my house bigger.

As I’m sure you find on many or all houses people have their own way of doing things.  The previous owners of this place loved to do things on their own, but they had no idea what they were doing.  From what I can see they were just trying to make this small house feel smaller.  They were quite successful at this, I’m doing my best to reverse it.

Living room looking into the Kitchen.

Some amazing artwork, make an offer, you know you want it.

Kitchen, all of this is going, besides the wood floors. This will be the best part of the house, which is very exciting.

The exposed drop ceilings, what a waste of headroom.

The exposed drop ceilings, what a waste of headroom.

Anyways, this is just the beginning, it’s becoming more daunting as the days past, good thing the place isn’t very big.

So yeah, standing water in the basement…great start to home ownership

Oct 2

Posted by adambez in New house | 3 Comments

I know I haven’t written anything here in a long time, I will explain, but it’s about to start the real fun. The reason I haven’t written here since the beginning of August, is that I was trying not to jinx myself out of this place.  I have had quite a few obstacles to overcome, but I think I will finally be in early next week.

I was supposed to close on this house yesterday (September 30th).  I met my Realtor at the house for the final walk-through, and we went in.  It didn’t take long to notice some things were not right.  When we got to the back door the dead bolt lock was destroyed and in pieces on the floor.  The hole where that was, was covered by a plate.  I then went into the basement only to discover that there was standing water on the floor, and a pipe leaking.

As it turns out the bank screwed up and ordered the place to be winterized as if it were going to be foreclosed on, boy were they wrong.  Anyways, they must have hired some Neanderthals to do the winterizing, because they had no idea what they were doing.  They removed the water meter and left a dripping pipe behind to fill up the basement.

Needless to say I wasn’t going to close on a house in that situation.  If I had closed, I would have had to take responsibility for all the costs involved with turning the water back on and fixing the locks.  I’ll say one thing, it’s a good thing we did the final walk through. I can’t believe some people choose not to do one.

Today marks 108 days (yeah I know, crazy huh) since I put my offer in on this place, so I’m ready and anxious to get this process over with.  Hopefully early next week it will all be over and the fun can begin.  I will be posting much more regularly on this once I get started.  I have the contractors ready to go and won’t waste much time getting moving.    Well stay tuned, there will be more to this story.

Tags:

Whew

Aug 9

Posted by adambez in Uncategorized | 1 Comment

After much tinkering over the past few days, I think I’ve got this place to the form where I wanted (for now at least).  Let me know what you think of my banner.  Anyways, it’s late and I’ve got a bike ride planned in the morning.  Night.

The Inspection

Aug 5

Posted by adambez in Kitchen Remodeling, New house, inspection | No Comments

Well, that was a learning experience. Nothing was too bad, but there were some things to deal with, as there always is. Mainly the place just needs a serious cleaning, my hands were sticky after leaving the place (and no, my hands were not sticky before I got there).
I was lucky enough to have my mom join me as well as my Uncle Mark. The plan is to have him help with the work that I am going to do, so it was a good chance to get familiar with the place. I won’t talk about too much, since I don’t even get my report till tomorrow morning, but there
were a couple things that are intesting.
Even though I plan on re-doing the Kitchen, there is one piece that will be staying and that’s the oven. It’s this antique oven/range from the 40s, and it’s beautiful. I will have to do some work to restore it, but I believe it’s going to be worth it. Here are the pictures my mom took of it.

My mom so kindly found a web site that carries manuals for these old things, and I think it would be awesome to have this in a new kitchen. These manuals have tips on restoring everything from the porcelin finish to the door hinges. Sounds like another project. I should start a list. Again, I think it really just needs to be cleaned.
Another thing we learned is that the first purchase after the house is going to be a dumpster. Lots of old crapy stuff needs to go. I plan on having a distruction party, if anyone’s intersted, I’m guessing I will be paying in beer. Plan sometime in late September or early October.