Renovation: Before (part 2)

So in 2009, my sister and I renovated my father's house. 


I am going to clear up one misconception. 

Renovating a house is not fun or as much fun as you might hope it would be.  Don't fall for the Lowe's or Home Depot commercials with the happy couple, happily demolishing their home.  It doesn't go that way.  I grew up around major construction sites thanks to my family's engineering firm so I knew about delays, hidden costs, etc. and this still threw plenty of punches. 

Ok I'm not going to explain every single picture because that would be excruciatingly detailed even for me, but I'll give you a quick run down.

This house, as you can tell by the light fixture, was built in the early 1950's by my grandparents. 

They lived there until their passing and then it was handed over to my father until his untimely passing. 

As you can see from some of the pictures, not much had changed in the house since it was first built.  All the windows were single paned and leaked like a sieve.  Despite the A/C going 24/7 - Southern California summer is a lousy time to renovate - it never dropped below 90 in the house. 

We used to have massive get family dinners here so the cabinets were full of dishes. 

My father loved two things in life aside from his family.  Books and climbing.  The picture with the through and through fireplace shows a sliver of what was in the front room.  What you can't see are the massive bookshelves holding hundreds of books. 

The outside of the house was mostly taken care of - lawn mowed and water, fruit trees in the back all healthy - but there was a lot of overgrowth that needed to go. 

And the garage door wouldn't shut unless you slammed it. 

Inside we had to replace just about everything you see from flooring to appliances, lighting, fans, etc.  We also replaced the interior doors, something that sounded easy and ended up being a royal pain.  What passed as "standard" in the 1950's is far from standard now so many items that sounded simple to replace, such as the doors, were in fact more difficult than needed.  

Things to do:

*  Clear down the house
*  Deep clean house
*  Replace all windows
*  Bring electrical up to code
*  New flooring
*  Replace all fixtures
*  New appliances
*  Fix garage
*  Re-plump house
*  Clear down back yard
*  Fix roof
*  New gutters
*  Paint house - interior and exterior
*  New interior doors
*  Mend fence
*  Replace misc. items
*  Repair interior walls
*  Patch house against pests
*  New roof insulation

A pretty standard list but each item had sub items.  For example, new flooring meant removing the old flooring, replacing the padding, finding tile, laminate, and carpet, and installing.  Replace misc. items means that every knob, pull, drawer handle, everything was replaced. 

As you can see, this project is a lot bigger than it looks.  This doesn't cover all the other tasks that had to be handled while the house was being worked out.  That meant meetings with the lawyers, dealing with the estate, the other property, etc. 

This was a large project.