Well we’re in the home stretch!
Finished the living/dining room and hallway. The bedrooms will get their first coat of oil tonight and then their white maintenance paste tomorrow night.
before
after
Redoing the Hardwoods Pt 3.
fixer upper
Farm House Update: Week 4
Well it was a week of highs and lows all around. We lost Vladimir to a stroke on Wednesday, which just put a heavy cloud over the week. There was a lot of grief and sad painting – I’m happy I kept working though, because now I feel like a lot was accomplished.
The Low:
I need a new main panel. F*&k! The connection tabs on the bus had been roughed up by the former owners and it’s such a severe issue the electrician (now that he’s involved) is going to replace the whole thing. This will require a permit so because the garage wiring is so bad/not to code we actually have to disconnect the garage and cap it so the inspector does not fail the work. I just keep having flash backs to the listing ‘AS-IS’ – and indeed it is….. The photo below shows MY inspector complaining about a breaker that does not match…. no mention of circled broken tab on bus. I am learning a LOT about electrical work though – pretty fun. Except for the whole spending money part.
The Highs:
Painting like a mofo –
Got the living/dining room in progress with 1 1/2 coats – still need to do the ceiling and the interesting trim on those cove ceilings.
Finished the bedroom!
Before – rusted windows, major plaster damage on windows, WHITE, wonky window treatments…
AFTER!
Plus the bathroom is 99% done! In the next week or so I’ll post a total before and after on the bathroom. I have done so much work in here – it’s so nice looking now! 🙂
The water works! You can read that post here.
I’ll post a home tour video here tomorrow of the top floor – while it’s in reno status. So stay tuned. We are getting so close!
Finally, Water at the Farm House!
We FINALLY have running water at the house! Some excellent news in a really sad week for us. This all could have been A LOT worse – but it was still pretty bad. I’m certain the only way this could have been even worse is if we were having to actually live in the home while we had no running water. Also heads up, this post is a long one.
“How did it all begin?” You might wonder. You might also wonder why I would ever buy a house without running water or how I could get my home loan, knowing the lender wouldn’t go for it.
Well, for starters….. I have a well. That in itself should lay the ground work for the clusterf*ck that we have embarked on to get water. Now typically a well is not a BFD – most generally whoever owns the well has information about it like depth, age of pump in the well, location of well, age of well, etc. Most folks actually spend some of their time ensuring their well is safe, working, and dependable. Well, not the folks I bought from. They didn’t know anything about their well system, except the fact that they got ‘free’ water from it. But, in the inspection process I did my due diligence. I learned all about wells, well pumps, bacteria, ecoli… anything that could make owning a well difficult. And to be honest the well was/is still a huge ‘plus’ for me. I got the water tested and figured out what I needed to do to prolong my pipes, appliances, and make sure I was drinking the safest water possible. In fact, the ONLY concession the seller gave me was a $750 reverse osmosis system for my kitchen sink (it’s basically a few step filter system to ensure that drinking water is 100% perfect).
Okay where was I? Ah yes, why would I buy a house without running water? Well, the only time I saw ‘water not functional’ was on the official appraisal – and I actually found the fix with my realtor. A switch had been turned off by MY sewer guy that powered the socket that the pump was plugged into! Excellent fixed it! Well, on my final walk through I noticed the seller had ‘fiddled’ with the pressure switch (that tells the tank it’s full), but after the awful contract we had, I didn’t push buttons at close and the seller actually said it was working. And it did work for 1 flush of the toilet. Then the pump burned the socket out and ta-da! no water on my first day of possession. Remember that communication while under contract has to be the WORST process ever – so they never heard I fixed the water – they decided to upgrade the pressure switch for me… so nice.
Repairing a well or the well system in my case isn’t usually a big deal, if you have all the information you need. In my case, I can only use one well company because my well is not permitted or registered and only the good folks at Geowater will work on my hillbilly clusterf*ck. I know, I get it – I think we’ve all established that I love difficulty let’s continue. Well I first had Geowater come out to see what was going on. We established the electrical was shite – something we really started worrying about in terms of safety for those big amp items. The root of the no water problem was the pressure switch was installed wrong – house warming gift from ma and pa hillbilly. That incorrect installation told the pressure switch on the jet pump to ‘fill the tank to 25psi’ but the pressure would only climb to 20 psi and would never fill – thus the jet pump ran for so long that it burned out the socket it was plugged into…. because the breaker didn’t know to trip……
Anyways. Okay now we have three issues; I have no water, my jet pump is broken, AND the electrical is not set up to support a jet pump safely. Perfect.
12 EASY Steps to fixing the well water:
- re-prioritize the ‘to-do’ list to accommodate cost/time of fix
- call Geowater back and schedule new appointment
- say all sorts of bad things about former owners to self while driving to starbucks to pee while working on new house
- realize that Geowater is installing the reverse osmosis system – not fixing the pump on their scheduled visit – communication crossed with existing project
- call Geowater and schedule appointment to REPLACE well system
- Geowater places equipment and electrical box – can’t turn on water though
- Geowater comes back and hooks up water, tests pump – but can’t leave on because of electrical
- Realize that fridge water line you cut in abandon was actually connected BEFORE main water shut off, so lots of water is actually all over kitchen floor
- Turn off fridge water line
- have electrician come out to label panel and beg him to wire well system to own breaker
- have uncle (HVAC professional) seal drip on jet pump – since we couldn’t run it long enough to test when well guy was here
- FINALLY HAVE RUNNING WATER
It only took me just 2 days shy of a MONTH to make these 12 steps happen…..
New Well System:
Anyways! yay water! I think by 2018 I’ll have ‘free’ water again 😉
Night of the Living Demo
Well, it’s demo city over at the farm house. For starters we had to remove so much crap/trash the former owners left as well as just tear out some disgusting bathrooms and ‘enhanced features’ that were growing/rotting/squating all over the property. That 30ft roll-off was packed to the gills. “Don’t let it go over the top!” Lois said 10 million times. And by jove we didn’t let the trash go over the top.
Since I decided I would do a little refresh on the bathroom, things have gotten out of hand. There will be a true transformation post about the bathroom in about a week, by the way. This is a photo of me in my gas mask as I sanded, poured Xstripper all over the cabinet and tried to remove 5 layers of paint. 2 base coats were lead… AWESOME.
Here is the before of my ‘en suite’ aka the corner of a bedroom. Notice the lovely blue color scheme. The creepy bathroom was added into this bedroom in the 90s. There was no water-proofing, no prep, and no attention to what a bathroom that is not supposed to be in a bedroom would do long-term.
The hardwoods have massive holes in them from the shower drain and the toilet fitting. Not to mention they are all warped and swollen from years of being under peel-and-stick linoleum. The plaster wall is ruined due to the hammer hole plumbing insert method they used. It is the epitome of what someone who had zero money and had just enough knowledge about something would do. AKA homeowner’s special.
Here is me in the bathroom again, because I worked on ‘refreshing’ the room with some new paint, I also decided we needed to redo all the caulking which led to sanding down the rusty window and repainting that too. In fact, there was so much cleaner used it lightened my hair substantially lol 😉 
Ah and now the piece de resistance! The downstairs bathroom…. One of the creepiest, ill fit and just disgusting bathrooms I’ve ever seen, let alone owned. Lightbulb in the shower? CHECK. Carpet? CHECK. The well system is actually that cut out hole you see in the right of the bottom right comparison photo. You could sit on the toilet and work on the well system…. efficient for sure…. That well system will be moved out into the new utility room now that the bathroom has been 86’ed from the layout. Eventually we will put another bathroom in the basement where there is enough space to actually have one, but for now just having the appropriate space to work on the well system or that ejector pump.
We still don’t have running water at the house, but hopefully that will be fixed very soon. Thanks former home owner for breaking the pressure switch and jet pump the night before closing! Appreciate you!
Then on to electrical work to see what fun we can have next!
More updates to come… and more before and afters of the yard… DUN DUN DUN!
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