This Old House

Maybe you have seen the movie or heard the quip from some friend about the nuts across town who bought the old ‘Mason place’ and have moved in. No we are not those people. But we did buy an old house here in Arcadia that has been in need of some serious remolding.

Jennifer and I have now been here in our “California Ranch house” built somewhere back in the stone ages of the 1950′s. Before we moved in we had all of the plumbing redone in copper. You have to love copper. Remember the line in the movie “Moonstruck” where the old man plummer is trying to impress his girl friend: shaking his hands in front of his face in that Italian way he says, “And then there is copper!” Great line from a great movie. The sentiment holds at least for me. Copper is the god of plumbing material. So we had all the plumbing replaced in copper before we moved in so we don’t die from poisoning in the first month in the house.

I get a tip from my friend “Wolfie” about an electrician guy that is from the Midwest and really does a good job with wires. We get him out to the house and 14 thousand dollars later we have new electrical service throughout the house and a bunch of new recessed lighting fixtures. The old electrical system was freekin scary – no grounding at any socket in the house and buried lighting ceiling fixtures under new popcorn. We got rid of all of the popcorn on the ceilings as well.

We had all of the wood floors resurfaced and a new kitchen put in with new appliances. Now we are comfortable. At least I am. Jennifer had other ideas. So now the real work begins with a designer and finding contractors and the like not to mention saying up all of our pennies for the new addition to the house.

This last week we finally got all of the plans approved by our conservative Arcadia City Hall inspectors. The demolition of the back of the house is done now and the foundation for the two new rooms are poured. Today we wait for the concrete to dry. Next week I think the framing starts. I am going to get into that a bit myself. All of this is really good stuff I think?

One of the things you discover in old houses when you tear down a couple of walls are all of the secret problems hidden in the walls. We have two that I can see now. One is termites that were not discovered during the inspection when we bought the house. The other is mold in the guest bath room wall behind the tile. Both of these problems will be solved. The termites damaged wood will be replace and eventually we will have to tent the house when the construction is completed. My real estate lady is working on this for us. The moldy wall will be torn down and the guest bathroom will be completely gutted. The only way to get rid of mold is to tear the wall away. The idiots that put the tile up in that bathroom did not install any barrier between the wall and the tile. Well of course the moister is going to seep through and mold will flurish. So This Old House project is in full tilt. You can see photos at flickr here.