The House in the Garden - Chapter Two

Now we begin the second chapter of our tale. In true Dickensian style, the hero's story will be told in eagerly anticipated installments. In the beginning, his bleak life is unattractive and seemingly hopeless, until a generous benefactor takes an interest.

 There will be laughter and tears, villains and charming girls. 

Unexpected, totally random problems that must be solved will present themselves, leaving us wondering if life will ever work out for our  poor, unfortunate hero. About half way through the tale, the readers will begin to wonder if this story will ever end. 

 But ultimately, the hero will have his happy ending in the company of loving family and loyal friends.

One of my goals in writing the blog is to document the entire transformation of the house. And since everyone wants to see the "before," a few ugly, boring entries are how things must start. Personally, I like to read about projects that show me the beautiful "after" pictures. 

This is the "before" main level floor plan. Each of the three rectangles was a separate construction.

 The original house is on the right. It included the living room, kitchen and upstairs with two bedrooms and a full bath. The upstairs is small and will only have cosmetic work done.

The middle section was the first addition - a laundry room, sun room, and work shop.

The left section was the second addition - a study and master suite.

More details can be found in Chapter One - HERE

Here is our new floor plan. We are making an opening under the stairs to connect the living room to the sun room ... through the old workshop! The old sun room, old study, and old workshop will be combined to make a new great room with kitchen, dining area and family room. This will be the heart of the house. The old kitchen will become a small office for me and a powder room. 

We got the permit a few weeks ago and demolition has begun. First, the wall was removed between the kitchen and the living room. Parts of it were cinder block and made quite a mess.

But I have the neatest contractor ever! He always cleans up before he leaves for the day. Yoshi is wondering what happened.

Next the studs and other wall were removed. And, of course, the jumbo vacuum is in the center of the picture.

The wall between the sun room and the workshop was then removed. 

The green tape is where the new doorway will be cut.

Next week will be short because of the holiday, but I suspect the new doorway will be cut and some additional cinder block removed. There will also be some preliminary work done for the new central air conditioning and heat. The house currently has two window A/C units. One is in an upstairs bedroom and the other is in the back, downstairs bedroom. Boring but necessary.

And when we are finished and the cherubs and Greek gods are painted on the ceiling, it will look just like this!

Just in case you are wondering, the illustrations are from a 19th century edition of Bleak House by Charles Dickens. Somehow that seemed appropriate. There was even a cat in a couple of the pictures!

The House in the Garden - Chapter One

Before the Great Remodel

The story began on a Monday morning in June of last year. Ever since our Colorado home had sold several months earlier, I had gotten in the habit of checking the listings and sales on Realtor.com, frequently 3 times a day. I went to every open house in the neighborhoods we were considering, studied the market and promised Hubby that I would patiently wait for the perfect house.

Then this popped up that morning:

The House in the Garden

This link contains the very photos that I was looking at that morning.

Thoughts were flying through my head as I searched the pictures and data. First, this is an amazing price for a house this size in Arlington. Second, either this is a weed infested yard or an overgrown treasure. Third, looks filthy but very interesting. Finally, this will go fast!

So I did what any logical person would do - I drove over. The pictures indicated that the house was vacant, so I started to walk around the side of the house and look in the windows. Half way down the path, I called Hubby and said, "I think I am in love."

He joked, "I hope it's not another man." 

He was in Colorado for the week, so I called one of his business partners to show me the house. Within an hour I was in the house, talking about writing an offer. 

By the time I went to bed that night, we had written a full-price offer, scheduled to close in 4 weeks. ...And I already knew that we were only one of the four offers made on the house that day.

The next morning I woke up, nervous that the sellers would choose one of the other offers. It was time to play the sympathy card. I wrote a sappy letter to the sellers and described our family, giving special attention to our disabled son. The house would be perfect to remodel for a wheelchair, and he would love to roll around in the garden. It was all true.

When word came back that all the potential buyers were to give their last-best offer, I reluctantly said, "The offer we made is our last and best." Then I tried to forget about the house, assuming we would lose it because I refused to get involved in a bidding war.

SURPRISE! They chose our offer. 

When Hubby arrived back in town, our first order of business was to go see the house. He had already accused me of wanting the house because of the garden and was prepared to criticize it. But half way through, he said, "This is a great house." 

The Redfin listing shows what the house looked like before we did anything. I am sharing with you what we did immediately after purchase just so we could rent the house.

We pulled up the filthy, greenish gold carpet that covered the original hardwood floors. Not sure if they were salvageable, we just rolled out cheap, new carpet. The walls had so much grime on them you could see the outline of everything that had hung on them ... with 1000's of nails and hooks. Also the walls, trim and ceiling were all the same color, so none of the details stood out.

This is looking back to the front door. Paint color did not photograph well from this angle.

This kitchen is the worst part of the house. First, you have to walk through the narrow galley kitchen to get to half of the house!! That doorway at the back has a dryer sticking a good 6 inches into it ... and an 8" step. The cabinets are tacky '60s era laminate with cheap boxes.The drop ceiling makes it feel even more claustrophobic. The only thing I liked was the little rooster curtain that hangs over the sink. I washed it and rehung it after painting the cheap wood siding on the walls.

After walking through that horrible kitchen and utility room (what were they thinking??), the nice little sun room has a vaulted ceiling, 2 skylights, and a nice view of the garden. The floors are just that fake wood stuff, but the nicest floors in the house. We painted the cheap wood walls.

Then you go up two small steps to get to...

what is called a study on the original floor plan, but looks more like a dining room to me.

If you look through the listing photos, this room was red - red walls, red carpet, red ceiling, red trim. RED. And the heavy drapes (floral, not red) did not help much. The bay window has amazing views of the garden and the distant hills of south Arlington! This is my favorite room in the house.

The main floor bedroom is a very nice size. But one of the windows is blocked with a window air conditioner and the other 2 have broken seals so you can't see through them. 

The bathroom is just ugly and has poor craftsmanship everywhere. 

There are two bedrooms upstairs, neither one particularly interesting to look at. We will be removing the window air conditioner, refinishing the original hardwood floors in them, and adding back some closets that were removed years ago. Decorating will be the big change.

This is the upstairs bath, which we had to redo immediately. The floor had a junky laminate that was popping up, revealing rotting wood. Since we had to redo the floor, we (meaning Hubby) replaced the ugly vanity with a classic pedestal sink. We finished it off with white bead board and the original brass towel bars that I polished. 

If you are floor plan person like me, this will help you get an idea of what we have to work with. Notice that there is a workshop, accessible from the outside, between the living room and the sun room. That will be important in the next chapter.

Stay tuned for Chapter Two - the new floor plan and maybe some demolition since we now have our building permit!!