Projects for the Big Red House
The house we bought needs quite a bit of work.
Our house is 143 years old and only had one item on its 3R report from 2011. To say our house is a mystery is an understatement. A 3R Report report describes the current legal use of the property as compiled from records of City Departments. It also shows any construction, conversion or alteration permits issued, but no electrical or plumbing permits. If you want to see a record of all permits pulled on a property, visiting the Dept of Building Inspectors website is where I start.
Things we needed to take care of right away
electrical systems - we had a Federal Pacific electrical panel, which have been known to malfunction and cause fires, etc., so we knew we should replace that ASAP. We decided since we didn’t know what was behind the walls in regards to electrical and plumbing, we wanted to just upgrade those items before we moved in to make our lives easier. When we had a plumber come out, they told us we already had copper plumbing, so at least we saved some money there for now.
plaster cracks, filling in the electricians holes in the walls with a plasterer
refinishing and repairing all floors - we have newer hardwood downstairs in the kitchen, double parlor, dining room, and carpet in the hallway. Upstairs there is more carpet, and a mix of wide plank (softwood) and newer hardwood in the back. It has been my dream to have wide plank flooring in our house, but these are beat to hell in some of the rooms, so we are having them repaired as best we can. Not sanding away the natural wear (patina) of these floors is important to me, so we may end up sanding some of this ourselves by hand :)
painting all rooms
pest work - we had an active infestation of wood boring beetles, tons of dry rot, and we had to do a little work to keep water away from the basement/foundation.
Things we need to take care of later
foundation - we know some upgrades were done in 2011 (thank the lord for that one permit pulled to give us this information ha), but we will eventually want to remove all of the brick since brick and earthquakes don’t jive.
reworking the upstairs back half to make the floor plan make sense (you cannot currently get to the primary bedroom from the hallway - you have to enter through either two rooms).
plumbing work (hopefully it’s minor, but TBD) - Having seen the same issues in both New Orleans and San Francisco, I think tree roots in your sewer later is a universal problem… If you’ve got a house that’s 100+ years old and a large tree nearby, there is likely some damage done to your sewer lateral from the roots trying to find water from your plumbing.
updating the kitchen
Basically, we wanted a safe and polished house to move into. Our house was not move-in ready at all. They didn’t even stage it before putting it on the market, so we got to see it with the layers of dust, dirt, incense staining and all. Luckily, there was a historic house specialist on the job (haha :) and I was able to see through everything and we knew straight away that this house was the one.
Despite it looking rough, I really could tell someone had spent money to repair stuff the right way along the way. This house was loved and we were definitely the right people to pick up that torch.
Since we’ve had to contact so many contractors, I’ve been compiling a list of the good folks we’ve hired or talked to. If you need some help finding someone, feel free to reach out to me for this info.
