The Denver House Remodel-Past, Present & Blown Up

Built in 1915, this beauty had been vacant for two years.
It desperately needed someone to love it. And we were those ‘someones’.
(Sorry about the quality of the photos. Many were taken with a disposable camera that we kept on the job site. Not very professional, I know. Please forgive me.)

We worked for about a year on this house and had everyone; including friends and family, on the volunteer call list. I owe them all at least a pie.
Here are a few weird things about this house:
1.There was a scary room in the basement with a shoebox full of condoms. Gross.
2.I found porn from thirty years ago tucked behind cabinets. Double Gross.
3.The man who had owned this had installed a 30 foot antenna into the driveway for his HAM radio.
4.Wallpaper covered every square inch in the house-even in the ceilings and the closets.
5.It stunk horribly.
6.Our realtor called this house ‘a turd’, just like the present house we live in.

Le Grande Living Room.
The house had HUGE windows. I loved scraping lead paint from each one of those window panes. Hours and hours of the screeching razor blade against glass and wood, cutting my fingers, inhaling musty old paint…..I wish I could do it all over again.

Refinishing the floors was the final touch on this beautiful house. We learned that this hardwood flooring style is called ‘Log Cabin’. Not bad for being 90 plus years old, huh? I don’t think I will ever buy carpet again.

A fancy staircase led you up to the second floor, with a sneaky servant’s entrance joining in on the landing. We made this huge chandelier (around four feet tall) by wiring two chandeliers together, antiquing them and adding a boatload of crystals anywhere we could.

I think this might have been my favorite rooms-it was one of the four bedrooms. I ate lots of PB & J’s up here with the hubby. It had the best views and the best sun to snuggle in.

I cried when we decided to sell this house rather than lease it. My blood, sweat and tears had been poured into it for a year and I wasn’t ready to let it go. My hubby told me we’d go to Europe with a small part of the profits if we sold the house.
I quit crying and booked two plane tickets immediately.

The Blown Up House ‘Remodel’-Past, Present & Blown Up

Meth Lab?

This was the first house my hubby purchased-before I knew him. He lived here with his band mates and a couple of other ruffians. I moved in after we were married and we lived here for three years. It was a duplex with great rental income. Then, a good friend of my husband’s stopped by.

And….blew it up. ‘How’, you might ask?

When a friend named Beau, a mattress and a gas line intertwine, what you get is a recipe for disaster. And then when the heater kicks on…KABOOM!

(Although, it looks like silk hanging from the broken window panes…they were at one time-mini blinds.) To top it off, this happened during Christmas. Both sides of our families were visiting. Nothing says ‘Merry Christmas’ like a blown-up house. Kayle’s dad laughed when he saw it. His mother cried. I cried. Then I started laughing. But had to pretend to be crying so the cops didn’t get suspicious. The good news was that we got a great Christmas card pic out of this disaster. The house made it onto the local news and even into the paper. We had a lot of memories from this wonderful moment in time; with family and concerned neighbors standing by our sides drinking coffee as firemen retrieved our singed possessions and portions of rock continued to fall off the side of the house, etc…. We thought of printing t-shirts with the picture above and a caption that read, “I survived Christmas with the Greiman’s in 2004.” I think it would sell. We ended up selling the remnants of the house and our lot to a developer. He’s done a pretty fine job fixing it up. One would never know that the house had blown up, unless they read this.

The Front House Remodel-Past, Present & Blown Up

It is a pre-requisite for our houses to have two front doors. We have owned only one property that had one front door.It was weird.

This ‘old lady gem’ was full of brass fixtures and wallpaper and stinky pet carpet and weird layouts and paneling.

One of our first tasks was to pull the paneling off in the living room. When we did: TA-DAH! Four secret windows were uncovered. Why would anyone cover over windows with paneling? Why do people still have rattails and mullets? Life is a mystery…

After a bunch of paint and sheetrock and re-wiring, we had this lovely room to look at. When we ripped up the carpet, we found pretty red concrete underneath. It looks like it’s wet, because it is. I just got done mopping it.

The second bath was made for hobbits. Tiny, tiny, tiny! So we remodeled it to look like this.
Before we remodeled it, you could have one foot cleansing itself in the shower, use the toilet and wash your face in the sink all at the same time. Although most people would love this feature, we decided to expand it a little and update it.

After the plumbing was stubbed in, and my hubby was on the road, I tried to hook the pex line up myself. I followed some bad advice from a hardware store worker and subsequently, the downstairs flooded. In a panic, I called my little brother, who saved the day. What a sweetie!

The kitchen was ugly. U-G-L-Y. Paneling above the top cabinets and the ceiling, fluorescents lighting, sticky wood cabinets and linoleum flooring. Ick. Something must be done!

Now, so lovely. It actually felt good to be in this kitchen once we were done with it. And we discovered a sneaky dumbwaiter pretending to be a bottom cabinet. It’s completely independent of the cabinets. You can roll it all over the house if you want to with a cake on it, or some wine, or just to show off that you have a dumbwaiter. Whatever floats your boat.

This room was screwy. Originally, you had to enter it here by going through the laundry room, which was off the kitchen. And it had a tiny closet with the hot water heater in it. The attic access was in this room as well. And to top it off, it had buzzy fluorescent lighting.
Yuck. Who would want to live there? Well Beau, who blew up one of our other houses, did for awhile. But, you will discover that he is quite crazy…

 
We tore out the carpet and installed these purty wood floors. Actually, I installed these hardwood floors. While hubby was on tour. Hm, how convenient. After installation, I sanded & stained all the hard woods in the house. I got the brown lung from it.

It’s been a love/hate relationship with this one, but….mostly I do love it.
Mostly.

The Guest House Remodel-Past, Present & Blown Up

We lived here for a couple of years and loved it. It met all of our needs and then some. But alas, our wandering eyes found a great deal on another ‘turd’ and we decided to rent this place out.

I still miss it. I could clean the entire thing in 45 minutes. Sigh.

This was the kitchen/living/dining/everything room. The lighting was perfect, the archway super cute. Before we remodeled it, this was one giant room covered in paneling and lit with fluorescent bulbs.

Yick.

A little side-note: I took this picture with a point and shoot camera in this house. The only lighting used was the ambient overhead lighting from the archway. Pretty…

We didn’t do much to the bathroom other than painting it and adding a new shower head. We leave things as original as we can, while still being functional. Trust me, this tile color choice would not have been my first.

I did fight for the chandelier in the bathroom. I have always wanted a chandelier in the bathroom. It seems so romantic. So Oooh La la.

We added several walls to break up the open floor plan and to make two bedrooms with closets. This was our bedroom, while the other was used as a office/guest bedroom.

I love the red in this room. It’s a bit racy and I like to be racy.

I miss you sweet little house. I hope you miss me too.