La Villa Loca

As you may have guessed from the tumbleweeds rolling across this page, it’s been a slow summer here at le casa de caca. We more or less knew this would be the case; we had a short list of high-priority fixes and improvements to make quickly (plumbing, AC, carpets), all of which made hilarious blog fodder, but the horizon of the next project, The Whole House, is quite a bit further away. The story well is drying up, the pithy anecdotes fewer and farther between, as life in la maison de la merde has become… actually pretty normal. But, to be fair, we have been making progress, and I DID start this damn blog to keep you updated, so: We found an architect! Getting to work with an architect might have been the part of this project I was most excited about. Sketches, plans, 3D renderings? It all just sounds so… cool. (Spoiler alert: it is.) But we soon understood that architects do more than just design cool shit. They manage the permitting process with the city, will often oversee the bi...

While we've done pretty significant renovations before, most of that work was DIY. So while we had the odd plumber or electrician come through the condo, our experience with having contractors or installers has, up until now, been pretty limited. We're starting to realize that managing that process is a very specific skill and one we'll have to develop over the course of this renovation. In addition to that, however, we've also learned that things can sometimes... get weird. Two quick stories: Some Like It [Exceptionally] Hot When we bought this place, we knew it needed A/C. Some previous owner had installed pretty nice furnaces, done the ductwork, and even started to run a coolant line outside, but didn't quite get to the part where you actually put an A/C compressor in. So, OK, this should be pretty easy. Right? Nope. We got a couple quotes, which varied by a many thousands of dollars, but both salespeople seemed to think the installation process wou...

While most of the first floor of the sh*thouse has original (and astonishingly straight, if scratched-up) hardwood flooring, the second floor was graced with unfathomably gross off-white wall-to-wall carpeting, complete with dust, dirt, dead flies, and what looked suspiciously like blood stains(?!). I can’t think of many scenarios where off-white carpeting would be a good choice, but when you couple that flooring decision with literally decades of neglect (and maybe a double homicide), well... you buy yourself a respirator before tearing it up, is what you do. Armed with utility knives, contractor trash bags, respirators (I wasn’t kidding), and the cheerful help of a friend*, we set out to make the second floor a little more livable. We assumed we’d be left with fractionally-less-gross hardwood, which we could cover with cheap, DIY carpet tiles until we were ready to tear the whole floor up. So we started in the back corner of the back bedroom where we were met with the old, cr...

So yes, the sh*thouse had some plumbing issues which needed to be addressed prior to two rational adult humans occupying it. In short, there was a smell of sewer gas in the basement, which is... not what you want. Based on the information we had, it seemed like the drainage of fresh (rain) water, aka the "drain tile", and the drainage of sewage (gross) were somehow commingled, which is pretty bad. Gotta keep 'em separated. The plumber who performed the initial diagnosis of the issue wasn't our first pick to perform the work. In addition to the fact that he sort of hung us out to dry during the negotiations with the sellers (a story for another day), his particular style of arithmetic allowed for swings of approximately $5000 when calculating dollar amounts, which is, uh, a lot. So, we booked a few more plumbers to look at the issue and give us a quote. Kids, if you're considering paying for a liberal arts degree, go ahead and stop listening to whichever parent...

On April 30, we bought a house. If you know Joe and I at all, you could probably guess that it… needs some work. We love a project, and we’re no strangers to working with vintage homes. We’ve gladly embraced creaky floors, wavy walls and funky layouts if it meant personality, history, charm, and the ability to make it our own.  So we bought a house that has all that in spades. But, like any good opportunity, it comes with its share of risks, and maybe more. This project is bigger than any we’ve taken on before. And if you’ve found your way here to our blog, you probably want to come along for the ride. Let’s start at the beginning. Welcome to Crazy Town! Real quick, how did we get here? After 4+ years in our beloved condo, we began to feel that familiar yearning to stretch our legs. We wanted a yard for Chief, a living room big enough for the oversized couch of my dreams, a garage for the vintage BMW of Joe’s dreams. Room to grow into. You know how it goes.  Wee...