Monday, September 14, 2009

Restoration on Many Levels

Purchase a 3 story Queen Anne style house. Fixer upper, comes with appliances, no yard and has great potential.
Asking price $10. . . . .And a lot of sweat equity.
this blog is actually a spoof or joke on my friends Melanie & Phil as they work on making their house market ready. If only their sweat equity was as easy as mine!

So last month I bought this house. Had it in my bathtub for the past two weeks. Today I moved it to the back deck. Gave it a good hosing. I have been working on this $10 investment for 3 weeks now.


The previous owner loved stickers (view the 3rd floor right side room and the first floor refridgerator)




Got that mess cleaned up.



She also liked permanent markers and fingernail polish.
Oh and what you can’t see is the film of elmer’s white glue that only appears when I hosed the whole thing off. Then it became a white goopy mess. So I had to wait till it dried again then took a sculping tool to peel it off.



Windows frames are missing because I am washing them in the sink.But these are much better pictures of the interior and exterior.

I have made some significant headway on it. Should have it done by this weekend.
Yipee. . . .but in all this work time and staring at the structure I have an alternative plan.


And yes that is our smoker you see through the window. Weird, Huh?





This was suppose to be a present for Joy for Christmas. This Fisher Price Loving Family Manor house is an original, first edition from 1993. Doorbell still works. Only missing one window frame, which is replaceable. But, why should a 2 year old enjoy this. Hmmmm


I keep seeing the whole thing painted black and made into a haunted doll house. Don’t you? With all the rooms/space I could have a Frankenstein lab, a phatom of the Opera living room. And wow, how about a Sweeney Todd kitchen!!! Such potential!!



Sigh, I will have to comb the goodwill stores for another one of these houses and make my Halloween masterpiece another day.

I wasn’t the only one doing home improvements. Here is Jerry and his latest project. The side gate. The neighbor wants to replace the fence on that side. Jerry wanted a gate that could open for human traffic and open wider for trailer parking. So what you see is only the wood side. The other side is welded metal frame which he designed and did himself. The curved top gate is hinged on the left side. If you pull a pin in the ground the human gate and the left side of the fence all hinges open to the house side. Pretty good design for an old dude!