Saturday, January 04, 2014

We are in an HGTV Renovation Show!

Jamie and I both love to watch HGTV.  We love Love it or List it, House Hunters, Property Brothers, you name it.  We always giggle when people get upset during a renovation when they uncover something unexpected.  This usually happens in basements, but not always.  Someone will take down a wall and realize there is a plumbing issue or something isn't built to code.

We think it should be expected.  You are doing a renovation - particularly on an old home - and you are going to hit one snag or another that requires time and money.

We hit a snag.

Our living room had this horrible paneling all over the walls.  Originally we were going to paint over the paneling.  Then we discovered that the paneling was textured so if we painted over it we would get the underlying texture.  That wouldn't be a bad thing except the underlying texture is farmhouses, water mills, and fences.  It's quite rustic and in keeping with our surroundings, but we are getting rid of the paneling for a reason.  We don't care for it and it isn't our taste.

So Jamie ripped the paneling down.  Being good renovators, we expected to have to repair some of the underlying plaster.  We did.  What we didn't expect:

Water damage underneath a window.
Jamie said to me, "Come take a look at this wall.  Does it smell musty to you?"  This was before he ripped the plaster and lathe out.  I told him it did smell musty and also felt a tad damp.

We had two choices 1) not worry about it and just paint over it or 2) rip it out to see what the problem is and fix it.

Whenever you are remodeling an old home, option 1 isn't the best option.  Hell, in any home, option 1 isn't an option.  You really do need to figure out what's wrong and fix it.  Jamie did some searching, as you can see.  It seems that the roof overhang outside does not have gutters and the water is falling directly on this window and then getting into the wall.  It should be an easy fix, but it is setting us back a tad.  We are entertaining next Sunday and hoped to have this room finished by then.  Perhaps not, but my colleagues will not mind....I hope.

He will fix the inside.  We need some bleach to take care of the mold.  When the weather breaks a bit, he plans to install gutters on the outside roof to redirect the water to an appropriate place.  Egads.

It's a good thing we do our own work.  And it's a good thing Jamie knows how to fix these things.  I can help with the renovations, but I am afraid of power tools and don't know how to do some things.  I don't screw around with plumbing or electrical.  In fact, I don't let Jamie play with electrical either.  We call in an expert.  Anything that could burn the house down is relegated to someone else.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Pauline... from past experience with mold at the Hedstrom Mansion, the mold specialist told us not to use bleach because bleach acts as a food source for mold. We were told to use borax. Just a tip for the next finding..