Wednesday, September 2, 2009

Interior (pre-Move-in)



Here's the living room. The house has four sets of french doors (one set on either side of the front door, one set dividing the living room area - the open doors on the right side of the picture- and one set leading out to the patio/deck above the garage). The fireplace is a new-ish gas insert. All of the wood floors are oak (from what I can tell, it looks like a mix of quartersawn and regular). I believe the mantelpiece and bookcases are maple, as are the moldings.



The dining room (the second set of french doors are on the right).




This is the other section of the living room area (or a bedroom). The french doors (open) lead out to the deck above the garage.



The kitchen. All of the cabinets are built-in. There are double-hinged doors leading from the kitchen to the dining room (open in the picture) and from the kitchen to the living room area at the back. The windows are dark because the passive water heater leans against this side of the house and completely covers them.


As you can see, the range was set into the counter away from the main floor area of the kitchen. Even if the rest of the kitchen were okay (it wasn't - the cabinets were very outdated and not functional), we would have had to rip this out to put the range in the right area. We don't have any pictures of the other side of the kitchen (the wall behind the range), but the washer/dryer hookups were there. With the washer and dryer behind the range, you couldn't have opened the oven door without hitting them.



The main floor bathroom. It is too narrow for the toilet - a tall person's knees would almost hit the wall in front of them when they sat on the toilet.






The main staircase. The ceiling is a little low because of the closets upstairs. All of the walls have been wallpapered multiple times, and I think the previous owners painted over the most recently-installed wallpaper to help sell the house.



The master bedroom. The windows on the right are dark because the ivy has completely overgrown them (the previous owners were older, and had lived on the main floor for the last few years. The wallpaper in this room was pretty neutral, so it wasn't painted over.







The main floor bathroom. The toilet is super old, slow, and a little tacky (if you ask me).



Main floor bath/shower.















We ripped out this toilet shortly after moving in. It was neighborhood cleanup (Salt Lake City has two of these each year. You can put one dumpster-sized load of junk out on the street and they will pick it up, free of charge). The tank broke, but somebody took the bowl (seat and all) within a day. People also picked out all of the scrap metal we threw out.




Second bedroom. The wallpaper has been painted over.


















The sunroom. You enter this room from either of the upstairs bedrooms. There's a decent view of the city from these windows, but it gets unbearably hot during the day.













The "green room," as the previous owners titled it. This is the only big room in the basement. At the back, the shelf has been framed over, and there were originally "beds" - just foam mattresses - on top of the shelf, with a TV in the corner. There's a small kitchen area with only a sink to the left of the picture.












The basement bathroom. Within a week of moving in, the main drain line clogged up, and sewage backed up into the shower down here.
















The second room in the basement. I have no idea why the wainscoting, since this room is next to the garage (the windows look into the garage). The only other rooms in the basement are the furnace room (at the front of the house - the concrete shelf made for a nice workshop for the previous owner) and a storage room between this room and the furnace room.

Monday, August 17, 2009

Pre-Purchase


this is the house before we moved in. the yard needs work, and the stucco will have to be patched. both chimneys are losing bricks and stucco, and there is a huge, non-functioning passive water heating system on the south side of the house that will be removed.



here's the deck, above the two-car (long) garage. the arbor (trellis?) is too low, and only covers a few feet of the deck. we're planning on raising it a foot or two, and adding more beams to cover most of the deck.


the back of the house has the least amount of cracks in the stucco. all of the windows are aluminum storm windows, with the original wood windows on the inside.


this sidewalk goes around to the front of the garage. past the gate, it gets too narrow to push a wheelbarrow through, so everything has to be hauled out in boxes and buckets.


the previous owner built a bunch of trellises out of galvanized pipe. this one is over the gate to the garage. there are more covering the walkway to the front porch, and a big arch over the back porch. most of them are for grapevines (i think there are four big grapevines on the lot).



the shed (complete with a cow skull over the door). it has seen better days, and we will probably get around to tearing it down and building a new one next year.


the laurel hasn't really taken advantage of the galvanized trelliswork over the shed. also, the grass here is the only "lawn" on the entire lot.


this is the passive water heater the previous owner built long ago (i'm assuming boredom was the primary motivator). it is no longer connected to anything but the house, and we will be tearing it off.


the water heater is built over the basement walk-out, and you can see the big grapevine which covers the back porch.