What goes wrong during a house remodel…
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Sure we’ll just knock of a few walls out, put new flooring in, paint and remodel the kitchen. Easy peasy right? Oh of course not. The things that going wrong during a remodel.
1. Oh the beam holding the entire roof up – The hubby noticed some sagging in the roof and just thought it was from settling. One day he decided to check and make sure the beam holding the ENTIRE roof up was supported, so he threw the hammer through the wall to check for the supporting stud. Through the wall that hammer went to find no stud. SAY WHAT? Oh that’s right the roof could have caved at any moment. We think the house was added on at some point and that support was never done right. The hubby threw some 2×4’s under the beam and then took a deep breath. Then went and started moving the epic amount of snow on the roof OFF of the roof. So much for us thinking “Well at least the bones are good.” We now have to have a couple 2×4’s popping out from the wall in my kitchen. We will trim them in white and deal with it cause I have no other choice! Also, we will have to jack the floor up around the fireplace and then jack the ceiling up by the fireplace while crossing our fingers nothing cracks and we don’t have to sheet rock and tape and mud again.
2. Oh dear garage – We have a double attached garage with a set of stairs in the back of the garage going to the basement cold storage room. I MAY have said, “Oh do you think we should measure the garage and make sure my truck fits in the first stall?” I was always getting the answer it will fit. Well guess what? It doesn’t. Unless I hang the nose of my truck over the front of the stairs. So now the hubby is already talking about building another detached garage. Uh hello let’s get one thing done first. Plus, let’s listen your wife and check this out 🙂 Not that we wouldn’t have bought the house but moral of the story!
3. Bathtubs are not my friend – I knew the bathtubs were disgustingly dirty and rusty but I kept praying that we would turn on the water, I’d find a miracle working product and all would be well in the world. Well the water got turned on, I went to town cleanings and I found HOLES in the bathtub. How do you get holes in your bathtub? We have the option of taking out walls to replace bathtubs or calling a bathtub restoration company, Surface Specialists. I called and left a message we will see how this turns out. Has anyone had experience with this?
4. Keep a bathroom door – In our over zealous excitement of ripping EVERYTHING out of the house we forgot to leave a bathroom door attached. Just saying’. Hindsight is 20/20 🙂
5. The furnace dies – Just when we were ready to go home and wrap up our long Saturday at the house we realize it is now 54 degrees in the house and the heat won’t kick in. Hmmm. So the hubby and his brother went to work investigating. A while later the hubby’s brother decides it’s time to go home (like I blame him at this point…I kinda wanted to do the same thing) and we continue to scratch our heads. How did this dang thing work for a year and no one lived here. We buy the house and it dies a week later. Eventually we gave in and called our local heating company, McGinnis Appliance. God Bless their hearts. They were out there in a jiffy. I left to go get Miss K from my mom’s and left the hubby and the repair man to it. I get a call a hour later. Seems that we sorta stapled through the wire leading up to the thermostat. Oops. At least it wasn’t a new furnace!
Of course we had progress this week and some fun as you can tell from the first picture! I painted away on Saturday with the help of my niece who hung out with me all day. We had a blast. I loving referred to her as the “Cookie Monster”. Every time she came back in the room I was painting she had a Chocolate Chip cookie in her hand. My kind of lady!
The hubby sprayed the ceilings so for me. Such a help! I hadn’t ever used a paint sprayer for anything before and this helped a ton. Of course we had no wood work or anything to paint around so we had a definite advantage from this point, but in about a hour he had 4 rooms painted!
The hubby ripped out both patio doors and got them re-framed up. We will only have one patio door in the end. I mean who puts two right next to each other? The left will be a big window since I LOVE natural light. The right will be the patio door. If you notice the framed portion on the right. That was what they used to brace the ceiling and jack it up. They gained two inches on the right of the fireplace where it met the ceiling. Talk about crazy!
Danielle says
Is it wrong that this makes me feel better?! 🙂
Julie Evink says
I reread this and I had blocked out all this crap!!
CaGreenRemodeling says
Hi! Julie I think that these are the common problems that are being faced during the remodeling
Julie says
Yes they are but you never want it to be you with those problems!
Karen says
Hi Julie,
Wanted to check in on your house project and I think my chin hit the floor about half way through your blogs. Seriously – holes in the bathtub and no support beam. I really can’t wait to see the finished project!
Julie says
Karen! I know we couldn’t believe what we kept finding but hopefully we are done “finding” and on to putting things back together! It’s always more than you expect right? Good thing I got a talented hubby!