Of renovations... and mission creep...

[wonko the sane?]

It started thursday morning. I was of the mind to move some of my wall art around, and install a new shelf. The art comes off the wall, I start patching holes, and I check my hardware for the matching shelf brackets... which I clearly no longer have.

I start looking it up to see if I can still buy this style from ikea. I can't even find evidence they were ever even made. Okay, that's fine. This is fine. I can just get the gubbins for TWO shelves and replace the brackets on what would be the lower one. So the shelf comes off the wall, so I can patch the holes in prep for the new hardware (which I still haven't even found or purchased yet.)

While seeing if I can find a matching shelf board (and I couldn't... which is what drove the following.) I look around the room and realize... none of it matches. At all. It's all shelving that's been scavenged and bodged together over... ****, twenty years? Longer? Hell, the long ones over the bed I salvaged from the headboard of the bed I bought when I was first working at mcgill, I was 25 then. I have some money, I could fix... all? the shelving to at least match?

Okay, so... break out the tape measure, start perusing shelving. I settle on TEN pieces from a store called jysk (if you think "knock off ikea" you are exactly correct".) to fill the spaces. Floating shelves, so no visible hardware.

Take everything off the walls. Apply ANOTHER round of patch.

Friday morning I sand, patch the loose ends, and off I go to jysk to fulfil my shopping list! Ten shelves of three different sizes and the wall mounting hardware (screws and wall anchors which are (because as mentioned, knock off ikea.) not included.) totaling one medium coffee shy of 200 bucks. Get it all home, late afternoon I do the last of the sanding and cleaning. The room, as is: could be painted. Right here, right now.

**** no, I am not doing that right now. But I'm going to start looking at colours in the spring so I CAN do it then. Great, wonderful.

Saturday morning: I get the myriad of tools I need to start installing the shelves. I place, measure, mark, and drill the first pilot hole! We're off! I grab the screw in style wall anchor from the jysk hardware bags: it gets half way into the wall before stripping the head. Now it won't go in, and it won't comes back out without a pair of plyers. ******* cheap shit. Drop everything: run back to jysk to return the 7 unopened packages of hardware, then up to the home depot for screws and wall anchors I know will work. Got twice as many for LITERALLY the same price as at jysk. Lesson learned, no more jysk.

Get six shelves installed, cleaned up. Break for lunch. Throw myself at the last four, then start putting up the art. I'm just now getting the transformers back onto the shelves. I think I've got enough room I could get nemesis on the (new.) titan shelf now. It's about 10 inches longer than before.

So yeah, this shit snowballed, and I just wanted to put up ONE shelf...

 

[CoffeeHorse]

https://imgur.com/a/jsxIxsa

 

[wonko the sane?]

Yup, exactly.

 

[Pocket]

This is what I'm like with computers, except I just end up procrastinating the whole project once I realize how many steps I've managed to turn the plan into.

 

[Deathy G1]

My now wife and her late husband bought a house in Maine in 2016 that was built in 1770. When they bought it out of foreclosure, the house was visually in very poor condition and had been home to squatters and an illegal marijuana grow house.

Prior to her late husband's death, the only work that had been done was some mold removal and initial demolition on a kitchen makeover, with new garage doors being installed a year after he died.

By the time I came into the picture, the plan was to patch and paint the interior, finish the kitchen and gut and replace the bathroom. Our contractor got as far as installing the new kitchen floor, moving the island and running power and plumbing for a washer and dryer in the kitchen when the mission creep started.

The house was failing structurally and needed major interior support enhancements and repair. All work had to stop and instead all effort went into adding beams and bracing to preserve the structure and make it safe to occupy. Doing that exposed other issues that required replacing floor joists, subfloors and hardwood throughout much of the first floor, which ultimately led to the bathroom replacement being bumped up since the old one had to be torn out.

We ended up relocating the bathroom to a different room since the original wasn't big enough for what we wanted, which then made us decide to close off a room next to the new bathroom for use as a first floor master. Following that, we tore the upstairs to the studs (and then tore those out too) since we decided to have our wedding at the house and the upstairs ended up being too damaged to just patch and paint. Doing the upstairs meant that some structural enhancements were needed for a part of the second floor that never had them done before (there was a previous big renovation in the 1940's). The process of installing new beams led to the discovery that more of the first floor needed to be replaced, so the second floor was delayed so the room under it could be repaired first.

By our wedding, the second floor was 90% done (thanks to the delay) and was finished soon after. After that, we redid the roof (which needed more bracing installed as well) and then finally circled back to the kitchen.

The demo for the kitchen revealed bad (read: unsafe) DIY wiring from a 90s renovation of the kitchen and the attempt to replace that revealed that the half wall between the kitchen and the hallway had been built by cutting load bearing beams away in the 90s as well. The whole kitchen was sagging. We had the whole room jacked and new beams installed, making the half wall once again a full wall. After that, the kitchen renovation was mostly completed, only leaving some beadboard and a windows replacement for later.

We then decided to replace the rest of the windows in the house that had not yet been replaced (much of the first floor) and that led to discovering major rot issues and replacing most of the front of the house. Finally, we replaced the kitchen window with a new panoramic window and finished the kitchen late last year.

The kitchen renovations started in 2019.

 

[wonko the sane?]

Jesus deathy, I admire your perseverance (cause frankly, I would have opted to demolish after demoing the second floor.) but... it's an abandoned house bought from foreclosure and built 250 years ago. I honestly don't know what you were expecting. I've brought down walls and done minor renoes on far newer houses and been shocked and appalled by the condition of the construction.

Hell: the last house my parents bought (before this one.) almost burned down because the dude they bought it from did his own electrical work and had absolutely no idea what he was doing. He did, in fact, burn down the house HE moved into, and had the claim denied by insurance because (surprise!) he did the electrical himself.

Still, four year turn around on a kitchen reno, not bad. Dad's done slower work.

 

[Deathy G1]

Jesus deathy, I admire your perseverance (cause frankly, I would have opted to demolish after demoing the second floor.)

The thought crossed our minds, but when the house is older than the country it resides in, it feels sacrilegious to demolish it.

Not that much still exists from 1770 anymore, just the frame (which isn’t really supporting all that much now) and remarkably, our bedroom floor.

Up next, we are adding a sunroom, building a rental unit with a bedroom, bathroom and kitchenette in the massive loft space over the garage (which was built in the 1980s, so hopefully less drama) and adding a third bathroom in the main house upstairs in some currently empty space abutting the loft (since we have to run the plumbing anyway).

I forgot to mention earlier that we ended up building a second bathroom where the original bathroom was since we had no idea what else to do with the space. It also didn’t help that there was always a line for the bathroom when all 6 of us tried to get ready in the morning. It was also finished before the kitchen.

 

[wonko the sane?]

The thought crossed our minds, but when the house is older than the country it resides in, it feels sacrilegious to demolish it.

Not that much still exists from 1770 anymore, just the frame (which isn’t really supporting all that much now) and remarkably, our bedroom floor.

Okay, this isn't about you, but your statement set it off.

We, as a society, need to come to a fundamental understanding of infrastructure. We either need to learn to take care of it, or we need to be pragmatic when it comes to tearing it down.

North american cities, especially the OLD ones, like new york, and montreal: have a massive volume of abandoned buildings in them. In montreal, the majority of those abandoned structures are HISTORIC buildings. The government requires protection for those ancient, historic structures... which consequently raises the prices of materials, repairs, upkeep in general. And they aren't ******* USEFUL anymore. It's too expensive to retrofit them, can't be used without updating, which means they aren't making anyone any money.

Governments on all level refuse to buy them due to the inflated costs of use and ownership, private owners are abandoning them because it's not worth the effort.

Find a nice picture, etch it onto a bronze plaque, require the plaque be prominently placed in the lobby of the building you replaced the abandoned, collapsing, historic money pit with.

Or we can wait till the homeless situation gets worse and recreate the burning of london when someone starts a ******* camp fire to warm up.

 

[Deathy G1]

In our case, my wife and her late husband are/were massive history buffs, so the historic nature of the house was a large part of the appeal.

Also, our house is in a very sparsely populated wooded area, so no danger of causing an increase in the homeless population (Maine's insane housing prices cause that on their own, foreclosure was the only way my wife was going to end up with a house of this size, historic or not).

Overall, I agree with you. At some point, things aren't worth saving. Honestly, I'm not sure if our house made fiscal sense to preserve either, but emotionally, it 100% did.

 

[wonko the sane?]

As an individual: if you want to make that decision, that's entirely on you, and up to you. Where ever your personal "nope" line is.

As a society: governments don't really have that option; especially when the space is needed for stuff like housing and community services. All you otherwise get is a rotting building that's taking up space, not useful to the community (other than a rat trap or drug den.), not generating revenue for shit like getting the lead out of the ******* pipes. Which is still a ******* problem up here.

Like I said, not about you: but you triggered that particular land mine.

 

[Pocket]

I'm honestly surprised more people who find themselves sitting on property the government refuses to let them develop don't just pull an Andrew Ryan, torch it to the ground anyway, and write off whatever fines they're charged for it as the cost of doing business, as rich people are already wont to do. After it happens maybe the fourth or fifth time, maybe the preservationists will start to get the hint.

 

[wonko the sane?]

They don't even need to burn it down: they literally just walk away. Wash their hands, skip all the fines and the tax system is so over burdened that they don't have the means to chase down every delinquent business owner that claims a loss on a building that can't be used because it's collapsing and not actually worth rebuilding or tearing down.

Once again, montreal is hounding the empty business owners on the main for unrented and unused store fronts... just like they did before the pandemic. It achieved nothing then, and will achieve nothing now.