Well, when you live in Florida with family in NE one has to have a guest bedroom...plus some sleep sofa's elswhere to boot.

We have a guest room in our house, it's been used twice in the 7 years we've lived here. I wish I could add the space to my garage somehow.

Silence the female! You DO NOT HAVE TO HAVE A GUEST BEDROOM!

That's why God invented the Residence Inn by Marriott. That's where my in-laws stay when they visit 'me.'

That's where when she's just a little pissed off. Sometimes it's the deck.

It pisses her off (and then makes her laugh) when I comment how nice it is to sleep outside in Denver in the summer. Sucks in the winter, though, although that's been done, too.

Give 'em a pillow, blanket... and an empty spot on the carpet.

that house makes me want to pour soup on someone

You want to hear something cool?

I had a meeting with the contractor, and we were standing in the kitchen talking. The kitchen is still down to the bare walls right now, since they're working on the attic right now.

While we were talking, I looked over at the wall, and there was a little tiny piece of paper stuck to it. I went over and looked more closely, and it was a stamp like this:

http://www.findyourstampsvalue.com/s...images/388.jpg

It was behind our pantry shelf, and had apparently fallen through a crack almost a hundred years ago. It was just barely stuck to the wall, so I was able to get it off pretty easily. The bottom 20 percent was torn off, but it was still stuck to the wall, too, so I got the whole stamp.

I need to drag out my old stamp collecting book to see exactly what year it's from, because there were a bunch of similar stamps like this that were produced between 1890 and 1910. Given the age of the house, I would imagine that it's from the later part of that era.

I know it's not worth anything in its condition, but the cool part to me was finding an item that most likely belonged to the very first residents of the home.

Cool find!

At my old house it had 160 acres and the person who owned it before us in the 50s was quite the alcoholic. So even after 50 years of having the house in our family you'd go along and find an old bourbon bottle outside that was 50-some years old... Not as cool as your story, but that's all I got :)

Moooo

Kevin - We restored a house built in 1902. Very similar to yours - an American Four square, I believe.

We found a stamp from 1920, old liquor bottles inside the walls, signatures of wall paper hangers from 1908 and 1926, and a handwritten note from a 12 year old girl talking about how Japan had just attacked the United States in Pearl Harbor.

It was a very interesting experience. Took about 6-7 years to complete, but was a real jewel when we were done. Lots and lots of stories about the whole project.

We had to eventually sell it as it was an hour commute to work, but we sold it for 7 times what we had in it. It was a great investment and good home for us to raise 5 kids as it was 3 stories and about 4000 sq ft.

Ah, the memories. Good luck with your project and post your "after" pictures when you get it done.

Okay then...call it the hospitality suite if you prefer. :p

Czar Nicholas, is that you?

King Vittorio Emanuelle III

Good luck with the renovations, Rain Man. The attic master bedroom will be nice and roomy. :thumb:

Ours is a Four Square too, but I think there may be some local design differences, because they're referred to here as "Denver Squares."

The Pearl Harbor note would've been way cool to find. The electrical guys just found a Collier's magazine from July 11, 1942, somewhere in our attic walls, so I was checking it out last night. A bunch of pictures are cut out, presumably for a school project, and in lettering that looks like a younger girl's writing, there are the initials "V.C." on one of the pages. It makes sense since the residents of our house in 1942 was a family named Christner. We didn't know if they had any kids, though.

Stuff that comes out of those old houses are a lot of fun. Good luck with your project. It's very rewarding when you get done and they make a great place to live.

Hope you can post the after pictures.

We are in our darkest hour now. The attic is full of construction equipment. The master bedroom ceiling has partially collapsed, forcing an evacuation of all furniture and clothing from that region. The other two bedrooms are full of these refugees. The living room is teeming with refugee furniture fleeing the devastation of the dining room and the kitchen. The basement is dark and abandoned with no power and structural enhancement underway. We ourselves have fled, and have only a bed and about 50 square feet of living space. Dirt and debris are everywhere. Strange men with nail guns walk the halls. There is no power, and only limited water. God help us all.

Call Oprah. She'll be there to help with a crew of 100's. You are black, right?

Many people move out during a major renovation like this.
I'm surprised they let you stay.

PS Don't ruin y'er shoes. K?

Forget about guest bedroom make it a guest room for Chiefs fans. Put in a couple big screen TV's (watch multiple games at once), beer cooler, big couch, couple lazy boys, wet bar and put framed pictures of models in Chiefs swim wear (stay away from pictures of Chiefs cheerleaders keep the place exciting).

Very cool place. I love brick homes, I bought one last year, all brick for 1917, Red tile roof. The thing is solid, and a bitch to heat.

Get a futon. Much more comfortable when used as a bed than a sleeper-sofa.

This should spark a poll

how long until Rain Man (or the mrs.) forces a move out.

At least Quicksssurfer knows where his kitty is now.

We have light!

We have ... (sinking to knees with fists clenched in air and tears running down my cheeks)...light (sobbing with joy).

For the first time in ten weeks, all of the lighting in our living area is back in place. The new third-floor bedroom is all done except for the carpeting and the curtain-thingies on the closet, and the new balcony up there is just awaiting paint and the move of the swamp cooler, which for some reason has been a major problem area. In the kitchen and dining room, all of the structural work is done, and the new kitchen floor is installed. The base cabinets are in, and we'll have to shut that down for a week while we're waiting for the countertops to be installed. The second floor structural repairs, lighting, and painting should be done today, which will be huge - all of a sudden we'll have room to at least put the packed boxes somewhere as opposed to the places where we're living.

And last but certainly not least, the basement structural stuff is done now, and we should get power back to the laundry room "soon". Additionally, our cat door has been installed in a basement window, along with a little tiny flight of cat-sized stairs so they can get to it. One of them has already learned how to use it, and the other one can figure out the stairs but hasn't quite got the hang of the door yet. (Push! Push with your nose!)

Does this mean your ready to have us all over for a house-warming party? I'll bring the burro, cheap tequila, and the watermellon.....

A burro would actually be nice to have in the backyard.

You seem like a floppy eared rabbit kind of guy moreso than a burro.

I...uh...

I've got no comeback for that.

They are really fun little animals. Tame and docile. A customer had two of them in his back yard and I had to be careful not to step on them.

I never thought about having free-range rabbits in my back yard. I wonder if they could learn to use the little cat stairs in the basement.

I wanted to see your kitchen, not hear some lame text description of the progress. Jeesh. Stupid n00bs.

Three weeks 'til the unveiling. We don't yet have all of the semi-precious jewels inlaid into the marble.

If they told you 3 weeks plan on 4, unless they really plan to be done in 2 weeks and they've already given themselves an extra week cushion - in which case they're very experienced and you should be very happy with their work - except for the damn architect.

Silence of the Rainman?
 

Please show us the pit in the basement where, "It puts the lotion in the basket!" :spock:

They told me September 13th, so I'm assuming November 1st. Unless the doors don't come in on time.

We actually have something that looks like that. There's a big filled-in concrete place where someone took out the old coal furnace, and it looks like a poorly covered up entrance to a pit. If the police ever search my house for bodies, I'm going to laugh as they dig up all that concrete, because that's the first place they'll look.

Unless of course there really are bodies in there from some past owner, in which case, boy, will my face be red.

Will you still be laughing when they find the remains of the dead bodies that the previous owner really did bury there?

PS Congratulations on getting part of your house back.

I'm sure they could use the cat stairs. He said he housebroke them.

I've done and seen enough renovation to be able to visualize what you're doing.

I'm sure it will be much improved when completed. Alot of people can't picture an unpolished diamond will actually sparkle.

It better look improved when it's done....

I just got a call from the chandelier people in my dining room. I ordered a brand new design, and it's late in arriving. They said, "It turns out that it still has to pass one more test with Underwriters Laboratories before we can send it out." I think I may have bought the first one in the nation.

Did they give you an eta on the chandelier?

They said two weeks assuming it passes. I'm a little unnerved by this, though. I may have to check and make sure it's got the UL tag when I get it.

I would come up with a plan B on the chandelier. By the way congrats on the renovation. I know it's stressful, but how exciting when it's finally done.

But...but...it's the coolest chandelier ever. It's "The Wave".

http://www.schonbek.com/mate/art/RE3214JG.jpg

(Mine's white crystal, not this darker color.)

Wow, that is a work of art.
When delays start happening, I start worrying that months and months may go by and I may still not get the item. I'd have a plan B in case you get tired of waiting. But that's just me.

Wow. That's hideous. When I look at it I get the urge to grab a chair and beat the hell out of it.

You just lost your invitation to my next dinner party.

Yeah, it is a little worrisome. We'll see how it progresses.

The challenge is that my dining room is very long and narrow, something like 11 feet by 22 feet. Conventional chandeliers won't really look good in it. We need something less round and more long, like "The Wave".

That's a little more plucked up than I thought it would be.

That is alot of work to do for a remodel, you must have money pouring out of your ***!

I'm hemorrhaging money right now on this remodel. It's brutal. By the time it's all over with, it'll be almost as much as I paid for the house ten years ago.

If you're going to live in it for a while and you're remodeling for your enjoyment, it's all good. On the other hand, if you're remodeling to sale right now, your timing ain't too good.

Nothing's ever predictable, but the plan right now is to have my heirs sell the place in 2073 after I die peacefully in my sleep.

You might want to show your heirs that chandelier before you install it. :)

Good for you RM. It needed it. No offense.

A real man would just install one of these in his dining room:
http://www.lindequipment.net/lighting/8050103sm.jpg

Today's a big day. At six o'clock, we'll pulley the bed and bedroom furniture up the outside of the house and in through the new balcony. The stairs have two 90 degree turns, so we can't just carry them up.

If all goes well, I'll be sleeping in my new bedroom tonight. If all goes poorly, I'll be sleeping on an air mattress with my furniture in splinters in my back yard.

Pulley? Yikes.

That all seems very complicated. I'll bet your forefathers would be disappointed.

I'm curious to see how this comes off. I have an odd feeling of foreboding.

Homeowners cover pull contreption furniture moves....
are movers covered...

:banghead:

:banghead: :banghead:

:banghead: :banghead: :banghead:


They put the refrigerator in today. It's more or less on the inside of an L-shaped section of the cabinets.

The architect didn't take into account the depth of the refrigerator. The cabinet door that's 90 degrees from the refrigerator won't open all the way, which means that we can't pull out the rolling shelves inside it. Plus, she designed the door opening too small and we had to cut three inches off of one of the cabinets on the inside of the L-shaped area. As a result, we learned that we can't open the refrigerator door all the way, which means we can't open the drawers in the refrigerator.

:banghead: :banghead: :banghead:

I think we can salvage it by pulling two big sections of cabinetry out and shuffling them around to move the refrigerator.

I hope.

:banghead: :banghead: :banghead:

There's your problem right there.

You should have paid that architect more money. Heh heh.

I wanted to 5 years ago but you threw a fit just because you didn't want stomach acid on it...

so was it splinters and air matresses or NASA's best Sleep Number Craftmatic Adjustable Waterbed?

nice ....can't wait to see it maybe I can bring a pizza on one of these sundays I don't work watch some Chiefs and get a look at the remodel :)

The sexist part of my personality must agree.

I knew this chick once who was an industrial engineer. (I believe now industrial engineers are engineering students with learning disabilities... kind of like how the retarted kids who had class next to the boiler room got diploma's like everyone else)

Anyway, she rearranged the plant I worked at about 10 years ago.... new offices, departmental areas, ect. Work started and they realized they were a few feet short of the amount of space they needed. Turned out she failed to figure the thickness of her walls in her plans.

She got a new job not long after that. :/

:banghead: Holy crap. Your architect might want to invest in a tape measure? Who will be re-working the cabinets to make the frig fit? Who will be paying for that?

If there's anything I learned during the five years I worked in the construction field, it's that women shouldn't be involved in any part of the process.

so your remodel was her first paying gig. OJT at it's best....
:rolleyes:

As long as they haven't been paid you have leverage.

Operation Bedroom Winch was a great success, other than my wife's disapproval of the code name Operation Bedroom Winch. It was particularly successful for me because the construction guys did it before I could get home to help. I was pleased that I didn't have to do anything, but at the same time I would've liked to have seen them do it.

The cabinet thing is quite frustrating. I honestly can't go back on my incompetent architect on all of it, because she got escorted to a seat by the window weeks ago. The decision to cut that critical three inches out of the cabinet was mine. (However, one of the cabinet doors still wouldn't have worked even with her original design, and I had to cut out the three inches because of another design weakness on our drawings.)

I'm optimistic that we can lose a day and shuffle the refrigerator and the pantry, which are right next to each other. If they can be reversed, we have no problem. Right now, I think that'll be possible and hopefully not even that hard, but I haven't heard back from the cabinet people to confirm. We're using pre-fab cabinet boxes that are being custom-installed, and it looks to me like we can remove about six feet of cabinetry and reverse it without having to replace materials. I sure hope so.

4 months ago

Granite saleswoman: May I help you?

Me: I want to buy granite countertops.

(Conversation ensues.)

Me: I want the backsplash to look like this. It's kind of unusual. Can you do that?

Granite saleswoman: Yes.

Me: Then we have a deal.



1 month ago

Granite cutter: Here's your granite. How do you want it cut?

Me: Like this.

(Conversation ensues.)

Me: And I want the backsplash cut like this. It's kind of unusual. I want to make sure you understand exactly what I want.

Granite cutter: You don't have a backsplash on your order.

Me: Yes I do.

Granite cutter: No you don't.

Me: Yes I do.

Granite cutter: No you don't.

(Calls ensue to granite saleswoman, messed-up stuff gets fixed.)

Me: I'm going to send you a drawing that details exactly what I want on this.



2 weeks ago

Granite measuring guy: I'm here to measure for your countertops.

Me: Cool.

(Measuring ensues.)

Me: Are you clear about how we want the backsplashes to be installed? They're kind of unusual.

Granite measuring guy: You don't have a backsplash on your order.

Me: Yes I do.

Granite cutter: No you don't.

Me: Yes I do.

Granite cutter: No you don't.

(Calls ensue to granite saleswoman and granite cutter, messed-up stuff gets fixed.)


Yesterday.

Wife: The granite got installed today.

Me: How does it look?

Wife: It looks great! But why is there no backsplash?

Me: There's no backsplash?

Wife: No.

(Ring, ring.)

Granite installer: Hello?

Me: Why is there no backsplash?

Granite installer: You don't have a backsplash on your order.

Me: Yes I do.

Granite installer: No you don't.

Me: Yes I do.

Granite installer: No you don't.

(Ring, ring.)

Granite cutter: Hello?

Me: Where are my freaking backsplashes?

Granite cutter: What backsplashes?

Me: The backsplashes on my order! The backsplashes that we talked about in detail and that I sent you the detailed drawing for! I want my freaking backsplashes!

Granite cutter: You don't have a backsplash on your order.

Me: Yes I do.

Granite cutter: No you don't.

Me: Yes I do.

Granite cutter: No you don't.

Me: Look at the fax that I sent you. The one with the drawings.

Granite cutter: What fax?

(Ring, ring)

Granite saleswoman: Hello?

Me: You stupid, ugly, piece of feces! I want my freaking backsplash! I want it now! NOW!

Granite saleswoman: Who is this?

Me: It's Rain Man! RAIN MAN! I WANT MY *******, ********, ********* BACKSPLASH! NOW! OR I'M GOING TO COME TO YOUR HOUSE AND STRANGLE YOU WITH A PAIR OF YOUR OWN PANTY HOSE! NOW!

Granite saleswoman: You don't have a backsplash on your order.

Me: ************** ********** ****** YOU AND YOUR UNBORN CHILDREN! ****** AND YOUR MOTHER AND ******* AND A BUCKET OF FRIED CHICKEN! ****** ****** *******! *****!

Granite saleswoman: I'll look into it.

(Ring, ring)

Me: Hello?

Granite installer: Hey...uh...your order didn't show that you were getting a backsplash, so we didn't load it. We found it in the warehouse where it had already been cut, and we'll install it today.

Me: ****** YOU! *******! ****** - oh, wait. That's fine.

:hmmm:

You're like some kind of incompetent moron magnet, aren't you?

This industry is full of them - including myself at times. There's a million details one needs to be aware of while remodeling. Some of them inevitably slip through the cracks. The mark of a professional is how well he or she can adapt to these challenges.

This is a whole train of incompetent morons. It's like I fell through a looking glass into a land where everyone is incompetent.

Oh, and I just got a call from the granite saleswoman. She says that it's going to cost an additional $445 for the backsplash because she never had it on our original order. I'm going to find out where she lives and slash her tires.

Somebody got the FAX....just happened to be the person that needed it.
You got lucky.

These folks sound like they could F'UP a One car parade.

I hate all contractors.

This is where the incompetent part of the moniker comes from.