Epiphany

Since we're in the midst of a heatwave, we all figured now was as good a time as any to leave the house alone for a few days. Ben is back in Bellingham until Friday, when the lumber will be delivered. Sam and I may stop by the house sometime between now and then to pull some more nails out of the studs and to clean up the downstairs kitchen, but for now we're really just playing it by ear. Did I mention how hot it is? The thought of exerting effort -- it's making me sweat just thinking about it. (Of course, that could also be from my apartment, which is ungodly hot right now and will probably prevent me from getting any sleep tonight. Guh.) Ben said he split his time today between working on the house and trying to dry off in front of the fan. I'm impressed he did any work at all.

Anyways, about that epiphany.... I was looking at the living room and upstairs bonus room the other day when I realized that it would be really cool to leave the bonus room as an open loft, rather than closing it off as a third bedroom. That way, we would be able to see into the loft/library from the living room, and vice versa. Sam and Ben also liked this idea, and Ben said it should be doable, so that may be our new plan for that space. Sounds like we will still have to close off part of the room to hide the furnace and water heater, but otherwise we would just enclose the loft using the same style rails as on the stairs.

Speaking of grand plans, we're also wondering if we can set up a projector to play movies on the wall of the shed. But that comes much, much later.

Lazy Summer Days

UPDATE: I forgot to mention a few days ago that Ben successfully installed a new bathtub and shower head in the basement bathroom. It sounds like there were some frustrations along the way -- something to do with leaky plumbing -- but all is well now, and it looks great (though there are no walls yet, so bathing could be a bit awkward). Ben also re-installed the pedestal sink that had been in that bathroom previously. It looks good, but we're thinking we might move the sink to the half bathroom upstairs so that the basement bathroom can have a sink with some storage room underneath.

-----

Sam and I have taken a little unplanned hiatus from The Bagley Project due to an illness known as Stupid Sunburn. We headed with Ben over to Greenlake Sunday morning for what was supposed to be a quick cooldown; we had every intention of going back to the house for some more demolition after a couple of hours. But after paddle boating for a few hours -- including a trip across the lake to pick up Craig -- we found we were too scorched and tired to do any work on the house. Sam's dad also came into town from Bellingham to check on our progress, giving us a good excuse not to work.

Today, Sam, Ben and I still find ourselves sun-sore from the lake. Although Ben was working at the house all day -- he said demo in the basement is now basically done -- we decided not to do any more demo after-hours. Instead, our evening has been filled with groaning, alternately, about sunburn and 95-degree weather. I have been in a bit of a foul mood about the weather since last night, when my apartment manager gave me a note saying I have to keep my windows shut from 9-5 all week so they can powerwash the building, despite a record heat wave in Seattle. (I'm not exaggerating; the word "record" actually applies.) As Ben rightly points out, this is exactly the type of crap I won't have to deal with after I move.

We may do some more demo tomorrow if the mood strikes. However, Ben says the second dumpster is mostly full now, so the timing is right for a little break if we want it.

Nails and tiles and...bees?

So, Sam and Cindy never told me the cool add-on features that this house came with! Last weekend, we took most of the ceilings down, exposing the studs, insulation (arms are still slightly itchy), and an amazing array of miscellaneous items. These items included:

• Some tiles that clobbered Sam's head.
• More Christmas ornaments.
• The nastiest plastic bowl you've ever seen
• Some kind of metal duct part. Not connected to anything, mind you. Just the part.
• Four hornet's nests.

That's right, I did not mistype. Four of them. One of these was about 18 inches in diameter, and when I took it down, a bunch of insulation came down with it. We concluded that it was structural, and should be replaced immediately. I will recommend to Sam/Cindy that a more robust, up-to-code, hornet's nest be placed in its stead.

As far as physical labor is concerned, this is one of the safer jobs I have worked at. Mainly, because one person takes all the injuries for the rest of us. His name is Sam. So far the tally is:

• Nail puncture wound in his left foot
• Nail puncture wound in his right foot.
• Bruises from a pile of ceramic tiles landing on him from above the ceiling. Yes, from above the ceiling. Once again, I did not mistype.

Cheer up Sam! Nothing Hydrogen Peroxide and beer can't fix. We're almost done with the demo. Soldiering on...

Living Room - Original

You thought I was going to tease you forever with the promise of pictures, but here, finally, are some images of the living room as it was when we found it. Fortunately for you, we can't make these scratch-n-sniff.

As you can see, the living room has a great fireplace and vaulted ceilings with exposed beams. I love the beams, but am not so crazy about the decorative tiles on the fireplace. You can't tell from these pictures, but it looks like someone has drawn trees on the tiles with a Sharpie. Fail one for etch art.

There are also two large windows at ground level and a smaller one up top. These let in plenty of light, though one of the ground-level windows may end up going during the renovation.

The room has a beautiful wood staircase. Unfortunately, that probably has to go too, as it is dangerous as is. Sam's grandmother came by to check out the house and tried to argue for keeping the staircase. I agree that we should try to keep a similar look for the new staircase, but am not a huge fan of falling through wobbly planks. For some reason, the previous occupants had a long, wooden plank nailed into the banister. No one can really figure out why.

The living room had a mix of grey carpet (original color unknown) and slate tile. We've since ripped all of this out, with much improvement to the aroma. Underneath we found wood floors, but there are a couple of areas that were patched really poorly, so we don't think we'll be able to keep them. We're trying to decide if we want to put in wood or tile floors instead.

House Stats

It occurs to me that we haven't given you the most basic details about the house yet, so here goes....

The house is in a Seattle neighborhood called Wallingford, about a mile west of the University of Washington, three quarters of a mile east of the Fremont neighborhood, a mile north of Lake Union and a mile south of Greenlake and Woodland Park. (According to MapMyRun.com, the house is just three quarters of a mile from my current apartment -- so it's not going to be a huge move.) We'll have access to plenty of bus routes, which run on both 45th Street and 40th Street (we're on 44th Street).

Wallingford's main attractions are Gas Works Park (on Lake Union) and the main drag on 45th Street, where there is food and drink aplenty (including at least five places to get sushi). Most of the houses there are WAY out of Sam and my price range. In fact, Sam and I didn't really figure we had a chance with The Bagley Project; although the listing price was in our range, we assumed that we would be outbid (as had happened a half dozen times already). The neighborhood blog, wallyhood.org, has even been lightheartedly poking fun at Wallingford's exhorbitant home prices by trying to find the cheapest Wallingford house on the market ($350K, last they checked).

As for The Bagley Project, it currently has two bedrooms and one bathroom on the main floor, and an additional bedroom and bathroom (and kitchen) in the basement. After the renovation, we will have two bedrooms, two and a half bathrooms and a finished bonus room upstairs, and two bedrooms/two bathrooms downstairs (still with a kitchen). We figure the finished square footage will be about 2400 sq ft. The house also has a decent backyard -- bigger than the yards at most of the surrounding houses -- and a large shed.

Okay, I have to run again, but will post again soon with pictures (this time I mean it) and another list of the interesting things we found during demo today (turns out the best place to hide things is in the ceiling).

Half the House It Used to Be

The demolition continues, and now there is definitely more sheetrock on the floor than on the walls. Ben decided that we should rent a dumpster after all (rather than taking the rubble out to the city dump truckload by truckload), so we're hoping to have all the demo done by the end of the weekend. The house is looking kind of scary right now ... basically each room is just studs and a pile of garbage. Once we're through with demo, the sub-contractors can come in and work on the electrical and plumbing. Ben says it'll be another month or so before the place even starts resembling a home again. Oof.

Here are some more things we found in drawers and walls throughout the house:
-- a marble and a spool of black thread, both in the wall of the master bedroom
-- a full set of silverware, tucked in one of the kitchen drawers
-- a packet of Ritz crackers, unopened
-- a box of Nilla wafers, opened
-- a huge pile of rat poop, in a basement wall (Ben was the lucky prospector for that one)

Again, I am promising pictures in a future post. It's getting late and, frankly, I'm exhausted.

A good Sunday

It's amazing how much damage 4 people hell-bent on destruction can do to a house in a day. Pat, Cindy, Craig, and I went to town ripping out walls most of the day. The best part of tearing apart a room, I must say, comes once you've pulled off one side of the drywall. You then get to kick (or punch) through the other side. This led to some skinned nuckles, but was definitely one of the highlights of the day for me.

Cindy, Ben, and I also went out in the morning and picked up a free fridge. When we got to the guy's place in Renton to pick it up it was already outside with the doors open. A little boy who lived at the house blurted out that it stunk like fish - and proceeded to get yelled at by a person I presume to be his dad and hauled off inside. We didn't pay too much attention to it though - it was free, right? And so loaded it on Ben's truck and brought it back home. While moving it inside, Ben and Craig accidentally opened the door and found that it did indeed stink. Ben claims worse than the house did when we initially found it; although, I find that hard to believe. We brought it out to the backyard and sprayed it out with bleach water a couple times, and it cleaned up quite nicely. So we now have a fridge for the shed.

After working on the house until 4:30 or so, we had managed to rip out all the walls from the master and second bedroom on the main level and nearly all of the 14 feet high walls in the living room. Ben is still working on the bathroom downstairs; it turns out the bathtub isn't going as smoothly as he had thought it would.

After BBQing with everyone and a brief nap, I came in to work early (midnight or so) to get caught up since I was having issues getting online from offsite. I'm hoping that my extra 8 hours this morning will result in getting enough done that I can leave early to help out some more today...

Gotta work up an appetite - All you can eat ribs tonight!!!

A Life In Objects

So far, here are some of the left-behinds we've found (a peek into the lives of those who occupied the house before us):
-- Two plastic army men, behind the walls in the master bedroom
-- A Garfield air freshener, also behind those walls
-- A Garfield baking sheet still in its original packaging, on top of the kitchen cabinets
-- An arrow, shot into the ceiling in the basement
-- A picture of Jimi Hendrix, resting on a ledge in the basement

Sam and I are lying around my apartment right now, mustering the energy for what promises to be a busy day. Both Sam and I have some work we'd like to get done today (as in, for our real jobs), plus there are normal life chores that we must attend to (the most pressing of which is laundry). Sam's dad is also swinging through town on his way back from a business trip, so we'll probably see him and take him out to dinner in the evening. Besides that, I gather there are more walls to be torn down at the house. We may also take the base cabinets out of the upstairs kitchen; the top cabinets came down yesterday.

Finally, a little blog housekeeping. ... I'm new to Blogger and wasn't sure if this blog was syndicated. It turns out it is, so if you want to keep up with us via feed reader, you can find the subscription at the very bottom of the page.

Let the walls come down...

Friday and Saturday saw substantial progress on the house.

Friday started with me stripping the downstairs bathroom of tiles and beginning - with limited success - to take out the flooring from the back rooms on the main level. This took up the better part of two hours. I then moved on to the nearby Tully's to get some work done, but my VPN connection has been acting up, so I ended up going back to the house and working on the floors until Ben returned from Bellingham.

Once he arrived, Ben and I went to Lowe's and bought 760 sqft of the tile that Cindy and I had picked out Thursday evening. We plan to use it to cover all the floors downstairs excluding the kitchen. Lugging 69 boxes of tile took up most of the afternoon Friday and, with the heat, we didn't want to do much afterward. Ben also got in touch with a couple roofing companies to come out and give bids, and he spoke with the inspector and got the go ahead to begin tearing stuff apart in full.

Later Friday evening, my roommate Pat came by and began work ripping out sheet rock in the master bedroom. Meanwhile, Cindy, Ben, and I went to Home Depot to design a kitchen. It's amazing how many ways one can use the same 10-15 foot wall space. Cindy and I both really like cherry wood with dark stained finishes, so chose the "Peppercorn" finish for our Home Depot design.

Saturday morning we got off to a late start, having spent much of the morning eating breakfast and watching Cindy's brother, Craig, in his valiant effort to win the 12 egg omelete eating competition at Beth's. He failed, however, apparently so did the guy from Man-vs.-Food, so that should lessen the shame somewhat.

Once we started though things started flying - quite literally. Our friends Liz and Sean came over to help and the four of us ripped out most of the rest of the walls in the master bedroom and living room while Ben tore up the downstairs bathroom. He also took out a couple of walls from the bathroom by chainsaw; after which we went and bought a new tub with surround and materials to extend the bathroom and change the doorway location.

A Picture to Satisfy Your Initial Curiosity

Okay, here's your first glimpse of the house. The windows have been unboarded now, and it's amazing what a difference that makes, both from the street and the inside.

The main entrance is up the stairs. There's a separate entrance for a mother-in-law apartment on the ground level. The front porch is a decent size. We'll probably have to build up a higher rail so that our tipsy friends don't ... tip ... but the view to the street should still be just fine. Eventually, we'll probably put a little table and some chairs out there. Or a hammock. Mimosas at sunrise, anyone?

For the record, I'm sitting on the steps in this picture. I'm not two feet tall. (Though at my last doctor's visit, I found out that I may be shrinking. Lost a half inch in the last year alone. Sam says one data point is not sufficient to indicate a trend, but I don't have much height to lose in the first place....)

We'll post pictures of the inside and backyard in subsequent posts.

And So It Begins

Sam and Ben made good progress today, unboarding most of the rest of the windows, ripping out the living room carpet and scraping off at least one layer of linoleum and tile in the main part of the house. They also painted part of the living room in colors we had considered the night before. It turns out that paint swatches do not necessarily translate well into bigger areas, so it's back to the drawing board on those. Who knew that two very different shades of green could both look like toothpaste when put up on a wall?

Unfortunately I couldn't take off work to pitch in, but the boys seem to be doing fine without me. Plus, Ben promises there's still lots of "fun stuff" left to be done over the weekend.

A lot of our new neighbors have been swinging by to see what's going on with the house. In fact, we met quite a few of them during inspections, before the house was even ours. From them, we got a little of the back story of the house: The previous owners lived there for over 40 years, and the husband/father made "improvements" to the house as time and money permitted. However, the family must have been borrowing against the house, as they faced foreclosure after the husband/father passed away last year. When they finally moved out, they could only find eight of their nine cats, which helps explain part of the house's stench. Our pest inspector confirmed this story when he found the remains of a cat under the porch; curiously, it seems that someone went and stole the cat's body sometime in the last few weeks. (Not that we're going to press charges or anything.)

After the family moved out, a vagrant friend of theirs decided to stay and conduct satanic rituals in the basement (as evidenced by the morbid Latin scrawlings adorning the basement walls). Eventually, he was evicted and the windows were boarded up, leaving the house -- dead cat, vomit-stained walls, oyster-filled sink and all -- to fester for months on end. We were the first happy house hunters to unlock that magic concoction.

Sam said he met a few more neighbors from the townhomes next door. It turns out that they actually built those townhomes, and had similar aspirations for our dear ole Bagley Project. Luckily, they weren't paying attention when our house went on the market. ... In any case, I think we're scoring plenty of points with the other neighbors just by promising not to tear the house down and build more townhomes.

Sadly, I have to push off posting pictures for another day. It's late again and, again, I have some work and sleep to catch up on. I would've checked in earlier, but just as I was coming home to my apartment my neighbor grabbed me to be an extra in his movie. I'm no actor, but it was pretty fun getting up into the camera like that. I'm sure I'll miss Fremont when I move, but I know Wallingford is full of characters and adventures as well.

Welcome

Hi folks, and welcome to The Bagley Project. The last few days have been a whirlwind, rushing to pull together last-minute loan documents, signing a ream of documents with a really-high-on-life escrow officer and, finally, getting the keys to our old-but-new-to-us home in Wallingford. Both Sam and I are really excited about the months to come; we're going to see the house through a complete transformation.

Sometime soon one of us will fill you in on our story to date, and will post pictures of the work in progress. For now, it's getting late and there are other aspects of life that need some attention (namely, work and sleep).

Stay tuned.