First off, I'm not a carpenter or a professional house restorer. Second, I don't want to be. Third, but I know how to do a lot of things regarding home upgrades, renovations, and remodeling . . . and I mostly enjoy the work. I don't mess around with electrical at all, and I'd rather not have anything to do with plumbing. The work I've done on houses in the past relates mostly to building small ones from scratch, fixing worn out flooring, doing trim work around doors and windows, building cabinets, and replacing windows. And, I've learned to do other things, and that comes from having restored a few houses.
I bought a mostly tumbled down house in an across the tracks section of town back in late 2003 and then set about restoring it. According to the deed, this old house was built 1919. It had the original oak flooring in half the house. The floors were drooping at the edges because of foundation settling, but the oak floors still looked good. A room had been added on to what was originally a small rectangular home with a front porch the width of the structure. A shop area had been added to the back of the house. I spent the best part of a year fixing it up, got it looking presentable. I call the place The Line Camp, an old ranching term, and it's home to some of my collectibles and my guitar shop. It is also home to 9 cats, my workmates, hanging out buddies. Anyway, I did some carpentry work on the outside, replaced the front porch flooring, and painted the place. Inside, I painted every room, did some fancy trim work in places, completely restored the kitchen and bathroom, and generally turned the place into an area to display the vintage guitars, accordions, mandolins, fiddles, etc. I collect. It is rustic but comfortable, and I learned a lot working on it.
I've built a number of outdoor buildings like sheds and small cabins. I built a patio room onto the back of my home, and I closed in the two car garage and made a large sewing room out of it for my wife. My home is now about 3,000 square feet, 3,500 if you count the patio room. And I built an attractive little house in the back yard for storage. I'm at an age now where I can no longer do the heavy work, probably couldn't build an entire structure now and can't do some of the repair work. But I can still do some things, and my skills at remodeling will soon be useful again. My daughter and her husband recently bought an old house here in town and will be moving in early next month . . . and it needs lots of work. My first bit of advice to them has been, "don't destroy the integrity of the house." Stay within the limits of what it needs to look nice and be functional, and don't go nuts with fancy fixtures and such that aren't practical. But . . . do the things that turn a house into your home, with heavy emphasis on the your home.
The place is a Spanish bungalow that has been doubled in size with various additions. They got it for a very good price knowing work would be required to turn it into a reasonably comfortable residence. It's livable as is, and they can work on it once they've moved in. And I'll be recruited to help out, since neither of them have any experience doing remodeling work. I've gone through the place three times now making mental notes of what must be done and in what order. All they see at the moment is the cosmetic stuff, the work that makes a place look better. So they talk about tile flooring in the kitchen, wood flooring in the bedrooms, new bathroom fixtures, etc. And I talk about making sure the sub-flooring is sound before any surface is laid down. I talk about new windows in the older part of the house, work that must be done in preparation of that. I suggest what colors will work best inside and out at the house, what work must be done to reduce water damage to the exterior, and what can be done to make the yard look better.
They're chomping at the bits to get started, and I'm willing to help. It's not like I don't have projects around my own home that need attention. I seem to never catch up, and my older house across town with the shop needs work again. It won't be long before the heat of summer shuts down most of my yard work here at home . . . or whatever other projects I've got to do outside. I'm no longer capable or willing to work when the temperature exceeds 100 degrees. We're already having days like that here in central Texas, so I'll be looking for more indoor projects. It's going to be a busy summer. Maybe I'll write some blogs later on about how to renovate specific rooms in a house.
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