The Cloaca Maxima

She Says:

So we jumped into this project with both feet.  Not only are we completely renovating this house, we're living in it at the same time.  Because it was a repo, and because it had been sitting unused and unloved for the better part of a year, it wasn't exactly move-in ready, or even live-in ready.

Someone had made off with the air conditioner/heat pump (true story- they just cut the cord and took off with it) (one of the reasons the house was such a "good deal"), so this was on the short list.  But more importantly, the hot water heater was broken and had to be replaced, so there was currently no running water.  But before we tackled any of that, we had to come to grips with this:

She Says: So, do we have city sewer and all that?

He Says: Uh, no Dear.  We live way too far out in the country for that.

She Says: Well, where is the septic system then?

He Says: (looking at strange green lids protruding out of the backyard)  I think this is it...

She Says:  What is that?

He Says:  I.   Don't.   Know.

This was our first introduction to the wonderful world of aerobic sewer systems. 

He Says:

It turns out the system is pretty nice.  It was and is in perfect working order.  Raw waste first travels into a concrete settlement tank, and then into an aerobic treatment chamber.  Aerobic means using oxygen, so indeed there is an air pump above ground that pumps fresh air into this tank.  Since the system  had been sitting idle for over a year, I was worried that the bacteria colony that is supposed to live inside and use the oxygen had died.  I needn't have fretted - aerobic bacteria are literally everywhere.  You don't really have to worry about them, just feed them organic waste and air and they do their thing.

After treatment in the aerobic chamber, the waste water goes (by magic, of course) into the post-treatment chamber.  A critical discovery was the presence of a PVC tube in the post-treatment chamber that was just the right size to hold a stack of swimming pool chlorine tablets.  By flowing the water through this stack of tabs, the aforementioned bacteria are killed and so live ones are only in the aerobic treatment chamber.
When the post-treatment chamber gets full, a float switch turns on a submersible pump inside, and the treated wastewater is pumped out into a system of sprinklers that distribute it.  Initially, these sprinklers were quite close to the house.

So, as long as the system has 120V power going to it to run the air and water pumps, it only needs the settlement tank pumped every 3-5 yrs. at about $200 a pop.  Handles garbage-disposal waste no problem, too, and those bacteria are tough little boogers, so we send the washing machine wastewater down there too.  No problem.

She Says:

There was an incident with the poo sprinklers going off unexpectedly (they're not on a timer or anything, so they just go off whenever the moment strikes them) and pelting someone, who will remain nameless, in the head with poo water.  After that, we dug a trench all the way through the yard and moved the poo sprinklers safely to the tree line, so now the terror of being out in the yard and getting hit with poo water is kept to a minimum.

The House is Going to be Great!

Good Bones.

He Says:

So, this little piece of cr.....charming little fixer-upper on ten acres should have cost a lot more.  It should have been well out of our price range, in fact.  Why wasn't it?  It had been under contract when we first located it, but the buyer dropped out, and we swooped in.  During the buying process, we figured out what was happening.

This home has a wooden joist floor design, on a perimeter concrete foundation, leaving a 33" crawl space below the floor.  It is a truly horrible place.  The floor joists are 2x10 pine, and had fiberglass insulation in-between the joists with a black poly plastic sheet stapled to the bottom covering the entire bottom of the house.  

The myriad leaks in the house must have dumped a large amount of water through the subfloor and onto the insulation and plastic over the years.  The sodden insulation weighed the plastic down and popped the staples.  It must have been something to see before it burst, but burst it did at some point, leaving the plastic in tatters and drifts of soggy insulation everywhere in the crawl space.  Season for a year or so and add bugs and you have a really wonderful place to spend some time.

When we were looking at the house, we found out immediately that the plywood subfloor was rotten (easy enough to tell just walking on it) but there was no way to tell if the 2X10 joists were also rotten.  Replacing plywood subfloor is not easy (more on that later) but is possible on budget.  Replacing joist beams, however, requires lifting the house.  Much, much more difficult.

So, we hired Professional Home Inspector Man, and he provided a report with a few blurry photos and told us that the joists were rotten because of poor drainage on the property completely filling the foundation during heavy rains.  Since we had only been on the property a brief time during the showing, who were we to argue?  We did some soul-searching, and decided this was our one shot at a home in the country we could afford, so we bought it.  I researched methods of replacing floor joists for weeks (most involve jacking up the house!) and finally settled on a technique called "sistering" involving adding new joists on either side of the old rotten ones.  

When we returned to the house to take possession, I immediately dove underneath into the crawlspace to survey my rotten joists...which turned out not to be rotten at all!  The Professional Home Inspector Man had taken one look at the fresh Hell that was our crawlspace, said "no freakin way" and decided to write a fiction instead of a report.  This apparently happened to the previous three bidders, according to the listing history, and that's why the property had been discounted several times before we ever saw it.

As it turned out, only about 20% of the plywood subfloor needed replacing, none of the joists had problems, and the drainage here is fine.  

The moral?  If the home inspection report doesn't look professional, it isn't.  Don't trust unprofessional reports.  And, sometimes, you get lucky.

Not Completely Crazy

In case you were wondering if we are completely crazy, here's the real reason we bought this run-down, ramshackle house:

It's all about the view! This property is full of beautiful pines, maples, sweet gums and mimosas in every direction.  This is the sunset we are treated to every evening as we sit on our rickety little lawn chairs in the back "yard" where the deck eventually will be.  It beats TV, which is fortunate, since it will be a very long time before we will even have a place to put a TV...!

Sharing this week with:

Some Basic Before Shots

She Says:

Okay, to kick this thing off, here are some "before" photos of the house...

She's got kind of a cute face, but needs a lot of work.  My least favorite parts are the oval frosted glass front door, and the teal shutters... you'll be seeing a lot of teal in these before photos...

Oh, and I'd also like to point out the huge slab of concrete currently serving as a porch- yes that will all be going away.

Here we are walking in the front door, into the "great" room.  Yes, that carpet is teal, and yes, it's all bunched up in places.  It runs throughout the house, even into the master bath.  More on that later.

The kitchen has a cramped and poor layout.  Apparently every pipe in the house leaked at one time or another, so the kitchen also sports this awesome hole in the floor:

Because of the leaky plumbing, the subfloor has issues throughout the house, so we'll be replacing or repairing all of it.

One thing I do love is this nice sized laundry/mud room:

But the floor in here has had a particularly soggy life and will have to be completely replaced.

The master bedroom is basically 4 white walls.  It does have a small walk in closet.

The entire house is 1400 square ft, so we will be incorporating a lot of space saving organizational elements to maximize the space, starting with the walk-in closet.

The house has two full bathrooms: this is the en suite master-

Yep, there's teal carpet even in the bathroom!

He Says:

What you can't get from these photos is the smell... wet carpet sitting over moldy subfloors through a long, hot summer.  Wow.

She Says:

And once again, teal finds its way into the color palette of the guest bath:

Here are the second and third bedrooms:

This bedroom will be converted into an office and craftroom...

...while this one will serve as the spare bedroom.

That's the tour!  All the work it needs is a little overwhelming, but we are excited and ready to get started!  Hand me that sledgehammer!

He Says:  

OMG, this is going to be a lot of work.

The House is Going to Be Great!

Welcome to our home reno blog!

We've always wanted a little place out in the country, and after scrimping and saving (and a little help from the destroyed housing market) we were able to afford this serious fixer upper on 10 acres in the pines!

Did I mention it's a fixer upper?  Here's some of the things on the list:

• Completely renovate inside, including kitchen, both bathrooms, laundry/mud room, all three bedrooms, and the great room
• Build a new front porch
• Build a new deck
• Landscape

So we're going to spend the next few months completely renovating this house to make it our home.

Our inspiration for this blog (and really this entire project) is that great 80's move The Money Pit:

These are our two sidekicks...

Boo... (note the freshly washed towels that have now been ruined and go right back into the laundry...)

and Bean... (note the general sloth and wretchedness)

Neither one will, of course, be a bit of help, but I am quite sure that they will offer numerous helpful opinions along the way.

We just keep telling each other... "The house is going to be great!"