The old chain link just had to go!

We asked all of our adjoining neighbors if they were ok with us putting up the fence. They didn’t really have a lot of choice since we had the receipts for the original chain link, so technically we owned it on 2 sides and could do whatever we want with it.

This was a non-issue, though, as everyone was excited to benefit for at least one part of a free fence, as we weren’t asking to split the bill or anything. We also got to meet our new backyard-adjoining neighbor through this process. She did offer to chip in, but we declined as we didn’t ask reimbursement from anyone else.

There was one small portion tall section that was built later behind the garage. Our other neighbors wanted to keep it up, but they said they had no problem with us butting up against it on our side.

Once we had the thumbs up to lightly trample on the adjoining properties, it was time to get the overgrown garden area under control. Morning glories had taken over one side of the chain link from the neighbors yard.

Then Jeremy spent a couple of weeks digging out all the old fence posts. There was over a dozen and they were all concreted in. To make matters worse is that the neighbor’s new sprinkler line was in the way on one side, and trees and bushes in the way on the other side, so we couldn’t use a gas-powered post-hole digger. Jeremy had to dig and break them out by hand. We put the old chain link pieces on Craiglist and they were gone within 15 minutes! Crazy.

Another fun thing to contend with, was this nasty old clothes line post to dig out before we placed the new gate posts. It was a huge mushroom of concrete buried a few feet down.

During the initial digging, we had the cedar delivered from Custom Cedar Products. The wood was absolutely beautiful and the prices were great. For not a significant price increase, the wood quality and customer service was above and beyond what you’d get at the big box stores.

Next he spent a few more weeks of aligning and concreting in new pressure treated posts in his spare time. Jeremy’s friend Rob helped him with this step. Our lot slopes downward a bit so they had some fun working around it. We’ll likely need to do some backfill to level things out a little more next spring.

While Jeremy was working on the posts, I started staining and waterproofing all the boards. Usually you would do this step after the fence was built, but we wanted both sides protected. We would’ve only been able to access one portion of the fence after it was up. Another factor at play was that I didn’t want the neighbors to stain their sides a different color that may bleed through the cracks.

We used a great product, TimberTek Pro UV Natural Oil Wood Finish in “Leather.” This product was recommended on a fellow neighborhood blogger, Rose City Bungalow 1913. We went down to the TimberTek showroom on Burnside, and they gave us a ton of color samples to try out.

I stained hundreds of boards every day after work and all weekend for at least a month.It was a challenge to keep Jeremy supplied with finished enough boards to build each section. Too much work, but the end result was worth it!

See the results…

Before

After

Before

After

Before

After

It made a very open backyard feel very private and intimate. The lattice is high enough where you can’t peak through it. All that gorgeous cedar really warms up a chilly fall backyard too!

After getting the fence up, Jeremy set to work on the custom gates. He mocked some designs out on paper and we modified until we found one that would suit our tastes. Other factors were the availability of boards we had to choose from. Without specialized tools, we were limited on really fancy options, but what Jeremy came up with was fantastic!

Here’s the double gate that adjoins the driveway. The finished side is out because this is the gate that is used most often.

Before

After

The tile detail was my idea. We had a few extra tiles left over from our kitchen backsplash project, so it was a great way to use them here. I also love the arbor arrangement.

You might also note we added a little custom feature for our cat, Max. It’s a cat door with salvage hinges from the house remodel and a salvage latch from Rejuvenation. Annoying raccoons also love it.

The other gate blocks off the side yard, and is rarely used. It’s nice to have for security, though. The unfinished side is out on this door.

We got simple latch hardware from Mr. Plywood. We were going to search online, but its hard to really know if they would work properly, and a lot of sites didn’t give specifications. It was easier to go with something we could easily return if they didn’t fit.

We started in the beginning of August, and wrapped up the project around Halloween! We had an original estimated budget of around $2,500.00. We ended up spending about $800.00 more than our original budget. We spent a couple hundred more on higher quality cedar. General materials and sealant were more expensive than anticipated too. Still, since we didn’t pay for labor, we didn’t break the bank.

Cedar Fence Cost Breakdown

We hope to do a lot more in the backyard next spring. A paver patio is planned and we hope to put in a proper garden with some boxes. Maybe even a bungalow-inspired garden shed behind the garage.

Bad phone camera shot of the new showroom.

New Blackline Stoneware dish collection.

My haul: Office Sign, Multi-colored Shade and Apothecary Shower Curtain.

Our old “P” curtain was nice…

But the Apothecary Shower Curtain is so much better! Coolest. Shower. Curtain. EVAR.

   
My old vintage shades and my new shades! They add a bit of whimsy to the room and make me smile. :)

Now, I just have to pace myself and wait to buy the Mosser Glass Mixing Bowl Set, Catamount Measuring Cup Set, Egg Press Linen Placemats (Tess Floral) and if I was rich, the Orb Lab Light.

This post continues our budget series. For a recap, you can see $257,000: The Rundown (Budget Part 1) and 257,000: Cost Breakdown (Part 2), and why we decided to be transparent with our remodeling costs in this post: Blogger’s Block.

Now onto to the next question you may be wondering: How did you pay for the project and why did it spiral out of control? Let this entry serve as a warning to future remodelers out there. Also, the saying that remodeling budgets usually cost twice as much as you’d expected is uncannily true. In our case, probably more like 3-4 times as much!

Anyway, let’s start at the beginning. We were relatively young first-time home owners at age 23. Our first home was located in the Portland suburb of Hillsboro. We purchased a 1500-sq.-foot, 3-bedroom, 2 1/2 bath house built in 2001 for $180,000.00. It was on a corner lot on a dead-end street in a great neighborhood. One problem was that it was at least a 30-minute drive into downtown Portland.

Although we’ve always made a modest income working in the web industry, in 2006, we negotiated contract that essentially doubled our income. That got us to thinking about what we should do to move forward.

It seemed logical at the time to look into housing in Portland proper. The housing market was starting to soften and we were excited to find a house with some historical character. Looking back, what we should’ve done is stayed put and paid off our existing mortgage. If we had done so, we could’ve had our mortgage paid off in a couple of years and moved to Portland with a huge down payment at the lowest interest rate environment in decades with a HUGE down payment. Hindsight is 20/20 so this part does make us a little bitter.

We went looking for a house before we listed our house. We found a couple of houses we put offers on that ended up falling through for one reason or another. One was really expensive and needed too much work (or what we thought was too much work at the time) and for a lot of sketchy reasons I won’t rehash, we walked away. Another was priced high but was perfect for us. Needed a bit of work, but nothing major. We lost to another offer that came in at the same time.

After two failed attempts and looking for about 6 months, we were definitely frustrated. We thought about going another direction: finding a cheaper fixer and possibly flip it. Now “cheaper” in the better, closer-in neighborhoods in Portland at the time was still around $300,000.

Soon after we found the Bungalowcious house. Problem was that we came in too late as it had another accepted offer. But within a week, that offer was rescinded. We probably should’ve took that as a sign that OMG this house needed TOO MUCH WORK, but I digress.

The purchase price was $329,000.00. We could’ve walked away after the inspection and probably should’ve. It was 30 pages long with photos of things that needed to be fixed. Many were small things and things that every 90+ year house would need (electrical, plumbing, etc.) We brought in a contractor to give some general estimates on some of the bigger problems like the old foundation.

We decided we could probably do a lot ourselves but negotiated the closing costs into the purchase price to make up for some of the needed repairs. We hoped to get substantial funds from the sale of our last house, so we hoped that would mostly cover what we needed initially and we could cash flow the rest.

A side note, the inspection didn’t go into that we needed a new roof, which wasn’t apparent until later in our project and they ripped part of it up for the dormer. That was a $7000.00 unexpected expense. Also we did a sewer scope that came back clear, but the city later FORCED us to replace it during the remodel for an unexpected cost of $4500.00. I think if we would’ve known those things along with our plans to add a dormer and finish the attic and basement costs, we may have walked away. Again, hindsight is 20/20.

Through creative financing (see: stupid), we were able to buy the house before selling our other house. Now, we were very lucky that this didn’t blow up in our face. We hoped we would have a couple of months with both houses so that we could do some of the work before moving in. Instead, since our house was priced right with a good realtor, in great shape and staged well (I watched too much HGTV at the time), we ended up closing on one house within a few of weeks of closing on the other.

Here’s how the sale and the purchase shook out numbers wise:

Hillsboro House Sale

Bungalowcious House Purchase

As you can see, we ended up having to put down 10%, which depleted the proceeds we hoped to have on hand to start the remodel. We should’ve considered that we would lose cash on hand to start fixing things in order to do the down payment, but we were stupid and figured we’d just cash that out when we started the dormer phase of the remodel.

We moved in late March into a empty money pit that didn’t look quite as cute and quaint as when it was stuffed with the previous owner’s “Grandma’s House” furnishings. It also smelled old and funny. This was our first real wake up call that we may be over our heads.

There was also no dishwasher, a tiny fridge, and no a dryer hook-up in the basement because the previous owner always hung clothes up to dry. So it was back to the laundromat for the near future. Buyers remorse hit hard.

We weren’t sure where to begin. We had a vague idea of priorities but no sense of what order we should do things. We started haphazardly getting bids on the big things we knew would have to be done: plumbing, electrical, etc. The bids were coming in as vaguely ballpark as we had no blueprints for them to reference as to a final state, just our vague ideas. After a couple of months, we settled on getting a designer to help us draw up some real plans. The cost? $3,700.00.

The plans took a couple of months to flesh out and then we started interviewing contractors to get some real numbers. We started out with four general contractors and slowly narrowed down to one. Even after narrowing down to one, we had to get really specific on all the fixtures and finishes to get a close-to-final price.

We struggled a lot at the fact that with a G.C. it was still going to be in-excess of $140,000.00 to get both the major structural work done as well as the finishing of 3 baths, kitchen, attic master and basement. Coming from small town Minnesota with nice houses costing $140K, it seemed crazy to spend $140K on top of a $300K mortgage!

With a final bid price astronomically higher than cash on hand, even after pulling our down payment back out, we knew in order to start soon we had to find a construction loan in an ever-increasingly tight lending market. Wells Fargo was still doing construction financing, but the permanent loan closing costs were significantly higher than a traditional mortgage. Not knowing any better at the time, we went for it and started that loan late December 2007, with hopes to start construction in January 2008.

In addition to the construction loan, we tackled some small projects that we figured would have to be done at some point, but didn’t need to wait until we started the big remodel. So from March-December 2007 we spent an additional $28,930.20 out of pocket – $6,500.00 of which was a deposit to our general contractor to begin in January. The rest was spent on projects like the chimney removal, new furnace/central air, electric panel upgrade, paint stripping, and the demolition of the basement, attic, staircases and kitchen prior to the official remodel start. We also purchased a few fixtures in anticipation for the remodel to begin.

Construction Loan of Doom™

During construction, we also had a ton of unexpected expenses that required cash out of pocket as mentioned above: the new roof, new sewer, electrical changes required by the city, etc. That and the fact that we hadn’t put allowances for appliances, flooring and other fixtures into our construction loan, wanting to purchase those out of pocket. After all that was said and done, in 2008 we spent an additional $57,442.23 out of pocket, not including the amount financed.

Upon closing on our permanent mortgage after the completion of our construction loan in August 2008, our payments jumped an additional $920.00/month. Ouch! What a way to celebrate a 2/3 completed remodel. Note: We still had the main floor to complete (a.k.a. “phase 2″: living room, dining room, hall and 2 bedrooms that we lived in while the rest of the house was torn apart.) We took the rest of 2008 off to recover from the remodelers’-high hangover.

In January 2009, we found Dave Ramsey, a little over a year too late for all our crazy spending and playing kissy-face with Wells Fargo (YUCK!). We decided to get real about our overspending and pay off all our debt using his Baby Steps.

This also meant that we had to follow a tight zero-based budget and keep the Phase 2 remodeling expenses as low as possible, only paying with cash. NO MORE CREDIT CARDS! This was a really scary decision, but so worth it looking back!

We tried to do as much as we could ourselves, but we knew our shortcomings, so we got bids on things as well. With the economic downturn, a lot of contractors were pounding the pavement looking for extra jobs. We were able to get some really fabulous deals during this time from some great guys wanting work. We hired out the remaining wood stripping ($2,880), trim/door dipping ($2,036) drywall ($2,630) and exterior trim painting ($1,700). We kept busy doing trim and plaster demo, refinishing the porch floor and all original windows. Having boards over your windows for months is not fun by the way. :)

So after all that, along with materials, we spent $13,482.22 out of pocket in 2009. A far cry from our $60k just a year before. We were able to free a lot of that income up to pay off other debts (credit cards and a large car note).

We also attempted to refinance in 2009 as interest rates had plummeted 2% in only 6 months. Unfortunately because we had a second loan with Wells Fargo, we felt pressured to stick with them for “ease in subordinating the second mortgage” and rolling some into the first mortgage.

We were lucky that our appraisal came back high enough even with part of the house unfinished. Finally after 6 months(wtf!!!!) of Wells Fargo incompetence, we finally closed on a refinance saving 1.75%. Even with more closing costs, this turned out to be worth it. We cut $370.00 off our monthly payment, and would recoup those costs in 21 months (May 2011).

Refinancing

We still weren’t done yet, though. In 2010, our income took about a 15% hit, so we were even more intense on being frugal about the remainder of the work. The only major expense we hired out was refinishing our hardwood floors ($1,998) and some necessary additional lighting ($600). We restored all the original doors, trim and built-ins: sanding, staining and varnishing up a storm for months. We painted and did the million little projects that add up. Year end total out of pocket: $9,046.51. And with that, in October 2010, our interior remodel was FINALLY DONE!

The Breakdown

You may notice that our 2011 Mortgage Principal Repayment total is huge compared to previous years. That’s because now that the rest of our debt is paid off, we were able to attack our second mortgage of $26,000.00 and completely pay it off this month! Woohoo! Our only remaining debt is our First Mortgage, which is daunting, but not impossible as long as we keep plugging away at it on Dave Ramsey’s plan!

Looking back, we now see that with our fabulous income, with a little bit of patience, we could’ve cash flowed the whole project $50,000-$60,000 a year at a time, and still made significant progress. Probably still finishing in 2010 or this year at latest, but with NO ADDITIONAL MORTGAGE DEBT! And saved a ton in closing costs and no interest.

We were extremely fortunate to have steady jobs during this long project as well. It could’ve turned bad really fast, had that not been the case. Especially when we had the rest of our debt on top of our mortgage and the sharp decline in housing prices. Any blip in our income situation would’ve made it impossible to pay the crazy mortgage payment we got ourselves into.

Also in a worst case scenario, if we had to attempt to sell a half-gutted house, we may have been forced like so many others into a short-sale or foreclosure situation. Only by the grace of God were we saved from our own stupidity. The lesson: Don’t be like the pre-2007 version of us! At the risk of sounding preachy, debt free is the way to be!

Continuing with the last post, $257,000: The Rundown (Budget Part 1), where we detailed out what the project entailed. We first wrote about why we decided to be transparent with our remodeling costs in this post: Blogger’s Block. Now we are ready to share the full itemized list of how we ended up spending exactly $256,920.00.

To recap, in our case, we pretty much rebuilt the house entirely. Room by room, the entire interior of the house was gutted and rebuilt with all new systems and services from the street. In the process, the original woodwork was salvaged and restored including the doors and almost all of the windows. All that remains of the original are the bones: an almost-100-year-old foundation that we repaired, the original main floor framing/layout, and the exterior was left intact. A new roof capped it all off (literally). When you look at it that way, $257K doesn’t sound as insane to build a basically-new house with historical charm.

The $256,920.00 total was tallied by manually entering every remodel-related receipt into an excel spreadsheet and splitting purchases into categories. After all the receipts between March 2007-2011 were tallied, I went the extra mile and reconciled with our Quicken records to account for any lost receipts.

All told, the data entry effort probably took about 30-40 hours. And after all that, I’ve spent about 18 hours crafting this blog entry to show all of you. Fun way to spend Memorial Day weekend, right? :)

Pie Chart of Doom

Download the $256,920 Breakdown Pie Chart (PDF)

Using the figures below, you can hopefully get an idea of how much a similar project would cost. However, every project is different and every market is different.

The costs marked “Pro” relate to professional contractor charges between 2007-2010 in Portland, Oregon. Most of our professional work was completed in Phase 1 through a general contractor in 2008, which increased the mark-up.

The costs marked “DIY” relate to materials we purchased, but did the labor ourselves. We do not have sales tax in Oregon, so keep that in mind. Not to mention that since 2007, prices on the same items have likely risen with inflation.

Phase 1 (March 2007-July 2008) references the work run by our general contractor, Diamond Construction and Remodel: the dormer addition, staircases, master bedroom and bath addition, kitchen, main bathroom, and basement remodel. Phase 1 completed 2/3 of the house restoration.

Phase 2 (June 2009 – October 2010) references our main floor renovation, which we acted as our own general contractor and did much of the work ourselves: the living room, dining room, hallway, bedroom, and some exterior improvements. Phase 2 completed the last 1/3 of the house.

What is left? We expect to put a cedar fence ($2K DIY), paver patio ($2K DIY) and more detailed landscaping in the yard. We should also replace our front stoop and have it repoured at some point.

However, we are in no hurry to spend any more money on the house. Anything we do in the future would have to be for our own enjoyment. For instance, if we keep this house for several more years, we may consider removing the vinyl and restoring or residing the house. This would run around $10K DIY or $20K+ professionally, so we are definitely in NO HURRY to sink money into that, as we know we wouldn’t recoup the cost.

Asbestos Abatement

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Bathroom Fixtures

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Carpentry

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Closets

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Construction Loan Closing Costs

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Demolition and Disposal

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Doors

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Drywall

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Electrical

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Exterior

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Flooring

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Foundation

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Garage

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Gutters

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Hardware

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HVAC

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Insulation

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Kitchen Materials

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Landscaping

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Laundry

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Lighting

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Membership Fee

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Miscellaneous

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Painting, Interior

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Plans & Permits

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Pest Control

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Plumbing

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Roof

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Sewer

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Tile

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Tools

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Windows

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Wood Refinishing

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Next up, we’ll go into more detail on HOW we paid for all this work with insane construction loans, HELOCs, previous home sale proceeds, and lots of income and overtime…

As an effort to be more transparent about our utter financial stupidity in regards to our remodel, we’ve decided to post our budget of doom now that all the receipts have been tallied.

And yes, you read that right. TWO HUNDRED FIFTY SEVEN THOUSAND DOLLARS. If we knew we would essentially be writing a check for that the day we purchased the house, we would’ve ran screaming from the title closing office! And this doesn’t include the original mortgage!

Where did all our money go? Well for starters, I figured I’d give a rundown of what we did.

Our project included the following:

Foundation

• Repair and resurfacing
• Gutter system and sump pump around basement foundation
• New foundation under pantry (was originally a back-porch)

Systems Replacement

• New sewer from street*
• Upgraded electrical service from street
• New electrical throughout (incl. decommission old knob and tube)
• Upgraded water service from street
• New Plumbing throughout (3 baths, laundry, kitchen, and wet bar)
• Removal of old central chimney from roof to foundation
• Asbestos abatement on old furnace vents*
• New high-efficiency furnace and central air (incl. new ventilation system throughout)
• New high-speed internet, phone and cable wiring in all rooms (incl. bathrooms)

Full Basement Remodel

• Basement demo down to studs (incl. disposal fees)
• Large Bedroom (to egress requirements)
• Super-sized walk-in closet (our computer server room)
• Large Media/Family Room with wet bar hook-up
• Full Bath with New Jetted Tub, glass bowl sink and laundry hook-ups
• New washer and dryer
• Installation and purchase of slate and iridescent tiles for floor and tub surround in bath
• Utility Room/Workshop
• Storage closet (under stairs)
• New wood basement windows with historical muntins
• Recessed lighting and salvaged fixtures
• Insulation, Drywall and paint
• Door, hardware and trim refinishing/restoration (detailed below)
• Fan/Vent installation (bathroom and server room)

Kitchen

• Asbestos abatement of kitchen tile*
• Kitchen demo down to studs
• New Douglas Fir cabinets
• Installation and purchase of savaged backsplash field tile/Reproduction Art Nouveau backsplash tile
• New mid-grade stainless steel appliances
• New farmhouse-style sink
• New kashmir white granite counters (we picked a type that is reminiscent of marble but much cheaper)
• Fir floor refinishing and patching
• Conversion of old back porch to full pantry/nook area
• Installation of salvaged pantry fir flooring
• Pantry shelving system
• Installed and purchased new and salvaged light fixtures
• Insulation, Drywall and paint
• Fan/Vent installation
• Window, door, hardware and trim restoration (detailed below)

Dormer Addition

• Structural beams in kitchen and basement to support dormer weight to code
• Basement and Attic Staircase Demo (incl. large portion of roof removal)
• Full dormer addition to allow legal staircase access and add full master bath to attic
• New staircases from basement to kitchen and kitchen to attic
• Open pantry access
• New wood-clad windows with custom muntins to match original attic casement windows
• Salvaged stained glass window and french door added to attic landing
• Insulation, Drywall and paint
• Window, door, hardware and trim restoration (detailed below)

Attic/Master Remodel

• Demo down to studs (including chimney mentioned above)
• New full bath with clawfoot tub and double sinks
• Installed and purchased salvaged original lighting and added recessed lights
• Installation and purchase of carrara marble basketweave bath floor tile
• Refinished and patched original fir floor from chimney removal
• Added HVAC vent service to attic
• Installed plywood flooring to crawlspaces to create storage areas
• Insulation, Drywall and paint
• Window, door, hardware and trim restoration (detailed below)

Main Floor

• Removal of painted wallpaper (turned out to be unnecessary as we demo’d plaster later)
• Demo of Living Room, Dining Room, Hallway, 2 bedrooms and bath down to studs (not including built-ins which were left intact)*
• Installed and purchased salvaged period lighting for all rooms
• Insulation, Drywall and paint for all rooms/hall
• Refinishing of original oak and fir floors throughout
• Fireplace brick stripping and restoration
• Installation and purchase of fir wainscot for dining room surround
• Installation and purchase of picture rail and door crown to replace areas where it had been removed in the 1940s
• Window, door, hardware and trim refinishing/restoration (detailed below)

Main Floor Bath

• Main bath demo down to studs
• New Main bath with shower and pedestal sink
• Salvaged period and added reproduction lighting
• Installation and purchase of custom subway and hex tile for bath floor, shower and surround
• Insulation, Drywall and paint
• Fan/vent installation
• Window, door, hardware and trim restoration (detailed below)

Wood Refinishing

• Salvaged doors and extra trim for use in new attic and basement remodel where possible, and purchasing new hemlock and douglas fir elsewhere
• Stripped and refinished of original built-ins
• Stripped and refinished all original trim throughout house
• Stripped, repaired, reglazed and refinished all original windows in main floor and attic
• Stripped and refinished all original doors and purchased salvaged doors where needed

Exterior

• New roof and sheeting (it was a full tear off down to studs)
• Stripped and refinished porch plank flooring
• Stripped and repainted porch beams, ceiling and trim
• Stripped and repainted window trim
• Minor landscaping and pruning (still plenty more to do)
• Painted garage and new dormer to match house
• Stripped and repainted front stoop

*Unexpected need and not in original plan

In the next post, $257,000: Cost Breakdown (Budget Part 2), I’ll go into specifics on how much we spent on each category, complete with fun pie charts. Oh my!

A month or so ago, I finally tabulated our total expenditures on this 3+ year project. The results, although shocking, were not that surprising.

I don’t feel I’ve done visitors justice on being fiscally responsible taking on house restorations of a similar scale. I know that’s not my responsibility, but I think that houseblogs sometimes glamorize the excess because the “end will justify the means, right?”

Our grand total is ridiculous. I know it could’ve been much worse if we hadn’t staunched the wound when the recession hit hard. After already committing to ridiculous mortgages, a little too late, we jumped on the Dave Ramsey plan, and we forced ourselves to manage every dollar with an iron fist. Since 2009 we did much of the remaining work ourselves or found rock-bottom-priced contractors that were just happy for the work.

Now that our fun playing house restorationist days are essentially behind us (except landscaping… ugh!), and a huge mortgage is in front of us, I cannot say that it was worth it. Even worse, it’s work every day to remind myself that it’s finally time to enjoy it.

Yes, we can “afford” the mortgage payment, but only if our jobs remain steady. That said, moving on with our lives with having children or doing foreign travel with this mortgage is not as feasible. As I type, houses nearby are listed well below what we could sell for and aren’t.

It doesn’t seem worth it after all those long days, nights and weekends of sacrifice. I spoke with a fellow houseblogger who said it best:

“I resent all of the vacations we haven’t taken and parties we haven’t thrown and stress we’ve endured to get this far, and for what, really?” — Stephanie from the aptly titled, Bungalow Insanity.

I totally agree with her! Yes, restored homes are indeed beautiful, but come at the expense of activities that probably should’ve been more important in the grand scheme of things. We only see that now that we are out of the remodeler’s high of infinite possibilities. Sure, I can repaint… or stencil, but who really cares except me? I have no doubts that a future owner will just paint over it. It seems like such a waste of time if we won’t live here long enough to enjoy it.

So when people contact me excited about the possibilities of buying a fixer, my apologies if I’m less than enthusiastic. Don’t get me wrong, I think historical homes should be saved. But it cannot be entered into lightly as it was pre-recession in the flipping boon with just the knowledge gleaned from HGTV, a few books and blogs. In other words: exactly what we did, to our own detriment. Novices in this world seem to land somewhere on the scale from WTF remudding to mediocre DIY all the way upto insane purist-eco/greenwashed-top-of-the-line everything.

For those, independently wealthy, I say go for it… with the caveat: don’t complain after the remodeler’s high wears off that you’ve exhausted your savings, can’t move because you can’t recoup the investment, can’t afford to travel, etc. now that the project is all wrapped up. I say this as the absolutely HYPOCRITE of these matters! We learned the hard way on almost everything, especially this lesson.

So should I keep blogging, I’m not quite sure. Instead I feel more like I’m encouraging bad behaviour.

Now back to the regularly scheduled programming…

On a recent trip to Phoenix, I helped my mother clean out her storage shed. I found several of my late grandmother’s items during the search. Among those, I found several vintage paperback pamplet-sized cookbooks stored in an old plastic bag. Of those, one in particular caught my eye:

We sold a similar vintage Hotpoint stove before our remodel. Sometimes I miss it, but although it was very cute, it wasn’t very functional for our lifestyle (it only had one really narrow oven, the rest was storage. A local Portlander purchased it and it has a new home in a true vintage kitchen nearby.

I know several housebloggers have vintage stoves that might enjoy a quick peek inside the Monarch manual.

This particular Monarch stove was long gone by the time I was born, and strangely of the family photos I have, there are no photos of the stove. I do love this photo of my Grandmother on my mother’s birthday with her siblings. Happy Mother’s Day Mom and Grandma, I miss you!

Inspired by McDonalds

Starting out with a tame one… this house is near one of my favorite cafes and it makes me cringe every time. The over-sized profile aluminum siding really goes well with mustard trim. Add one of my biggest hates in safe neighborhoods: fugly metal security doors.

Mellow Yellow

It’s hard to represent the scale of this vinyl-covered wonder. The siding choice and color makes this grand home look very sad. Even the porch beams were given the “touch of class” that only bad vinyl can give. On the upside though, they did take the time to cut the vinyl around the window trim and other elements instead of removing them which is often done. Also the vinyl is likely protecting the original siding, so there is hope for this big guy someday. However, metal window awnings have serve no purpose except look cheesy.

Green Migraine

There are lots of assets that a house can have, but being able to see it from a mile down the road is not one of them. My phone camera does not seem to be able to capture the true-to-life shade of this bad boy. Regardless, I think you would agree that Web-Bright Cyan and Christmas Tree Green don’t exactly blend together gracefully. As I’ve said before with exterior colors, at least they are changeable, so this home’s abomination status may not be permanent. I did notice a “Hippies Live Here” sign in the front window, though, so I’m not getting my hopes up.

Epic Turret!!!!!!!!

OMG, if this wasn’t so poorly executed, I would think this house is totally rad, because OMG TURRET. (I have a thing for houses with turrets.) :) There are several elements when put together that confuse me, though. #1) The combination of siding choices… metal with hardiplank in shades of Eggplant and Slate Blue. #2) Rustic doors and medieval lanterns… could look really cool on an old Tudor, not on a big purple box. #3) Cheap white vinyl windows with faux grids and the white garage door. The whole house sticks out like a sore thumb, but there is something uniquely “Portlandia” about it, so I ain’t mad at it. C+ for effort.

Nausea, Heartburn, Indigestion…

Local Portlanders probably recognize this beauty from gawking at it on Glisan. Up close, its worse than you can imagine. The windows and garage show that its likely that the insides are stuffed to the brim with crap. I have a feeling that this is a real life Hoarders situation. Regular readers of the blog also know of our hatred for large quantities of Pepto-Bismol pink paint on anything, so featuring this house as an abomination was a no-brainer.

WE HAVE A WINNER!!!!!

Although I’m not running a competition for the worse abomination in Portland, this one wins hands down. If you zoom in close, you will see that YES, that is a toilet mounted on the dead stump. The toilet is smartly accented with a squatting statue, skull and scare-owl. It’s also obvious that these homeowners must be UofO Duck fans that or Green Bay Packers, so they get points for team spirit. No simple banner will do. Paint the whole damn house team colors! Now I need to find an OSU Beavers house! Challenge accepted, crazy toilet-duck house!

Monsters Inc.

I know I’m featuring house abominations, but from looking around for landscape ideas, I’ve been catching some great yard abominations. If you zoom in to the original, you’ll find some great treats.

As always, I welcome nominations. Even better if you take some shots and send them to me, with credits/linkbacks of course.

Big Red

The photo doesn’t do this house justice in person. Even with dark shades on, the color burns out your retinas. I think it may have been a traditional foursquare, but its been hacked and stucco’d over beyond all recognition.

Baby Shutters

Where to start? I hate decorative shutters in general, especially when mounted outside of the frame and unusable, but these were taken to a whole other level. Don’t even get me started on the vertical siding or the replacement shiny brass leaded glass front door.

Neopolitan Nightmare

This house takes the cake, literally. :) Poor color combination choice is not a completely unforgivable offense, because it can be changed. However, I’m not thrilled that they painted over brick and the original block. Even the chimney is pistachio green! The vinyl on the second story also makes no sense.

As an aside, the first time I passed this house and looked up into the second story window, I swear I saw a ghost. It was probably just a guy in a hazmat suit, but it kind of freaked me out.

WTF?!

Another poor foursquare that was probably nice in its prime, but has been completely hacked apart beyond all recognition. I expect an early 1990s dream inside as well as evidenced by the two massive windows that encroach on the second floor. There is no hope for this one. My vote: demolish ASAP.

Jetson Cottage

I wish I could see where they were going with this one. Looks like a architecture school drop-out had a bit too much fun. I have to admit, the upstairs room is probably cool from the inside, but the exterior execution just isn’t working for me. The strange log fence really seals the deal, doesn’t it?

Porch Pretty

This is another house that could be redeemed of the owner’s poor judgement on the porch. Plexiglass windows? Sometimes creativity should be stifled.

Do you know have photos of any house abominations? I’d love to see them and share in a future edition.

Since we don’t own a 360-degree camera robot that real estate agents pay for access to, we had to look for some cool DIY solutions. The best tour was made with Microsoft PhotoSynth compiled from 280 different photos. You will need Microsoft Silverlight installed to view this type of tour, but it really is very cool with the level of movement around the rooms and the ability to zoom in and view the tour in full screen. It’s kind of trippy!

We also made some simple flash tours, which are a bit more than a 180-degree panorama. These were more complicated to create and they are still a bit rough as far as the stitching. They will have to do for those who don’t have access to download Microsoft Silverlight.

Living Room

Dining Room