Monday, February 23, 2009

"Owning things" is the new "having fun."

Amy and I bought this place 3.5 years ago. I quickly found out how easy demolition is. We ripped out tons of dropped ceilings, carpeting, wood paneling, 2 walls and some other stuff.

I quickly found out how hard, expensive, time consuming, and knowledge based fixing things is. I also came to realize how many people are really good at doing things and are really nice and amazing people who love to help friends.

I literally would have NEVER EVER EVER gotten this done without the help of a few great people. Not that it is done, but it is really close.

Peter (aka 9er the whiner) did so much work for us it is unreal. He did all of this even after I didnt listen to him about taking the house down
to studs. This forced him to get really dusty a lot. What a good person.
Brody and I did our best hanging the drywall together.
Ed and Turner installed the floors. If anybody wants info on buying floors, contact me for his info. They are sick. 16" wide pine in 17' spans. Crazy unique. He is in the Pittsburgh area and I imagine it is a good deal on flooring. Turner was on xmas break and spent 12 hour days putting this stuff in around riding. Long days. He stayed at our house for like 3 days straight.

And the finishing touches were done by Amy's friend Matt. Matt is the type of dude that gets totally into a project and sees it until it is done to perfection. I am the exact opposite. He knows it, but deals with it.

Now some pictures. The "before" shots are after all the demo work and stuff. I will post the pics of when we bought the place, when it was a totally gross grandma looking house.














For like 2 years this room was separated by a narrow hallway and had no light (see the front door, it was that wide minus wood paneling on both sides. There was also a wall coming down the stairs (which are crazy steep cause of the high ceilings) which made it look even steeper and more narrow. That is gone as you can see from the last pic. For a few years this room stored lots of scrap materials, lots of plaster chunks and junk. I would come home from a snowy ride and lift my bike on top of it (it was like a 3 foot pile) and just roll it into the middle of the room.
Babik said it best... "from punk to pink"
Whatever, my mortgage is still 300/month.

10 comments:

David said...

nice work. I have some demo pics from our kitchen. kinda wish i had taken more before pics of the rest of the house:

http://bigbrit.blogspot.com/2008/03/so-finally-some-kitchen-updates.html

and http://bigbrit.blogspot.com/2008_04_01_archive.html

I love doing this shit tho, so let me know if you need any info or tools.

Gary said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Gary said...

hey guys, the place looks great! It probably helps that my crap isn't in the way anymore. I want to come see it soon.

Matthew Ruscigno said...

Who are you?
First no pb and now tiles and pink.
That 2/3 crisis is for real.

Anonymous said...

Looks good Steevo.

aaron said...

that paint went up quick! (at least quick for me)...congrats man...but keep it in check, or next thing you know you'll be buying coffee from local coffee shops that won't serve you unless you get a table.

Steve said...

Wow...looks REALLY nice!

Bedil

Spice said...

Ed really helped you??

steevo said...

NO NO. ... not that Ed.
Ed and Turner, you know Turner. His dad is Ed. He races too and is a rad guy. He is younger than blackie.

Other Ed might give me color choices for drapes or something.. cause .. you know

Anonymous said...

VERY impressive. HGTV would be proud. You would know what that was if you had cable (or for that matter had heard of TV before) Mortgage is AWESOME too