Burglar Time

My dad's favorite game while I was growing up with Burger Time.  It's amazing.  You run across patties and lettuce and tomatoes to make, you guessed it, burgers.  All while being chased by salt and pepper.  It's kind of like real life, if... yeah, I can't make that work.  So let's just move on to the house, shall we?

During the inspection, we were told that the house is a death-trap.  No lie.  The combination of a breaker box that had been recalled due to "combusting and setting houses on fire" with the plethora of burglar bars (all with lost keys) securing the premises equaled certain death to the inspector.  These are things we had to remedy immediately or be prepared to perish in flames.  I chose the former.

They both turned out to be an easy fix.  The breaker box was a quick call to an Electrician I found on Yelp: Grayzer Electric.  He was friendly and asked me to send him the inspection report.  He came back with a quote the next day.  Easy to work with and his total cost was about half of what the inspector had thought it would be.  The best part: it only took one day.  

(Note: we were the only house on the street with burglar bars and we do not live in a bad neighborhood.  So we decided that they would come down.) The burglar bars required us to buy our first power tool at the house: a sawsall.  I think I'm in love.  In one afternoon, the house went from this:

To this:

Just by sawing off four little brackets on each window.

Yes, we still have a burglar bar'd front door as the actual door is hollow and that sh*t ain't safe.  Luckily, we have a key for that one, so it's less of a fire hazard.

We plan on painting the shutters black, coving over that metal scroll work (we'll try painting it black first) and tearing out that corner planter on the front porch.  Once we get a new front door, that also will be black.  There's a lot of landscaping we need to do to slope the yard (and potential water) away from the, but we'll leave that for winter when it's not a million degrees outside.

Go to Your Happy Place (Part One)

One gem of advice I got on how to have your relationship survive remodeling a house while living in it is: create an oasis of calm.  Get that room painted and clean and happy and set up so when everything else in the house is falling apart, you can grab the dog and hide out in the safety of your happy place.



The obvious choice was the master bed/bath, so we started there and tried to finish it before spending our first night at the new pad.

Let's revisit what the master suite looked like the day we took possession:

The door shown above is the door into the master bath.  That's the next stop on our lovely tour:

I think this must be how parents feel and look back at photos of their babies.  "She was so small!"  "I can't believe how much she's grown!" (enter other parental sayings here.)

Let's pretend that the master suite is Julia Roberts in Pretty Woman.  I wanted to make her go from this:

Would you want to sleep there?

To this:

Go ahead and put a ring on it.

Let's keep with this analogy.  I tore off all of the fabric - this meant the drapes (which we saved and now use as drop cloths), the shower curtains and the valence in the bathroom.  She got a good scrub down with a Mouse sander outfitted with a scrubbing pad and Clorox Cleaner:

Momma will be proud!

We also steam cleaned the carpet in the bedroom portion, scrubbed down the tub, washed the windows and the walls.  Everything was as spotless as it was going to get.

Then it was time to dress up that squeaky clean lady, I mean, suite.

Color.  I wanted a good neutral that would go with anything and we decided it'd be a good idea to paint both rooms the same for continuity and to help them both seem a little larger.

Enter Dolphin Fin.  

T was a little skeptical, but once we got it on the walls, we were both very happy:

This is probably the most accurate capture of the color.  A lovely, warm grey.

 This one shows the grey vs. the color that was previously on the walls and built ins.

And that is where I'll leave you for today.  Part two to come soon.

Won't You be My Neighbor?

House.  With a capital H.  I bought one.

Let's take a second, or an hour, to absorb that.  I probably should have by now as I closed on May 2nd and have been in it since the end of May.  But it's still so new and almost too big to absorb.

I.bought.a.house.

I am so very lucky to have been able to get into a house in the current Austin market.  I had put 5 offers in, each above asking, and got rejected thanks to those moving into the area with so much cash that they have nothing better to do than go all-in (in cash) and blow all the offers that required financing out of the water.  Luckily, my Realtor wanted to be my neighbor, so he got me into this house before it went on the market, so no competition.  Thank you, KG.

The house is in an interesting state.  I love it in all of its "I'm stuck in the 1950s and I'm proud of it" glory.  And by "love" I mean that I am feverishly changing 90% of the superficial aspects of it.  I'm a big fan of projects and before-and-afters, so this is a match made in house hunting heaven.

Let me show you what I'm working with in its pre-possession glory.

Burglar bars, pink shutters, weird squiggly tree flanking the right side... GLORIOUS.

The inside is complete with wood paneling, the original oven/stove in GE Woodtone brown and, last but not least, popcorn ceilings.  Like I said before, I love it.  It's in a great location, it's built really well, it has a floorplan that can work with a few adjustments and it's on a 1/3 acre lot.  Perfection.

I'll leave you with a few more pictures to finish the introductions:

Front door and foyer:

The front living room:

The middle living room looking into the blue room:

The middle living room looking into the kitchen:

The kitchen:

Looking from the kitchen to the back living room/office/dining room:

One side of the back room:

The pink (guest) bathroom:

Back bedroom:

Front bedroom:

Master bedroom:

Master bathroom:

Downstairs to the walkout basement:

Basement:

Basement Bathroom:

Garage:

She's quite the project house, ain't she?  I am honestly a little overwhelmed with the amount of space we have, but there is just so.much.potential.

First project's first... REMOVE THE DEATH TRAP BURGLAR BARS!