Home Improvment H E DoubleHockeySticks
By earthsong
@earthsong (589)
United States
January 29, 2007 8:35pm CST
About 9 months ago we moved from a 960 sq ft mobile home to a 2500 sq ft, two-story, 100 year old farm house. We did a lot of minor (and some not-so minor) home improvement on the mobile home, and my hubby always complained that if we had a house things would be more standard sized, things would be easier to repair or replace... you get the picture.
Well, its tax time and we decided to start some minor jobs we could do in a day or two. Let me just say that just because its an actual brick and mortar house, and not a mobile home, there is no law saying things will be standard or easy.
Our first project is an actual door on our bedroom. Our house had 4 conforming bedrooms and one non-conforming bedroom. Our goal, make it a conforming bedroom so in the distant future, when we sell, we can sell it as a five bedroom. After taking off the old trim, tearing out a 2x4 and trimming back the drywall so our doorway is a standard 36x80 again, we run to the local home improvement store and buy a door, a knob, nails and new trim. Guess what. No, the doorway is NOT standard. Now, far be it from me to say that maybe my hubby didn't measure 100% correctly. So what does he do? He trims the door and frame down to the appropriate height, complaining the whole time. "Why can't anything just be standard?" "Why do I start these d$%m projects?" "Next time we are hiring a carpenter!"
Goddess help me, he wants to put new stone tile flooring down in the kitchen next weekend!
1 person likes this
1 response
@lifeiseasy (2292)
• United States
30 Jan 07
Sounds like tons of fun ... unfornately in house that old he is going to find that all the trim ,doorway sizes windows just about everything will be different than todays sizes...also the width of the boards and trim will be different...het it all good though...as for the tile floors he might want to think about laying 3/4 inch plywood screwed down before starting as the floors may be very unlevel ...but you will get through all this and look back and say "what a beauiful home we have made" !!!!
@earthsong (589)
• United States
30 Jan 07
I've been wondering about that. There is one spot that is very definitely uneven. I know the house was split into a duplex for a while, then made into a single family home again. There are weird spots and walls, places where you can tell something was taken out or that wasn't original.
I really hate to cover the wood floor in there, its the original wooden slat flooring. But its had nearly 100 years of mistreatment and misuse, we already consulted a friend who does floors for a living, he said it would cost more to restore it than to cover it up. How sad.
