Ho hum, not much new to report… except that work is finally beginning on our house!
I had just about given up on ever hearing back from Mike. I last spoke to him in January, I think, when he gave me an estimate to rewire the house. Then I asked him to coordinate the entire renovation, and I’ve been waiting for a quote ever since. I was collecting numbers for other contractors and was planning to call them this week.
But then, yesterday morning at 6:30 AM, Mike calls, and he sends Mark the carpenter by, and the next thing I know there’s a big load of lumber and a table saw in our house.
I think he’s sending a crew to finish the demolition today. I did most of the gutting myself back in October, but I didn’t touch the ceilings and there’s lots of little things that I didn’t take care of.
Mike may be disorganized, but he’s a friend and I know he won’t try to screw me or do a half-assed job. At least I think he won’t. Please?
And now I have to make a decision about all those windows. We have 15 windows (damn that’s a lot) on the lower floor of our house, all of which were flooded, and I have to decide whether to refurbish or replace…
That’s a big one to decide B. It really all depends on the style and age of the windows. I don’t know when your house was built, but if it was b4 1950, I would try to save them, if you trust the carpenter. A lot of window manufacturers will rebuild windows as well. If it was built after 50, I would just replace. Thats my 2 cents for ya.
Contrats on the news. Maybe you’ll finally have a full house again soon!
Our house is something like 85-100 years old. I’m not really sure exactly. But this is just the basement. The upstairs is still intact. Those old windows are drafty and they rattle. It would probably be more expensive to refurbish them…. I just don’t know. I’m worried I’ll get vinyl windows and hate them. But they would be energy-efficient. Argh.
If the windows are the “old style” multipane rolled glass, you should refurbish for sure! But if you have plain old dual hung windows, it wouldn’t hurt to slap in some vinyl windows.
Character is very important in a house (this coming from building them) with that old of a house, you should keep the old as long as possible. I understand the costs are more, but so are the payoffs.
If you can imagine an old 3 story farmhouse with vinyl siding and “new” vinyl windows……..All of the charm is covered up essentially.
From what I’ve seen of your house through pics and rox, it is very charming and I for one, would not want to lose it.
Sorry for whoring your blog man.
Lee
Look into whether or not you can take a tax break for replacing with energy-efficient windows…
Ed Vielmetti put me onto your Flickr photostream. It’s great to see photos of the city taken form the prespective of a resident, rather than a journalist.
Thanks for chatting. Very cool that you put your cell phone number on your blog. I do the same. It’s funny who’ll call you out of the blue.
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