Now comes the other part of renovating. The electrical, the plumbing, the painting. Equally, if not more, important and certainly more expensive...but not particularly exciting. I've spent several days getting bids, and now it's time for the electricians and plumbers and painters to do their respective things.
The previous owner put in a large, new electrical breaker box outside, but there's still one of these fuse boxes in the hall closet, which will be replaced with its modern counterpart soon. I haven't seen glass fuses since I was a kid!
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| Fuse box in hall closet |
We need a plumber to check the water pressure and to install a garbage disposal and dishwasher and to revamp the icemaker hookup, which was done in an unusual janky way, to say the least. Nothing exciting to see here, folks. Painters will come out to put a fresh coat of Sherwin Williams Dover White on the walls. All the trim and built-ins are painted a creamy white, but the previous owners slapped a coat of bright white on the walls, I'm guessing just to clean it up for showing, so we're toning that down a bit.
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| sherwinwilliams.com |
Exciting or not, all these things are part of the process when you buy an old home. After all, the combined effect is what's important. As tedious as it is to schedule bids and work, in a couple of weeks we'll be happy with the results.
So cool Dana, you have an electric antique in the house. Maybe the former owner was too cheap to add a small sub-feed breaker box to replace the fuses. Nothing wrong with fuses except if one blows it may be difficult to find a ready replacement.
ReplyDeleteWe may end up keeping the electric antique for a while ourselves. The first bid we got yesterday on moving it outside was $2960. The previous owners installed a huge new breaker box outside that has a switch to turn off the fuse box inside. Everything electrical checked out well when we had the house inspected, andd everything is working well, so we may follow the age-old advice "If it ain't broke, don't fix it." The former owners left us an assortment of fuses, so for now, we're debating spending our money on other things...like replacing the 1970s era garage door opener, having the exterior trim painted, and having some repairs done to the original intercom system (which we anticipate costing a fortune).
DeleteMaybe not exciting, but definitely will improve how you live in the house - the dishwasher, anyway. I have a compost bin, so almost didn't put a garbage disposal back in my kitchen when I renovated last year, but got convinced to do so "for resale value." I am surprised that you include painting in this list - I probably would have put it on the "fun" list, were it me. Is that because you have a standard color of paint you always use? Or some other reason?
ReplyDeleteThe house has a dishwasher, but it's the loudest thing I've ever heard, and it looks like someone did a DIY dishwasher dye project, because it's all splotchy blue inside. My daughter's main request was a dishwasher that's practically silent, so a new one is going in any day now. We've always had a garbage disposal, and being without one is a real pain. Throwing table scraps in the trash is so messy. You know, I started to leave the painting off this post, because choosing colors is usually so much fun, but this is the second house we've painted white, and I find choosing the right white harder than any other paint color. I had been agonizing over finding a color that matched the existing trim. I absolutely couldn't decide. Thank goodness the paint company's estimator was able to show me the best one yesterday. I guess that's why I decided to put painting in this post. :)
DeleteI see the reason for the paint now. Sorry it was feeling more like a chore than fun, but at least it's done! (And I have a new dishwasher that I hardly notice. It's wonderful. No more waiting to turn it on until we're done watching TV or the guests have left, etc.)
DeleteI assume the roof is in good shape. I had my 1955 galvanized waste line replace as it was corroded inside, the opening was about half the original. How does the mailbox and house numbers look?
ReplyDeleteThe roof checked out fine in the inspection. Our water pressure is a little low in our showers, and the plumber told me it was probably because of build-up in the galvanized line, so that may be something we have to do eventually. I will say, however, that replacing our shower heads with Delta H2Okinetic products definitely made the water flow stronger. We haven't put up house numbers yet, and I'll be doing a post soon showing the new doors, porch lights, doorbell, and mailbox.
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