The Ugly Duckling is Turning Into A Swan

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Here’s the second installment of PJ’s mondo-Baltimore City rehab.  At just under a few weeks into the rehab you can see we have the place gutted, and framed.  You’ll also notice that we waterproofed the basement which as I understand, Baltimore City is requiring for all new rehabs whose scope includes a full-finished basement.

REAL ESTATE INVESTING TIP: Beware, if you plan to gut a house and finish the basement in Baltimore City, you may be required to waterproof.  Listen, waterproofing is a plumbing job.  A lot of plumbers don’t like to do it however, because its dirty grunt work.  You have to bust up the concrete slab, and excavate a trench of about 7 inches wide and 12 or so inches deep.  That my friends makes a BIG PILE of mess.  Once that’s complete, the job is pretty simple.  The plumber will drop in a plastic corrugated pipe and you route that to a sump pump.  Cover it all over with some gravel, then fresh cement and viola’ your done.  Seriously, the costs of the material for a job like this is less than $300-bucks.  But the labor is ROUGH!  That’s why we have a $10/hour guy break up the floor and haul the debris.  Then once the plumber is done, we bring the $10 guy back to cover up the plumber’s work.

Check out the video.

At this point we are post-demo, and we’re well into framing.  We’ve pretty much busted out most of the interior walls, added new support beams, and we’ve busted up two bedrooms and made them into one grand master bedroom complete with its own master bath.  We also took away from the over-sized landing at the top of the steps to add space to the otherwise tiny main bath.  We framed in a pantry, a 1/2 bath, and a laundry room on the main level just beyond the kitchen, and we added some nice arched entrances into the living room and dining area.  The kitchen is immense and will have a sit-at breakfast bar for three to four – in addition to an adjacent dining room.  The house is really starting to take on a much more modern and open layout.

Click on the picture below for more pics of our progress.  Enjoy

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C’mon you’ve got to admit, this is already an amazing transformation, and we haven’t even hung one piece of drywall.  This ain’t just lipstick on a pig – this is an extreme-makeover!  We’re about 3.5 weeks into putting this house back together.

For the first installment of this rehab go here:  5204 Wesley Rd – Part 1

How about that new dormer and front porch?  Both are 100% rebuilt.  Nothing was salvageable.  Just about the only the only things we saved in this house were the roof joists, the exterior walls, some interior studs and the floor joists.

The second floor of this house has been totally transformed, from basically an attic to a REAL floor with two nice bedrooms, and a spacious full bathroom.  To make the transformation, my student Joann opted for a much larger dormer to create the bath space.  The bathroom ceiling will be vaulted to create an even bigger feel.  We also rolled backed the walls 16 inches to create more space in the dormer bedrooms .  And most important, we created more ceiling height by raising the ceiling trusses by about a foot.  It doesn’t feel like a cavern anymore.

CHECK THE PICS!

The first four photos of the set below are essentially exterior shots of the new porch, new roof, and new dormer.

The next four photos show the first floor framing and how we’ve opened up the first floor to create a more modern feel and functionality.

The next 9 pictures are of the second floor framing.  There you will see all that we’ve done to create the great new space that is the 2nd floor.

The final four pictures are pretty cool.  I’m often asked, “What do you do with uneven floors that are often found in old houses that have settled over time?”

The answer – We jack up the floors and make them even again.  When you’re doing a full-gut rehab, this is a very easy task.  If however you are doing a rehab where you are not removing all the plaster or sheetrock, plan on doing some serious wall repair if you jack up the floors.  Look closely at the final few pictures and you’ll see that we used blocks of treated lumber to bring these floors up 1-3 inches in some spots.  Pretty cool.

Even better – look at the last two pictures.  That should give you some indication as to why the floors were so uneven.  This is one of two rotted columns trying desperately to hold up up the main beam in the basement.  To give you an idea of how bad each column was – my contractor needed only a good kick with his boot to remove them!

Not shown in all the pictures is the new electric, plumbing and HVAC.  Today, we’re waiting on rough inspections.  Once we get the green light from Baltimore City, we’ll insulate and start hanging drywall.

So, that’s it for now.  I’ll have a lot more to show you in about a week.

Click for all the latest pics!

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