We purchased the home on Halloween...October 31, 2018. We lived in Dallas at the time, so we drove to Rockmart every weekend (and some week nights) to work on the house. It was cold in this house! The exterior is three-layer brick and there is no insulation. So..we bundled up and pushed through!
One of the first things we did was remove the remaining porch. It was a safety hazard because it was not secured to the house. This video shows how my husband and brother-in-law creatively removed the last portion of the porch. We kept the columns to re-use on the new porch.
Unfortunately, the deck boards were rotted, so we had to remove them also. The concrete pad on the right side of the house was poured over the wood porch at some point and the wood porch had fallen underneath..so we had to remove that too. We hired a friend to help with breaking up the concrete.
The previous owner cleaned out a lot of the "stuff" in the house. We were left with the pieces from the front porch (huge columns, railing, plantation shutters, and a few pieces of furniture).
We carried it to the basement so we could work on the floors.
The front support beam that ran the length of the house (from the dining room across the foyer and front bedroom) was rotted. Instead of removing the flooring, we decided to prop up the floor and remove the beam and replace it with a new beam. Sounds easy..right?
We used a beam from a previous renovation (also 100 plus year old home) because the new wood is not like what they used 100 years ago! Notice the difference between the new wood and the old wood?
The floor in the front foyer was also damaged from termites. The house is 90% brick, but those termites always find that 10% of wood!
We removed the oak flooring, which we believe was installed in the late 40's or early 50's. This is the original pine floor that was under the oak. This was the subfloor. Once we removed the rotted floor, we replaced it with a thick plywood.
We did this same process in two other places. The back foyer and our master bedroom.
We ended up replacing this entire floor (in the master) because there was only a small portion that wasn't damaged.
We removed the wall cabinets in the kitchen and framed up a wall to add new cabinets. Don't worry...we saved the sink!
The exterior walls are brick so adding this framed wall will make it much easier to add cabinets. We will also bring the window up to allow room to add a cabinet here.
Hall bathroom was a challenge to demo! The tile was very difficult to remove.
There was an exterior door in the hall bathroom, leading to the back porch. We removed the door and added a window.
The bathroom floor had termite damage, so we replaced it.
The 3rd bedroom will be our master bathroom. This will make the house a 2/2. The rooms are big though.
We are not removing any existing walls in the house. Partly because they are plaster and lathe and because we want to keep the house as close to the original as possible. We did add this wall to make a closet for our washer and dryer and for our clothes.
Stay tuned! It starts to get good after this!
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