Showing off a bit
Greetings All !
Sorry! I’ve been too busy at work lately to get around to posting this tidbit of news:
Last Thursday, the Independence Examiner (local newspaper) published some nice info about our house in their “Welcome Home” section! This is a weekly “magazine” that gets inserted into the paper every Thursday. I think they’ve been running it for a little over a year now.
Anyways, we made the COVER PHOTO / COVER STORY !!
And what’s nice is, the Examiner has posted the entire magazine for download online:
http://examiner.net/mdRealEstate/images/pdf/WH012408.pdf
If that link no longer works, I’ve put a copy onto this website as well:
http://www.myoldhouse.com/WH012408.pdf
Now, I do have a few small criticisms of the article. The reporter asked me if there were any mistakes in it, I emailed her back several corrections, she said she’d make them, but she never did:
1) Any references to “Greek revival style” are incorrect. That should have been “Colonial Revival style”. I originally thought it was Greek too. You know, you see those pillars at the front of our house and you think Greek Temple. But I’ve been corrected by historic preservationists about that.
2) I’m concerned that folks may come away thinking we had to do TONS of work on the interior of this house, since we bought it three years ago. That’s not true. While there are a lot of things that NEED to be done, we focused more on the exterior. The interior walls look pretty much they way they were when we bought the house (except for the paint color in several rooms).
Now, that said, it IS true that when I made an initial TOUR of the home, I ended up storming out saying “No way, not in a million years!” There were huge, obvious water stains running down the northwest corner soffit, plus you could see spray-foam applied in an attempt to fix it in the attic. Plus, spray foam was also at several other points in the attic ceiling / roof. And the previous owner even used spray-foam to fill in cracks in the exterior rock at the front of the house (instead of using mortar)!!
I could not BELIEVE that anybody would LET us tour the house with those huge water stains going down the side of it.
My wife convinced me to come back and look at it again, two weeks later. The owner had PAINTED OVER THE STAINS with an almost-matching color of paint.
Eventually, the house’s interior did sort of “grow on me”. And I figured I’d just throw a good chunk of money at a very good building inspector and see what he had to say about the place.
3) I was also disappointed that no mention was made of the fact that we’re currently in the middle of the application-review process for getting our house declared and zoned to be a Local Historic Landmark.
4) Maybe I’m nit-picking here. She wrote:
I think she was confusing statements I made about the second-floor sleeping porch on the rear of the house with the roof.
The roof was the first thing that IMMEDIATELY needed to be repaired about this house! It was sagging! It was leaking! We had to have them “shore it up”, by sistering new beams with the attic rafters, just so you could have a couple guys stand on the roof safely, so that they might start replacing the shingles!
(Not to mention the house is 102 years old, not 115. Pick nit, pick nit!)
The sleeping porch, however, was what our inspector, Norm Clark ( http://www.nspec.com/) said was probably in the best condition of any sleeping porches he had seen in his years as an inspector!
OK, enough nit-picking.
The day that the article came out, Wendy Shay from the city’s Community Development Department sent me an application for a set of awards that the City of Independence gives out every May. May is “Historic Preservation Month” here…and that’s when they give out their Historic Preservation awards. Wendy encouraged me to apply.
I’m sure I’m facing huge, stiff competition here. But I’m particularly proud of the exterior renovation project that was completed last year! So, I’m going to apply, based on that. I think it would be great if the painter-carpenters and the historic color-scheme consultant get some kudos for the terrific advice and job they did! After all, my wife and I are “dummies” at this stuff! Oh, we have a sense for what’s old and what’s original and what’s in the best interests of preserving the house. But we had no idea what lay under that old asbestos siding!! The house looked like a typical old white squarish lump of a farm-house, fer-cryin’-out-loud!
So, I’m going to try to get my application in next month for that. I need to gather some photos, type up some paperwork, etc.
I also need LETTERS OF RECOMMENDATION from friends, neighbors, and area organizations, if possible! That might help support our application. (It’s mentioned on the form.)
So, if you believe that our exterior renovation project may have inspired some people around here or really helped improve the image of our neighborhood, could you please type up some short letter to that effect and get it to me before the last week of February?
Figured it wouldn’t hurt to ask. In these days of desktop publishing, that’d be maybe 15 minutes of work for somebody who can type at a decent speed.
Thanks!
David Raasch
David,
We live not far from you in the Old Northeast and also have a foursquare, though ours is Craftsman inside, not Colonial Revival. We need to have the kitchen remodeled and I saw that you rated your kitchen contractor’s services pretty low. Knowing what you know now, who would you have gone with instead (if you have anyone in mind)? I’m very nervous about hiring a contractor that might not work out, since we don’t have much money to spend.
Thanks,
Janice
Comment by Janice Lee — 5/3/2009 @ 5:55 pm
I’m afraid I haven’t researched another contractor (since that project) for something as big as our kitchen project was.
We just finished working with a local guy to have our garage exterior replaced. (I have to take photos for uploading here later today.) I know he has a network of subcontractors that he farms-out to for things he isn’t skilled in.
And we’re probably going to work with this same guy for our second floor bathroom. But if you asked me today if I’d be comfortable with using him for a full kitchen remodel, I’m just not sure yet. I kind of like this “trial run” thing we’ve done with the garage. It was a fairly UN-complicated project. He did a good job. Did what he said he was going to do. There were no cost overruns. Everything went smoothly (except, one could argue, for the weather).
His name is Mike Butler and his business is called “Inviting Spaces”. He and his wife, Denise, run the business together.
My reasons for hiring him:
1) I got a chance to see their house. When they bought it, it basically had been condemned. That’s how bad a shape it was in. But the inside of their house now looks wonderful!
2) I’ve had a chance to work with Mike and Denise on various grassroots neighborhood-building events and activities in the past few years. And they’ve impressed me as being honest and down-to-earth.
(If anybody reading this is interested in perhaps contacting Mike and Denise, you can call them at 816-674-6775.)
Yes, it was still a bit of a gamble. Because business and friendships sometimes don’t work together too well. But then, I thought about how my grandparents would have done the same thing years ago. Would they have hired a complete stranger? Maybe. But I think folks in the old days would have hired somebody either based on good-word-of-mouth…. or based on the fact that they knew the person and they knew them to be skilled and trust-worthy.
Now, that said, we chose our former kitchen contractor based on some good word-of-mouth too. But that wasn’t the only factor. I think we took too much faith in that company’s books and books of positive testimonial letters. And we didn’t take into account how OLD the good-word-of-mouth was! That was a key mistake! Our friends had used that company several years previously and, unknown to us, the company had been sold to somebody else in the years in-between!
We’ve been “mentally planning” that remodel to our second-floor bathroom. And I did have Mike take a look at that, as my initial plan was to have him do the next major step that is needed: repair the subfloor.
However, in recent weeks, it has become apparent to me that I need to really, really describe and draw in detail just what I want done in that room. And then, when we’ve got that ready and the money ready, then we’ll probably re-engage Mike to do a lot more than just replace the subfloor.
Ah, I’m with you regarding having little money to spend. We actually did the garage entirely on credit cards, since our balances were down below $1500. (We have no car payments, but then our cars are getting quite “long in the tooth”.) The garage NEEDED to be fixed. It had to be done. Now, where money is going to come from for the bathroom remodel (and at least one “new” used car), I have NO IDEA.
Thanks for your question! We have friends in Old Northeast and it’s good to hear what’s going on over there! (Wish the local meat market still received the “Northeast News”!)
Thanks!
-= Dave =-
Comment by Admin — 5/4/2009 @ 8:55 am