Reuse. Rehabilitate. Restore. Architectural salvage and repurposed pieces for the home.
We’re seeing a light at the end of the tunnel with this porch rebuild. Look!
Above is the porch prior to demo. We were going to put balusters instead of shingles, but we’re sticking with the original design.
It was taken down to the foundation. We had plywood flooring for 2 years.
Look! Rotted columns repaired! It was being held up by 2×6’s for the longest time.
Look! Interior framing done and columns back up!
Look! Gorgeous floor and wainscoting!
I shot two impressive homes on Monday. What are the chances of that? A Spanish villa inspired (realtor says English) stone house in Beacon and a sweet Victorian in Poughkeepsie.
The “Under the Beacon Sun” house needs some work, but it looks soooooo worth it! My jaw dropped when I walked in. But then I was like “No. More. Renovations!” It’s listed at $299k.
The Poughkeepsie house is on a lovely block within walking distance to Main Street. The people living here have good taste, which doesn’t hurt. Don’t know the price yet, but last I heard, Poughkeepsie was less expensive than Beacon.
The dining room renovation was finished about two weeks ago, but I just grabbed some snappies of it yesterday. Last you checked in, the restoration looked something like this. And before that, even worse.
It’s kind of a non-event since we didn’t change anything drastically. It just needed a lot of repairs. The plaster. The wood. Even the light fixture needed to be rewired. We lived with all that for five years and only finished it for someone else.
The adjoining living room has been finished for quite some time, but the wood still needs sprucing up.
There is still something to do in every single room, but we’re getting there! We finally have more help. This weekend there will be 7 different people working on our house. Woo-hoo!
So, the broker finally came over to look at our Beacon house and tell us how much we stand to lose in this God awful market. Looks like we’ll list it at $399k even though we paid $385k and put (still putting) a shitload of work into it. What are ya gonna do? We’re motivated.
Everyone thinks their house is special and worth more than the realtor tells them. But we KNOW our house is special because it has a turret! That didn’t impress the broker all that much. He said the home has some nice period details, but the turret isn’t a major selling point.
Well, excuse me, but I beg to differ. Why? Because there’s an old home sucker born every minute. Take us, for instance. We looked at several houses before seeing this one. When we pulled into the driveway, my eyes teared up because it had a turret (We didn’t see any pictures beforehand as it wasn’t listed yet). We knew we were going to buy the house before we went inside. We toured around in a matter of minutes so we could quickly put in an offer. Did I mention we had been looking for months? I think six months, to be exact.
We overpaid. It didn’t appraise out. But we love our house. We think there are other folks out there who are jonesing for turrets just like we were.
$399k is not what we wanted, but it’s a fair price for the house. I’m really hoping buyers won’t try to get us down to much or I might cry again.
We got blasted with snow in Beacon last week. As if digging out for 4 hours, two days in a row isn’t bad enough, nearly the entire town lost power. The City of Beacon was under a State of Emergency, which has since been lifted.
Trees are down. Most of Main Street lost power. The post office was closed. Beacon Natural was giving away free melting ice cream. It might’ve been a fun adventure if I wasn’t stuck alone in my dark, cold house.
I did what any gal with a city pad would do….I got the hell outta there!
The roads had cleared enough by Saturday for the husband to come up from Brooklyn. Central Hudson was saying it could be mid-week before we got power. The house would only get colder. After one restless night of sleep, no shower for two days, and non stop shoveling with wet socks that I couldn’t dry, I was getting cranky. We assessed the situation and decided to take the pets and head down to Bed Stuy until power returns. Unfortunately, after several tries, the van wouldn’t start, so we squeezed the 6 cats and 2 dogs into my Rav 4.
It’s the third day since Beacon has lost power and most folks have lights and heat now. Not our house. Could be the light show I witnessed outside my window on Thursday night. The one that rivaled any at the planetarium. Or it could be that tree that came down in the road, perhaps taking some electrical wires with it.
I’m toasty warm and enjoying a sunny Brooklyn day. Pissed that we’re missed a few days of working on the house, but kinda happy we’re being forced to take a day off.
I just feel bad for my neighbors who decided to stick it. I would have endured, but the pets looked cold. Yeah, right.