Entire House Repair

 The previous owners of this house were investors.  They bought the house for their son while he went to Penn.  He, of course, had housemates and they lived there for several years.  This was not a rental, but it was not an owner/occupied house.  I think this is a great investment for parents, but a terrible way to take care of a house.

The current owner wanted to make it his house, and it took a lot of work.  He refinished the floors and took out all of the baseboard heaters.  Then it was our job to make everything look great.

Before

After

Damage from old baseboard heater

After

There were 8 areas like the above that we repaired, plus the old paint was peeling everywhere.  Two of us spent 2 days repairing the walls before anything got painted.  We repaired just about every surface in this house and painted everything.  In the end, this was a very gratifying job.

New bathroom

This person gutted an entire house in the Society Hill section of Philadelphia.  It's a modest house of 1,800 square feet, and it's currently being finished by other contractors.  I am contracted to paint everything in March, but the owner did me a favor by asking me paint the bathroom before the plumbers finished their work.  Bathrooms are the hardest rooms in the house to paint.  No one likes squeezing in to paint behind a toilet or claw foot tub.  There could be many uncomfortable angles and spaces.  So, we were able to prime and paint an empty bathroom with brand new walls today.  It doesn't get much easier than this.

Surprise

This room was decorated in the 1970's with wood paneling and foam ceiling tiles.  Then a serious smoker lived there for decades.  The room was dark, filled with nicotine and tar stains, and seemed to be sloping towards the back of the house. 

Please excuse the fuzziness of this image.  The camera seemed to focus on dust on the lens.  I did not know until I downloaded it.  I'm sure you'll get the idea anyway. 

Our job was to take down the tiles, install drywall on the studs, and paint the entire room.  However, as soon as we took down the tiles, we got our surprise.  The ceiling framing was angled and attached only at the sides of the room, which was approximately 10.5' x 12.5'.  All of the beams were spanning 10' and were not attached anywhere except at the ends.  I could not attach drywall to studs that were not attached to the ceiling.

So, we took down the framing and saw that the paneling did not go to the ceiling.  The homeowner did not want to take down the paneling and the 50's wallpaper behind it, so we had to lower the ceiling.  To get it to take the weight of the drywall, we re-used some of the old framing and attached it to the existing ceiling studs.  This brought it down 1.5 inches, but it was still not enough in a few parts.  So, I put in larger crown molding.

After some heavy duty primer and 2 coats of paint, the room was completely transformed.  It's much brighter, more secure, and 6" higher.

After the Flood

This is the 3rd time these folks called me to do work in their house.  After Hurricane Irene in August 2011, they found that their basement bedroom carpet was kind of squishy.  So, they had someone remove the carpet, about 14" of studs and drywall, and the baseboards.

I came in to get their walls back in order.  They do the painting, so these pictures may not be as impressive as I want them to be.

Before

After

Before

After

 

 I don't know what is wrong with my camera.  For some reason the walls look darker in the after pictures.