Hiding convection heaters in home staging
foreignlady (5b - Montreal area)
7 years ago
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aprilneverends
7 years ago
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7 years agoRelated Discussions
Purchasing a home with 45 year old appliances
Comments (68)Thanks for the ideas. Yes that is what I need to do except we went and looked at that house again and it has not been kept up with, and has mold in the basement now, with the plants along the house shriveled up we can see cracks in the foundation and I requested that the water be turned on so we could check that that works, toilets,etc. but they didn't have it on. The plumber was there and did winterize it but they still have it for sale.How can you buy a house when the water and gas aren't even on? They knew we were close to getting our sold because my relator told their relator the other day, then today they winterize?Seems they are hiding something as the water has never been turned on anytime we have walked thru that house. Plus we know the water heater was leaking and there was water all over the basement floor too. That is probably why the water was off but sheesh you know!! If you want to sell your house you fix what has to be fixed so you can show it. Now we have our house sold and no house to buy. Nothing on the market we want. How did this happen... Got to find a place but winter is upon us and our closing is Dec 5. Whoa is me. Will keep you posted. There is a very nice house going on the auction block and it looks very nice but I bet it will go for more than we have to pay. We want to be mortgage free totally. But the taxes there are high too so this tax info will help with this house. Going to get a hold of the courthouse this week. Auction is Nov 9....See Morehouse from hell...new home purchase saga
Comments (26)It does sound like you have had more than your share of problems with your house. It is not always first houses where this happens, either. We were not in our first house very long before exDH was transferred out of state, but our second house had a few problems. I was giving the dog a bath in the front bathroom when I heard water running under the house. Turns out the drain pipe from this tub emptied into the crawlspace through a big hole in the trap! We later learned that the huge floor furnaces were still hooked up to the gas lines - even though the floor furnaces were now under carpet and padding and we had central heat. My next house was a fixer-upper. I knew that going in. I was single by then. I had an inspection done on the house and some of the faults were pointed out to me - the rotten windowsills and bad gutters, the original gravity furnace with asbestos ducts. I had the furnace replaced before moving in. In cleaning the bathroom, I learned that the shower enclosure was not firmly attached to the walls, and behind it it was very moldy. I pulled it down myself and then had to hire someone to sister new boards into rotten wall framing, kill the mold, and put new walls in the tub surround. I used a cheap wall board as a finish product there because I could not afford ceramic tile at the time. This was all before I moved in. Some of the more obvious problems were noted in the city inspection done before the sale, and the sellers were required to have them fixed. The drip-edge molding where the sill met the foundation was gone, and the fascia boards at the foundation were rotten. They were replaced before the sale. My home inspector said the roof was new. He was right. The shingles were all new, but they were laid on top of the bare roof deck on the back side of the house and on top of two older layers of shingles on the front side of the house. The flashing in the back leaked. We did not find out about that for a few years. I knew the gutters were bad, but not until it rained did I learn that the holes in the gutter were mostly above the front porch. The original concrete porch had been removed at some point and a big wooden porch put on. I did not realize that the old concrete porch was not under the wooden one, or that the concrete porch had been the roof of the root cellar. So when it rained, the gutters leaked onto the porch, where the rain flowed down into the root cellar in the basement, across the basement floor, and into the basement drain! I think it was two years before we (I had remarried) had the money for a new porch. Next we got windows and doors, the year after the porch. The back door going from the garage to the back yard had a crack in it big enough to let the snow in. The window sills on one side of the home were rotted (which I knew going in), and when the new windows were installed, we were able to have the contractor fix the rotted wood in the outer walls there, too. I had some boric acid put into the wall before he closed it up, to kill the carpenter ants there. It helped, but we still saw occasional ants for years. Once the old dying apple tree out back was removed, the ants were gone on that side of the house. I had to replace some rotting wood on the garage before they left for good. I went into this house knowing about some of these problems. My home inspector was really pretty useless in finding these other problems. I have never had a home inspector be THAT helpful with a house. We took about five years to get the house structurally sound, watertight, and comfortable. Our house was 50 years old, though, and I know you did not expect your problems with your newer house. The thing I learned hanging out at the Building a Home and Buying and Selling forums is that the building industry hires people who do not know what they are doing. A ten year-old house should not have the problems yours did, but sometimes they do. If the guy who installed your door knew nothing about proper flashing, it would all rot out, just as you saw. Housekeeping is right in the reply above about not having to fix everything right away. I was up nights worried about the proper sequence for fixing things. It is no fun at all to have more projects to do on your house than you can do or can afford. Eventually, though, you get things done and you begin to like the house. Keep focused on what you liked about it in the first place. Even buyers of new houses have some of these problems. There is one poster on Building a Home who had to have her unfinished home demolished because it rotted to the point of being unfix-able before she even moved in. Just looking at things, no one would ever know to expect these problems. And the home inspectors really don't do enough to ferret them out. You CAN't see some of these problems without tearing off molding or getting into walls. Talk to a lawyer if you want to think about suing. Watch DYI network and subscribe to Handyman magazine. You will learn a lot, I did. We ended up loving our house. I hope you get that back with yours, too....See MoreHow Best to use KD @ This Stage
Comments (33)Oh for sure, for sure mock it all up. I have pictures of my husband sanding our vanity drawers underneath a paper arched doorway. We piled boxes everywhere to represent the pantry and base cabinets, kinda like building a fort. And I kept the box our trash can came in for months because it was roughly the same size as an upper. That thing got taped up on nearly every wall in the kitchen. I would also suggest moving your little table to the living room for a bit to see if you hate the idea as much in practice. I would amend the plan comparison list to say that, like the drawers, it's less about the total counter lengths than how it is distributed. Even without the flip-up counter in mine, you get two wide swatches of counter (42" and 36") to work on. Anything less than 30" is not really useful as a work space -- just as a landing zone -- because it is less wide than a human body. In the OP, you have just one true work space that is 30-36" (depending on the size of the dishwasher), and no other swatch of counter is wide enough to work on. I know you don't cook, but even assembling a simple salad requires some space to spread out your ingredients, to chop, and to mix. Right now, you have a big stretch of counter on the peninsula, and you are going to lose that. I am not saying add back the peninsula because I don't think it is good in the space, but do block off all your counter work space except 30-36" for a week and see how if you can live with that plan. For sure, I could not. This is why I suggested running the microwave wall counter through the pantry in the OP and a flat glass cooktop that can double as a counter. I like very much how open and simple and clean the OP layout is, but I dunno that you will have real space to DO anything with the plan as it is. That lack of counter would bug me everyday. It's the thing that has kept your kitchen rolling around in my head, thinking there must be a better solution. The other concerns I had about the OP are really much more minor and the type of trade-offs we all have to decide to live with in our kitchens, but with counter space issue, it started to seem like a long list of things that could be better. Like the long-ish walk between the two sides of the wide galley is un-ideal. The way the sink wall cabinets just cut off randomly on their way to the front door without dying into a wall or other natural stopping pointing, so when you enter the home, your view straight ahead would be of the floating sides of an upper and lower, just hanging out there. The table placement on the end of that cabinet run also seems a bit random and after-thought-y, and the table there would be an obstacle that you have to walk around. The bottom three stairs also stick out kind of randomly and are an obstacle you have to walk around. And then there is so little counter. And all of the work spaces face the wall. Do you go in the basement often? If it is rare that you go down there, could your table and chairs go against that basement door even if it isn't moved? The stairs and table grouped together on that side has a lot of benefits -- the walkway past them stays wider, the stairs aren't sticking out randomly by themselves, and it's a much cleaner, less-obstacled flow from the front to the back of the house. Maybe you could add a wall stub or vertical beam against the wall or something minor architecturally at the end of the sink wall cabinet run, so it is dying into something and the ungrounded ends are not what greets you at the front door. In my layout, the trade-offs are the extra built-in storage means the space will feel a bit smaller (although I hope not too badly -- I kept the walkways wide and the windows big, and things will be neater and less cluttered with more storage), you won't have seating in the kitchen, and the cooktop venting will not be ideal. I'd make sure the window above the cooktop opens and get a downdraft cooktop and call it good enough. I wouldn't hang a range hood. I know you'd prefer seeing the window to seeing the hood, and your cooking habits barely need venting. That is an exterior wall -- if your future buyer needs a more serious range hood solution, it is easy enough to add. Perhaps you could have to help keep things from feeling closed in. A mirror would be useful too for when you are putting on your coat and hat and stuff on your way out, and it would bounce light around. There is no helping the kitchen seating issue. I'd just try moving the table to the living room for a week or two and make sure that is a deal breaker for you. Between the two layouts, it seems a choice between function and feel. Function in the kitchen vs. how the kitchen makes the rest of the apartment feel. It's not that one functions while making everything else in the apartment feel horrible and one doesn't function but makes everything else feel like a luxury palace. But each plan is slightly weighted in one direction. You'd just have to decide what your top priority is and what you'd rather compromise on. As a side note, I am surprised you wouldn't use the hinged counter. I thought you would particularly enjoy working or sitting at a big counter with a view of the garden. You'd asked for seating with a view initially. Like on a cold day, flip up the counter, heat up some soup, stirring while looking at the garden, and then sit there to eat it looking out at the garden. Seemed nice. Then you just flip the counter down when you are done. As a second side note, you'd be committing yourself to a long time without a kitchen, but if you absolutely can't make up your mind, you might gut your kitchen now so you can really mock up these layouts up in the space you have and get a real feel for them. This post was edited by Jillius on Mon, Jan 5, 15 at 16:42...See MorePlease help with new kitchen layout in old house
Comments (34)I've been quiet but busy and wanted to thank everyone again for the floor plans. algeasea, my husband said some tankless heaters can be mounted outside, but not the one he bought. I have spent countless hours trying to research refrigerators and freezers and don't feel that I have gotten very far. Same with ranges - but at least I have been able to channel some of that frustration into demolition (which has uncovered some old termite and water damage.) I have followed cpartist's advice in another thread and sat in the kitchen with all these plans and tried to picture how they would work. Sena01, I moved all that junk off the wall so I could try the refrigerator over there, then realized the water hook-up for the ice-maker was still attached, so still working on it. benjesbride, I have tried to open up to losing the built-ins, but just can't bring myself to do it. cpartist, the bricks could probably be taken out, and I would love to do it, but the fireplaces haven't been used in years and the tops are actually now taken down to below roof level. Plus, other nasty surprises keep knocking that as a project lower on the list. mama goose, I did some research on how cold the GF flours need to be kept, and while a lot need to be in the freezer, some of the starchier ones would be fine in the refrigerator, and some in the cupboard. I'm glad you asked because I threw them all in the same place to make things easier at the time, and any less freezer space used will help me get closer to getting rid of the chest, which I agree is ugly and a space hog. Caligirl5 , I'm going round and round with the same problem of wanting to separate the laundry but not wanting to sacrifice the extra light and space. cpartist posted some photos of people that handled it well. Has anyone done a study on the emotional stages of kitchen renovation? So far mine have been (sticker) shock, confusion, frustration, panic, anger, and depression....See Moreforeignlady (5b - Montreal area)
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foreignlady (5b - Montreal area)Original Author