PROJECT NASHVEGAS

Monday, June 18, 2012

CALLING IN THE REINFORCEMENTS

My girlfriend made her relocation to Nashville over the weekend and her parents followed her to help with the move. After a visit to the storage locker on Sunday, I figured that they would want to just relax and explore the city before heading North on Tuesday. I was very wrong- they came to work! My girlfriend and her parents immediately descended on the jungle that was overtaking the backyard and front porch. After pulling weeds and exposing the front railing, her mom took a trip to Home Depot to pick up a tree limb saw that is scarier than any power tool I have in the house. They moved on to cutting brush, pulling vines, dropping trees, blowing up damns, etc. until they ran out of space in the driveway and dumpster to pile the waste. Here are some pictures of the cleared front deck and the backyard carnage;

We continued this pace on Monday as we focused on finishing the bedrooms & hallway. While I finished some trim work in the bedrooms, my girlfriend and her parents put a finish coat on ALL of the interior doors which had been removed during the first weekend. They had a great system going with her parents finishing the exterior on sawhorses and my girlfriend finishing the interior on the floor. Here is a picture of the paint line in motion and the result;

After taking a short break in the afternoon, we decided to finish off the painting in the guest bedroom. We returned to the "assembly line" model with my girlfriend on the roller, her mom on the trim brush and her dad bouncing between moving ladders, catching paint runs and pulling masking tape. We ended up painting the entire room including 2 windows, 2 doors and a new closet in under an hour! Here is the result;

Lastly, as a bonus, her mom discovered an amazing pub within walking distance from our house! It is a cool bar/grille in a restored house that specializes in Tennessee whiskies and micro brews. Also, their menu is distinctly German which means my dad will love this place! Here is a link;

http://www.nashvillescene.com/bites/archives/2010/04/23/check-out-the-menu-for-brand-new-village-pub-in-east-nashville

5 comments:

cbchingJune 19, 2012 at 8:12 AM
A MAJOR difference in that room! Good grief! Who knew what a difference a $25 gallon of paint could make!
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AnonymousJune 19, 2012 at 8:49 AM
thanks for the credit, joe. Every little thing we do seems to make a big difference, that's the "fun" of the job. And we've made great neighborhood discoveries, the river, other neat homes, good sniffing places for Bella, the great places to eat. EC
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AnonymousJune 19, 2012 at 9:22 AM
The wider casing really kicks it up a notch. -WP
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kmJune 19, 2012 at 9:30 AM
WOW!!! Things are shaping up. I looked to see if you had the paint brushes tied to their hands or their shoes nailed to the floor!! Bet everyone is tired today. Guess I don't have to come down this weekend! And the front porch......I don't think I had even noticed that there was a railing there. Looks great!! Guess Christina, Jen and I will just go sit at the pub this weekend! Love to see the progress.
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mike leeJune 19, 2012 at 8:46 PM
looking good... no comments or pictures of the mosquito bites? i forwarded christina's picture to fergany with the title "i miss you." jk, jk.
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JOE'S INTRO

Hello everyone and welcome to my blog! Since I have started this forum a week into my project I thought it would help if I gave you some background on the events leading up to my relocation. In addition, I have posted a few brief posts on each room just so you can see some “before” pictures and the initial work that has been done over the last week- most of this has been demo/rough work so there won’t be any glamour shots just yet. I am tagging each post by room so hopefully you will be able to see the rooms develop simply by looking at the
history of each tag. Like I said in the blog description, please send over ANY and ALL comments regarding the blog and
the house. I am looking for everything from design ideas to technical advice to blunt criticism- all of this feedback will help me in some way! Also, please look around the page as often as you can because I hope to add features and rearrange the layout as time progresses. Lastly, please take a minute to complete the survey in the right sidebar. Being that I am color blind and male, I have no idea how to decide on the “cute” details for the finish work (paint colors, materials, trim options, etc.). I will be changing these polls frequently and they will play a huge part in how I complete each room.

Thanks again for checking in on me!

Joe

THE PROJECT

My name is Joe and I have created this blog to document the progress of my first complete home remodel. In May of 2012 I left my job & life in Ohio to attempt to make a living by remodeling distressed homes for a profit- I have relocated to Nashville to follow my girlfriend as she begins a 2 year fellowship in the area. Armed with the knowledge of my father, the support of family & friends and the financial backing of an investor, I started work on the first house and hopefully a new career path on Friday, 31 May 2012. Please keep in mind that this is my first attempt at a blog so consider it a “work in progress”! Also, please post any and all comments because I would appreciate all of the feedback I can get as this thing evolves!

THE BACKGROUND

While the entire Nashville plan was technically set in motion in the spring of 2011, my dad and I made our first house hunting trip on Saturday, 14 April 2012. In February 2012, I was connected to a fantastic agent who specializes in dealing with distressed properties in the Nashville area. We decided to center our search around Historic East Nashville. From my research, this area entered a rebirth about 15 years ago and is now a very progressive, eclectic neighborhood within minutes of downtown- I would compare it to Ohio City/Tremont for my Cleveland friends and Oakley for my Cincinnati people. Unfortunately, with our timing, the heart of East Nashville has been turned and the houses are now beautifully restored and extraordinarily expensive! In an effort to stay as close to this community as possible we continued looking into the nearby Inglewood neighborhood. We actually found a house and struck a purchase agreement within days after our first trip however we decided to pull the offer because of some negative street information that surfaced at the 11th hour. Our agent continued to email similar listings & comps and I took a solo trip down on 23 April to tour our eventual house. The home was horribly neglected and virtually uninhabitable after going into foreclosure/abandon almost 2 years ago however it showed a ton of potential if we could get it at the right price. We then began what we would later describe as one of the most inefficient and insanely bureaucratic processes of all time-dealing with Fannie Mae/The Government! Fannie Mae uses a program called HomePath which requires a mountain of paperwork for the realtor and a negotiating process that is completely tilted in the governments favor. We made our initial offer on 25 May and spent the next FIVE WEEKS renegotiating, filling out paperwork, waiting for emails/phone calls, etc. - it was extraordinarily frustrating and will probably mark the first and last time we deal with this type of purchase. We finally closed on 25 May however we had to wait almost another week to go through the process of having the electric
connected (up to this point we had no idea if anything worked in the house and had only toured a couple of the areas with a flashlight). I made a trip down with a friend on 30 May to drop off my personal effects in a storage locker and attended a “Walk Off the Earth” concert downtown- the trip was a great time and the concert was as amazing as we expected. I went back to Cincinnati the next day to pick up my dad and our family’s 30’ Mallard camping trailer which would be my home for the next 3 weeks! My dad and I parked the trailer on the front lawn and started working on the home the morning of Saturday, 02 June 2012.