PROJECT NASHVEGAS

Thursday, July 12, 2012

MOVING THE SINK

Today I moved the kitchen sink from one side of the room to the other. Yes, almost a whole day of doing work that no one will ever see! Here are some end of day shots- notice the sink sitting 4 feet away from where it was in yesterday's post;

There was a lot of plumbing related stuff that may interest some readers. If you’ve read some of the first posts, you’ll know that I put in that utility tub in place of the kitchen sink within the first week because there were leaks coming from everywhere once the water was turned on. Since we decided on a new kitchen layout, I ripped out a bunch of my new plumbing today to reroute the sink to the other wall. I spent a majority of the time running a vent for the pipe to the roof. I used the same hole by cutting out the existing steel/iron and routed my new PVC in the same direction- in retrospect, it would have been much easier to just cut a new hole above the sink or use a mini vent above the trap instead! The one bright spot of today’s work was that I added shut off valves to separate the kitchen and I have lines ready to go if I decide to add a sink in the basement. Here are some shots of the plumbing;

New kitchen lines with shutoffs connecting to the new supply lines;

New kitchen supply & drain from the basement going up through the floor;

Long shot of the new lines & drain- please note that the wires, hanging mildew disc, etc were left by the previous owner;

My parents are coming into town tomorrow so my goal will be to put up the crown moulding in the living room/dining room so it’s ready for my mom to paint. I also hope to trace all of the kitchen wires into the basement so my dad can more easily come up with an electric plan for the new layout. We also ordered the roofing today so we should have some new exterior shots by the middle of next week.

Lastly, we have discovered a few more awesome places in our neighborhood! My girlfriend joined some of her friends at the “Family Wash” last night which is an old laundromat that has been converted into a music venue/restaurant. She LOVED it- here is a link;

http://familywash.com/

We also discovered the greatest breakfast place in America this morning- “The Nashville Biscuit House”. Here is a link- I will be waiting at the door at 6:00am on Saturday morning with my parents;

http://www.nashvillebiscuithouse.com/

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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.