PROJECT NASHVEGAS

Monday, July 16, 2012

POLL RESULTS ARE IN AND KITCHEN WALL IS OUT

Over the last week there has been a poll on this blog to decide the fate of the shared kitchen wall. While there were four choices, the poll resulted in a dead heat between “Open Up the Kitchen” and “Make a Half Wall for Dining”. We flipped a coin and ended up taking most of the wall out- here are some shots;

My parents were in town for the weekend to help me tie up some loose ends and progress on the kitchen. My mom spent Saturday touching up the bathroom while my dad & I ran the new electric for the kitchen. We labeled all of the breakers in the afternoon and found that the wiring has no consistency so we are going to run the new kitchen to completely new spots in the panel. Here is a shot of the new wiring coming up from the basement- this bundle will eventually be behind the wall between the dishwasher and sink base;

My dad spent Sunday in the basement installing the junction boxes for the new wiring and cleaning out the dead stuff. I spent the day installing the crown moulding in the living/dining room while my mom followed behind me with finish paint. We ended the day by finalizing the cabinet and lighting layout before going to an amazing restaurant in downtown Nashville called “Demo’s”. This place was recommended by a few of my softball teammates when I first moved to Nashville and I now understand why- huge portions, amazing food and great prices. Demo’s has been a Nashville staple for the last half century and they have hundreds of signed plaques from celebrities who have visited their restaurant. Here is a link to their website;

http://www.demosrestaurants.com/index.cfm

I spent the majority of Monday haggling with roofers and insulating the kitchen walls. Tomorrow’s goal will be to close up the kitchen and I have a mutual friend stopping by around noon to help me hang the 20 sheets of drywall. By the way, the new roof is currently stacked in the front yard and will hopefully be installed on Saturday- we went with the color “Driftwood” which should work well with the eventual dark gray siding, white trim and stained wood shutters/front porch. Here is a link regarding the shingles- thank you BG & SK for turning around the order in record time!

http://www.iko.com/images/res/swatches/Cambridge%20-%20Driftwood.jpg

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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.