Red Rocks Restomod

I'm a glutton for punishment. In all seriousness, I simply wouldn't have been satisfied with new construction or something that I couldn't truly make my own.

French novelist George Sand (a pseudonym for Amantine-Lucile-Aurore Dupin) is attributed with having said "Work is not man's punishment. It is his reward and his strength and his pleasure." I think that best sums up my reasoning for choosing a project.

The first time we toured the house, I caught a sneak peek of a major selling point for me, in the form of a corner of carpet that could be lifted up...

Wouldn't that alone sell you on the house?

My girlfriend Katie left town for the weekend to visit her best friend from growing up, Mary, and that left me the weekend to try and get some work done... My mom was in Montreal visiting family, and my dad was stuck in San Jose, where it was raining. Excited to see the house and help get the project started, he hopped on a plane and flew out to Colorado to spend the weekend with me.

So my dad gets into town and helps me figure out an electrical issue that I was being an idiot about (breaker box outside the house had one of the breakers tripped, which killed power to parts of the front of the house... Definitely not a fan of how that's wired) within five minutes, after having lived without lights/power in those rooms for a week. Great ego boost, and confidence inspiring for sure.

With that taken care of, he asked what I wanted to do next, encouraging me to paint the walls as it would give the house a fresher feel. I knew this to be true, but I couldn't look past the carpet as being the first thing I wanted to get rid of. I absolutely hate carpet. I don't mind area rugs as much, because they can be picked up, cleaned, and you can clean under them easily. But wall to wall carpeting, I absolutely cannot stand. My allergies are a big part of why; in a matter of hours in a carpeted house, the trapped dust gets me to where I'm congested and struggling to breathe. On top of dust, it's nauseating what biohazards carpet hides, and this is especially true in houses where animals have lived. The previous owners of the house had (according to the neighbors) five dogs, including two very aggressive standard poodles that barked the entire time we visited the house. I knew I was in for a treat with the carpet coming up.

It wasn't easy, but one section of carpet at a time, it all came out and revealed something I knew I could work with...

This is the filth that gets hidden under carpet... a solid 1/4" layer of dead skin cells from who knows how many years. If you take something like this on, please wear a mask. I know I will in the future, because I was coughing up a lung for over a week after this.

The areas of the floor missing stain here are where something acidic (read: dog urine) came in contact with the floor and wasn't cleaned up, more than likely because of the carpet sitting on top of the hardwood floors.

The beautiful blue 30(?) year old carpet, seeing the light of day for the last time.

This shows more of the dust, as well as some of where the carpet padding stuck to the floor due to moisture (left side, dark splotches), and if you look in the top of the picture, you can see why I say carpets retain biohazards. The entire carpet was like that. I didn't take any pictures of that because it makes me gag.

Another reminder of why you should clean up after your dogs when they have an accident in the house...

One section left in the living room!

And now just some cleaning up... But a few discoveries to share before posting the before/after!

The hardwood does extend throughout the entire main floor, as expected, including the closets.

There are three layers of flooring in the kitchen/room behind the kitchen, two vinyl on top of one linoleum. The linoleum will be a pain to remove thanks to black tar mastic adhesive, but I do want to try because there is hardwood underneath...

And finally, a little before and after of the living room. It really surprised me how much removing the carpet opened up the space!

Before:

After:

And for the typewriter friends reading this, a little part of the collection that snuck out to get a breath of fresh air...

On top, a Hammond No. 2 (oldest verifiably dated known of its model, and my first Christmas present from Katie), two Sentas that were a gift from a great friend Gabe, a Hammond Multiplex with four bank scientific keyboard. On bottom, two Remington Portable #3s; the maroon on red was a gift to me from Alex, a fellow collector in the San Francisco area, and the purple on lavender is from a great non-profit ministry in Virginia called Equipping The Saints (http://www.etsusa.org/)

With all said, a huge thanks is in order to my dad JF for making the trip out and helping tackle this project, it was no easy task, to put it lightly...

Next post will be on the absolute headache that has been fixing and painting the front half of the house, check back in a few days and hopefully it'll be up!

I'm terrible at blogging and making sure to keep up with posting new content. But I'm going to try again.

Now that that's out of the way, a little about myself. My name is JP, I just turned 25, I'm very opinionated, and I love projects. I grew up in NYC (Morningside Heights) and then Northern Virginia (Oak Hill) before moving to Blacksburg, Virginia to attend Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, better known as Virginia Tech.

I've always had a bit of difficulty making new friends when I'm somewhere new or unfamiliar; I'm not especially socially awkward, I just tend to be a little reserved and keep to myself if I'm around people I don't really know. Moving to Blacksburg, I spent my first year in my comfort zone not meeting too many new people (only met friends of friends) and spending time with friends from high school. My second year in town, I decided I needed to branch out and meet new people; I had looked into joining the Car Club at Virginia Tech my first year there, but it had seemed a bit too cliquey to me, so I'd cast it aside as something to look back into later. That year, they started a program to get more involvement between new and older members which they called the "Wheel and Lugnut Program" (functionally similar to family lines in Greek life)... simply put, it worked. Long story short, thanks to the encouragement (or taunting, I guess) of friends I made through CCVT, I started disregarding my apprehension towards projects and taking more on.

Anyhow, all that to get to introducing my biggest project yet... I bought a house. It's a 1929 bungalow with a Main Street address in small-town America. If that's not the American dream, I don't know what is. So it needs work, and it's another project, thus is life... I wouldn't have it any other way.

My goal for this blog is to commit to actually working on my projects and sharing them proactively, rather than reactively sharing with folks if and when they ask. Expect the unexpected in terms of what projects I'll share; it'll be a mix of absolutely mundane and [hopefully] decently interesting.

Anyhow, here're the pictures of the house from the listing to give you an idea of the starting point for this project, before I delve into what's already been done and plans for the future (or share other projects to distract myself from this one).

So there it is, it obviously not what I want it to be, but it's got good bones and potential... More on that later!

Red Rocks Restomod

Monday, April 25, 2016

Why Take on a Project?

Sunday, April 17, 2016

A Little Introduction

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