The project house in Glen Arbor.

These are all "before" photos of our latest Father-Son project.  At the time of this writing (Jan 2003) most of the updating is done, but none of the photos are available to show.  The place has undergone quite a transformation, and the work has been as expected and generally under budget.  The house will make a fine home for a small family someday.  Glen Arbor is an expensive area to live in.  With Lake Michigan on one side, and Glen Lake (supposedly the most expensive inland-lake lakefront in the state) on the other side of town, there is very little in the way of reasonably priced family housing in the area.  With perhaps two notable exceptions, this place has to be the least expensive house on the block... with some of the neighbors homes (on the water) in the 500,000+ range.  I don't expect it to be hard to sell.... hopefully I won't be wrong.  The neighborhood couldn't be better, and a desirable school system too.

This is the view from the roadside as you enter the driveway.  I understand that the lawn was accustomed to being mowed annually, around the 4th of July.  This photo was taken about July 14th I recall.

While the former owner mowed the grass annually, we periodically need to flush the stale gasoline out of the old Cub Cadet lawn tractor, and hence, get to it a bit more often-- though, nobody would accuse us of mowing the grass too much, I hate to admit.

This is the view from the rear.  There is a nice deck under that sliding glass door that is hard to see in this photo (the tall grass hides it somewhat).

The experience of walking into this house when the project began is not fully realized in photos.  We need "smello-vision" for that. In the coat closet we found (amongst other things) a sign for "Free Kittens".  Apparently the former owner had his fill with a reported 30 (give or take) cats living with him and wanted to keep from exceeding reasonable limits.  So,-- if you're wondering why you see the carpet being pulled up-- now you know.  Those stains (also on the walls in spots) are not just water stains.

This house has a very nice living room.  The first thing that struck me was the number of windows.  Originally this house was located on the shore of Lake Michigan overlooking the Manitou Islands.  A very picturesque spot, and hence, the owners wanted to take advantage of that and had extra windows installed.  When the house was moved to it's present location (further inland-- no view) the windows remain.  Since all but one had a broken seal between the double panes, they have been replaced with windows more fitting for the homes present location.

Note the fine 70's era sofa and kerosene heater.  That's a nice heater-- still in good shape.  I understand it was how the occupant kept warm the last winter he lived here (before moving to the California coast).

Dad had some job pulling up that stinky old carpet.. and padding.  That wasn't the end of the stinky, nasty, dirty jobs-- however.  You'd be amazed at how far cat urine can penetrate.  To the right you can see the doorway between the formal dining area and the kitchen and how a small leak in the flashing around a roof vent caused a failure of the floor between the rooms.  There is a somewhat rectangular metal plate moved to the right of the hole in the photo.  5/8" masonite floor construction doesn't fare well when it's subjected to water.  Note too the water stains at the bottom of the paneled wall.  That's mixed with stinky chemicals-- yukko!

The kitchen isn't all too bad in some respects, awful in others.  There was a funny hole cut in the floor in front of the refrigerator that has yet to be explained.  It was cut purposefully, but I cannot see any reason why anyone would put a 2" diameter (roughly circular-- cut with jigsaw) hole right in front of the fridge.  We will end up replacing the well worn countertop and putting in a tile backsplash, along with a new floor and other nice touches in the kitchen.  

Outside of the kitchen, and directly back from the front door is what I'd suspect could be called the "family room" or a non-formal dining area.  That darkness in the right photo at the bottom of the wood paneled wall is cat urine stain.  We had to replace that window (as you can see it's fogged up due to the broken seal between the panes) and in the process tore the wall down to bare studs.  The urine had soaked through the paneling, through a layer of 1/2" drywall, and even soaked the vapor barrier in the insulation.  We managed to replace that window with the one "good" window (of the four of that size in the house) we had.   There was an interesting synergy in this project, since all the windows except one (the one we used here-- er, and those in the sliding door) needed replacement due to broken thermo pane seals,  we ended up residing the place and also refinishing the interior sides of all exterior walls with drywall.  The house lost it's "trailer park" look on the outside with the new (white) vinyl siding, and the inside of the rooms are much improved with the drywall walls-- it breaks up that "oh so 70's" paneled look.  Needless to say, by putting the drywall on the walls, we were able to pull off the urine soaked paneling and eliminate a major source of the cat smell.  

Yet another leaky bit of flashing on the roof added a nice water stain in the ceiling of the master bedroom.  There's also stains along the base of the paneling in this room-- it apparently was quite flooded at one time.  That's not a problem as we will cover that nicely with cove molding when we have finished putting new carpet down.  Sadly, that leak caused some sagging in the floor underneath the toilets in the bathrooms on the other side of the wall.  This was repaired when the new tile bathroom floors went in.  Of course, soon after we took ownership we replaced the roof--- that goes without saying. There are three bedrooms in the house.  The right photo if from one of them.  They were in reasonably good shape, except for the need to have the windows replaced.  The new windows are much nicer (and inexpensive too!) and provide the necessary egress (code approved).  The older windows would be much harder to escape through if you had a fire.

Fire might not have been too far away for this house.   The furnace (left photo) was in very poor shape.  The oil burner exhaust was leaking back into the house and surely making for a deadly environment. Of course, there was bad flashing where the chimney met the roof and tons of rusty leakage with that.   There's only one place I've seen a dirtier furnace-- or one that put the home occupants in more danger (my friend will remain nameless). This one will have to live with second place for disaster-waiting-to-happen status.

On the right is the more imminent problem.  While the photo shows some fresh NOALOX (aluminum-copper conductive gel) treatment, the main breaker (100amp) feed line on the right was loose into the breaker (that was fixed when I applied the gel) and not only arcing somewhat (must have done wonders for the former occupants old 386 computer-- which he left behind) but you can see that the outer insulation of the main feeder was starting to melt.  That breaker and wire surely got mighty hot.  A nice way to set the house ablaze.

The left photo is the view from the master bedroom down the main hallway to the "family room".  What you're seeing at the bottom right of the doorway is where the carpet was pawed up by a dog, I presume.  There's claw marks on a couple of the doorjambs that look as if there was one or more dogs living here too.

The center photo shows the master bath.  You can't see it from this view, but the floor under the toilet has weakened and it's being held up by the drainpipe.  Nice new toilet too... more on that later.

On the right is the regular bathroom.  I don't know what it is about bathroom carpet in Michigan-- but it seems to be common up here.  You should see how much nicer these two rooms look with freshly tiled floors and paint.

Getting back to the new toilets (both bathrooms have new toilets-- by the former owner).  It looks to me as if the guy left the house during the winter (good time to go away on vacation-- can't blame him for that) but he either didn't leave the heat running, or it ran out of fuel.  Needless to say, Sherlock Holmes deduces that the owner had returned to a nightmare of broken pipes, cracked porcelain, and flooded disaster.  I guess some people just shouldn't own their own homes-- it's as simple as that.

Evidently, broken toilets and flooded rooms weren't the only problems.  The homeowner found a ruptured water heater and needed to replace that too!  While he apparently managed to get the toilets installed reasonably well (ok... they worked and didn't leak too much) the water heater repair was an amazing disaster.  The owner had purchased a really nice GE electric water heater, this is a darn nice unit!.. but, sadly, he didn't know how you glue together plastic water pipe.  All the joints were held together with copious amounts of silicone sealant and topped with filamentous packing tape.  Apparently, if he kept the gate valve nearly shut on the water supply, he could keep the leaks to a minimum-- that that appears to be how he lived.  As soon as you turned the water on, it would be just above a trickle.

The photos above are taken in the 3' tall crawlspace under the building.  You can see the top of the old water heater, and his plumbing work. The copper pipe is the existing house piping-- the place was plumbed in copper.  All plastic was the homeowners repair.  Sad, if he only had bought a little bottle of the cpvc cement that they sell in a bin right next to the pipe!.. it's cheap too!

Here's the view of the bottom of the old electric water heater.   Amazingly, the bottom of the unit was buried in the sandy floor of the crawlspace!  They either placed the heater there before moving the house on site (it's a modular) or they had one heck of a job sliding it through the access door and over to it's location.  Note the washed pebbles on the left and the "washout ruts" too.  Apparently the joint that was made between the old copper pipes and the new plastic pipe sprayed the water out in a major way (it sure did when I turned on the well pump-- even with the gate valve nearly closed!).  I'm still in awe at this installation.  Surely there was no conceivable way to nicely drain this water heater to winterize the house.  You'd have to crawl down there with a shovel and do some digging first!

Otherwise, the crawlspace wasn't too bad.  The water softener-- again, partially buried in the sand-- is shown on the left next to the water well controls.  There was the typical discarded ductwork on the bare dirt floor, and some insulation over a heat duct that was pretty well torn up, and had a pretty good rodent skeleton amidst the debris.

In fact the only really "nasty" thing about the crawlspace was the occasional decomposed remains of a small rodent.  There must have been about six or more I came across.  The photos do not give them justice.   One thing that is for sure, adding a plastic vapor barrier atop the sandy floor in that crawlspace sure improved the smell of the house.  As the cat urine smell was removed, the place had taken on a more "musty" tinge, which appears to have come directly from the moisture seeping into the crawlspace from the open dirt.

While we're on 'horrific photos' ...

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