Renovation

The House Gut is a new series written by HumaneFoodie. She lives in NoMa. You can read the first installment of The House Gut here and the second installment on finding the right contractor here.

We had decided from the beginning that we wanted to make our house energy efficient, even if that meant spending more upfront.  One of the reasons we chose our contractor, Mark Richardson from Renaissance Development, was because he was excited about and had experience in green building. One of the first areas to focus on when gutting the house was the basic operations: heating, cooling and plumbing.

Insulation

Mark recommended we use an open-cell Icynene spray foam rather than fiberglass insulation, which some argue is more environmentally friendly than petroleum-based insulation products.

Heating

We have a TriangleTube high-efficiency boiler, which is rated 96.0 annual fuel utilization efficiency (AFUE).  The scale for typical boilers ranges from 80.0 (least efficient) to 90.6 (most efficient). While this option certainly costs more upfront, our gas bill (which covers heating three levels, hot water, and a lot of cooking on a gas range)has not yet exceeded $115 a month–and we live with three other people.  Our hot water is provided by the same boiler and is stored in a highly insulated tank that looks like a regular water heater.

We also chose to keep most of our radiators, and we found the rest at Community Forklift, a wonderful salvage store right outside of D.C. where you could get lost for hours among the doors, windows and vanities. (Stay tuned for House Gut Vol. 4 for more on material salvaging.)  We used radiant heat in the kitchen floor because there wasn’t a good location for a radiator in our open floor plan. Each floor is on its own heating zone, and the kitchen is controlled separately.

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The House Gut is a new series written by HumaneFoodie. She lives in NoMa. You can read the first installment of The House Gut here.

Finding the right contractor for your job

And you thought that finding a date in this city was hard? Try finding a contractor.
But before you even get to that phase, do you even want to buy it?
After we put in an offer on the house (New Series – The House Gut), we could still rescind the offer based on the inspection or even later if thefinancing (or appraisal) didn’t work out. But before getting a mortgage, we had to be sure the house was in no worse shape than it appeared.

We first had it inspected.

In a 35-page report emailed two days after a (four-hour) walkthrough with Cliff from Capitol Hill Home Inspection (recommended by our agent), we read through all that had to be done:

• Upgrade electric and plumbing and get a new HVAC system
• Tuck point the outside brick and fix chimney
• Put on a new roof and fix up the garage (although it does look very Frank Gehry-esque)
• Fix rotting front porch and floor joists, deteriorated walls, and other items
• Put new insulation in throughout the house
• Deal with the lead paint, asbestos and termite damage
• Completely renovate the basement

Scary stuff, especially for people who had never been through anything like this. But we had to think about the big things we wanted to do on top of the needed renovations and do another walkthrough – this time with a general contractor (GC).

A “first-time walkthrough” with a GC is standard practice. It is good for a potential homeowner, who will get an idea of what a job will cost, and it is good for the GC, who may have just landed some business, for s/he might get hired to do the job down the road.
We gave the contractor an idea about what we wanted to do (from bottom to top):

• Make the basement a livable space with a living area, bedroom, and full bathroom
• Open/remove the wall between the kitchen and dining room
• Renovate the upstairs bathroom and add a second bathroom upstairs (where the sleeping porch was)
• Add a closet to the back bedroom
• Re-do the garage
• Build a second floor porch and put in solar panels on the roof
• Oh, and all the other stuff listed above needed to make the house habitable.

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The House Gut is a new series written by HumaneFoodie. She lives in NoMa.

Looking for, buying, and gutting a house in D.C.

Buying a house in the District may seem as unfathomable as a paycheck over $25K did when you first moved to this city. But if you’ve stayed past the two-year cutoff period for D.C. residents who never change their drivers’ licenses, you’ve probably started thinking about the long term: Rents are increasing, neighborhoods are changing, and you can’t afford to live in the city forever on a teacher/non-profit/government salary.

So, you start looking to buy a place.

There are three types of houses/condos to buy in D.C.:

1) Gently used (very hard to find),

2) Flippers (Is that a granite backsplash covering up shoddy electrical work?), and

3) Gut job (huge undertaking, but in a town of people who like to “fix and run things,” could there a better option?)

So after six years here, my huuuusband and I charged into the world of buying, gutting, and living in a house by adhering to the mantra we learned growing up in the ’80s: Reduce, reuse, recycle (snarky PoPville commenters, eat your hearts out).

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Before

Yesterday we took a look at a great backyard renovation from Shaw. Another readers sends his backyard reno:

“Everything cost about 10,000, we did everything ourselves (even broke the concrete) except building the deck. We built raised planter beds for growing vegetables and have a fire pit and pear and fig trees. This helps with water runoff into the alley.”

Very nice!

If you have a renovation you’d be willing to share please send a few photos (preferably before and after) and include a few details about the project including cost to – princeofpetworth(at)gmail

Thanks to a reader for sending in his great backyard renovation:

“All in all, costs for the backyard came in around around $33-$35K (yikes, I know). The deck material is what really drove up the cost. We chose to use Ipe wood decking which was quite pricey, but weathers and last much longer than conventional decking material.”

If you have a renovation you’d be willing to share please send a few photos (preferably before and after) and include a few details about the project including cost to – princeofpetworth(at)gmail

Gabi

Before

Thanks to Jenia and Sergey for sharing their beautiful bathroom reno. If you have a reno or a home improvement project you’d be willing to share please send an email to princeofpetworth(at)gmail and include a few details like cost, time frame, tips/advice, lessons learned, products used etc.

Jenia writes:

We are done with our bathroom renovation, so I wanted to share some pictures. We are so happy with how it turned out. We changed the layout of the space, which meant that we had to replace all the pipes and heating ducts. Also in the process we discovered that our bathroom stack had a crack, which had to be replaced as well. We spent about $11,000 with all labor and materials. We did a few things ourselves such as demolition and stripping old paint/ repainting moldings and doors, and painting the ceiling. There is a lot of salvaged pieces here including a claw foot tub, which we purchased on craigslist and which came with the shower system (!), also console sink base (not the marble) is from craigslist. We are replacing all the MDF doors in our house with salvaged ones from Community Forklift, the hinges are from there as well, while the glass and brass knobs are from Loading Dock.

Finished

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