Home - The Burner Downer

Bringing a house back to life and chronicling the adventure.

The Truth About Adair.

Found this little ditty online, a foreclosure. I negotiated a low cash deal and closed within just days of my offer. The initial tour of the property told me that it was a worthwhile neighborhood, an old house with solid bones and had plenty of room to do the work and still make some money.

A nice sized, fenced lot.

Bedroom One. A pass-through bedroom with paneling that is peeling away and dirty ugly smelly blue carpet.

The laundry room floor is rotting and the hot water heater is rusted and leaking.

The back bedroom is mostly just stinky from the carpet.

The Worst Toilet in Knoxville.

The living room was about like the back bedroom, just in need of some TLC and to get rid of the carpet.

The kitchen floor is rotting, the cabinets are gross and the plumbing is a complete redo.

Phase 1: Demolition

First things first, get rid of everything and evaluate the structure and support of the house. Or in other words...it's a damn dirty job, but somebody has to do it. One of the main thoughts that came to me over and over, "somebody was living here, with this house, like it is." Things are gonna get worse before they get better, but it is a process. So I got myself a dumpster and I started loading out the junk.

Got rid of the old cabinets - easy enough.

Everything in the bathroom will have to go.

Dropped the paneling and of course the plaster walls just crumbled.

Where they didn't crumble, they told a bit of a story about Rock and Roll and the 80's.

Is this part of the "trickle down" economy?

Doodles.

TN Vols football

Love.

More Rock and Roll with KISS drawings.

Starting on kitchen sub floors - there were 4 layers of rotten wood.

The plaster walls were gonna have to be stripped.

The back bedroom wasn't too bad, mostly just carpet and padding.

The living room was also fairly easy.

The laundry room was the worst, with the rotten wood including the support joists and revealing that the house is sitting on dirt.

The kitchen begins to reveal more sagging floors, with the wall and supports rotting in the dirt.

Candy clearly didn't know it was time to make the home maintenance.

One load down. Time to empty and reload.

Lots of work, pulling the sub floors was the hardest part. Worked a pry bar for several hours to get to the original hardwood flooring. It is getting pulled next.

A floor plan to decide how to tackle the wiring, plumbing and to generally give me a sense of scope.

Demolition, Trepidation, More Demolition

Headed back to Adair house to continue demolition and the thing that I realize is that I am being too conservative about what I am getting rid of. Somehow I thought the more I can keep the better off I would be when I put it back together, but the more I work on it the more I realize that I will just have to work around whatever I leave. So I am taking a new approach and the sledge hammer and sawz-all are my new best friends. So I went until my muscles and the Dewalt batteries gave out.

Before

The shower is now gone, along with all of the flooring.

Initially I was still thinking about leaving some of the "good" sheetrock. I changed my mind and went back and took everything out.

I can see daylight.

This sheetrock is now gone.

Turned my attention on the middle bedroom - was thinking I'd do a bit of ceiling repair, scratched that and decided it would be better to just expose the structure and fix what needed fixing. The difference is probably less than three pieces of sheetrock.

I started looking at the space plan and want to move the doorways to line up with the living room doorway.

So I removed the walls and may even keep the kitchen entrance wider.

Open says-me!

I didn't know these things could bend. No wonder my back is sore.

And then there's this mess. I need a shovel and wheel barrow or maybe just a gas can and a match...

After.

A Tiring Weekend

Cleaned up the debris from demoing the middle bedroom and turned our sights towards the kitchen and laundry room exterior walls. We spent most of our energy just digging out the crawlspace in the kitchen. Then turned our focus on stabilizing the main beams of the house, which do not even reach the exterior walls. In the process of digging a footer we made a fascinating and shocking discovery. Take a look...