bought a side by side duplex back in the summer of 2011 and spent about 15 months doing renovations inside and out. seemed like a great idea at the get go but i was quickly overwhelmed with my other work commitments, travel and other properties.
it is two 3 bedroom apartments approximately 1600 square feet a piece. on one side it appeared as though there had been a garbage can fire in the bathroom and more or less all of the copper had been stripped out of the basements.
as a lover of original architectural detail the original plan was to scrape, prime and paint the original lap siding, replacing trim and such as necessary. after about 2 days of scraping that plan was quickly abandoned…priced out materials for vinyl siding and aluminum trim…probably the best decision i have ever made…
tore off all extraneous trim, wrapped all opening trim in aluminum them covered the whole place with fan-fold to smooth out some of the lumps and bumps in the old wood siding. sealed up all the seams and proceeded with siding.
my dad came down to give me a hand with the high stuff and give me a quick refresher on siding installation and using the brake as i have done neither since the last time they resided their house when i was a kid.
somewhere within these pictures i decided to install all new windows as well. unfortunately the whole schedule went wrong, so i did all of my trim before the windows were installed as to not hold up the rest of the siding so i had to come in afterwards and put in some final finish metal pieces to close up the casings.
seemless gutters and downspouts were installed shortly after the siding as well which again i think was a good investment.
i didn’t touch the roof as it does not leak despite looking like hell…that is a project for this coming spring. i’m hoping to do the work myself but given the size and height of it i’m beginning to have my doubts.
the interiors were also completely redone although i did not take any real before shots of those.
about a month after getting them rented i got a call from one tenant saying he thought a sewer pipe had broken and that the basement was flooded…he sent this message as an email…when i noticed the email the following morning i assured myself he was mistaken and that the sump pump had simply failed from the heavy rain the night before…
upon arrival i discovered no broken pipes…but a main backed up into the basement into a lovely pool of human refuse that had to have been a few weeks old…had it snaked…apparently the clog was all the way out at the street…approximately 50’. i guess i just never ran enough water or paper down the drains to cause problem while i was working on it…it was easily the most disgusting mess i have ever had to clean up.
planning to do some black awnings over the front and rear doors and paint out the foundation black this spring as well.