Kent & Patti Randles' Home Page

	Our Old (1911) House! This picture taken 5/8/99, the day before we put in our offer to buy it. The sale closed 6/25/99.
	The "before" back of the house, from the appraisal. The scabbed-on laundry room will be removed, and the back wall will have two new windows, a new back door, and a new back porch.
	The "before" kitchen from the appraisal. The door to the left was to the basement stairs, but will become the pantry.
	The "before" dining room, looking east, from the appraisal. What you see is the 8-foot "dropped" ceiling, which was collapsing, since it was tied to the original 9' 4" ceiling which had broken and missing 2x4's.
	The house through time. Here's the house in December '99. The gutters have been removed, and there's at least one new coat of white paint over most of the dark brown trim.
	September 2000 New facia, new front walk.
	Our 2000 e-mailed Christmas Card picture. All the trim is finally painted! The creative downspouts are an effort to keep water away from the basement walls.
	Sunrise Christmas 2000.
	THE WORK BEGINS In the beginning, there was only one blackberry bush. But it was 40 feet wide, 30 feet deep, and almost 10 feet tall.
	Half done removing The Blackberry Jungle.
	Blackberries down and put into a pile, after shredding.
	However, there was a lot of stuff UNDER the hedge: like seven Christmas trees, a kiddie pool, lots of old lumber (including a rotted door), a foreign-car axle, a "customer parking"sign including pole, a bee hive, and...
	...650 pounds of roofing, PLUS:
	we exposed the results of what happens when some former tenants behind us dumped their 6 cats' litter box(es) into the alley for about six years. 3,000 pounds worth of used cat litter! In addition:
	We can now see another neighbor's un-registered Plymouth Scamp (which has since disappeard). Patti is shown working on clearing a path from the alley into our backyard.
	Kent doing his "American Gothic" imitation.
	A fairly clear view of the alley with Patti standing against where a neighbor has included the alley in their backyard.
	Patti prepares to demo the kitchen ceiling, which was not in the plan, until...
	...we demo'ed the kitchen cabinets and found mice had built a kingdom inside, under, and also in the wall behind them. So we had to demo two more kitchen walls, and the ceiling. You can see where shelves had been attached to the wall in the original pantry, which got included in a bigger kitchen sometime later, along with the back porch.
	The original, since removed, knob and tube wiring. (One wire is neutral, and the other is hot.)
	The Dining Room and Living Room, in process.
	The Dining Room and Kitchen, in progress. The stairs to the basement are now on the left.
	After removing everything from the room (including the original but no longer used lead pipes to the sink), the Bathroom gets its new floor.
	The "before" picture of the front entry.
	Patti and Summer model the workbench made from an old kitchen cabinet bought at an estate sale. This is in the northeast corner of the basement, where the new laundry room will be, before it was remodeled.
	Patti uses a heatgun to strip paint from one of the window frames.
	And when you use the heatgun on a bathroom door, you find interesting stuff under the paint!
	Patti vacuums a bare portion of the foundation before applying a new section of "skim coat."
	Patti & her sister M.E. Gladis install a new fascia board. New plastic gutters were then screwed to the facia.
	Brother-in-law Phil, Patti, & M.E. hoist the new kitchen "garden" window into place.
	Patti decides that this would be a good spot for a new stairway into the basement.
	Of course you have to support the floor BEFORE you cut out the floor joists, so some 4X4's and "floor" jacks hold up a temporary beam.
	Ta da!
	Patti, Phil, & M.E. stop breaking up the old "troweled" basement floor long enough to pose.
	The "concrete sisters" pose with the 6000 pounds of old concrete they moved out of the basement and into the concrete recycler's bin. (Since we recycled the concrete, we only had to pay for transporting the the empty bin)
	The basement minus the old floor. Yes, the water heater has been suspended.
	How you get liquid concrete into your basement.
	The concrete "pumper guy" fills the first of the holes for the new footers for the additional posts required under the main beam in the basement.
	Gary Hilliard helps us install the new posts on the new footers. You can see one of the three "short shore poles" or house jacks that held up the house while the footers were being poured. This also gave us an opportunity to level the sagging main beam.
	After the basement floor was poured, the new part of the front walk was, too.
	Patti coats the worst section of the basement walls (the east end of the south wall) with sand mix concrete mixed with "moose milk" and water.
	Doesn't EVERYONE have an electric cement mixer in their kitchen?
	The southeast corner of the basement, at the beginning of the primer coat.
	Behold: the sealed blue basement walls.
	Patti prepares to paint the north half of the basement floor.
	The stringers are installed for the new basement stairs, and the stair boards get painted beforehand.
	The cats check out the new stairs (the youngest 2 grew up in the basement before the new floor was installed)
	Patti models the space where the old stairwell was.
	Patti shows off her demolition handiwork, and the space for the future kitchen pantry and back bedroom closet.
	Patti, M.E., & Phil prepare to remove the west wall of the back bedroom.
	With the still-intact dropped ceiling in the back bedroom being held up by a board, Patti prepares to remove the old toe plate.
	June 2001: the new back bedroom "space" awaits sliding closet doors.
	April 2002: the new kitchen/dining room wall gets layed out on dining room floor. This is our first new wall.
	Patti emerges from the 4th dimension, through the a doorway of the new wall.
	Tilted up and secured, looking west. The left doorway will be the door to the basement, and the right doorway will go into the kitchen.
	Looking east.

Kent & Patti's

"Our Old House"

Updated: 12/04/2003

(Click on picture to see it full size)

Our Old (1911) House!

Rest in peace: