Couple Transforms ‘Hovel’ Into ‘Great House’

The house had what we had been searching for all summer: a fireplace, nice yard, spacious rooms and old-fashioned charm.

“What potential!” said my husband, Larry, as we surveyed the rotting floors, leaking ceiling, broken toilet, falling plaster and cracked windowpanes. Before you could say “first-time buyer,” the “Sold” sign was on the lawn and the hovel--uh, home--was ours.

We imagined it would take us three months to whip the two-bedroom, one-bath house in Culver City into shape. It’s a good thing I didn’t know it was going to take three years. I might have gone mad and roamed the streets, brandishing a crescent wrench at passers-by.

You learn a lot about your spouse--and yourself--while you’re renovating. I had a plan: “One Room at a Time.” Larry had his own plan: “Whatever I See First That’s Broken, I Fix.”

Soon, every room in the house was under construction. The refrigerator was in the dining room. The bed was in the living room. The bathroom was in the back yard.

Every weekend, every weeknight, every waking moment was spent sanding, stripping, hammering, plastering, painting. After two months, the renovation romance was over. It was time to put my foot down--if I could find a piece of flooring that would support it. My demands were simple: “I want a kitchen, I want a bedroom, I want a bathroom, and I want them now.”

“As soon as I finish replacing all the broken window sashes, honey; I just have to find this one tool,” Larry replied, from his perch on a ladder outside the breakfast room.

That one tool usually took all weekend to locate. The garage got so disorganized that sometimes it was easier to go back to the hardware store and buy that one tool over again.

We didn’t want to do all the work ourselves--we were driven to it by outrageous estimates and incompetent workmen. One careless plumber flicked his cigarette toward the trash and missed, burning three neat holes in the flooring we’d just laid.

“Aw, you can fix that in no time,” he said, as he handed us his bill.

Sometimes what we saved in labor we made up for in wasted materials and time. It took Larry 10 tries to cut a piece of sub-floor that would fit around the toilet. But on the bright side, we didn’t have to buy firewood that winter.

When Larry took the dining room ceiling down, he turned a fan on, which circulated plaster dust through every room of the house. It even deposited a thin layer inside all the cupboards.

Initially, we thought the previous owners were complete idiots. “How could they carpet over these hardwood floors? Why did they wallpaper the bathroom three times without stripping? Who would want this hideous, dark paneling in the bedroom? Why are the French doors nailed shut?”

Soon, all would be explained. The wood floors were too thin to be sanded again, the wallpaper was holding up the walls, there was no plaster behind the paneling and the French doors rattled like gunfire on windy nights.

And then there was that first rainstorm, when water poured into the garage from both the roof and the floor, and the laundry room roof we’d already fixed leaked again--in the same corner.

We quickly accumulated an extensive library of do-it-yourself manuals. Larry became an expert plaster finisher and handyman. I replaced windowpanes, painted and wallpapered.

In a single, nightmarish weekend marathon Larry, my father and I laid three rooms of vinyl flooring. After the screaming died down, we all agreed that we had done better than any pro would have done, and besides, we were saving a fortune.

It would be two years before we moved into the bedroom. It was in such bad shape that we hid it behind closed doors, like a mad aunt.

The plaster--where there was plaster--was badly cracked. The floor was three different levels and of two different materials. Several layers of old-fashioned wallpaper had to be stripped a few square inches at a time. Inexplicably, there was a stove vent in the ceiling. The building records for the house were not very helpful; the first entry reads: “1928--add room to old building.”

When the stress got to be too much, we took six months off and renovated the guest house.

With our charge accounts soaring toward their limits, we figured we’d use the rental income to help finance the rest of the renovating. The three tiny rooms adjoining the garage turned out so well, I wanted to move in myself, but no such luck.

Our tenant, Victoria, moved in and then immediately left on vacation, leaving her dog, Preshus, in her daughter’s care.

The first night, Preshus got left alone. She responded by eating the brand-new carpet, ripping the molding off the walls and chewing off the built-in shelves. My husband made the grisly discovery. Have you ever seen a grown man cry?

You don’t make a lot of friends in the neighborhood while you’re renovating. The weekend the new hardwood floors went in, one neighbor stood outside for hours, screaming “Quiet!” over and over, while the electric stapler shot the 2-inch beveled oak planks into place with that deafening sound only an industrial air hammer can make.

It started to make me nervous that everyone I met who had renovated was divorced. “I knew it was over when we added the second story,” one friend confided. “We’d spend hours standing in the driveway, screaming at each other over color samples.”

Would we finish the renovation, or would the renovation finish us? I decided it was time for drastic action. I quit my secretarial job and finished the kitchen and the office in three months.

Then Larry, an associate TV producer, took seven months off, and the dreaded bedroom, the dining room and the living room fell into shape. Suddenly, for one shining moment, the house was habitable.

Our debt situation, on the other hand, was unbearable. We ended up getting a second mortgage. Under the terms of the loan, we had to give them all our credit cards and promise never to renovate again. We were all too happy to comply.

But renovating an old house is like painting a battleship--by the time you get to the end, it’s time to start over. Shortly after we “finished” renovating, the paint on the bathroom walls began slithering downward, and we completely dismantled the bathroom again to install a new ceiling and wallpaper. So far, the wallpaper is holding up the walls quite nicely.

We know the foundation still needs work--every time the washer goes into the spin cycle, the house simulates a 4.O earthquake. But to the untrained eye, the house is finished.

And somehow, somewhere along the way, it turned into a real home. Visitors all say the same thing: “What a great house!”

READERS WELCOME TO SHARE THEIR REMODELING TALES

Readers wishing to share their remodeling experiences should send queries or manuscripts to Real Estate Editor, Los Angeles Times, Times Mirror Square, Los Angeles, 90053.