Just Do It

Everything about this house has been unusual, from its purchase onward.

How many people (who aren’t very, very rich) buy a house sight unseen? In fact, we trusted our intermediary so implicitly (and the price was so mind-bogglingly low) that we bought this property without having laid eyes on it.

We knew that it had suffered years of neglect, and we were more than willing to break our backs, as opposed to our meager budget, in the process of bringing it up to date.

Had neglect been the only problem, however, we never would have discovered all of the tricks we’ve employed to keep expensive contractors at bay, tricks that should help any homeowner, particularly first-time buyers, faced with undoing a confessional full of the previous owner’s decorating or maintenance sins.

When we first saw our new home, the Dumpster’s worth of debris in the yard couldn’t disguise the nobility of its three enormous oak trees or the rusticity of the volcanic-rock retaining walls or the possibilities of the ravaged pond.

Inside, too, the living room’s cedar-lined walls and the knotty pine kitchen ceiling told us that, unorthodox purchase or no, we couldn’t have ordered a better house.

It was after the euphoria faded that we had to confront some potentially expensive problems.

The first was the floral-print wallpaper, which was nearly everywhere except the floor. Trying to remove it, we realized it had been placed directly on the drywall. Much of it simply wouldn’t come off, and trying to paint over it caused it to bubble.

Rather than replace the drywall, we smothered the walls with inexpensive wallboard joint compound and used a trowel (or a rag) to come up with patterns we liked. Texturing the walls hid the damage done by removing some of the wallpaper and was actually more attractive than the simple paint job we’d envisioned.

There was also a frame surrounding some ‘50s-vintage fake brick behind the furnace in the living room, which had to go. Going at the “brick” with mallets, we realized that there was nothing but bare plywood behind it.

On a walking tour of the local home center, we found some corrugated tin in 8-foot sheets that was not only cheap but also would help chill the warm tones of the wood-walled and ceilinged room. Just about any other alternative would have demanded professional help to remove the 6-by-8-foot frame in which the brick had been encased. We simply used metal cutters to shear the metal to size and screwed it into the plywood. The effect is excellent, and strangely lush, for something that cost $10.

Dry Rot Solution

There’s nothing worse than admiring an old-fashioned swing-out wood-framed window in your new home, going to open it and having it practically come apart in your hand. Dry rot had eaten away a significant portion of some of the frame. Repair estimates ran in the several hundreds of dollars.

Finally, one carpenter, blessed with a kindly heart or a really lousy business sense, said, “Why don’t you go ahead and use Bondo and wood glue to build the frame up. It’ll probably be stronger than the original.”

Once I got him to explain to me that Bondo was auto body filler, I was off.

The advice was excellent. I dug out the rotten portions of the wood, anchored what was left with wood glue and slowly filled it in with layers of Bondo. Once the surface was smooth, I sanded and painted. The windows are extremely sturdy and look exactly as they should.

Particularly in an old house like this one, floors are always a problem. The carpeting was downright frightening. The dog wouldn’t even lie on it. But carpeting a house costs a fortune, right?

Not necessarily.

Most people think of industrial carpeting as that gunmetal gray stuff you see on the floors of “family restaurants,” but that’s not the case anymore. Half to one-third the price of standard carpeting, really attractive, quality industrials are available in any color and style. The only limit is the short nap. All industrials have it, and if you’re set on deep, luxurious carpeting, you’ll have to buy the expensive stuff. With good padding, though, industrial carpets provide just as much cushioning as other kinds.

This house has a very large living room and a huge kitchen. The bedrooms are small. When we decided to split the living room--mainly because half of the wood floor could be salvaged through refinishing and half could not--we figured correctly that carpet remnants would provide the coverage we needed, bringing the price of industrial carpeting down by another third.

Using remnants takes patience. You spend time regularly visiting several local carpet dealers until you find what you want. It took us only a month or two, though, until we’d found the highest quality industrial remnants that we really liked--not that we simply settled for. It was worth the wait.

There was one flooring conundrum that I would not wish on my worst enemy--I’d rather haul really big rocks than ever face it again:

The previous owners had glued carpeting to a bathroom floor. There were teenage males in the house. Need I say more?

In a makeshift moon suit complete with face mask and yellow gloves, I hacked away at that rug with a hammer and chisel for one solid week, chipping it off the wood floor 3-inch scrap by 3-inch scrap.

When the rug was finally gone, the smell remained. The wood floor had absorbed all of the carpet’s magisterial malodorousness. Also, some of the glue was particularly stubborn. I put every toxic substance known to man on that floor, but the smell and a thin layer of glue remained.

Floor Problem

The original plan to refinish the wood floor was now out of the question. We couldn’t afford to lay new wood, and the floor was too irregular for tile or sheet vinyl. Either of those options would have required laying a smooth flooring on top of the wood--expensive.

We had seen cement floors, most often in “industrial” settings, but liked the look. The condition of the existing floor wouldn’t matter and, most important, it might smother the smell.

We got good advice on cement mixing and bought a rust tint to add to the mix. Laying was a mess, and divorce was an option during the process, but the floor looks great and you can’t smell a thing. Just remember that only complete idiots mix concrete with their hands. Mine took a month to heal.

Most say that necessity is the mother of invention, but I prefer the more basic variant. Poverty is the mother of invention. Even if you’ve got the cash, try winging it. You might come up with solutions that will surprise and delight you. You’ll sit as I do, smug and self-congratulatory, eyeing your handiwork, check balance in hand, with the novice’s pride at the result and the cheapskate’s pride at all that money saved.