It’s time for this log of our journey rehabbing a house to close.
The house isn’t completely done, but are they ever?
There’s a working roof, electrical, plumbing, heating ... all new drywall, full insulation, replaced and repaired windows, a built-in shower, new toilets, re-claimed pedastal sinks, refinished kitchen sink hooked up with a disposal and dishwasher, some new floors, gutters repaired, porch repaired, all appliances replaced, yard landscaping started ... hey, we even have curtains and color schemes. There’s not much more to talk about here. It seems we survived. Would we do it again ... ? Not a chance in hell.
The many benefits of the region are certainly what attracted us to this area. But we’ve had a reality check since then.
Sure, the houses cost less. But our property taxes on a house valued around $25,000 add up to about the same amount (after all three bills come in) as our property taxes on a $270,000 house in Juneau. No savings there.
Food may cost less (it does everywhere when compared to Juneau) ... and I distinctly remember being blown away by low bar and restaurant tabs when we visited ... but that hasn’t made up for the higher utility bills we’ve had to pay.
On the one hand, our house is more than double the size of the house we had in Juneau. Utilities should be expected to be higher. On the other hand, the bills we were paying last winter were for an empty house with heat set to 55 F so that drywall mud would not freeze. There was no level of comfort being achieved, and the bills were more than double what we paid for a comfortable living environment in Juneau. Adding to the negative (and my fear of next winter) is that the local bills were using a brand-new, energy-star furnace in a fully-insulated house. Our place in Juneau had an old boiler and no insulation until we added some in the attic, and the heat ran on oil rather than gas. For the whole winter in Juneau we paid about what we paid for the worst month here. And there was more snow in Juneau.
We’re definitely not living like millionaires here. We rarely get a chance to eat out and enjoy those low food prices. But that can’t all be blamed on Pittsburgh taxes and utilities, a lot has to do with renovating a house...Another area where prices are no lower than anywhere else. As a friend of mine recently said on Facebook ... “I’ve come to realize that money...runs out quickly when you’re improving your home.”
Over the past week all of the pieces I’ve been stockpiling for the last year finally came together, with much help from my parents who worked non-stop all week.
We have lights, fans, a working range, our very own laundry, house plants, flooring, art hanging on the walls. Here’s a photo tour.
There’s no excuse for only posting once a month! Here’s a slide show (with 177 photos and one video) to make up for my absence…
A little about the slide show: it’s organized by areas in the house so that you can see progress more immediately than we have. Starting in the kitchen, I worked my way through the first floor. Then to the stairs, the second floor rooms, and the attic. And then there are some random photos thrown in for fun ... a little Guitar Hero anyone?
Would multiple excuses help? The main one being I’m pregnant and due in November? That, getting the house ready to move in, trying to catch up on my dissertation, visitors, and nice weather (before the heat rolled in) are just a few of my excuses. But hopefully from here on out (at least until November) I will be better at updates.
We’re picking out paint colors. That seems like a good sign.
The final room has been hung. The finishing has begun here and throughout the hallways and other rooms. The attic, one bathroom, and three other rooms have been painted already. Kitchen, bedroom, and hallway flooring is piled up collecting drywall dust.
We even made it to the yard ... actually my parents did! They came to visit for six days and transformed (tamed) our side yard and helped plant a garden on the other side. We applied for the side lot through the Redevelopment Authority of Allegheny County. It took about six months to hear back about it, but now we’re in the title transfer stage.
This past week I was reading Maslow’s article about his well-known motivation theory and the hierarchy of needs. Throughout I couldn’t help but liken the theories to Braddock.
Many of us who have come here did so with visions of a lower cost of living making time available for the pursuit of self-actualization (or at least esteem needs) within a community that supports not only out-of-the-box thinking but action. Instead this past winter we found ourselves tossed back to the second tier, struggling with safety needs as we spent most of our time and energy figuring out how to keep warm. And by warm, I mean we celebrated a 40-degree room. Some spaces, like those being rehabbed, relied entirely on kerosene heaters and didn’t even achieve this level of warmth.
Maslow points out that once a person has dealt with these lower tier needs, things will never be thought of the same way again. If a man starves, he will not take food for granted in a way that he may have when he had only experienced food as a given. After spending an entire winter cooking while wearing a winter coat, hat, and scarf while watching my breath hover in front of my face and wishing I could mix things with gloves on but instead having my fingers go numb ... I appreciate climate controlled environments so much more now. It’s like stepping into another world when I visit people in towns where broken or missing windows, old boilers that only heat two radiators, and no insulation are things of nightmares instead of a common reality. What’s even worse is that this low level of living standards actually cost MORE than all of the comfort I experienced in winters past in Alaska.
Now as spring enters the picture and we are thawing out, there is a palpable change in the air. We are aiming again for needs a level or three above safety. Things are moving again. And hopefully next winter some of the renovations will be done and there will be warmer buildings so that we don’t all end up hibernating our higher level goals as we search for heat.
Source
Maslow, Abraham H. (1943). A theory of human motivation. Psychological Review, 50(4), 370-396.
Braddock is an urban 'burb of Pittsburgh that has been drawing in DIY types willing to put their time and energy into making this a better place for everyone here. We heard about it in January 2008 from a friend of a friend whose brother had moved to Braddock in December. We made it here for a visit in February and were back for good in March. It's an almost empty town somehow full of energy.
This site is a story of our journey to and within Braddock ... "what follows is a story; one version only of the many possible narratives that could be told of these events." (Kolko & Reid, 1998)
Many of us who have come here did so with visions of a lower cost of living making time available for the pursuit of self-actualization (or at least esteem needs) within a community that supports not only out-of-the-box thinking but action. Instead this past winter we found ourselves tossed back to the second tier, struggling with safety needs as we spent most of our time and energy figuring out how to keep warm. And by warm, I mean we celebrated a 40-degree room. Some spaces, like those being rehabbed, relied entirely on kerosene heaters and didn’t even achieve this level of warmth.
