gremlin

Definitely doing before, after, and during photos all over the place. I took measurements when I was at the house and drew up a basic floor plan. Not the best, but it works. I've already modified it the way I would like it to be. It was listed as a 4 bedroom 2 bath, but I think the original house was a 2 bedroom 1 bath. The back part of the kitchen and the 2 beds and 1 bath at the back part of the house look added on. The only way out to the back yard is through an arcadia door in the 4th bedroom. The laundry room is only accessible from outside. That is going to change. By the time I'm done, it will be a 2 bedroom 2 bath with a bonus den that can be used as a 3rd bedroom, the laundry room will be accessible through that back room, the bedroom off the kitchen will be opened up and be the 'dining area' as part of the kitchen/living area and the window in that room will be replaced with french(?) doors going out to the patio and the back yard. The main living room is about 16' x 18', the kitchen is L shaped, and the longer leg is 25' front to back while the dining area is roughly 9' x 11'. The bedroom off the kitchen is about 9' x 11', so opening that up will double the size of that part of the kitchen/dining area as well as opening it up to the back yard/patio. The back room will be set up as the play room/puzzle room for the nieces and nephews. They all love coming to Grandma's and Auntie's house to play "cuz Aunt Gremlin has so much fun stuff to play with!" I will probably set up my 40 gallon tank in there. Not sure what I would put in it, since I need it for the plecos and the CAE during the winter. Oh well, something else to plan...Maybe a terrarium during the summer.....or hatch caterpillars...

Tony G.

40g.... you could do a school of danios or tetras and just add the plecos and CAe in the winter

this is exciting!

gremlin

The only problem with that is the two plecos and the cae already are overstocked on the 40 gallon. The cae is a good 6-7 inches and the two plecos (sailfin) are at least 9-10 inches (or longer by now). I also had three cories that my younger sister gave me. Last time I saw them was about a week ago - all three were still swimming around. She got tired of keeping them in her little 5 gallon - the other fish she had died. I've told her that tank is too small for the fish she wants, so she has to do daily water changes to try to keep them alive. She is giving up on fish for a while. She is keeping the tank up and running with the animated ornament and the plastic plant and the gravel because her two girls like to look at it.

Tony G.

Tell her to check out bettas. They would LOVe it in there

I see your point about the stocked 40g.... hmmm maybe you could plant it or decorate it so it looks like its occupied with something..

gremlin

Since I don't use substrate, it is fairly easy to empty it when I put the fish back outside. I keep a couple of filter pads in one of the waterfalls in the pond so I always have a "cycled" filter pad. Then when I bring them in, I use the pond water and slowly change it out with fresh.

Tony G.

thats effective haha!
your house looks very roomy

Gouramiguy17

I think Arizona would be a good place to live, you could have a huge ponds with tropical fish in them couldnt you?

Tony G.

haha i wish...

hey gremlin, my house is for sale and has 27 000 galllon pool that you could use as a pond

its in mesa in the Alta Mesa area

Gouramiguy17

Nope my research claims the nights get too cold to keep tropical fish

gremlin

It is too cold and the temps change too much for tropicals.

I actually looked at a couple of houses with pools thinking what a great pond it would make - divide it and have goldies in the shallow end and tilapia in the deep end. Then I could watch my fishies while I was fishing for my dinner.

And, (I have the best sister), I now have a PDF writer so I can show you all the floor plan I drew up! Bear in mind, I took the measurements of the rooms all by myself so they are not the most accurate in the world, but at least I could get an idea of how the house was put together... Also, the placement on the lot is not necessarily accurate since I did not get measurements outside at all.

I found a web site that lets you do floor plans and such for free. It gives me something to play with anyway.

This is basically the way the house is now.

I'll have to figure out how to compress the "later" file since it is too big...

Nope, can't get it small enough. Oh well.

Attached Files

house basic current floor plan.pdf (85.9 KB, 14 views)

Red1313

Oh that looks like an awesome place Gremlin
Congrats on everything.
Sounds like you've got big plans for that and it's going to be awesome!

Hehehe on that 40 gal you could set it up as a sump (wrong word the filter part could be a trickle down into it before getting pumped back up) for another tank (tropicals or whatever you wanted) then come winter you'd just add the plec's into it.
lol just an idea.
So excited for you!

aquarist48

Hello Gremlin. Your house plan sounds great!
Ken

Gouramiguy17

Wow, that house is almost as big as mine, I'm in a small little 3 bedroom house but it is a nice house

Lucy

Hi Gremlin. Sure looks like you hav your work cut out for you.
I know that you're excitd and I sure don't want to be a killjoy.
Have you had an inspector come in?
I would worry about that black mold and see how far it extends into/behind the wall board, floors and ceiling.
It can be pretty harmful.

gremlin

Mold remediation will be about $2,000 since it is limited to the one room.

Latest update - still waiting on paperwork and mortgage to go thru......

Lucy

I'm glad to har you have that covered. Hate to see you stuck with a 'sick house'

sirdarksol

Out of curiosity, on the mold subject; is that room immediately below where the AC used to be?
It looks like that room has rain damage, and I'm guessing that the same water ran down between the walls, but I doubt that Arizona roofs get beaten up enough to allow a leak like that to get in. Condensation from the AC could easily have been the cause (someone around here had their AC collapse a ceiling in their house).

Which leads me to a secondary question: is all central AC put on the roof in Arizona? My central AC is on the ground next to the house and feeds into the furnace/fan in the basement, which then cycles the air through the entire house. I just presumed that was how all central air was hooked up, but I've seen several references to this rooftop AC recently, and now my curiosity is piqued.

gremlin

That was me. My bedroom ceiling landed on my bed at 2:30 in the morning (yes, I was in the bed at the time).

The mold damage is in the back of the house, the a/c unit is towards the front. No, not all a/c units are on the roof. We don't have a lot of basements here in Phoenix due to the difficulty of digging in the kalichi (desert clay-like soil that is very difficult to dig in and has no drainage). A lot of the houses I looked at had the a/c units sitting on the ground. A lot of them had no a/c units left (due to being stolen). In fact, a friend of mine had her a/c unit stolen - it was sitting on the ground to the side of her house in front of her fence. When she had it replaced, she added another fence so that the a/c unit was no longer visible/accessible from the front yard.

I was at the house this morning with a couple of general contractors to get estimates on the repairs needed. The guy I had doing an estimate before that I thought was a licensed contractor, wasn't. Anyway, I spent 2 1/2 hours this morning going over everything at the house with them, so now I get to wait for them to send me their estimates. Both of them said it looked like the back part of the house was the original house and the front was added on. The back is where most of the repair work needs to be done and one of the contractors said it might be easier and cheaper to just raze the back part of the house and rebuild it. The majority of the repairs are in that back part of the house.

As for the leak in the one bedroom, it is right where the old and new parts of the house meet, and the roof has a funny little valley in it there that probably holds rain water and lets it soak in. If I decide to rebuild the back of the house, that would solve the roof issue as well as a lot of the repairs in that part of the house. Decisions, decisions...