My first house

Hi Guys,
I purchased this house about 2 years ago, in March 2007, just a few months after my 18th birthday, and I figured I'd share on here....since I'm renovating it myself I thought it might be good to join this forum to share my experience and ask for help, if needed.
The house was built around 10 years ago by this guy Jimmy, who now lives in a newer house next door, again, that he built himself. And it's built using mostly recycled materials, as a result the windows and siding do not match, but I can live with that for a while. It's fairly small, about 500 sq feet over 2 levels, the first floor is a storage area which, once renovations are finished, will be finished off and include a laundry area. The second floor is the living area, it's got 1 bedroom, 1 bath, a kitchen, and a living room, all fairly small....but that's fine with me. It's also in the beginning stages of renovation, we got the second floor almost completely gutted and next we'll be putting up drywall.
Here are some pictures on my FlickR album: flickr.com/photos/26065766@N03/sets/72157617048965199/
These are just a few recent pictures, showing the ceiling fans I installed and the new door I hung upstairs (the old one was a 15-lite glass door that was busted up badly). The last picture is the ceiling fan downstairs, which isn't hung properly or, for that matter, wired properly, it's attached to a plug in cord as there's no electricity down there except for one outlet in the back, by the water heater...but that's just temporary, in due time it'll all be rewired down there with more outlets and some new lights and such.
I can post more pictures of how it looked before we gutted it later tonight, once I get home.

Here are some pictures from when I just bought it

flickr.com/photos/26065766@N03/sets/72157617154587696/

The front door looks very nice.

Using the main floor for storage and as a work area is fine in my view, as long as you have a decent place to live while you're not working.

You need to include "http://www." before your flickr web pages before this page's software will recognize it as a link and treat it as such. That is, your links should read:

"http://www.flickr.com/photos/26065766@N03/sets/72157617048965199" instead of:
"flickr.com/photos/26065766@N03/sets/72157617048965199"

My House - a set on Flickr

and

"http://www.flickr.com/photos/26065766@N03/sets/72157617154587696"
instead of
"flickr.com/photos/26065766@N03/sets/72157617154587696"

My House Before - a set on Flickr

When I remove the quotation marks around your flickr web page URLs, this web site then correctly recognizes those to be links to your flickr web pages and presents them as such.

Thanks Nestor, I had them that way but the forum would not let me post links as I have less than 5 posts, which is why I removed the beginning bit

Yeah, I came across that same problem when I first started posting here. It's supposedly to prevent spams and scams.

The thing is that lots of people only come to a forum like this one in order to get help solving a problem, and the use of a picture or image of the situation is most helpful to explain the problem clearly. But, people new to the forum often don't know very much about DIY work and may be reluctant to post replies because they don't have confidence that their advice would be correct. So, new people are often the most affected by the 10 post rule simply because they don't have the confidence in their knowledge to reply to other people's questions. To post pictures, they have to come up with 10 questions rather than 10 answers, kinda.

So, I can see both sides of the problem. Spammers link to sites they want you to visit on their first post, but people new to the forum are often the least confident in their knowledge and therefore the reluctant to post anything but questions.

Greater minds than ours have failed to find a solution to this problem.

Yeah, well it happens, it's easy to get 10 posts though, I moderate at another forum so I know!

As for my house, thanks! The second floor will be the living area, with more or less the same floorplan it had before, except the shelves in the living room have been removed, as well as the little wall they were nailed to, and the window behind them was uncovered. The kitchen will also be tweaked to include a small range. The cabinets will be replaced with wood ones and the floor will be that Pergo laminate flooring that looks like mahogany. The bedroom and living room will have gray berber and the bathroom will have regular white peel and stick tiles. The walls in the bathroom will have tileboard across the lower half, again, white, with molding along the top of it. The biggest changes are outside, the first floor looks pretty bad outside now with two different widths of clapboard on the front and T-11 siding on the right side that's in pretty bad shape. It'll get new uniform clapboard on all 4 sides and the front will be re-arranged so I can have a full height door, there will also be a small front porch.

I put floor plans in the first Flickr album I linked

I'm also have the same case like you because I have a new house and I have some problem on how to renovate it but my friends recommend me on his friend contractor and he help me renovate my house and I made it successfully so if you need to do is find a contractors that help you with your problem.

Wow- bought your first house at the age of 18! That's impressive! Congratulations on that ! Good Luck with the reno too, looks like a lot of work. But your young- you can do it. I bet you've got lots of help from friends & family.

Good Luck!

Zachary said:

Here are some pictures from when I just bought it

flickr.com/photos/26065766@N03/sets/72157617154587696/

Click to expand...

Wow. A new house at the age of 18! Congratz on that.

Your house looks really good. Good luck on the renovation! Hope you can post some pics after you finished the whole house.

Wow, it sounds like you have lots of work ahead but again...you're young
It would be great to know what you have learned so far and, to help others in similar situations, post a quick list of projects needed in the order you think makes sense now that you are working on it.
Congratulations!