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I continue working on the second floor
of this gorgeous 1911 Colonial
that I bought from the city for a dollar.
I have so many people here,
I don't have enough paint supplies.
The bathroom looks brilliant
but the rest of the rooms are stuck in a time warp.
And there is not a lot of original material
left to work with.
This is one time where I'm like, you know what?
What's here is not going to work.
With a little creativity, I don't know.
This one just looks like it might actually fit.
We're gonna be able to bring this house back
to period in no time.
We're gonna make this work.
I buy and sell houses, but I'm not your average flipper.
Oh, my God.
Why in the hell would you cover that up?
I just want brick.
I don't just renovate,
I restore old homes to their former glory.
It's screaming, like, "Make me pretty again."
It's day and night.
There's always one last door.
Which is not easy when you're a single mom,
but I'm making it work.
My name is Nicole and I'm addicted to rehab.
Work on the Dollar House has been speeding along.
The downstairs is finally done.
And upstairs,
we've taken the main bath from broken to beautiful.
Wow, that's a big sense of accomplishment right now.
Now it's time to focus on the bedrooms
and turn the second floor into a livable space again.
Every house I have, we nickname,
because the colors are something odd.
And this one is a toss-up between like chubby checkers
or the purple groove room.
I haven't decided which way yet
but more of vinyl tile in here over hardwood flooring.
Water damage everywhere,
which means it's just all going to come down.
But for a 1911 home, this room is massive
and there's just tons of closet space.
This is unusual because most of these houses
have little tiny closets.
Now all the paint is literally coming off the walls
and that is from the freeze-thaw
effect throughout the house.
There's not a constant temperature in the house.
So literally, it causes the walls to buckle
and come away from the lath.
This, unfortunately, we kind of call it
the dead body room
because there's burn patterns in this floor.
We don't know what it's from.
It's really nasty.
It freaks me out every time I'm in here
and basically we're going to chunk out
this hardwood flooring here,
feather it all back together.
Another huge closet.
The closet space in here just-- it blows me away
every single time.
This is just going to be the backroom,
'cause it's the smallest of the bedrooms in this house
but it's still quite large.
I don't know what the hell is splattered
all over the doors.
All the plaster's cracked,
everything's coming off anyways,
so I'm pretty sure we're going all the way down the studs here.
So this house is from 1911
and we're digging into everything.
So I'm just going around the house
and testing for lead everywhere.
Testing for lead has never been easier.
You can pick up one of these kits
at any hardware or whatever.
You just got to follow the directions.
There we go.
Then it just leaks out.
So I'm just going to rub it on here,
I got 30 seconds to do it.
I forgot I was counting.
See, that's what happens, I get distracted.
It's like I can't walk and chew gum at the same time.
Obviously, I can't do a lead test and count.
I think I've gone longer than 30 seconds.
So red is lead,
yellow is not, so that's good.
I kind of assumed there was lead
'cause usually in these old homes there is but it isn't.
So that means we're safe to get in here,
scrape away at the paint
and make it a good shiny surface again.
Scrape away.
We have the sheetrockers here
and now we're putting the dry wall up.
And the reason it's so important
that I get these guys in here
and get it done is that we still have to mud and tape.
It's summertime, it's hot, it's humid,
I'm going to need a little more dry time.
The faster they get this drywall done,
the faster I can get to paint.
I had two stair treads that just kept breaking apart
and it looked like because somebody had done
some really bad repairs to them before.
So we're going to actually use a combination
of construction adhesive
and tack them in there so that they go back on.
I couldn't replace the treads
but actually repairing these
and just reinforcing them will do the trick.
And the nice thing I like about that
is that these still match.
All the wood grain is out of the same lot.
The two stairs would kind of stick out
if I'm using natural.
The other thing is, is that
this was actually missing the trim molding
on these two treads
and most of the time trim molding's decorative
but in this case it is actually adding a little bit of support,
so we're gonna replace that
underneath these two stairs too.
Now once I sand them
then this crack is actually going to blend in.
The volunteers that I recruited
from the neighborhood are back
and ready to help me get the paint on the bedroom walls.
I love the fact that I have so many people here.
I don't have enough paint supplies.
That's a good day at the Dollar House for sure.
And Corey's in there at 6'8", just rolling away.
I love that.
You want to roll?
Roll it close this way.
There you go.
Nice.
We had 10 people show up today
and we've busted out the upstairs with the paint.
It's now very tranquil and calm up here
and it's really starting to feel like a home.
Who did this smiley face on the trim, my child?
Woman: Your son.
Yeah, there's smiley faces all over the house.
You know, stripping the floor tile is a party.
I got Cam and Lee for helping me here.
Because if you do it by yourself,
it's just not as much fun.
And I was really hoping we'd get in here
and these things would just start cranking up.
So far Lee's got the technique down pat.
Okay, I am really freaking jealous of that.
Cam: I know.
Nicole: Because you're doing it slow.
Oh, yeah.
All right, I'm gonna try the slow way.
See, you're pulling it too hard.
Okay.
Did you get another one?
Okay.
See, I can't.
I can't do it slow.
Seriously, is it this slow?
No.
(grunts)
All right.
Halfway done, right?
Oh, these last ones are just stuck.
Yeah!
That's right.
Whoo!
Master bedroom, checker board no more.
Originally, when the house was built,
this was stairs going down to the kitchen,
which I opted not to put back in
because I wanted the powder room on the main floor
versus having the stairs.
So my idea was, I take this weird little shelf
and I make it pretty,
like it's supposed to be there,
like a linen closet or something.
Then I thought these cabinet doors would do it,
but they're just not doing it.
But I think I came up with another idea.
I don't know.
This one just looks like it might actually fit.
I have no idea where this one came from
because it doesn't match any window on the house.
Let me see if I can make it a little door.
Well, I think that's a better fit than the doors.
Just have to do a filler piece at the top,
put another piece of glass in, put some hinges on it,
it'll work.
All right, George,
this is what we have to figure out in this room.
Like how burnt is the burn, can we sand it out enough,
and can I just stain this room?
That's all the questions.
Because it wasn't too bad over here.
This is shot, it's burned through,
you have to replace it.
Yep.
Yep.
Yep.
Yep.
Yep.
I would try to find some used wood if I could.
I'm pretty sure
I have enough salvaged wood to do this.
And then, again I'm curious, you know,
after we get the first sand down,
to see how bad some stains are.
I might end up staining a few rooms
and then I want to do a water-base in here,
just 'cause this house has so much sunlight.
All right.
I'm excited that we get to save the wood in this room.
I love doing that.
The good thing about the Dollar House
is that all the scraps in my garage are going away.
I probably have a good $800 worth of wood here
that I need to patch in today.
And I have it from other jobs.
The only bummer is, I don't have any
salvaged leftover wood today, but you know what?
We're gonna make this work.
First thing I want to do is take out the bad ones
and then go from there.
Okay.
You know, the most important thing here
with a patch job is that you feather everything in.
Because if you don't, then it stands out.
I hate walking in and seeing crappy patch jobs.
So the extra work it takes,
we cut out a lot more wood than we needed to.
It's worth it.
Because after we get done refinishing,
no one will know there's a patch job here.
No way is that going in there.
Yeah.
Okay, we're gonna have to cut it.
Okay.
The last piece is always a little tough to get in
'cause you-- we're squeezing
one piece of wood in here
and it's got to be perfect and snap right in.
But the rest of it now you can kind of see,
our new wood blends in with the old wood.
You see the difference in colors now
but it matches the pattern on the rest of the floor.
So when we sand it and we finish it,
it will all have a uniform look.
All right, burnt floor no more.
Nicole: Now that the floors are patched
and all the vinyl tiles are up in the checker board room,
it's time to get everything sanded
and start putting down the polish.
This new wood patch we put in where there was
a fire is not going to blend with the existing floor,
so I'm gonna tape it up and we'll come back later
and stain the patch to get it closer
to the color of the existing floor.
Nicole: While the poly is drying,
I have just enough time
to sneak out to the hardware store.
My old window idea is great
except for I'm missing one of them old windows.
So it's easier for me to pop into the hardware...
use their facilities and get it cut real fast.
Hey, Jessie.
Hey, Nicole.
I just need a piece of glass for this guy.
So...
Let's get that measured up over here.
And 11 and 7 ins... 25 ins.
This is why I come down to you guys
because of this handy dandy thing.
House coming along good though?
Nicole: Yeah.
I just decided to add extra projects on
and this was one of them.
I'm making a door for
the closet at the top of the stairs.
Okay.
Once you get this old trim out,
should fit right in perfectly.
Just going to put in here, then I can--
Yeah.
Carry it home, so I don't break it.
Just like new.
See, that's much easier than taking it out.
Yep.
All right. Thanks, Jessie.
Oh, you're welcome, Nicole.
Okay.
Well, it's not the most perfect thing in the world,
but I'm making my old window a door now.
And the best part is, is that it cost me
4 bucks for hinges and $6 for a piece of glass.
My secret to making all my little oddities
that don't match the openings,
the width or using old windows,
to close them, I use a magnetic catch.
Two bucks at the hardware store
saves me a lot of time and grief
from trying to get a latch on this.
I've taken what could be
a really ugly space in this home
and I've made it useable for the cost of $10.
Because the old window was in the attic,
I bought a new piece of glass,
the quarter round I just found in the scraps.
The space was already here
and now with some paint and a pretty handle,
looks like it's classic to the home.
Nicole: George, this is exactly why
I always use old salvage wood to patch in but I was out.
So let's just doctor them up.
George: Little bit of golden brown
and a lot of mineral spirits.
Nicole: See what we come up with.
You can't go in and buy these colors.
You just got to sit here and mix them to fit the house.
All right. Let's see how this turns out.
All right.
All right. Let's do it.
We tinted the floors.
We need to let it dry overnight
because if we
put the water-based poly on here today,
it just kind of slides all your stain across the floor.
So let it dry overnight and George will get in here
and finish it up.
So it's a quick technique
to make sure that our patchwork looks original.
So the trim actually got tucked behind the wall
which I find in a lot of these older homes,
through the years, they've just
thrown on layers of wall.
So we're just using everything
out of the scrap wood pile
and we're creating a new cap for all this trim,
which looks really rough right now.
But after we nail it up here, do some caulking,
sanding, painting, then it will try
to blend in with the trim of the rest of the house.
So this is what we end up with after the mud dries.
It basically looks like a frosted cake
which if we left it like that then, of course,
it would defeat the purpose of doing all this prep work.
So you just take a semi-smooth sanding block.
It's basically we're doing the same treatment
that you would do to a wall
when you mud and tape it or do a patch.
One of the issues with this house
is that it was used as almost like a boarding house.
So you can see they just beat the heck
out of these door jambs for years.
Padlock here, padlock there, padlock there.
It was just insane, so I'm going to actually
put in some new jambs.
This is one time where I'm like, you know what?
What's here is not going to work
because I would have to use
so much filler and Bondo and everything else.
It's just not worth it.
And again, I always label my trim
because I got to tell you, even in a small project,
you got a pile of trim.
Without labeling, you're going to be there
all day trying to match it back up.
I just rolled back from lunch and the inspectors are here.
Inspections, I love when inspectors just show up
and I'm coming back from lunch or whatever.
It's okay.
It's an open book here.
You want to come in and check out our work,
that's great.
While you're here, sign off on my chart
because we want to get moving on this house.
I didn't call them, I didn't schedule them,
so I'm guessing they were in the neighborhood.
Usually, your surprise inspectors
are simply building.
They got to come sign off on everything.
There's really never any issues with our inspections.
We got to do what we got to do.
As long as they have good news for me,
it's good that they're here.
Because we want to get moving on this house.
It's time to finish the trim and pull together
the last minute details in all these rooms.
Kind of started a little club here,
ladies who paint.
So every time we're ready to paint,
there's a bunch of us in here getting it done.
Painting is just not my favorite thing to do.
That's why I'm doing the caulking today.
The second floor went from this really quite scary
"not knowing what you're going to find
behind the closet door"
boarding house to where you walk in
and everything's bright and inviting.
The master bedroom feels like a master bedroom.
It was a simple thing
as just taking it down to the basics
and letting the original
characteristics of the room speak volumes.
The middle room,
starting with a nice fresh coat of paint,
taking it down to the clay color it is
and just kind of neutralizing everything bad in there.
And then last but not least,
I ripped out all of that burnt hardwood flooring
and feathered in flooring to match.
So that we could keep the original hardwood floors.
The back bedroom, really, all it took
was some fresh paint,
redoing the ceiling and furnishing it.
Just kind of giving it a little zest
and now it's got it.
And hey, I already took my first nap here.
So let me say, for me to be able to say
I'm comfortable sleeping in one of these bedrooms now,
that's such a huge achievement on its own.
Next time on Rehab Addict.
Oh.
I feel like they're setting me up for disaster.
Move.
That's stupid. I'll use that.
Nicole Curtis will garbage pick her own dumpster.
Holy bajolies.
This is it for the backyard.
It's not supposed to make sense.