Casa de las Ratas

February 2, 2002

This Spanish style house was built in the late 1940's.
Originally located in Santa Monica, this house was moved to Los Serranos in the early 1970's. 
Old Elmer and his wife bought the house from the folks who moved it onto the 12,500 sq. ft. lot
located around the corner from my house.
His wife died shortly thereafter and in his insanity, filth, and misery,
ol' Elmer just lived there for about thirty years not touching a thing.

 From the roof, you can see my house and studio located just around the corner.

 

So far so good. One can imagine hanging out on the front patio on a hot summer night grilling some carne asada...

 

 The main entry is interesting with its four way arch. The front part of the house is under the spanish tile pitched roof which is in pretty good shape overall. Need to find the reason for this leak in the ceiling... ok, found it: The wankers did a closed valley method with the clay tiles and the two valleys are toast. Oh well... it gets worse...

 

The living room is huge with nice tall ceiling and fireplace. This room is in good shape overall. Relatively speaking...

 

 Walking down the hall, the section before the arch is also in good shape. To the right is the Master Bedroom where ol' Elmer lived.

 

 Master Bedroom also in good shape. The paint isn't even peeling off the walls too badly.

 

 However the closet suffered bad water damage. We had to tear out the bathroom behind this wall as it was still soaking wet from the roof leaks near the soil stacks and clay furnace vents. Bad flashing.

 

Here is the main bath. Ol' Elmer didn't bathe too often. He probably didn't have running water for the last five years at least... The curved ceilings and arches for the bath and shower are pretty cool. I'll try to retain them in the restoration. For now, everything has since been ripped out as the water damage in the walls was pretty substantial behind the tile.

 

 The second bedroom has rounded corners, but alas, everything had to come down due to more water rotting the lath.

 

 "As is"....

 

 This is looking back down the hall towards the front of the house. Now we are under the flat roof section where most of the major leaks are. The second room is towards the left, the kitchen is on the right. Walking backwards you enter the third bedroom...

 

 More ceiling damage, but the walls are ok in the third bedroom. Second bath on the left, small closet on the right...

Funny little window in the 3rd bedroom's closet.
Hopefully the walls behind the tile in bathroom 2 are ok.
This green and black tile is pretty nifty and the white fixtures are indeed worth cleaning up.

 

 

The kitchen... ol Elmer had some kind of catch basin and trough hiding up in the ceiling which didn't work very well. Why he never fixed the flat roof is beyond me...

Everything has been ripped out of the kitchen now. Only two rat nests were found in the walls...

Here's Placido starting the giant trash heap outside the kitchen. It ended up about 15 feet tall.

View from rear corner of house. 
The lot is huge so a second house or garage or something could be built on it.

Coming up next at Casa de las Ratas: 
Week 2: more cleanup and roof replacement.
Week 3: fun in the kitchen and hotmop crew 
Week 4: fixing the valleys, new kitchen subfloor
 Week 5: prepping the roof, framing in the kitchen, ripping out more floors...
Week 6: Replacing a ridge board, new tiles on the roof, more paint, why not?... 
 Week 7: Let's get the roof finished! And destroy more stuff inside! 
Week 8 & 9: Final touches on roof, removing all the old hard conduit/black pipe, filling yet another roll-off dumpster. 
Week 10 & 11: Plumbing will be completed. More tools will be acquired. 
Week 12: Kill that old rear bathroom, level the yard, cast some concrete. 
Week 13: HVAC installation, reclaiming wasted space, start fixing windows
 Week 19: Sanding windows, drywall blocking, paint the house exterior!  
Week 22: Big Inspection goes well, stucco scratch coats, wiring beauty shots 
Week 23: Is that The Rat House or Circus Vargas? Termite Tenting! Nuke 'em all. Insulation begins. 
Week 24: R-19 in all the ceilings. 
Week 28: The guys will complete all the wall insulation. Drywall Begins! 
Week 32: Drywall and yet more drywall. 
Week 34: MORE drywall! 
Week 38: 8,000 drywall screws later, it's all up. Mud and tape brigade begins! 
Everything up to week 52: Bath and Floor Tile installation. 
Week 62: Windows Reinstalled. I hope you are not afraid of COLOR! 
Week 64: Finish color washing. Install some crown moulding. 
Week 66: Tons of cool details to show off. Moulding, AC Grilles, Floor Tile, Medicine cabinet... 
Week 67: Window casings 
Week 76: Copper Gutters! Too cool. Exotic lights start arriving. 
3/3/2005: Outside lights and wood floors installed! 
6/29/2005: Kitchen Cabinets installation! 
Rat House 2007

 

 

Rat House floor plan PDF

Manley Labs home page

House of the Rats photo by Allen Wrench who has taken a great interest in this project.

All other photography by EveAnna Manley

The Rat Crew officially endorses SHAKIRA as official music of the Casa de las Ratas

Satellite View:

 

11/2007 FUTURE of the Rat House: First Draft Garage plans!