Day 27- Watch your Step!

Well the floor of the bathroom upstairs was very soft from water damage and was now an issue once the tile had been removed. Part of it needed to be replaced and since I wasn't sure how I felt about cutting out floor and kneeling on rafters with a giant opening I had my contractor do it.
So all the sudden when I walked in one day I saw alot of light coming into the downstairs bathroom and when I realized that it was streaming from the big "skylight" above from lack of floor i will have to admit I was a little freaked out. But of course I had to grab a picture because hopefully this is something that I will never see again.

And the mess below from the falling rotten floor. Awesome. Can I just tell you how many times I have cleaned out this bathroom?? And I'm not even living there yet!

Day 26- My most Loyal Crew

Just wanted to give a shout out and thanks to my most loyal working crew- My parents...and don't forget my 89 year old grandma who also tries to help where ever she can! My mom has been a wallcovering stripper, plaster knockerdowner, staple puller, and just about anything else I ask her to do. My grandma usually takes clean up duty but is also been known to strip...wallcovering that is.

And my dad (who is not pictured below because he worked the first shift this day and we were working the second shift) has done a little bit of everything too, this day he took down the kitchen cabinet and old vent...which he had to do partly with a sawz-all.

Looks like it is almost ready for a new refridgerator!!

Day 25- Whatever Blows your Skirt Up

Which might be you standing on a HVAC (Heating, Ventilation and Cooling) supply vent on the floor of my new house...so watch out! Alot of the old registers are big iron grills on the floor. Which need to be desperately cleaned and painted....any volunteers? I have moved a few of them and need to figure out how to patch the spots as well. So tricky when wood floors are involved. But I will figure that out next week. So one thing I can tell you is that I did decide to upgrade from the old oil tank that is in the basement (which needs to be removed before I can occupy the house...again, any volunteers?)

And for a little HAVC education: This 1938 house was actually orignally run on coal. There is a coal shute door behind the wood board you see to the right in the picture above and behind the old carport post you see in the picture below. (I did take that out and put in a small glass block window). So after coal went out of style (50's?)they installed this Oil tank (pictured above) which was fed from outside pipes which you can see in the picture below. This then fed to a Oil burning furnace and then probably about 30 years ago upgraded to a gas furnace which was completely fried and unworkable when I moved in. So needless to say all winter when I visited the house my toes would become frozen.

So, HVAC has basically been ignored in my blog world and I do apologize to all of the HVAC geeks out there who have been losing sleep over it. I actually had my new 95% furnace installed the first week I had the house and the Furnace and AC are about 1/4th of my overall construction budget. And they have been rerunning and moving ducts here and there but wrapped up alot of it this day. Here is a picture of the new unit in my gorgeous basement;I am looking forward to my $1500 tax rebate next year with this puppy (and also hoping it saves me a ton of money this winter). We did rework some ducts runs upstairs to gain some more space and better efficiency and moved some downstairs due to wall changes but the biggest change was adding a run up to the new toy room. In order to do this we had to run a duct up along the dining room wall to the old attic dormer space above. Problem being this is right over the unit in the basement and the return on the other side of the dining room wall was in the way. So they got it in the wall but had to bump it out at the floor which made us fur out the wall a bit as you can see below. Now that is one fat wall...but at least the kiddos will stay warm upstairs!

They only have one duct to adjust and then I will need to get everything THOROUGHLY cleaned because not only are the ducts filled with plaster chunks, construction dust and dirt but also 50 years of discustingness that I do not care to think about but cannot help but see when I look down into the vast void of nasty iron return grills. Yuck.

Day 24- 1930's-40's Design

Besides the fact that the house itself was a Sears Roebuck house model in the 1930's there are only a few items I have found that might be original to the house...or at least very close to original. Under three layers of floor in the Main Bathroom I found this black and gold 3"x3" checkerboard patterned linoleum floor. If it would have been tile I might have been able to salvage it but since it was linoleum (which actually use to be made completely from flax) it was damaged from water and tore easily when trying to get the layer of plywood off of the top of it. It definitely could have been the original flooring to the bathroom. It was laid right on top of the wood structure of the house and then it looked like there was an orange carpet placed over it at some point and then sometime within the last 10 years they installed a 13x13 sticky tile down over plywood. It was very hard to get all of those layers up so I did ask for some strong muscle assistance.

The other piece in the house that I love is the built-in curio cabinet. I am not sure when it was built, but I love the style and character. You can tell it has been painted many times...and I am not going to keep the blue. I would try and strip it but since my kitchen cabinets are going to be white I thought this would look nice if it matches.
It is starting to take shape...just wait till you see what happens next!

Day 23- My Free Booty

And by "booty" I mean acquired treasures that I found inside the house...what were you thinking? So not much happened on Monday either...something probably happened but since I am behind all of my days are running into eachother so I will tell you about the attic and basement "antiques". So downstairs in the basement there is a small "crawl space" and by crawl space I mean a 4' tall by 4' deep ledge that runs around 1/3rd of the basement. This space was closed off with insulation board but when we tore it off we found what some might call junk and others might call treasure. I went with the later because most of it is pretty cool.

80 billion mason jars (ok, I admit that I might be exaggerating but there are ALOT)
I guess this is an old top to a "washing machine" and what I mean by washing machine is that this has a crank on the side and you ring your clothes through the two thingamajobbers and it rings out your clothes so you can hang them outside to dry. Although this "appliance" came with the house I have decided to upgrade and keep my old washer and dryer.
Up in the attic there were many treasures to be found. 3 suitcases, 1 never been used cot, one picture frame, one old vinyl wrapped twin headboard, and lots of books and games.

My contractor seemed to get a kick out of the English book.
The suitcases are pretty cool, even inside. I think I will try and make a table out of them or something.

Day 22- If Someone Screams DUCK!!!...

It might just be that there is one on your roof. Besides more cleaning this is about the extent of what happened at my house on Sunday...
A duck on my roof. I pulled up and needless to say it was a bid weird to see a duck sitting on top of my roof. Honestly I thought maybe it was fake and someone was playing a weird joke...but no, there was a duck just hanging out on top of my roof.

Day 21- Frustrating

Saturday I thought I was going to be getting drywall so I was pretty excited but when I got to my house after Soccer practice I soon realized that it was not happening. I guess an inspector had shown up on Friday late afternoon to inspect my roof and noticed the interior work and told us we would need to get a General Building permit and an inspection before we closed up the walls...dum dum dum. (sound affects...not calling the inspector dumb).

So needless to say when listening to my construction consultant who reviews my progress and gives me the money when things are done was wrong in which permits I would need ...so needless to say it took about another week to get everything we needed in place. (which means this past weeks blogs...that I have not written yet may be short and sweet).

Soooo...what I did do that Saturday was spend three hours cleaning my house (which seriously seems so pointless because it only stays that way until a contractor steps foot in it and actually works on something) and the fact that I think I am going to be tired of cleaning this house before I ever live in it!
Anywho, after that I went over to my dads workshop where we finished the hamper for the laundry chute and started the toy cubbies for the Toy Room! Sometimes my dad is leery of my diabolical plans...but he still goes along with it (thanks dad!) AND it will all be awesome in the end!

Lucas calls this a secret passageway to the washing machine...as long as he doesn't try to climb in it we will be fine!

Day 20- Plumbing and Insulation

Last Thursday was exciting because 80% of my plumbing went in and 70% of my insulation. Big day in my world. Probably not such an exciting blog though...except I do have a great picture of me with sticky foam insulation all over my arm. Mental note to self: wear gloves and long sleeves when using foam insulation in a tight attic space...otherwise you might get it all over yourself, then you might get it covered in dust and dirt, then you might not be able to scrub it off with anything except turpentine and a week later there might still be remnants of it all over your arms. Just an FYI to people who ignore instructions on the can...

Here is the attic before Insulation (and after digging out the old)...

Here is it afterward...

And the walls got R30 which is VERY thick (to keep my babies warm) Plumbing went in in both bathrooms, kitchen, washer, etc. I went with PEX which is both affordable and very durable. So all the white tubing you see below is actually my water lines run from the basement up to the 2nd floor. PEX contracts and expands with hot and cold so you cannot get pipes that burst in the winter. It is run in alot of the newer homes and so far seems pretty cool. I was also able to get a VERY good price on the plumbing due to the ease of installation.

And here is my new shower location. I am actually able to fit a 6'tub in my main bathroom but after comparing costs it was not worth an extra $1200 for 12" of tub space, so I am going to go with a standard 60"x32" tub but dress it up with amazing tile with hopefully only spending 1/3rd of that price.

I will keep you waiting in suspense for what the tile is going to look like...especially since I have not even picked it out myself. But no worries...it is on this weekends agenda!

Day 19- The PROJECT

Well, let's just say I have been feeling adventurous...(obviously). I bought a power tool combo pack and you have got to try everything out right? So this past weekend with all of the brilliant ideas going around I decided to try and add to the brilliantness. Last week I thought of a laundry chute option which would drop directly from the kids bathroom to the top of my washing machine...brilliant right? Because if I made it easy..maybe I would actually do the laundry??

There use to be a tall linen cabinet in the corner of the 2nd floor bath which was cool, I was going to keep it and paint it but once everything got gutted the bathroom looked so much bigger without it. But then I realized that the bottom of the cabinet had a laundry hamper in it which I thought was the coolest thing ever and was trying to figure out how to use it. So I went upstairs and measured and realized that I could fit the bottom half of the cabinet into the bathroom wall and with a little retro-fitting of the hamper depth (by my dad- thanks dad!) it could all magically work. Now I just needed to figure out how to get some linen storage in. So I came up with an open towel shelf. I think it would be fun to have bright and colorful towels on display that are also easily accessible and some extra toiletries stored in fun bins would fit too. So I started cutting my shelf this past weekend. Let me just first start to explain that this is really the first time I have used a circular saw to any extent. I mean I have helped cut deck boards and misc trim or whatever for our old house but to actually take a big 4x8 sheet of nice wood and build something...never happened. So hey why not give it a try right? It can't be that hard!

Ummmmm...yeah.

Let's just say I cut some wood this weekend but put off the rest until my dad could help me. Not that my dad wants to take any credit in the final product though since it is not straight and there are numerous gaps from crooked cuts...but I still think it is pretty cool. And will look great with a little putty, some trim and a few coats of paint! lol

The shelf will be mounted to the left as shown and the cabinet on the right is the one being retrofitted into the framing behind it and the chute opening is below (which I got to use my sawz all for!). What do you think?

Day 18- Bucketload of Crap

So Monday I took a friend to the doctor and took a little sister out for her birthday and that seriously took up my entire day (but a day off from dirt is usually nice)...so needless to say I made one short stop at my house where I noticed my 4TH DUMPSTER was getting kinda full. I did not budget for 4 dumpsters ($700). The first dumpster was included in my roof cost...the others have been so full when they were picked up that we got yelled at by the dumpster guy.
This 4th dumpster was actually suppose to be a 10yarder but they brought the wrong size so the guy told me not to fill it up all the way or I would be charged for a 20 yarder...not sure I can avoid it really. We are close, but it is time for another cleaning and one more plaster wall section that needs to come down. Hmmmm.