Day 28- Kinda like a Horror Movie

On this day I tackled the basement....which has been said to be like one of those horror movie basements when you really aren't sure if you want to go down or not- especially at night when there are no lights that currently work. There have been some "ghostly" moments. A few weeks before this I was having strange water issues...one faucet would randomly start leaking and then you would turn that off and another one would start leaking. There use to be a shower down here just randomly on the wall...like one might decide to strip and shower while standing in the wide open basement...it was weird and scary. All the old galvanized pipes were just nasty looking. I wasn't sure I would want to wash my hands let alone shower in any water that ran through them. So they were all gutted and replaced (which helped the look a bit too). I do still have foundation issues when it rains...but then again I don't have gutters yet so I am hoping once the rain is not pouring next to my foundation that that will go away. The entire foundation and chimney were tuckpointed throughout (for those who are not sure what that means: motar was replaced/repaired in as needed). So anyway, I spent the afternoon just cleaning up the mess from contractors, the mess of old cabling, phone and weird misc stuff hanging from the ceiling and some old plumbing. Here are some before and after pictures: Before:

and after.Before...and after.

Not sure if the pictures do the justice but it was kinda extreme when it actually wasn't so scary anymore. Although I do still need to get that old OIL tank out...volunteers anyone?

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 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.