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.

Day 17- Brilliant Ideas

So the great thing about working with great people is that together you can come up with brilliant ideas. I think sometimes you stare at something too long and you don't think past what you already had planned.

Once the walls were opened up completely and everything was actually clean I was talking with my contractor about what to do in Lucas' room because there was not actually a closet in his room. There was one right outside it, but I had always planned on putting a small closet behind his door because the space wasn't very useful, but my contractor said- "Why don't you just recess it into the wall?" Oh...well now that is brilliant since there is just wasted attic space. Problem being it was going to be short with the roof angle which probably wouldn't have been a big deal. But then we got thinking- why don't we take the hall closet and make an opening to it off of his room. There was just enough space for a 24" door to go into a "walk-in" closet that we extended about 3' into the attic space. So it got framed out that night! The shorter side is unusable for hanging clothes probably but it is perfect for rubbermaid tubs of old/future clothes. And I have a feeling that Lucas will turn this room into a pretty cool hang out while he is little.

Then in Lilly's room there was a closet already in place, but it had two large ducts (supply and return) running through the closet from the basement. These were added on when the upstairs was finished (guessing about the 50's based on finishes). My contractor asked why I didn't just change these ducts to flex ducts and run them through the attic instead? Again...brilliant.
So that is what we did! You can kind of see them in the picture below inside the closet, and then a 6" duct use to run all the way up to the vent you see at the top.
Here are the new flex ducts back behind the closet.
Now I just need to fix the hole in the floor!

Day 16- Getting Dirty

Well the fun part of demolition is the tear down, breaking walls, using sledge hammers etc. But cleaning up always follows and it seems to take just as long...if not longer. Especially when you are tearing down plaster walls that just crumble and turn to dust. So needless to say it is boring to blog about cleaning up but basically half of the time at the house that is what I am doing. I always say I will be sick of cleaning this house before I even move into it...but what I am hoping is that when it is actually clean and livable I will just want to keep it that way all the time.

The whole house is a dusty mess and I have not been able to work upstairs without a mask on since we opened up the walls. The amount of dust and insulation and 80 years worth of crap is just floating through the air and if you are not wearing a mask you will be blowing black snot later that day (just being honest).

So, this past weekend I cleaned and also finished cleaning out all of the attic bays. Once I had decided to tear off the paneling and realized the other boards were behind it and the nasty insulation that was behind that I decided that $500 was worth paying someone else to do it. And it was a good thing I did for the following reasons:

1. It would have taken me a four days to do by myself

2. It was very hot up there and you could hardly breathe even with a mask

3. The brown mexican that went in came out black...seriously

Even this past weekend when I was just cleaning up final insulation residue my arms and face were charcoal in color and my mask was covered in dust. This is what it looked like when the walls were opened up:

This is what it looked like after I paid the guy to dig it all out:

And then I essentially this past weekend I shop vac'd all the little leftover insulation debris, ashphalt shingle debris (that had come through the rooff during tear-off) and 80 year old dust. It was not fun, but felt so good to see this at the end:

And now we are ready for new insulation!

Renovation Day 15- Now we are getting somewhere!

Ok, so we had been slowly framing all week but Friday they hit it hard and it all came together. I have sketched out over the original spaceplan to show you the changes I am making. The side door on the left goes away and I am putting in a back door and new "mud hallway" complete with washer/dryer and coat storage. The kitchen gets about 24" longer but I gain alot of cabinetry. I am then taking what is now the 4th bedroom and making it a small office with built-in bookcase. (I am super excited about this room).

The second floor plan seen just above already had a dormer built out in back for a 3/4 bath which was gutted as seen before. We are expanding the closet and putting the door off the bedroom to the left instead of the hallway. The attic dormer in front gets insulated and finished for a toy room.

This side door gets removed and filled in and it will look something like what I have sketched below: The existing stud wall got removed and a header put in place for support and all the walls were framed! The kitchen wall sits back another 24" but with closing up the side door I gain about 8' of lineal cabinetry. The picture below is where my new back door will go as well as coats and washer/dryer niche.

What you are looking through in the picture above is the new pocket door opening to my office!

And this is just a quick sketch of the new tub and open linen storage in the 1st floor bathroom.