Day 29- And SCREAMS went out

So on a Friday afternoon I am awaiting my little sisters arrival to come and help me with the house for the weekend. My contractors had just left and my other little sis had just run to grab something from the other house. I am trying to clean things up a bit and am upstairs using the shopvac. All of the sudden a bird flys from one attic opening to the other right above my head. Needless to say I screamed. I call my contractor to freak out and ask him what to do and if he can come back asap. THEN....my hero arrives. It is Tiffany and she is wondering why I am screaming. I start to explain what just happened when all the sudden the bird flys out again and over to a corner and into a piece of insulation. It was near an open window in Lucas' room (which is how I am assuming he got in in the first place) so Tiff decides we should try and scare it out. I agree with her...and then hand her a 2x2 while I stand frozen and gutsy girl goes over and starts hitting on the stud next to the bird. Nothing happens. We decide that maybe if we start using the shop-vac again that it will scare him out. So I turn it on and start vaccuming...then all the sudden we see insulation fall from the attic above and we look at eachother with that evil eye and whisper "there he is" and then all the sudden I look up and he is sitting 12" from my head on a ceiling joist and all I could do was start SCREAMING!!!!

The bird then flys into Lilly's room and is sitting up on top of a piece of insulation up in the corner right next to the window. At that time Cheryl comes back and wonders what is going on, we tell her the story and show her the bird and she comes upstairs to join our venture. So we come up with a plan! We will open the window in that room, close the door, turn on the vaccum and hit the wall with a stick and he will just fly out...right??

Sooooo...Tiffany BRAVELY goes and opens the window that is next to the bird so that hopefully he can fly out. We all go in Lilly's room and close the door hoping to contain him in the room (although one wall is only studs so there is about a 5' opening for him to fly back to Lucas' room). So since I did not think to grab my camera at the time; here is a description of what is happening:

-I am in the corner of the room (farthest from the bird) trying to duck behind Cheryl although she is so skinny that it is kind of difficult to use her for any kind of protection.

-Tiffany has her beating stick (a 2x2) and is approaching the bird to plan on hitting the studs trying to scare it out.

-The Bird (which is black and ugly) has its yellow eyes wide open, its beak chattering and is probably way more scared than I am...maybe.

Tiffany gets in place and starts hitting the wall...scared bird does not move. I turn on the shop-vac and start yelling at the bird to get out of my house. He flys across the room and almost out of the 5' opening but instead perches on top of a shelf. (I hold Cheryl in front of me...what? you haven't seen the movie THE BIRDS?). The bird finally realizes that maybe he should try to get out of this house where girls are screaming and trying to hit him with a 2x2 and suck him up with a vaccum so he heads for the window...but BOOM! He hits the top of it instead. Ouch! He regains his composure (while still in the air) and FINALLY flys out the bottom!!! Tiffany rushes over and closes the window, I run to close the other bedroom window and we all breathe a sigh of relief.

So needless to say I have to give a shout out to my heros that day. For some reason I could not be as brave as my sister Tiffany. Maybe its because she deals with 8-12 children everyday under the age of 5 that nothing can really scare her anymore? I'm not sure...but I am really glad that she showed up when she did.

The only brave thing I did was after the bird was gone. I wanted to make sure that he had come in through the open window and not the attic space above through a vent or something (since my house has been known to be a bird haven). Sooooo I get a ladder and VERY SLOWLY stick my head up through a 2'x2' opening that has about a 6" layer of blown insulation above it. Kind of assuming that at any time another bird will swoop towards me and start pecking my eyes out........but nope. We are good. No holes in the gable vents that I can see and we decide that maybe that was enough action for the night and that we should go eat some dinner.

Although it would have been awesome to catch on tape and post to you-tube...all I got was a pic of my sister the next day being awesome like she always is. I thank God for the heroes in my life. There are many right now and I couldn't do this without them! XOXOXO!

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 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!