Vacation is over

The vacation time is over, but the show rehearsals have begun.  It's going to make it more difficult to find time to work on the new house, but I found some time today, and changes continue to happen.

The back porch has been removed, the foundation dug, and today, the footing and walls are poured.

Meanwhile, upstairs, we continue to work on the bathroom.  The tub is in, and the shower surround is going up.   The chimney is gone from this level.  Still work to do to move it out of the main and basement levels.

Speaking of the main level, I finally got around to getting the kitchen sink and drain taken care of.

In order to do that I had to finish dismantling the downstairs shower area.   This should make the plumbing that much easier for the new addition, as well as open up the basement for better storage.   Now to finish the cleanup, and get the utility sink installed.   That will let us wash down the walls and get rid of the mold for good.

Top to Bottom Changes

We're overdue for an update, so I thought I'd put my tired fingers to use and post.

The roof is now about half way done.  It would have been a lot further, but some of the workers elected not to show up today, much to the chagrin of the contractor...  From this view, it looks great.  (Although after this was taken, the chimney was removed as well.

The other side doesn't look as good.   Assuming we have a  full crew tomorrow, they'll make good progress however.   This has been a hard roof for them to do.

Last night, we removed the last wall of plaster in the bedroom.   We are (laughingly) thinking of calling it either the Jonathon or Nichole memorial wall, as they both suggested (correctly so) that we remove it as now was the time.

The kitchen is pretty much ready to go.  We took down the tile ceiling and hope to simply put wallboard up on the same strips.  Should work fine.  The only wall we left alone is the back wall which will be coming completely out.

That leaves the basement, which no longer has a mold filled shower, just a mold covered corner that will be cleaned up as soon as we can hook up the utility sink and shut down the other plumbing that has to come out.

Since these were taken, the chimney has come all the way out of the bedroom, which makes a tremendous difference in perceived space.   We'll get some more pictures of the new roof-line and the inside of the bedroom soon.   The bathtub and surround have arrived.  Work on that is beginning again.   Once the roof is done, the only demolition left will be the back porch and wall, along with the chimney through the dining room and into the basement.   Then it's on to making all things new!

Catching up

This should bring us pretty much up to date.  No work for us tonight as we had other duties, but lots was accomplished yesterday with the help of friends.

Wiring accomplished.   Double outlets beside the bed (matching ones on the other side.)  I'm very happy with the quality of the wiring in the house.

In the bathroom, you can see the thick blue data wires heading to the basement where the wiring will all be connected.

Here's that same wall in the Kitchen below, where demolition began on Monday (July 25th).  All the upper cupboards removed, and the lathe and plaster off about half of the wall space.

These two shots show the completed outside walls.  The wall with the sink will be completely removed as this is where the addition will be attached.  The sink is moving under the window on the upper picture. (Or that's the plan for now...)   The ceiling comes down next.

More walls come down

I'm a week behind in posting.  Last week started out slow as I found that a those things I tell my patients not to do, really do injure backs when done that way.   That put me out of the running for three days, but by Thursday (with good Chiropractic care) I was back on the job.

The corner wall, previously removed to give us more room space, is now doubled to make adding sheet rock and insulation possible while still allowing airflow to let the heat escape.

These windows will be removed, and a wall will head across so that we can have closet space.  The windows have to go anyway because of the one story addition roof line at the back of the house.

This will be the actual closet space.  The bathroom is behind the wall to the right.   That doorway (now removed) was the hallway that will now become part of the bathroom.

These two pictures show the progress toward the end of the week, with walls cleaned out and ready for me to get to work on wiring.   We did do more work over the weekend, including running most of the new wiring (some is waiting for the closet wall) and getting the data cable run to two locations upstairs.

A Bedroom Update

We removed the wall between the two smaller bedrooms, only to find that wasn't original to the structure. It was a standard wallboard wall that was put in sometime after 1964 (since we found several 1964 pennies left in the wall - cool idea by the way) Quite a mess after the demolition in this first shot. This was on Sunday, and the dumpster had not arrived.



Here's a similar shot after Wednesday night (July13, 2011) with the cleanup complete, and one extra wall removed (on the left side of the shot). A new wall will be built following the curves of the roof to give us some additional room. Perfect way to get things insulated at the same time.


Here's a shot in the other direction. We still haven't moved the stool out.. some day we'll have enough energy to carry it downstairs at the end of a work session.

A Bathroom update

We thought we were doing very well on Sunday, when we took the bathroom down to the bare walls (or at least three out of the four walls), and removed the tub, stool, and vanity.



Then Monday, we took out the ceiling, the floor, and the back wall. Messy work, but by Tuesday we were getting the plumbing put back together. The sink needed to move, and there were some issues with the quality of the work that was done before, including joists that were cut to pieces, and poor drainage angles. Good to fix this sort of stuff since it will be over the kitchen. Hate to have stuff leaking down!



By Wednesday night, we had the new water lines up to the appropriate spots. Gotta love that Pex pipe.. red for hot, blue for cold. We also removed the outside of another wall where a door will be closed in. Now I need to get at some minor wiring changes and we need to get a tub and shower surround on the way. Before that goes in, the floor will get finished, the window comes out, and insulation goes into the outside wall.

Deconstruction Beginnings

We have begun the deconstruction phase of the project. I started gently in the kitchen, and at least started to take the old cupboards apart.




Then we decided that our time would be better spent upstairs in the bathroom / bedroom areas. Here are some before shots of the small bathroom.







As well as a couple after we started on the walls.






All this happened the week of July 4th. Major changes happened July 10th with the big hammers coming out. I'll get pictures of that before we start today.