Week 3 Con't - Monday

Surface cuts on legs: multiple
Deep gouge on arm received while trying to save Joseph from falling off his ladder: 1
Smashed fingers: 4
Sore muscles: all
Contractor bags filled: 56

AND WE'RE STILL NOT DONE WITH THE FREAKIN DEMO!!!!!!!!! The back of our house is now a shell that we're not entirely sure how to put back together. My internal dialogue often consists of "What the F&*$ have we gotten ourselves into?!?!?! " We had no scope of the amount of demo we had to do and we did not plan accordingly. So we don't have a dumpster. Therefore, the ever-growing pile of rubble in our driveway will have to be moved into one at a later date. This prospect is soooooooooo grim.



This picture does not do justice to how big this pile is.

Realistically, we (or rather I) really should have looked at this as 2 distinct projects, closet and bathroom, when coming up with the 6 week deadline. Needless to say, that ain't gonna happen. We've spent the better part of the last 3 weekends on the new closet portion alone. We do have most of the framing up, just waiting for drywall.





Before we drywall, however, plumbing and electrical must be done. Some plumbing was in place for the half bath, but the toilet is now going where the sink was, the shower is going where the toilet was, and the sinks are in a new, un-plumbed spot, so it's not going to be a super simple plumbing job. We don't do plumbing or electric, so we're counting on Joseph's help with that stuff.

Another small hitch: Because of the piecemeal renovation by the guy who previously owned the house, we have quite a bit of furring to do. (Furring is when the beams that hold the drywall aren't even, so you have to add scrap pieces of wood to make them even - Joseph taught us this). Basically, the previous renovation was done around the existing structure rather than creating a new (and better) design and dealing with the issues this caused, which is why the existing "master suite" had a tiny half bath, a small closet, and a random tile entryway with a sloping floor that led to french doors. His intent was to flip, so I guess I understand, but it's created more aggravation than we anticipated. If I had a dollar for every time I've heard someone say "you never know what you're going to find with these old houses" we could probably fund this renovation.

Chuck went ahead and put a couple of pieces of drywall up in our closet, so we could take down the wall of plastic and somewhat reclaim our bedroom.





We permanently borrowed a 2.5 ft x 6ft section from the guest room to create a place for the sink vanities. The ceiling in the bathroom is lower than in the rest of the house, so originally, we were going to frame the sink ceiling at bathroom height and then put cubbies in the guest room over that area for seasonal storage. The middle of the bathroom ceiling was lower than the 2 sides, so we took it down to see what we were dealing with. This was an awful awful job whose mess consisted of nasty old insulation, a huge birds nest and lotsa little turds from unidentifiable rodents.



This resulted in a red bumpy rash on my arms and legs. I don't even want to think about what was in there.

As it turns out, the middle of the bathroom ceiling had been installed as a drop ceiling and the beams were higher than we thought. This means the new bathroom ceiling is only about a foot and a half lower than the guest room ceiling, so we decided to forgo the cubbies and keep the sink ceiling at 10 feet. This will add a nook that allows us to do something cool with lighting.



This is one of the only pieces of existing drywall that we didn't have to take down. Praise the lord!

We have a few issues that we've run into that we need to figure out. Like this:



It's a beam rotting from water damage that frames the roof. Great find!

There was a lot of this all day today:



As of the end of today, we're finally to the point where we have small projects that we can work on during the week, such as taking old nails out of existing beams, and furring the beams for drywall installation. Up to this point, we haven't been able to do much during the week because demo makes such a huge mess. We're both on new schedules and get home around 7pm on weeknights, so we'll see how much work we actually get done this week. It's finally starting to cool off at night, and change is in the air. I have a wicked case of fall fever after our hot, dry summer, and I would really love to have the bulk of this done by mid-October, so we can have a fun fall! Gotta keep our eye on the prize.

Which is this: