The Great Wall

The wall that has been holding everything up for weeks is actually finished. In the end, it was one of the cheaper and faster projects we've done. In one day, the crew had widened the original opening, replaced the studs, and sistered the joists running through the bathroom. Pretty sweet, really. 

Not the greatest picture, but I think it's funny how well you can see the window in the master bathroom from the kitchen right now.

So the joists that were beveled and notched and just cut to pieces have been sistered across the bathroom floor. The really rotted nasty one in the kitchen has also been sistered, but that sister joist runs all the way across the ceiling of the kitchen (on the left in this picture).

A nice visual of how much wider the door opening is. It's about doubled in size. We had hoped to be able to take it out one stud further, but to do that we would have had to re-engineer the basement, because of the load distribution over the lintel of the doorway downstairs. This is one where a) getting what we wanted would have been impractical in terms of the amount of work and money and b) we chose to work with the house and not force it to do things that didn't make sense. 

So then this afternoon the Mr. moved the doors around. This is the door to the mudroom, which we moved a few inches to the left. This is to accommodate a utility sink in the mudroom and a full size counter/cabinet in the kitchen. 

If you'll recall, our original plan was to bump this wall out into the little closet to get a full depth refrigerator on this wall. Because of the brick column, which is supporting a steel beam which is supporting all the masonry on the second floor, we aren't able to do that. We've decided to go with a counter depth commercial fridge/freezer instead, and leave the wall alone. 

The doorway from the office to the kitchen is framed out now, to give us more counter/cabinet space. You can see the brick column just to the right. 

Next up: plumbing, electrical, dry wall, paint, world peace and moving. 

Mud room demo

This demo has really been a group effort, with just about everyone having pitched in at some point. (Except me. But I took pictures!) 

We found an actual birds nest in the wall. The mason is going to plug up the whole on the exterior. 

When the ceiling came down, there was a rain of black coal dust. It's still layering the boards and drifting around, but you can really see the handprints on the light, I think. There was no insulation above the ceiling. We'll fix that. 

The whole shebang. This door wasn't functional when this picture was taken, so it wasn't really a door. But it fit the hole! Which is more than we can say for our current solution. Grrrrrrrrr.

Master bathroom demo

Now that I've rejoined the ranks of the gainfully employed, our cousin Casey has been putting in a lot of hours on our behalf. One of his many projects over the past few weeks has been taking up the hardwood floors in the master bathroom. They have all been carefully taped up and stored in case we need to use them for patching other spots. We have to get the floor up in order to run the plumbing through. I helped take down the walls a little while back. 

 

After he got the floor up, he took down the ceiling so that we can run the electric and new lights and fans through and install the waterproof drywall. It was a very messy job. 

The door frame will go back up, flipped around so that the door will open out and we will have access to the washer and dryer that will be right here. 

Still no progress on the bathroom, but you can see the PVC drain running from the roof through the attic. 

Dancing on the ceiling

You might recall that there was some worrisome water damage on the plaster ceiling in the guestroom/playroom upstairs. The Mr. and Casey have been working very hard on drywalling over it, which was deemed the safest, most hygienic and cost effective solution. I was concerned about losing any ceiling height at all, but unless you're making a determined comparison of this room with the master bedroom, you really can't tell that it's about an inch shorter than it used to be. These pictures are mid-process, I've been told that they're actually finishing it this weekend. 

In preparation for completed electrical and painted ceilings, I ordered two of these lights from Amazon, where they were $15 cheaper than the orange store. They've since gone up in price on Amazon as well, so I'm just going to pat myself on the back for striking while the iron was hot. I think I will do one in this bedroom and one in the master, and we'll see how that works. I was thinking about something a little fancier in the master, but the Mr. wasn't feeling it.

Outside excitement

Kite flying in the park

After at least two months of phone calls, visits, contractors, assistant managers, etc., we have a new door! I say A new door, because naturally they brought a door for the back that was about 4" too short. Despite the fact that we paid them to measure the doors, and special ordered the doors, etc. etc. So they just extended the door jamb to make it fit and are going to reorder the correct size door and reinstall it for free. In four weeks. Of course. They also spent a lot of time on replacing the garage door, but I didn't get a picture of that. Way to go, blue store.  

This is the door on the side of the house. I wanted something with some glass to get some light on the stairs but not so much glass that I would have to put a security door on it. I had about three options in the special order size. I hope this is a workable compromise. I also distinctly remember saying I wanted the nickel hardware, and yet this brass was installed. Oh well. It is a door. A special order, super short door. I want to paint it green. 

After several weeks of absence, our masons have returned and started building this scaffolding in preparation for fixing the chimney. We hope to see some more progress on the masonry soon. 

In less visible news, round one of new electric has been installed, so we have a new line from the pole, a new service, and new circuits for all the mechanicals and the eventual alarm system.