Let there be light!!!

Notice anything different?

For the first time in several months, we have lights!!!!!!!!!!! (!!!!!!!)

We have lights in the basement and the attic, and it only took one weekend.  ONE WEEKEND. 

We bought a ceiling fan for the playroom upstairs and are hopeful that we won't actually be threading new wiring through the plaster, just making new connections and putting new outlet boxes on. So we could be ready to paint in the bedrooms in another week or so. 

SQUEEEEEEEEE!!!!!

*That's the Kid's new-to-him bedframe in the picture above. $100 on Craigs List. Solid vintage brass. Score!

Also, I painted the exterior doors. Palladian Blue, Benjamin Moore. Apparently I suck at cutting in so I never took real pictures for you. See how the angle of the shot completely obscures my crappy edging?

Not all our internet purchases are happy ones, unfortunately. 

But I got a great deal and fast shipping on one half of a Gerber Viper toilet with elongated bowl! I'm going to order the tank tonight but apparently I need a fair amount of extra pieces and such. And a toilet seat. I'll have to consult The World's Most Meticulous Plumber before we make our weekly (or thrice weekly, depending) run to Menards.

We left the attic light on because 1) we can! and 2) you have to climb into the attic to turn it off and 3) we have the fancy ugly florescent bulbs so it's using a minuscule amount of power and 4) it's really nice to have the house look inhabited. With a broken window. Cause we keep it so classy like that. 

Accentuate the positive

We're having the kind of day where everything is going wrong and nothing is going right and costs are spiraling wildly out of control while our quality of life diminishes rapidly... so, here. Here are some 'after' pictures. Sort of. This is the basement sprayed with Kilz!

Leftover pile of debris from laundry chute removal. It's all gone now. 

We got $40 for this pile of wire. We would have gotten more money if we had stripped all the insulation off the wire. Yeah right.

So here is the 'big bad' of the day. We're trying to get rid of the dumpster, as it is becoming mattress and box spring central. (None of us have ever put a mattress or box spring in our dumpster. Strange how that happens.) So I thought, we should take down the ceiling tiles in the kitchen and get that in the dumpster. That's about all the demo left to do in this phase.

HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA

This is the original plaster ceiling of the kitchen, completely in shambles and full of water and god knows what else, being supported by some flimsy boards and a sheet of plastic. The box for the kitchen light was completely rusted out. Super safe, I'm sure. If I had a couple of big guys, we could have taken down all the upper cabinets and let it rain down upon us. Alas, I have no big guys lounging around my house waiting for orders. There doesn't seem to be a way to take down the ceiling without taking down and/or potentially damaging the cabinets, which I do not have the funds to replace. While the removal of the upstairs bathroom floor may have helped this destruction along, we still can't clean this out from above and if we could it would only go halfway across before the upstairs bedroom covered it up again. Not to mention that next week we lose our helper and I am supposed to be studying for boards. We have no idea when we will have the money to tackle the kitchen since it's tied up in our current house so it appears that this is going to be here for a bit. Until something miraculous happens, or whatever. 

In case you're wondering, I do give up on this house. I give up on it all the time. Sometimes several times a day. I just usually get over it pretty quickly. 

This time... we've been broken up for about four hours. I'm still not speaking to it. 

Hobos, Guys, Stairs and Swings

We continue to work on demo, and we ordered dumpster #4 on Monday. For those of you playing along at home, that's 80 cubic yards of debris that we have already hauled, carried, tossed and dragged out of this house. Our new dumpster is a 20 yard, the same size as dumpster #1 so we're aiming for a project total of 100 yards. That does not include ripping out the wheelchair ramp, although it could happen. Who knows. The new dumpster may even be dumpster #1, except it didn't smell like spam last time. Or maybe it's urine. Hobos? Food? Who can say. What adventures are dumpsters having while they're off duty?

The mold remediation is finished except for a little clean up. The entire basement has been scrubbed, sprayed with mold killing chemicals and then sprayed with Kilz. Ceiling, walls, floors, everything. It's taking a long time to dry since we keep having thunderstorms, and the air conditioning isn't turned on because everything is wrapped in plastic. But it's nice to know that the mold is (almost entirely) gone, and it was super nice to have guys working in the house. It's like we're not doing this alone! (We're not, but it often feels that way, round about 4pm and/or 12 am). I was telling the mold guys this and they said, "makes you feel like there's someone else pulling the rope?" Which is almost exactly the case. The surveyors finished staking out the property lines today in anticipation of fence building, and our replacement bricks have come in and the mason is waiting for a dry day to climb up on the roof and rebuild our chimney. So things are happening. We are going to make some final decisions on plumbing and electrical, since that's holding up just about everything else at this point, and get something going on the door replacement and gutter fronts asap. We've had a lot of gutter quotes, but so far no one seems to think that our copper gutters can be repaired. Tragic, but not entirely implausible. I have yet to see gutters offered in a patina green shade. Phooey. 

So in preparation for guys of the plumbing and electrical varieties, I took off the dining room side of the nasty wall today. I'm not going to lie, when the Mr. asked me my plans for the day and I very seriously said, "oh, I think I'll take out the wall" - I felt like a bada$$. The lath was in bad shape and the joists need to be cleaned and possibly Kilzed as well so it was a very dirty job. If a toilet drain had exploded all over you and then been left to sit for an indeterminate number of years, you would probably be in bad shape too. Even so, it was nice to see the sun shining into the dining room. The Mr. took off the kitchen side of the wall at the end of last week, and fought valiantly to remove the laundry chute. It seemed like an impossible task from that side, and he also realized once the wall was down that the plumbing was flat against the dining room side of the wall, so we would have to take it down to remove the pipes. Which sounds crappy, but we always wanted to open up this wall in the first place, and our plumbing/electrical situation is just making that a reality sooner rather than later. The laundry chute (on the right) is actually soldered to a piece of metal that we discovered underneath the middle section of remaining lath, which explains why the Mr. wasn't getting anywhere trying to rip it out from the other side of the wall. The other chute is a heating duct that runs right up to the bathroom, and opens up at the top of the tub. So every time they got out of the tub or bent over to wash their hair or whatever, water was running straight down the chute. We will take it out/move it someplace more convenient, so we should be able to push this wall back at least past the heating duct. That will bring a lot more light and communication into our kitchen/dining room, even if it takes us some time to get the cabinets and peninsula put in place according to the plan. 

Communicating with the ghosts of plaster past. 

In other news, the tack strips and staples are gone from the living room and the stairs. The stairs are actually really beautiful, if now completely full of holes and scratches. I hate that amber red carpet more every day. 

From a few steps back, you can almost see how awesome they're going to look when they're all fixed up. Don't be scurred by the boarded up window. It's fine, we covered it up to protect it (and us) during demo.

Have I ever shown you my awesome mirrored door? It's awesome. 

And most awesomely, an AMAZING housewarming gift arrived this week. It is so sweet. Recycled plastic that can be washed after every cloud of demo dust or sidewalk chalk or sticky popsicle or spilled beer and will look beautiful for as long as we live here. Our breaks are a lot more restful and relaxing, especially when we get a little afternoon rain and the windows are open. It helps - physically and mentally - to sit and swing and think about when this project will be mostly finished and we can have lazy weekend mornings or afternoons with the Kid or glasses of wine with friends on the porch. Thank you, thank you, thank you.

Ding dong the pine is dead!

So proud of the Mr, who won his battle with the knotty pine paneling yesterday. We have officially eradicated all the paneling from the basement and the stairwell, which totaled somewhere between 40 and 50 cubic yards of dumpster. We found my new favorite wallpaper under the pine on the basement stairs, which naturally wasn't salvageable. We kept a piece for my little collection.

This is actually even cleaner now that I took all the tools and stuff upstairs. Note the bathroom is completely gone except for the tile floor on the right. Looking east. It is actually painted pink, that is not a lighting trick.

Trash mountain is completely gone, and the mold guys started work today. Hooray!! Progress!! They did chemicals and scrubbing today and are running an 'air scrubber' overnight. They will start painting tomorrow and should be finished by the middle of next week. 

This was once two utility rooms. And a kitchen. 

Kitchen cabinets are all gone. That white pipe was the drain for the sink. 

We've been demolishing through a couple of rain storms with the sump pump disconnected and this is the only part of the entire basement that is getting water, and its only on the wall. The dark spot under the ceiling is actually the original coal chute, which is open to the elements. We'd like to replace it with an egress window so we can use this room (once two separate work rooms) as guest rooms or offices once the plumbing and electrical have been taken care of. The back corner (north east) is an area where we have epic gutter failures, which we hope to have fixed soon. Once those two things are taken care of we are hopeful that all water problems will have been resolved. The perimeter drainage tile seems to be working just fine. 

When the mold guys came in this morning they took a look around and said, "Wow, you guys must be done wore out."

Yes, yes we are.

More Basement Demolition Photos

These images are already inaccurate as they were taken in the middle of last week, but it will make my next post that much more impressive. I hope.  

This is our basement trash mountain. To match the one upstairs. 

Looking north, through the great room. 

Already the closets are gone and the hallway is at least twice as wide. Looking east. 

Much of the bathroom was demolished by our good friend Mr. Coffee (or so I was told.)

Demolition Progress

We're mostly demolished, both in terms of the house and in terms of our physical status. The Mr. is putting in yet another late night loading up a dumpster (we filled the 20 yard ridiculously fast, I expect the 30 yard will be full tonight, and we still haven't taken out any first floor carpets). He's taking some updated pictures for you all, but in the meantime here are a few pictures of the upstairs bathroom from mid afternoon on Saturday:

Down to the studs (laundry chute door has been removed since)

Charming. Historic! We found many pieces of concrete with newspaper attached to them. Most of the newspapers dated from 1947. 

One million razor blades. I have since been told by a classmate that old time medicine cabinets included a slot to 'dispose' of your razors. Pretty sure the 1970's cabinet we removed didn't include this, but who knows. Maybe they thought it was a gift they could leave for future renovators. 

Pathetic dumpster. It could have been completely filled before lunch. We seriously underestimated how overbuilt the basement was. 

Huge thanks go out to all of our volunteers this weekend! We were able to get pretty darn close to our goals for the weekend and would have been closer still if we'd had another dumpster. We are very grateful for the skilled and enthusiastic help with taking out the bathroom (Andrew, Laura and Katelin!) and ripping out the basement (Kyle, Mike, Terry, Bruce and Andrew!) Those are two different but equally awesome guys named Andrew, and my apologies if I've forgotten anyone. It was a pretty long day and we are thrilled that no one was injured. (Mostly. We got out with a few cuts and scrapes.)

We are very tired and I am personally relieved to have been 'clean' since Saturday night, although I managed this feat by hanging out with the massively tantrum-ing, possibly sick Kid. Saturday afternoon we were ready to pack it in and had collected him from an awesome day playing at the neighbor's house with their 5 and 7 year old kids (for which we are so grateful!) when some friends pulled up ready and eager to help. So we turned back around and went back to it, setting the Kid up with the iPhone and his Legos on the porch. The Mr. was surprised when the neighbor kindly returned him to us, as he had wandered back to their house to talk about Legos. Whoops. So we have been keeping a tighter rein on him. He clearly loves the new neighborhood and is becoming quite the local celebrity, since he is perfectly willing to talk to everyone and knock on people's doors if they don't come out to hear his thoughts on light sabers, Death Stars, and battle reenactments. We are having lots of talks about boundaries and what is street and what is park. 

We're at the stage where it feels like the life we envision for our family gets farther and farther away with every hectic fast food dinner and bungled house showing, while the layers of dust and grime (and shattered tile collecting in my decolletage) seem like 'the new normal'. It's always darkest before the dawn, it gets worse before it gets better, etc. etc. We could use a long nap and a good meal. I've discovered that my optimism about this project has a direct relationship with my blood sugar. I'm consuming a lot of sugar as a result. I would really love to see just one project coming together at this point. Soon and very soon. 

This week I'm finishing up the last few days of my second bachelor's degree, and we'll be taking the weekend to celebrate graduation. My personal next project is most likely floor refinishing, which shouldn't be too big a deal but may be complicated by the knob and tube wiring we discovered in the bathroom. It's not throughout the whole house and we were hoping it had been completely updated, but alas, no. So there may be a lot more holes in walls coming up. Fun times!

Basement Befores

Most of this no longer exists: