The big day

Well our big day has been very big indeed. We finally decided on the paint color for the kids room! Tada!

Just kidding. We did decide on his paint color but that certainly wasn't the biggest action of the day. It's hard to say what the biggest accomplishment was today. Maybe we should have them fight it out. In fact I think we should have a cage match: new gutters vs. no kitchen!

First up, the interior contender, our former kitchen!:

Surprise! We found a chimney!

We have a lot of kitchen cabinets in strange places right now. Like, they are three times bigger in the middle of the room than they seem on the wall. You can still swing if you don't mind getting up close and personal with an ancient mouse nest we discovered in one of them. 

Technical foul! What happens when you have guys coming to destroy stuff and the dumpster doesn't show up until 5:04 (ten minutes after the guys had to leave?) This. This is what happens. It's all gone now, no big deal, and totally on the dumpster people (and perhaps the people ordering the dumpster). 

The challenger: new gutters!

I am sad to see the copper gone. It was so lovely and added such character, but it was literally destroying our house with its complete failure to direct water in appropriate directions. So I will use as much copper as I can reasonably and stylishly afford on the inside. Sorry, house. 

I said a lot of prayers for these guys. At one point the Kid was shaking their ladder. (!) 

I hustled him off to school. 

Our aluminum/copper combo is now all aluminum. Sad face. But a dryer basement! Preserved masonry! 

I hear these are worth big bucks. I also love them and would like to use them for something, but I'm not sure what that would be without causing undue damage. Like, a planter? That I could cut a bigger hole for?

Also, I like money. See: no kitchen or bathrooms

The Kid is the winner! "Hey look at my muscles! I'm a super hero!"

In other news, the electrician is scheduled for next week, the guys are coming to take down ceilings on Friday, and I have a big dilemma in front of me for next week: refinishing floors or painting cabinets? Stay tuned!

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.)

Party Dumpster

The party carpet is no more. Hallelujah! Despite the protests of a vocal minority I feel 100% better now that its out of the house. Given the water stains on the underside, I'm a little concerned about the floors. They are still under the carpet pad to protect them while we do some demo in the upstairs bathroom and open up the wall between the kitchen and dining room. So I haven't seen them yet. Carpet removal is my favorite demo project because it makes the house look better immediately. The floors still need work of course, but it is super gratifying to pull out the nasty, smelly, filthy carpet and reveal the hardwoods. It's like opening a present! A present that gives me hives when I unwrap it. Alas.

Demo is surprisingly difficult to photograph because there is so much dust in the air. See also, covered in filth and disgusting and exhausted. I took the camera today but only got these two shots on my phone because of the aforementioned factors. 

The Mr rented a jackhammer for the weekend. He busted out the floor and the plumbing in the upstairs bathroom today. The ceiling is still in pending the whole house re-wire which is now a certainty. But the basement is very near completion and we are on dumpster #3, so we are making good progress all around. Which is good because we can only take another few days of this manual labor before we seriously start falling apart. I am so tired that I am walking into walls and tonight I caught my heel in the screen door and have a 2" gash down the back of my heel. Hives and Crocs with a cap and gown is a classic look for graduation, right?

Thursday night the Mr and I loaded dumpster #2 until nearly midnight in a driving rain. Not the kind of romantic evenings I envisioned spending in this house, but it won't last too much longer. I will be overseeing some contractors next week, getting a few more bids and continuing to work on floors and walls. I may have found two excellent candidates for the living room paint color, which will be used in different ways throughout the house. Hopefully I will get to put some samples up soon, because the paint really keeps me motivated. Whatever it takes, right? 

This lovely robins egg blue was lurking under the cabinet on the wall between the living and dining room. Makes me feel like I'm really tuned into the history of the house with all my plans for aqua. This is the wall that will be opened up so of course it can't stay.

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!

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Saddest face of sad. Why can't this stay? Why? 

I mean, I know why. But still. Does anyone know of a screaming deal on hex tile? 

In more positive news, this: 

This: 

This: 

And this: 

Equals this: 

We may need a bigger dumpster. 

(We've started calling the bedrooms by their carpet colors now. So from the top, that's the 'green room', the 'red room', the 'blue room' which is not the master but the future master bath, and the master closet.)

P.S. I hate you adjustable shelving. You suck.

Day One Progress Report

God bless you, dearly departed homeowner. God bless you for buying the expensive wallpaper. God bless you for priming the walls before it was applied. God bless you.

I have about 90% of the wallpaper in the house removed. And this house was papered. It came off in full sheets in my hands. I used no tools. My nails are all still present and accounted for.

Lest you think I've been inhaling some sort of toxic gas and hallucinating, we made a short (and apparently hilarious?) video to demonstrate:

This was actually one of the more 'challenging' wallpapers in the entire house, because it was more paper and less fabric underneath and was tearing horizontally. Most of the floors are covered in entire sheets of paper. Like so: 

Did I do that? 

My back and feet tell me that I did. 

So in addition to winning the wallpaper lottery today, I also unearthed this little gem: 

Also known as the gorgeous hardwood floors in my bedroom. Score. 

This is the worst thing that happened today:

Oh wait. That's the wall I'm going to open up anyway. Looking at the state of the wall, we may end up removing it entirely now. Either way. It's cool. 

I also got the water and gas turned on and the utilities switched over to our name. We met the next door neighbors to the north, who don't live in that house but come down randomly every few weeks to mow and stuff, so we were able to have a fence discussion much earlier than anticipated. We had two other contractors out to bid today and are looking forward to their numbers soon. I will call and order the dumpster for the demolition party tomorrow, it will be dropped on Friday and the sledgehammers attack on Saturday. Depending on my discussion with the mold guy, we may have all the carpets and wallpaper down by Saturday as well. 

Am I crazy or are things going really well over here? Don't get too excited. It won't last. 

The armadillo and I meet with the mold remediation dude at 9 am.