7 days to go, we are not ready
November 21st, 2012
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This’ll be the day the wall dies!
November 13th, 2012
It’s been nearly a week but Matt finally let me into the house again! In the meantime the electricians have been re-wiring and Glenn’s been tiling. We finally got the building permit in to take the dining room wall out post architect drawings so Matt and I went over to the house Saturday morning to do just that.
Plan A was Matt demos the wall and I get to do the cleanup of the resulting mess. Lucky me. I decided, having never destroyed a wall before, that I wanted to give it a try. Matt looked at me a little dubiously but eventually handed me the goggles and crowbar. Enter shit eating grin ;p
My first attempt was rather feeble I admit, but a couple good swings later I had a made a good sized hole in the wall. Awesome! Then, having decided that I had my turn, I graciously gave the crowbar back to Matt. Ok, ok, I figured I’d better quit while I was ahead because chances of me seriously injuring myself were rather high.
Matt, now being an expert in demo, took out the rest of the wall in 10 minutes flat. Watching him, as I waited for the inevitable clean up part, a little tune popped into my head. Think of the melody to “American Pie”….
“And they were singing…
Bye, bye Mr Nasty Ass wall,
Drove my crowbar into drywall
And the drywall was gone.
Good ‘ole boys were drinking whiskey and rye
Singin’ this’ll be the day the wall dies….
This’ll be the day the wall dies!”
And then I started singing it. And singing it, and singing it some more. While originally Matt thought it was pretty funny, he’d had enough when I was still humming it under my breath in the car on the way to the cottage hours later. Not too long after that he was sort of humming it too. Don’t you hate it when songs get stuck in your head?
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Of Wires and Roofs!
November 12th, 2012
So in Tara’s last post she told you about how she managed to knock out power to most of the house while trying to run the space heater. Yes it’s important to keep the house somewhat warm while there is no heat (its not quite cold enough for the pipes to start freezing but our contractors might!). There’s another issue with the the lack of power, our contractors (mostly Glenn) need to have power to run their tools which is pretty key!
So after blowing the power to most of the house it merited some investigation and I have to say the results of said investigation were not good to say the least. Having a single device like a heater knock out power isn’t normal and mildly worrying and when the electricians came in the next day we found out that most of the wiring through the house was frayed and a fire hazard. The only thing running through my mind when hearing this was ‘Oh shit, this is going to be expensive’ and it was at $5,500 for something we thought was ok.
This really didn’t need to happen, the budget was tight already!
Now you would think this is the end of our problems, alas that would be wishful thinking! The decrepit (as Tara puts it) garage attached to the house had an aging roof and we knew this when we bought the place. It’s a flat roof that had water pooling on it when it rained and while this isn’t an immediate need for concern what was happening with that water was.
The water on the roof was leaking slowly into the house and it was coming through into the kitchen. Thankfully it was just a little bit but with new walls and cabinets going up right where the drip was it could cause problems like mould.
I could almost hear the bank account crying in pain about yet another unexpected cost!
Another $4,100 later there’s a new roof on the garage (at least there will be no more water in the house).
At the end of it in the matter of a couple days we’ve managed to spend almost $10,000 in unexpected costs. That’s what happens when you get an older house and start opening things up. If this keeps up the house will become a money-pit.
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There goes the Power!
November 6th, 2012
Managed to get into the house in between Matt demo and Glenn reconstruction to wipe down the upstairs hallway and bedrooms to keep the house destinkification process moving along. Started in the upstairs hallway on the weekend to make sure I wouldn’t be in anyone’s way once things got going again on Monday. Thankfully the hallway wasn’t too badly nicotine stained, just majorly cobwebby. Did the upstairs bedrooms next hoping it wouldn’t be too bad like the hallway. Well, it was kinda somewhere in between.
Started with the master bedroom. Getting my mop ready to TSP the ceiling, I actually took a good look at the ceiling for the first time. Interestingly enough it looked like someone spilled a cup of coffee upwards all over it. Lovely. As I moved around the room I found more random brown splatters in various places and all over the inside of the bedroom door. Gross. I soo don’t want to know what that was!
Monday came and the temperature went down. With no heating in the house anymore and the temperature dropping it was starting to get COLD. Left a space heater on overnight in the dining room but figured I’d give it a break when I got there in the morning. Made it through the second bedroom with my trusty old mop and TSP, chatting with Glenn who was working on the bathroom. Paused a few times to help move the tub in, and move it back out, and back in, getting it all ready to install. All was going well and then I moved back downstairs to get out of the way and give the living room a round 2. It was soo dirty to start with that although it was already cleaned once a couple of weeks ago now, it was in definite need of round 2 and possibly 3.
Once I got back downstairs I decided I was way too cold and it was time to turn the space heater on again. Take 2… 3? OK, while the heater was working all night it apparently didn’t want to work anymore! On the off chance that it was the plug rather than the heater that wasn’t working I decided to move it over to a plug in the living room. Turned it on… Heard Glenn shouting down from upstairs…
What?! Apparently all power went out upstairs. The outlet that Glenn was using for his power tools was now suddenly not working. I went back to the heater, gave it a dirty look, and turned it off. Something suspicious here…
Spent the next 10 minutes searching with Glenn for the outlet tester thing that tells if you an outlet is live or not. Had to put my Matt thinking cap on to determine where he might of left it, strenuous task I know, but I figured it out. It was lying down in the basement where Matt and Paul were demoing, never made it back to the toolbox where it belongs. Figures.
So, Glenn went around and checked all the outlets… Apparently I blew every fuse in the place because I was cold. There was one working outlet in the dining room, and one working light upstairs. Fantastic. What a pain. That is so not normal.
Texted Matt. Think we’re going to need an electrician in here stat…. Doo de doo… What? No, I didn’t do anything… Guess that’s enough damage for one day ;p
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The Demo Continues – The Basement
November 2nd, 2012
So now that we’re at the point where we are starting to rebuild things there are still things that need to be destroyed… I mean demo’d. The biggest of these is actually one that’s pretty big, the basement.
What we needed to do now that the oil tank and boiler are gone is to demo the oddly placed bedroom in the basement. The big question that you might ask is why would you demo a finished basement? A basement apartment no less?!
Well we can start with the fact that whoever put this basement together was either on drugs or drunk. The bathroom had a window that was half boarded up to accommodate a shower. Which was one of those insert thingys just placed above the drain by the way. Then there was the stove next to the electrical panel. And did I mention the wires for live outlets that were running along the floor. Think a flooded basement with live wires – nooo, that’s not a risk for electrocution at all?!.
The next reason that we needed to demo the basement is because we need to put in a couple posts to hold up the new wall for the kitchen (or lack thereof as we’re taking one out). Did I forget to mention that we also need to put in the furnace and new washer dryer?
OK so the net result is most of the basement needed to come out and that is what Paul and I came in to do and it came apart fairly easily… well the walls did at least.
The ceiling is another story – there were 4 different kinds of ceilings in the place:
Tonge and groove ¾ inch plywood (very heavy)
Drywall with thin plywood on it (this is two because they covered the finished ceiling with plywood)
and spots without ceilings.
Ok my question is, why would you put plywood on top of a finished ceiling? Really?? Its not that hard to tear down and put it back up properly. Seriously.
The good news is most of this crap is now done thanks to the help Paul provided! It looks much better already.
OK kind of ready to start putting things back into the basement (only the kitchenette and bathroom left to remove).
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