Week 9 and 10

Week 9 was the second week of July.  We started removing flooring this week.  We pulled up the teal carpet from the breakfast room and under that the linoleum.  We scraped it all up and also removed all of the staples.  We also started removing the wood flooring from the kitchen, southwest bedroom, the phone room and tile from the inglenook.  

This week we also met with the HVAC guys from Freemont HVAC to plan for how we are going to heat and cool the house.  I've been somewhat torn because I would love to reuse the old radiators, but I don't think that is going to work for us.  Especially because the back section of the house has no radiators in it.  A few years back, the owners put a furnace in the attic, a monstrous beast that is covered in box elder bugs.  We have talked about reusing it, but we would like to relocate it from being dead center in the middle of the attic.  We have talked about using the attic space as a bonus room, and would like to get the old furnace out of the way.  After talking to the HVAC installer, we decided we would replace the old furnace with a new, high efficiency one and move it to the east side of the attic.  We need to place some return air vents in different locations around the house so we discussed this as well.  A few of them will be located in closets, and a few others will be placed in the columns entering the family room. 

Week 10 was a continuation of removing the flooring.  We tried very hard to pull out all the nails and not break the tongue or groove of the planks.  This was a tricky task considering the wood is 94 years old.  The kids were great help removing the nails that we didn't get.  All of the flooring from the center of the house and the back area got removed and stacked out in the garage.  

We spent time cleaning up the yard again this weekend.  It's amazing how fast everything grows.  We raked, trimmed edged and mowed the lawn.  We were also able to sell the range this week which is awesome.  Love getting appliances off the driveway.

BTW... we got our building permit from the city this week. YEAH!!

 OK Kayden... we get it already. You have biceps.

Week 7 and 8

This week we finished taking down the main fireplace to below the floor level.  We removed more lath and plaster from the wall between the future kitchen and dining room, and from the North wall of the front room.  When we removed the wood trim in the front room, we could see that the wall paper was behind it, which leads us to believe that the wall paper in the front room is original.  I wish it was in better condition.  I've put pictures up before, but it is really cool stuff.  I throw some more on here.  

We have completed most of the ceiling and wall demoltion for the main floor at this point, and so we decided to tackle some of the work in the basement.  Clay was able to take apart the old boiler for the radiators that was in the basement and remove it.  We turned off the gas and began removing the pipes in the basement.  Pretty much all the pipes in the basement were hung below the ceiling, but I plan on pullling down the lath and plaster on the ceiling in the basement and getting everything that has to be ran new, up in the ceiling.  We also disconnected the water heater and stored in the extra storage room in the basement. 

Out on the porch, Kayden and I had pulled off all the lath and plaster ceiling, the wood soffit, and wood trim.  Everywhere we pulled down the lath and plaster, it leaves the little nails in the joists and they have to be removed, too.  The kids have always like pulling the nails, because it goes pretty quick and it's easy. This weekend, I had a couple of my nephews (11 yrs. old) at the house, and they loved pulling all the nails out of the porch lid.  They did a great job. 

Week 8 we continued all the odd and end cleaning up that needed to be done to complete the demo.  Removing more nails where the lath and plaster had been, and of course, constantly sweeping up the fine dust.  With no soffit on the house, the wind blows right through the attic and stirs it up.  I sweep the floor continually trying to keep up with it as much as possible. 

We finished removing all the pipes in the basement this week as well.  

We also sold the old refrigerator to a neighbor and the dishwasher off of KSL.  It was nice to get them off the driveway.  The gas range is still out there, though.

Week 5 & 6

As we began to take the lath and pLaster off the ceiling, we discovered something that has been a pain ever since. On top of the lath and plaster is a fine dust, anywhere from an inch to two inches deep.  As we would pull the plaster down, the dust would fall all over us, get in our eyes and make it hard to breath.  We are not sure what the dust is and haven't had it tested, but... I think it might just be a gypsum powder that was spread on top of the ceiling, in the attic, to help insulate it. We wore our masks, and tried to get it all down quickly.  We also realized that this dust would basically get everywhere!

The fuzziness in the picture is from the dust.  Looking west from kitchen.

Because this dust was such a mess, I began to think that maybe we should just keep going on the demolition and get more of it done than we were originally planning on.  I figured that since we had the dumpster there and we were already creating such a mess, we should go ahead and demo anything that we were going to need to remove for the final plan.  

So... we continued to remove lath and plaster from walls and ceiling in all of the back area of the home as well as the bedrooms, bathroom, and kitchen in the center of the home.  We even removed the lath and plaster from the north wall in the hallway.

This shows the North wall of the hall gone.

At this point, the only thing left was the south wall of the hallway that backed up to the fireplace. This is the first point that Clay and I have varying opinions about what should be done.  Clay felt that we should leave the fireplace and beautiful wood work in the inglenook.  I felt that we should remove the inglenook, take down the fireplace and demo the south wall of the hall to open it up and let the natural light shine in and through the whole home.  

Looking east.  Taking down all the walls between

the bedrooms, bathroom and kitchen space.

And... I  got my way this time. We began taking apart the the benches and removing the marble from the face of the fireplace.  We also climbed up into the attic and began removing the brick to bring down the chimney.  The dropped ceiling in the inglenook had a whole lot more of the white dust on the top so we carefully tried to scoop off as much as we could and even tried to vacuum up quite a bit of it.  We finally got it all taken apart.  The benches were pretty much still intact, and we plan on reusing them in the home.  The dropped panel ceiling was also removed and we will be reusing it in the dining room. 

This is the South wall of the hallway, and the inglenook fireplace

is on the other side of this wall.  Like the little storage cupboards on either side?

Kayden, Lydia and I went downstairs and removed the dumbwaiter closet.  We found an the old library book and the 1903 Indian head penny as we were taking it apart.

                      

This is where the dumbwaiter used to be located.  Years ago they closed it in.  We did find the pulley, though. 

We also finished demo-ing the bathroom during this time.  We took all the fixtures out to the driveway, including the bath tub, and Clay and our neighbor Mike were able to break up all the old tile and concrete from the bathroom floor. 

We began removing old plumbing lines from the basement.

I love this tub.  I wish we had room for it in the new bathroom.

Week 3 and 4... Demo and "Quick, we need a garden."

This week we continued to take down the lath and plaster from the walls and ceiling in the back part of the house.  We began removing all the trim and moldings from the bedrooms as well.  We have a neighbor that came over to see what we were doing at the house.  His name is Mike and he lives alone just around the corner from us.  He began asking us how we were going to get the radiators out of the house and before we know it, he is lending us his "dolly" to help move them.

  

I felt like if I was going to get something planted this year, I better hurry and get it in the ground.  We dragged the old railroad ties from the back off the house to the back of the yard and created a garden spot.  The kids worked hard and pulled all the weeds, and we planted the seeds my mother gave me for jumbo pumpkins, and Jenna's cabbage that they give fourth graders.  

We have already filled one dumpster completely full, and so we had to have that emptied.  

We finished removing all the cabinets from the kitchen, and stacked them out in the garage for now.  Clay disconnected the radiators, and I helped him remove them all out to the drive way.  They are stinkin heavy and I'm not quite sure what I want to do with them.  I think it would be a shame to send them to the scrap yard.  I've got to come up with a good plan, or Clay is going to haul them off.  

Week 2... Walls coming down.

WEEK 2

This week we did a bit of outside work as well.  We took down the barbed-wire fence that was around the old pasture and dug out the fence posts.  We put the old swing set out on the curb with a free sign on it, and it was claimed almost immediately.

On Saturday, with the amazing help of my bestie, Vic, we emptied out the basement, removed the fascia from the house, and took the massive swamp cooler out of the back window. We also finished taking the chimney on the back of the house down below the main floor level.

We started removing items from the bathroom including the medicine cabinet, plastic tub surround, shelves and hooks.  We removed shelves and cabinets from the main hall and and the closets in the back of the house.

Finally, we began removing walls, lath and plaster, base boards and other trim, starting at the back of the house.

We pulled down the rest of the ivy on the west side of the house and trimmed the cherry and plum tree and the plants in the front.

We had a tree service come and trim up several of the trees and also remove dead limbs, a few trees and some old stumps.  They also hauled off all the branches and yard waste we had trimmed.

The yard looks so much better with the old branches hauled away, and it's amazing to see the space opening up and sunshine coming through now the old ivy is off the windows.

Give me a Sledge Hammer!

WEEK 1

Our very first night of owning the house, we started tearing the paneling off the walls where the water damage had occured.  We rolled up the old, mushy rotten red carpet and hauled it out and started removing the base and trim from the walls, doors and windows.

There were at least three, maybe four layers of wallpaper in that room.

On Monday after we closed on the home, I called Kevo and asked him to get us a dumpster at the house.  We were ready to get going on it.

During the week we took all the appliances out and put them on the driveway and started removing the upper kitchen cabinets.

Saturday morning... I woke up thinking "I want to tear down a chimney today. Thanks Nicole Curtis!"

First Chimney down below roof.

Getting ready to take down the second chimney.  This was a bit tricky trying to figure out how to get the cap off.

We took this chimney all the way down to the first floor.  

Girls enjoying the view.

We also cleaned most of the vines off the west side of the house and emptied the garage.  We figured we were going to need to store some of the doors and woodwork we would be removing in the garage.

We pulled the lath and plaster off the ceiling. We wondered if the sliding door at the back of the garage worked and guess what?

It did.

There were hundreds of walnut shells up in the ceiling put there by squirrels.