Love the Smell of Lumber in the Morning!

During the second week of August Kevo's crew started building up the new temporary walls and preparing to move the bearing wall.  All the 2x6 rafters through the center of the house will have to be cut and reattached to the new beam with joist hangers, and each 2x6 will get a second 2x6 attached to it.  They are all getting doubled up.

This is the new beam being held up by the temporary walls.

The new furred out wall in the back of the house, and the new framing in the front living room.

Where the old fireplace used to be... see the hole in the floor.

New wall between the kitchen and dining room.

Again... looking into dining room from kitchen.

The post is permanent and will become part of the new kitchen.

During the third week of August, we dug the footings in the basement and crawl space for the new posts that will hold the beam.  The footings got poured and the beam got set in place.  Finally, the old walls came down, the temporary walls came down, and the new framing started going up.  

The big girls wanted a turn using the jack hammer.

They did a great job.

On Saturday,  I started making a hole in the back wall for the future opening for the girls bedroom. Clay dug the hole for the temporary power line.

I do get a little carried away with a sledge hammer!

We had torn out a fireplace here, so it made since because the roof trusses

were already out of the way.

Clay digging a four foot hole for the new temporary power pole.

During the last week of August... school started! This was a little hard to take as I thought we would be further along by this point and not quite ready for the summer to be over.  A new friend and neighbor from Fruit Heights, Ric Stewart came and cut the holes in the brick wall for the openings to the back rooms.  He also broke out the old concrete fireplace in the main family room downstairs. 

This is where the fireplace used to be in the basement.  Ric broke it down, and it was 

real back breaking work.  Thanks Ric, you are awesome! Removing this

made the whole room feel so much more open and bigger.  

Who doesn't love a good trench?

During the end of July and first part of August, there really wasn't much going on at the house.  We were waiting to get the engineering back so that we could move forward with framing.  We planned on removing some of the old walls and putting up a new beam to support the roof.  In the mean time we continued to remove flooring from the back section of the house and did yard work.  

We received the engineering for the new beam and changes to the roof during the first full week of August.  We also got our first supply of lumber on the 7th.  

The old clay pipe sewer line was dug up and replaced with a new pvc sewer line.  We discovered an old septic tank buried in the back yard that had to be drained and filled in.

Victoria, my bestie, came over and was able to help me take apart the old stove that has been in the basement for forever.  We were able to break it down to a point that Vic, Clay and I were able to lift it up the stairs and out onto the driveway... and there it sits.  I want to put it back together and put it in the garden, but then, I would have to have a garden to put it in.  Hopefully, next summer.

Clay was able to remove the sinks from what must have been the old laundry room in the basement. 

 And... We got some new, temporary walls built to help support the roof while we remove the old walls.  Yeah, now we are putting our home back together! 

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.