Update

I haven't posted an update in a while but we have gotten a lot of work done in the last month. I have decided that I am going to spend the summer replacing the windows and doors on the house and then I want to finish weatherizing the house so when the fall comes I can start putting up some walls in the house. Hopefully by the time winter comes I will have the house insulated and I will also have plumbing in the house so I can stop driving five miles to use the gas station bathroom twice a day.

Little John

Whenever my family needs to get some yard work done around the house we normally borrow my grandfather's tractor Little John. Throughout the day my father used Little John to level the backyard and clean up all the garbage left from the shed.

Sand Pile

Since the shed is no more I had a load of stone and a load of sand dropped off at the house. My father took Little John around and leveled off parts of the backyard with the sand and filled in the big gaps in the driveway with the crushed stone.

Fire Pit

Once we started cleaning up the yard I found this makeshift fire pit. While I was cleaning it out I found a bunch of burnt garbage including old rusty springs. My neighbor later explained that once the previous owners had run out of places to hide garbage they started burning it in the backyard. The old springs belonged to a mattress that they burned.

Backyard

So the whole backyard was full of just loose garbage from the shed and old branches. While I was raking my father drove back and forth with the tractor scooping up the piles of debris I made.

Driveway

The driveway has turned out pretty nicely. We will probably extend it a little farther into the backyard but right now I am really happy with the way it turned out.

Fire Pit

It may not look like much still but with a little work I think it could be a nice little touch to the backyard.

Backyard

While we had Little John for the day we decided we should rip down the old pool deck. My father was more then happy to crush something with the tractor.

Backyard

My dad told me he would put the skeleton of the porch in the back corner of the yard but as soon as he got it there he changed his mind and dragged it into the middle of the lawn so he could cut it up with the chainsaw. My neighbor saw this and asked if he could have the pieces so he could have a bonfire later. I figured it would save me some room in the dumpster so it was a win win. 

Backyard

Well the party porch is no more

Backyard

Little John has destroyed enough for the day. We still need to put down a few loads of top dirt and grass seed to really make the lawn complete but it looks a lot better that's for sure.

Front Porch

So I have been looking forward to ripping this front porch off since I bought this little dream shack. Unfortunately I picked a rainy day to try and tackle this task. 

Front Porch

I have avoided going near the front porch just because I was worried I would fall through the floor. Looks like the previous owners also threw bags of garbage on this porch too. Classy

Front Porch

It took a while for me to really get going on the demo. I had a tough time trying to figure out how to rip the roof off without having it crush me. Finally I crawled into the hole and busted a hole in the roof. I then sat on the edge of the roof and ripped chunks off. The only negative was when I ripped my pants trying to get back down from the ladder when I was done. At least the neighbors got a good show out of the deal

Front Porch

While I was swinging the sledgehammer around this board fell directly on my head. Luckily this board was so rotten it felt like a wet noodle. If that board wasn't rotten at least my parents wouldn't have to drive very far. Turns out there is a funeral parlor half a mile from the house. Convenient 

Front Porch

I managed to knock this part of the porch over with my bare hands because it was so rotted.

Front Porch

I thought after I got the top part of the porch down the bottom would be easy but once again I was wrong. The previous owner figured out that the porch was rotting so that just placed another piece of plywood on top of the rotted boards. Nothing that a sledgehammer couldn't fix

Front Porch

Deuces gross old porch 

Front Porch

Yep the porch may be gone but the front lawn still looks nasty

Front Porch

After raking a most of the glass and garbage I can almost see some light at the end of the tunnel. Maybe by this time next year I will have a lawn instead of a garbage dump

Hole in the Wall

So today's big task was to cut a hole in the exterior of the house where the new french door will be going. I will be eventually putting a deck on t-he back of the house and the doors will open into the eat in kitchen.

Hole in the Wall

So while my dad was getting the framing ready for where the door would be put in I was left to rip down the siding on the outside of the house.

Goodbye Window

After I finished ripping the siding off the outside of the house my dad started ripping out the window.

Hole in the Wall

So while I was at the store my dad called me to say that he broke the saw trying to cut the wall. Naturally I went home and got a chainsaw so we could keep working. My dad managed to cut through the entire house with the chainsaw and still have everything level at the end. Not gonna lie I was impressed 

Hole in the Wall

Right after my dad was done cutting he pushed it into the backyard. How the ladder didn't get crushed is beyond me

Hole in the Wall

Yep looks like we just cut a big hole in my house. My neighbors normally come running over to check out every little thing we do at the house but when half my kitchen wall falls into the backyard we don't get a single visitor. Weird

Hole in the Wall

Next step is to actually put the door in. We should be doing that next weekend hopefully

Update

So my goal this April was pretty lofty. By the end of the month I wanted to get the power hooked up, remove the downstairs wall between the living room and kitchen and put the subfloor down upstairs and downstairs. Now the the month is over I can look back and say that it was a pretty big success. We got done everything on our list except we are only 3/4 done with the upstairs subfloor. On top of that we also had the shed in backyard removed. Not too shabby at all I don't think.

Power

That's right the power has been turned on and the house didn't blow up. Looks like the house is coming together.

Lumber

So spending my days off at Lowes has become a common occurrence.

Downstairs Wall

So this wall downstairs is holding up the upstairs so needless to say I can't just knock it down. Our plan is to build a beam to replace the wall so when we put up sheetrock you will have an open concept between the kitchen and living room.

Support Walls

So before we took down the existing wall we had to put up two supporting walls to hold up the upstairs. Once we put up the walls we started take down the original wall.

Downstairs Beam

So to make the beam we took three 2x8s and sandwiched plywood in between each piece. We then glued everything together and then screwed them together. Needless to say this beam is pretty solid. 

Downstairs Beam

So in order to put the beam in place we took a 4x4 and jacked it up to push the beam on top of the posts. It took a while but we finally got it in place

Downstairs Beam

The beam is in place now and it looks pretty nice. Now we just need to nail it to the floor joists before we remove the support walls that are preventing the upstairs from crushing us.

Downstairs Beam

Beam Brackets

So when we put the beam up we secured them to the floor joists with these brackets. Each bracket holds roughly twenty nails to make sure that the floor is safely attached to the beam.

Downstairs Beam

Goodbye old wall. It took a little bit but we have a beam in place now that supports the upstairs better then the wall that was there before

Downstairs Subfloor

So my father and I decided it was time to put down some subfloor in the living room/kitchen area. In order to put down the subfloor I needed to pull every nail out of the floor which sounded pretty simple at first. I never expected pulling nails out of the floor to take two days. Now that all the nails are out we can start putting down some flooring

Giant Hole

So while I was pulling nails out of the floor I tried to take out some of the rotten boards that were where the old bathroom was located. Unfortunately there was a lot of rotted boards in the corner  

Giant hole

So to take care of the hole in the floor we put two pieces of half inch plywood down to bring it up to the same level as the rest of the floor. Maybe now I won't fall through the floor anymore.

Downstairs Subfloor

Looks pretty decent now. With that wall gone and the subfloor down the house is starting to look a construction sight and not a dump

Downstairs Subfloor

Looks like I won't be falling through the floor anymore. My house is practically baby proof now

Downstairs Subfloor

It really makes the house look completely different with a fresh new sub floor in this part of the house. I am getting to the point now where I feel the need to wipe my feet when I enter my house now and not when I leave

Downstairs Subfloor

It took a whole afternoon but we have the subfloor loosely screwed down. Now I need to go around and put about 25 screws in each sheet to make sure they are all solid.

Dumpster

While I was checking out the backyard I noticed something moving under the dumpster. Looks like my neighbors cat really likes my dumpster.

Goodbye Shed

So my neighbor allows her children to run around my lawn constantly even though it is clearly not a good spot for children to be playing. On Tuesday I found a bunch of ice cream cones in front of the shed and later in the day I saw the kids chasing each other around the shed. I decided that since the children's mother is an irresponsible waste of space I decided that I needed get the shed removed. I hired a guy to come down with an excavator to rip the shed up. 

Goodbye Shed

This dumpster was dropped off Thursday morning and was filled completely by the afternoon. Hopefully I will be getting my last dumpster at the beginning of last week. 

Goodbye Shed

Well now I don't need to worry about little kids playing around in the pile of garbage in the shed. Bad part of the shed being gone now is that I have nowhere to take a leak anymore.

Update

So in the last month I have not really done a lot of dramatic work at the house but instead I have been cleaning up the odds and ends that I had been neglecting. On the plus side I have been able to piece together some more information about the previous tenants that helps explain why the house was in such amazing shape. Apparently the previous owner was a woman who received the house in a divorce settlement. She had no real intention on living in the house so she began renting it out to a couple. Unfortunately the couple invited 11 of their closest friends to come and live with them so their were 13 people crashing in the house. The tenants decided they didn't want to pay for their garbage removal service anymore so they just threw all of the garbage into the shed out back until rats began coming into the neighborhood. At this point the neighbors call the owner and explained what was happening at the house but the owner basically told them to go fly a kite. Eventually the idiots living in the house set the kitchen on fire somehow and the owner kicked out all the tenants and ripped out anything valuable. Since the house was no longer being heated and the owner ripped out a bunch of windows all the pipes burst and water began running down the walls causing mold to grow throughout the house. After that the owner stopped paying her taxes and idiot me went out and bought the stupid thing sight unseen. Mystery solved.  

Basement

So I had been avoiding cleaning out the basement like the plague. Every other room I had worked in so far was filled with garbage and I figured the basement would be the same but much creepier and darker than the rest of the house.

Basement

So it is difficult to see but this is a crawl space we found in the back of the basement. This is directly under the old kitchen and the old laundry room addition. Under the old laundry room my father found that the floor is held up by nothing but 2x4's. As my father quickly pointed out floors need to be made of much heavier boards so we will have to rip the entire floor apart and rebuild it with bigger boards. Surprise.

Basement

So the previous owner ripped everything out of the house except this hot water heater. I am sure that it has been regularly serviced and is in perfect working order. I am sure that it isn't a heavy sack of crap that I am going to have to drag upstairs and throw into a dumpster.