So I am switching from mornings to midnights at work so I have been given four days off in a row. I really wanted to spend all four days in the house to try and get most of the demo work accomplished. The upstairs still looks like some post-apocalyptic horror film so my father and I are going to focus our energy downstairs. If I can get the whole house done by the end of February I will do a back flip.
Wednesday, January 30, 2013
Living Room Sub Floor
My father got bored one day and wanted to see how the sub floor looked under the rippled layers of gross tile in the living room. The sub floor looked like it was in decent shape so I wanted to spend today clearing off all the crappy tile
Tool of the day
Before I went to work on the house today my father and I went to Lowes and bought the black roofing scraper featured on the left. The scraper on the right was a nice tool but it was not designed for the level of tile hell that my house had to offer.
Living Room Tile
Today I decided I was going to attempt to rip up all the water damaged tile in the living room and get down to the sub floor. It wouldn't go down without a fight
Living Room Tiling
So in order to get to the plank sub flow in the living room I needed to peel off two layers of tiles and glue. The last layer was glued and nailed down to the floor making it even more of a joy to rip up.
Today while I was working on the floor my father was attacking the kitchen. He got all walls stripped down to the "studs" and noticed that the kitchen has six layers of flooring that I will get to remove. Literally I don't need to worry about this house being haunted because I think any ghost in this house would be terrified of how much of a cluster fuck this kitchen is.
Attic Randomness
My father had to crawl into the attic crawl space and decided anything interesting he found would get thrown down the stairs. He likes to share
Attic Randomness
I might just clean these two up and give them to some lucky baby. They will never know
Attic Mess
So I think the the previous tenants of this wonderful home might have had a slight hoarding problem. The attic crawl space is filled with from floor to ceiling with all sorts of crap. Today I had to crawl in there and I found a mattress (no feces to be seen), a bunch of DVDs, clothes, stuffed animals and more random nick knacks than I can comprehend.
Living Room Mess
I managed to remove all the tiles in the living room and moved on to the bathroom. The bathroom had plywood on top of linoleum on top of plywood on top of tile. At one point I was swearing at plywood as I ripped it off the floor then I remembered all the windows were open and my neighbors children were playing in the front lawn. Yep I am now the grumpy old neighbor who all the neighborhood children will fear.
Kitchen Nightmare
So I have come to the conclusion that this kitchen is my own personal albatross. Ever wrong I have ever commit in this world has somehow been rolled together into this one giant karma karate chop. My father has done a lot of house remodeling in his day and today he walked out of the kitchen as told me just how much of a pain in the ass it was. Fucking karma.
Small Lake
With all the snow melting today I found that all the water from my neighbors property was draining into my front lawn. On the plus side I now have waterfront property
Wednesday, January 23, 2013
Potential Stair Ideas
New Possible Layout
Now this is how I am thinking of setting up the house. I figure a third bedroom is a good idea and I don't see a lot of people being upset that they don't have a formal dining room. I think with the elimination of the pantry and the overall expansion of the kitchen will give plenty of room for an eat in kitchen and it will flow into the new living room making both rooms feel even bigger.
Tuesday, January 22, 2013
With a Little Help from my Friends
So in the last two weeks I haven't done a lot of work at the house but last week I had some friends from the academy come up and help me destroy the downstairs of my house. Today I spent the whole day doing nothing but cleaning all the demo carnage that has been building up. Unfortunately it was cold as all balls in the house so I had to compensate by cranking some Muse to stay motivated. Between Muse, Mumford and Sons and Fun I managed to clean the giant pile of crap in the downstairs and fill the dumpster. All and all pretty productive day and I still have all my fingers and toes.
Big Honking Board
While I was trying to rip this fella off the wall he decided he wasn't going down without a fight. The board hit me in the head and knocked me hat off. I think I won the day but he definitely had his moment in the sun
Corey Whitney
While going nuts on a wall Corey was accidentally impaled with a chunk of wood. Luckily he made it.
Jim Farnum
Two of my buddies from the academy Jim Farnum and Corey Whitney came to help me destroy my house
Hello Giant Pile of Shit
My father is very good at destroying things not so good at the cleaning part though
Mystery Hole
While I was shoveling out garbage I almost fell through this hole in the floor. When my dad ripped out the tub he neglected to tell me about the big fracking hole he left.
Collection of Weird Ass Crap
I found all of these items since demoing the downstairs. From left to right a small tomahawk, smaller hammer, baby fork and two toy guns. Not seen here a variety of baby books and about 30 steak knives. The baby that used to live in this house was EXTREME!
Dumpster #2
My father paid a guy to bring in a backhoe and smash up some of the garbage so we could finish cleaning the downstairs.
Wednesday, January 9, 2013
Upstairs Ceiling
Today was my day off so I went over to the house to try and get a little work done on the upstairs. My father and I wanted to try and keep the ceiling alone upstairs and just drywall over the old lath but after we took a closer look we determined we couldn't make the ceiling level with the lath on the ceiling so I had to rip it down. Ripping down the ceiling wasn't difficult physically but hot damn was it a giant mess. The attic had about six inches of nasty blown insulation in it and when I ripped down the lath it all fell out making it look like it was something out of post apocalyptic horror film. Even though I had all the windows open upstairs I still couldn't see anything because of all the crap that was floating in the air. I managed to get most of the ceiling pulled down and once I get a new dumpster I will be able to clean all the garbage out of the upstairs. I was hoping to get the whole house demoed by the end of the month but it looks like it will be the middle of February if everything goes well.
Random Bricks
As I was pulling down the ceiling I had a bunch of bricks fall through the ceiling and almost smoke me in the head. I could have died in a pile of blown insulation in a dumpy house. My father said he would have just tossed me in the dumpster so I could be with Sad Fan again
Old Chimney Frame
I found that their used to be a chimney in the house and the old framing was still in the ceiling
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