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.

Basement

No fucking joke there is another fucking bed set in the basement. I swear I have had it with beds I am going to sleep standing up from now on.

Basement

The basement was not nearly as terrible as the rest of the house as far as piles of garbage goes. Here I figured the basement would be a nightmare...

Ice Ice Baby

.....clearly I spoke too soon. So not too long after taking the pictures of the basement I stopped by the house to drop something off and heard dripping coming from the basement. When I went to see what was making the noise I noticed that the entire basement floor was covered in a foot of ice. When all the snow melted it drained right into my basement through small cracks in the stone foundation. My father reassures me this is not that big of a deal and I will just need to hook up a sub pump when the house has some power.

Upstairs Demo

Now I wanted to focus on finishing demoing the upstairs by removing the rest of the planking on the back wall and removing the rest of the plaster on the ceilings. As with every other job I have started in the house I figured it would be an easy day. As usual I was terribly disappointed.

Upstairs Demo

Now my father and I had agreed we should try and keep the planking on the upstairs ceiling since it looked pretty straight. We figured if we removed the plaster covering the planking we could just put sheetrock on top of the planking. The Whalen men took care of the plaster on one half of the ceiling so I had hoped I could take care of the rest of the upstairs without any trouble. I quickly found out that the Whalen's are much more patient than I am. After about 15 minutes of messing around with little pieces of plaster I just started ripping down the entire ceiling.

Upstairs Demo

Every time I think I am done seeing blown insulation more of it seems to pop up somewhere. I swear this has to be the last time it is running out of places to hide now.

Upstairs Demo

Upstairs Demo

Finally both the plank wall and plank ceiling are gone. The only tricky part was trying to pull down the boards without also falling through the floor where the old upstairs bathroom used to be.

Upstairs Demo

So while I was throwing boards out of the upstairs window I looked and saw that a man was standing in my backyard. He explained that he lived a couple houses down and wanted to see if he could have the wood I was throwing out so he can burn it in his outdoor wood furnace. I figured it would save me room in my dumpster so why the hell not. Finally I have a neighbor who isn't super creepy

Upstairs Demo

Upstairs Demo

Done it is all done!!! All I have to do is rip the nails out of the studs and the upstairs demo is finished. Glory hallelujah I managed to finish without falling through the floor again. I will call that a win

Temporary Work Lights

So my father took an old extension cord he had in the garage and turned it into a string of lights that we are currently hanging from the ceiling. It has five light bulbs in the string and all you need to do is plug it in. It will be kind of nice to be able to work past dusk for a change

Wiring

So my father started teaching me how to wire outlets this weekend. We are setting up temporary outlets right now just so we can use a couple power tools and use our temporary lights. 

Outlet

I will find out if I wired this little guy correctly when National Grid turns my power on but if all goes well I will be using power tools by the end of the week. If things don't go well the house will burn to the ground and I will find myself with all sorts of free time on my hands. Win win