Ripping and Roaring

We are still digging out of the family room....
Down to the studs. You're sick of these types of pictures, aren't you?


One more...
This is where the weird TV closet used to be. By the way, our GC tells me the top of that is a support beam and when they cut the hole in the wall all the weight is being held there by 3 screws. Awesome. We also figured out that closet used to be a bathroom.


The old blue bathroom now has a FLOOR! No more looking in at the crawlspace (and no more fears that an animal will crawl into bed with us at night).


The tub my husband picked out for me. It blows air bubbles. I can't WAIT!


PS: Still no floors. Also, no tile. Waiting game for delivery.

The more you dig, the more you find

Two quick shots I snapped before heading out of town for work....

We've pulled everything down in the kitchen and family room. No more wall, no more ceiling. It's good we did. We found some very questionable electrics issues.



As we pulled down drywall we found a pretty serious issue. Water is coming in on this corner of the house. This is the family room and on the other side is the garage. It's as disgusting as it looks.



Word from Scott is that his bathroom has a floor and the tub in my bathroom is in position. Waiting for pics! I'm tired of deconstruction! I'm ready for reconstruction!

We still have 1 bathroom intact

There wasn't much work done over the weekend. Our GC was busy and we hit an electrics snafu. Old house = old wiring = what does this switch operate? It's a current waiting game. Hope we can get the electrician out here Wednesday. He's a busy dude. Anyway, other than scrubbing the blue sink and pulling nails out of the wood where the ceiling used to be and another IKEA trip, we had a bit of a house break.

Which leads me to tell you about the bathroom we currently have....the only room in the WHOLE house which hasn't been touched (other than cleaned). Now, mind you, it needs some new tile and a new floor but in order for us to have a place to live, we had to leave one bathroom use-able. And, other than the squishy floor near the tub and the horrid vanity, it's darn glorious, with all original fixtures.

Check out this incredible shower head from 1959. I *LOVE* taking a shower because of this shower head:


I don't know if this angle gives you the best view of the shape of the spout, but it's darn cool!


You've seen the shots of our 1/2 moon Crane sinks, well, how about these awesome knobs on top of it? I mean, come on!


Yes, that's a gigantic medicine cabinet! So much storage!


Original lighting fixture:


Exhaust fan:


And, of course, most of you have seen the pictures of our Honeywell Tap-Lites. This one has a cracked plate. I've not been successful in finding additional plates for these and I need several (singles, doubles and triples). If you come across them, let me know!

The ceiling is falling!

Oh-no! Well, it's not falling on accident but we do have to take the ceiling out in the kitchen and family room....all so we can have recessed lighting. It wasn't in the plan but when the electrician came over last night he found that, just like our 6 layers of flooring in the kitchen, the house came with 2-3 layers of ceiling. And we thought the super messy part was over.

Here's a picture of Mike and Ryan ripping out the ceiling. Yay fiberglass!


And Mike thought he was just coming over to wire some outlets for us. Who knew deciding where to put outlets would be so hard, by the way.


Not only did we sleep with no ceiling in the kitchen, we slept with no floor in the old blue bathroom. It's open down to the crawl space (please let us continue to have some semi-warm days until we have flooring and insulation, PLEASE!)


Scott is down to one cabinet left to build! Here are the 3 tall cabinets that go on the wall with the fridge and oven/microwave. Plus there is a tiny cabinet in the photo too. It goes next to the dishwasher.


I realized after talking to Becca that I never mentioned that our flooring came in - but it was wrong. Half of it was slightly darker than the other half. If it doesn't arrive today...well, Monday or Tuesday. That puts flooring a week behind.

So, of course, we have run into problems in a house that is 50 years old. But, it's getting there. Just might take a little longer than we thought.

Another week down!

I can't believe I haven't updated for a week! This house is totally gutted now. We have one usable bathroom and we are on a mattress on the floor until the flooring is put in. The flooring was supposed to arrive yesterday but it wasn't correct. So, end of this week or start of next. sigh....

We are down to cabinet building (oh so fun) and our General Contractor has started doing his work. Tonight he took out the damaged sub-floor in the kitchen and replaced it with new. Pictures below. Enjoy and thanks for following along!

Dinning room before (carpeted):


And after carpet, padding, tack strips and staples removed:


Check it - some more awesome wall paper under the mirrors:


We pulled the weird TV stand out of the "closet" as well as pulled off the "speaker doors":


Just about full:


Scott begins the cabinet build:


The first one is done! He says it's the hardest one....It's the corner cabinet:


And then he was on a roll!


That's our GC, Ryan. He just finished ripping out all the water damaged flooring:


And that's our new kitchen sub-floor:


Pre-historic wasp Scott had to kill. Sucker is HUGE!


And, finally, he SOOO deserved this moment:

Monday & Tuesday

Scott has yet to send the pics from his phone but this is what I've documented from Monday and Tuesday:

All the carpet, padding, tack strips, nails and staples are up from both spare rooms (my project the last 2 days). It's ready for the stranded bamboo floor!:


(don't be jealous of the wall of mirrors!)


Scott ripped out the carpet, padding and the tile under the carpet. The hallway is now ready for our new floors:


His current project is the ripping out the 80's bathroom. The tub is gone, the sink went away a few days ago, we took the toilet out yesterday and the walls are coming down now:


Look what we found behind the giant mirror!!! It's metallic! I bet this went really well with the cocaine sink!!


This is our dumpster mid-day today. Tonight, it's almost full. (Compare to the shot from a few days ago):

(PS: I don't like this but I don't know what else to do. We are giving as much to Habitat Re-Store as they will take!)

And for your viewing pleasure....The masks of Mr. Lewis Scott:

Blue bathroom is empty

I think my dear husband thinks I should post each picture as he sends it. :) He's working hard and I'm trying to keep up, but I'm at work too.

The blue bath is blue no more.....you remember this from yesterday's post, yes?
Just in case:


He rented a jack hammer and had fun (not really):


And then, the little baby tile was gone:


And then, the busted shower pan was gone:


And he began ripping out the wall:


And another room is down to the studs:


He ended the night by ordering this beautiful door for the new shower:

We are still demoing our little hearts out

I should say, I'm out of town bringing in the bacon and Scott is demoing his little heart out and sending pictures. Enjoy this next round of the even more trashed version of our house.

Now you can see the kitchen floor (look at the post from yesterday to understand). Of course today he pulled up the whole floor)....



This is the dumpster in our drive way. In this photo it contains the kitchen dry wall. It's gonna fill up, I'm sure of it. Though we are taking anything we can to The Habitat Re-store (cabinets and counter tops went there already).



This is where the "cocaine sink" (as I like to call it) used to be:


For reference, the photo of the "cocaine sink":



And, now....on to the blue bath.....Here it is before we started the demo (don't worry, we are saving the sink. It's going in a new floating bamboo cabinet):



This is Scott beginning the demo. He's making it so our GC can get to the pipes:


Shower doors gone and big hole in the wall. We are going to move the shower head to the other side of the wall.


And, finally, the toilet, sink and cabinet are gone to make way for the new floating cabinet with the old sink in it. Blue toilet will be coming back too.



Hope you aren't sick of demo photos yet. We have a few more days of ripping up before we start making it pretty again. When I get home I'll take a picture of all our possessions filling up our garage! Happy labor day! We are laboring.