We're gonna have to fix that: Change of Pace

Having Todd working full time on the house made a huge difference. The pace has completely changed now that we have all the tools and somebody to direct the big jobs. This is fantastic in terms of progress -there is so much going on that we never manage to stop working before 10.30 pm. We are tired, but seeing the progress keeps pushing us to do more work!

Although we worked hard to get the demoing done before Todd’s arrival we didn’t succeed. I had my portion of playtime hammering the plaster off 2/3 of the front bedroom on my own during the week, but we finished taking down the ceiling and the lathe only on Sunday.

On the weekend, thanks to the full crew (Todd, Jaime, Gene and John), we were also able to complete the partial demo of the closet and the full demo of the bathroom and laundry areas. As usual the house had plenty of surprises for us. we found a disgusting dead rat in the bathroom wall- I guess that explains all the rat poison we found in the attic space. Once we took down the plaster in the bathroom we finally could understand the extent of our dry rot damage. There is a crack in the plaster, right were the roof beam comes in. The whole water collected by the gutters has basically been coming in from that gap. These pictures give a pretty good idea of the result. We knew that the floor was rotting too, and we had patching already in the budget. However, when Todd poked a hole in it with his foot, while moving the claw-foot tub, we decided to take the whole thing out. At the end of the weekend the whole west side of the house was an open space...all the way to the basement.

The dry rot hiding behind the medicine cabinet

The full extent of the damage once we removed the plaster

One of the old tenants

Goodbye bathroom wall

The naked front bedroom

Finishing touches

Our pile of wood keeps growing and we are starting to wonder if savaging is a good idea

Since the plan was to get a lot done through Labor Day weekend Todd took off Wednesday and part of Thursday. The rest of the week the two of us got rid of the old sewer, water and gas lines. On Thursday night Todd taught Eric and me the nuts and bolts of electrical and we were ready for the long weekend.

Electricians in training

Labor Day brought us some new and valuable volunteers. Tatiana and Cody joined the crew on saturday and Sunday and James came to help Sunday and Monday. Thanks to such a large number of people we were able to get a lot of framing done and started pulling the new electrical lines. Todd and Cody also convinced us to reframe the closet...another item that we added to the list. Eric and I set the beams for the new flooring and felt really proud after completing the task.

Cody, Tatiana and Todd...an awesome crew!

James, great electrician helper

View of the basement...through the old bathroom floor

A piece of wood from the old bathroom-some termites must have had a very good time there

The west side of the house after demo

Framing crew at work

Learning how to use the chopsaw

Time to get rid of some windows

By Sunday night the closet and half of the bathroom were framed in, the floor beams were in place and the front crawl space, the front bedroom and the bathroom were all wired. On Monday we also purchased more material and got ready to finish the framing, replacing the last dry-rot and termite damage along the external walls, and get place the last outlets and switches. Got a lot done, but still a lot to do!