Discoveries

Week two of demolition has uncovered some goodies. More walls have come down and each day when I arrive there are little ditties to share. A 1978  CR phone book was encased in the kitchen wall and today a sweet little nest of eggs was discovered in the bathroom wall! How mama bird found her way to behind the drywall and in the insulation we will never know. I'm pretty sure the eggs are old. OF COURSE, I am keeping them. I love stuff like that! Its. not. weird.

Where is my mother?

The original structure of the house is slowly becoming evident. Dave has figured out where the several additions have been added and where the stairs originally went to the basement. A cool brick wall was found in one area - it was the original back of the garage and where the present dining room was added. Not sure if we will expose it. It would take sand blasting and a ton of work!
I have been slowly painting in the basement. Rog and I will tackle more this weekend. My car has become full of paint cans, supplies, Home Depot bags & receipts, and Stan's stuff as he accompanies me on my work days.
Hardwood flooring will be ordered soon as well a plumbing fixtures. I picked out some sweet mercury glass pendants for over the island. Cabinets will arrive mid December.

Our GC, aka The Master, Dave hard at work.

The lovely tub and shelf are already gone:)

Did we buy this house?? Hell yes. It's gonna be awesome. 

This is a labor of love that will evolve over time. 

How did this get here?? I asked Rog if I could get chickens for the yard and he answered, "Absolutely not".  Maybe a couple goats then... Wait till I drop that bomb on him!! (If you know Rog, you know I will NEVER win!)

And no...the house has still not sold. God has a plan and its a good one.

Master Dave -part 5

The Rock

As Julie noted, the hammer’s are out! The behind the scenes stuff included the permit process, the planning and ordering, coordinating the subs and, finally, getting us to finish the kitchen we were working on.  With a couple of dead days in the schedule, we started on Monday…and the dumpster was full by Wednesday.  Demolition is grunt work, but it’s also like being a detective—once the drywall comes off, the house reveals the many changes it’s received over the years, some good, some not so good.

We believe the kitchen could very well have been in what is now being called the living room—that was Roger’s  guess and I’m starting to come around.  The framing in the kitchen revealed a huge window opening that had been framed in recently by the look of the lumber, and there’s no way the sink would have been against the window.  There is glue directly on the subfloor, indicating old vinyl flooring had been there once.  We think the stairs were moved when they swapped the kitchen, and that they added the dining room (and lower bedroom) at some point based on the roof framing and the “solutions” the previous contractor’s came up with…note, I just hit the sarcasm font.

The demolition is also revealing some pretty shoddy electrical work which will all be fixed as we continue.  We would typically remove a 4’ swath of drywall around the perimeter of the kitchen, but because of things we were finding in the wall we were going to remove, we decided to remove all the drywall…BINGO, we found a number of open splices  stuffed in there.  This will keep us all vigilant moving forward.  I can say with confidence many of the changes  in the house were never permitted and were not done by professionals, regardless of what their business cards may have said.

Today we start on the master bath and bedroom—wonder what surprises are in store for us there!

Scary wiring like this has been found. Yikes!

And we're off!

After a long time waiting the first hammer was swung this past Monday at the Rock house! During this blog hiatus there have been many decisions and plans made that seem insignificant to most, but crucial to the project. For instance, picking out tile, shopping for lighting, ordering cabinets, etc seems premature but in reality these things have to be ordered and ready to go before the demolition starts. Ordering cabinetry is a fine art. My kitchen designer, Betsy Goldstein from Kitchens by Wedgewood led me through the process of choosing cabinets sizes, crown molding height, roll outs, and island design. All things I have never given much thought to as I putz around my own kitchen. 

Meanwhile, Rog and I have been tackling the basement ourselves. We had a drywall guy come in and re-texture the entire basement, add rounded corners, and repair some icky spots in the drywall. The lovely bathroom down there had popcorn ceiling AND walls that had been painted over, so it was quite an eyesore. We rented a paint sprayer and applied all the primer and painted the ceilings. It kinda scared us when the paint hit a light bulb and it blew up:) I wore my sweet green bandana on my head to keep the 'do clean, but Rog forged ahead without and ended up looking 80 years old at the end of the day. He blew white crap out of his nose for 24 hours. Who needs Dr Neilmed?
I have begun painting down there and hope to have it finished in December. 
Now...the good stuff. The upstairs flooring has been torn out, the wall is out and all the kitchen cabinets and appliance are gone!! If anyone needs a white electric stove, come and get it. Shout out to Bruce, Dave and Mike for all the hard work. A BIG dumpster out front is about half full after one day. It was so exciting to walk in and see how open and different it will be. Check out the in progress pictures:

Looking towards wall before. Notice the hardwood floor.

After; wall is gone! The kitchen was in a room by itself. All flooring was removed.

The is where the frig was...

Frig was on the wall that was removed. Cabinets are in the dumpster!

The soffit above all the cabinets has been removed so the new cabinets will go all the way to the ceiling.

My guy working in the basement. He looks so thrilled..
Our house has not sold which Rog says is a blessing cuz we would be living in the construction zone.  So true. This week will be spent ordering flooring and painting. Thank goodness for Pandora and some rockin stations that get me thru my private time with a paint roller! #crashtestdummies #Gloveandspecialsauce #Sublime