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!