Friday, May 29, 2015

Frames

Yesterday, I went to our house to grab the mail. And peek inside our pile of sticks to see what was new. I figured more piles of rubble would be waiting for me to jump over. I was not disappointed! I was wearing a dress and sandals, so jumping wasn't really on my list of things to attempt but I snapped a few photos anyway.

Here is what's left of bathroom #1:


I noticed that this was probably the original front door of our house. At least at some point. What's funny is that we were considering moving our door to this spot last year while we were doing the initial planning but decided against it for miscellaneous reasons that I can't even remember at this point. Bummer! Anyway, you can see on the left that the yellow shelves pop out and the now empty bathroom space pushes back. Our plan is to eventually put a big built-in unit here that houses the TV, books, myriad other things. If anyone wants to build this for us in return for good company and a lot of Dominos pizza, you know how to get ahold of me.

Mmmm, attic insulation. Don't you just want to dive into that pile? Not! Because they removed parts of the ceiling, they pulled down the insulation and I can see the roof of my house from the inside! It's REALLY odd. We have such a cute, tiny house. Looks like it's got good bones. Especially for being 68 years old.


Here's the new framing! This frames out our new Master Bathroom. It also acts as the wall of our closet. Tough to see but you can tell what would is new and what is old. Hopefully. Can you?


And here is to the right of that bathroom! This will be the laundry room and then the 2nd bathroom. Aka for kids and guests. Sorry, guests!


Just for kicks, and bricks, here is a 3 day old photo of what they are doing outside. They have to dig the concrete up in order to create the foundation for the 2 bedrooms going back there. When I went by last night, the dumpster was filled to the top with chunks of backyard patio.


I couldn't get a better photo. See: dress and sandals. I've been ill enough times the past 5 and a half months. No need to add severed leg to the mix. Or tetanus. On a fun note, here is Jordo and me "watching" the demo last weekend.


Cool hair Hansel. Anyway... We're on a hunt to find our bathtub so they can frame that out next week! Stay tuned.

Thursday, May 28, 2015

It’s Going Down For Real

Just like the subject line of this post, it’s going down. For real. I wanted to take a time lapse video of the demo of our house and have us do a crazy dance to “GDFR” by Flo Rida but now’s not the time to be messing around on a demo site. The song and the house demo aren’t really related except for that the house is coming down. For real. And that’s the song title. Moving on.

We started demo last Friday. They started by taking apart that heinous back of the house addition that was never permitted.
BEFORE:




AFTER:





It was really satisfying to see that piece of junk come down. The owners before us did some modifications on the house that must have been all unpermitted and all wacky. For this addition they laid tile straight onto concrete. It was basically a closed in patio. When the crew ripped it down there was mold and rotted wood. There were two sets of steps that led from the original house down into this addition. One was from the 3rd bedroom and one was from the 2nd bathroom. It was odd. Here’s a photo:


Look how janky these steps are in demo!



One set was wood, tiled over. The other set was brick, tiled over. I don't even want to know what lurks beneath our front porch, which will have to wait for a remodel round 2 when we build our savings back up!

Next, they started on the interior walls. They demoed the kitchen – removed the cabinets, the sink, the flooring. All gone! Before we purchased:




After we purchased:




Demo!:




They then removed the walls surrounding the kitchen and laundry nook and parts of the ceiling. There are a lot of rat nests up there. Luckily, it seems like the rats probably were long gone before we even bought the house 3 years ago.


We are taking down the wall that actually is supporting the house. We’re really interested in how they are going to do this. Here it is with just studs. The big ass beam they are using is laying down next to it, I think:


They removed the walls in bathroom #2. We now have a beautiful view if anyone wants a nature bath. They removed part of the wall that will start our new hallway from the kitchen to the bedrooms. The crew demoed the walls in current bedroom #2 and current bathroom #1. Sayonara. We noticed today that they also removed our floors. Well, the first layer of floors. When we moved in we put down laminate on top of the hard wood because it didn’t match everywhere and was too thin for us to sand down and stain. We put carpet in the bedrooms and removed the kitchen floor (see the before picture above) and put down simpler tile.





So that’s where we’re at as of tonight. It’s thrilling and terrifying to see your own house in ruins. We’re really excited for the rest of the demo to go smoothly (fingers crossed!) and for the re-building to get started. Stay tuned.

LinkWithin