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It’s been about a millions years… or feels like it, anyway

Our last post here was a catch-up post that I wrote in early October 2020, and the post didn’t even catch us up to the then current state of progress on our remodel. It’s been forever, and a lot has happened since then. Frankly, one of the things stopping me from updating the blog is pictures. Between us there are many hundreds of photographs to slog through. I’m not going to do it. The photo slogging. Not today, anyway. I’m apologizing up front for the limited number of photos. It’s come down to this: I need to either process all of those (expletive deleted) photographs, or I need to blog without (most of) them.

The other thing is how to organize all of the information and events, and get them all to you in a way that makes sense. I’ve been thinking about it, and I think that if I break things down by month that will be the easiest way to go. We have email messages and Facebook history that I can use for the order of things. Though written in October, my last post caught us up as far as early August last year, with most of the windows being installed, the replacement of the beams in the kitchen ceiling, and graveling the driveway. Next up: the rest of August. Oh, and though I was going to write entire paragraphs for all of this, get Dave to proof it, and any number of other things, I’m not going to. I’m going to leave it as a bullet list, and actually get this update out today! Here goes:

August 2020

  • North-facing kitchen window re-framed for larger glass
  • Window installed

September 2020

  • Removed remains of double sticky tape from lower bath walls
  • Dave continues to take the house apart

October 2020

  • Building starts in earnest: the new laundry room is framed in

November 2020

  • Removed wallpaper border from half bath
  • Copper pipe removed
  • Plumbing rough in done, except for a few things that they returned to do, and a number of things they never did
  • Inspector passes the plumbing… why?

December 2020

  • Electrical rough in starts December 9, and turns into a much larger job than originally planned, as the original wiring in parts of the house were so weirdly done, and so far away from code that it’s amazing the house didn’t burn down decades ago

January 2021

  • Electrical rough in passes inspection—hooray!
  • Maple tree near house removed, so very very sad, but it had to come out as a significant percentage of the trunk was hollow

February 2021

  • We realize that the plumbers didn’t do more things than we’d thought… like they missed plumbing the shower in the downstairs bathroom, and the ice maker in the kitchen has no water, and a large list of other things; if you’re local and want to know which plumber to avoid, we’ll be happy to tell you

March 2021

  • Heavy rain shows that the fix to the laundry room wall isn’t 100%
  • Network closet floor installed, and it’s gorgeous; that same floor will be installed throughout the house, except in bathrooms and laundry room

April 2021

  • Roll up garage door installed in barn
  • Fixed laundry room back wall leak problem but good; work done by Rock Solid Waterproofing

May 2021

  • Dave begins pulling network wiring throughout the house
  • Master bath linen closet delivery
  • Removed remaining insulation from entire house
  • Same guy who laid the floor in the network closet also fixed the two toilets that the journeyman plumber didn’t know how to deal with (there are no words for that original plumber that make him sound good)
  • New plumber found to fix original plumber’s mistakes, then he leaves for a three-week vacation so work is put off until mid June
  • Rose hedge falls over
  • Insulation hung upstairs

June 2021, so far

  • Insulation hung thought most of the downstairs
  • Insulation inspection passed for upstairs; downstairs pending
  • Finally finished painting the master bathroom; painting the half bath begins
  • Sheet rock going up!
  • Climbing rose put on trellis
  • Work cutting fallen roses back begins; this is going to take me a while (there are 17 bushes in the hedge!); the worst of the fallen have been cut back, and the remaining canes look great

And now you have read the list, and we are all caught up. Basically. I don’t even want to tell you when we think we might be able to move into our house, as I don’t want to jinx it. Stay tuned. I’ll leave you with this photo of Ansel. He is extremely good at being cute.

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What’s above that ceiling?

We decided a while back that the library ceiling was one of the few that we’re going to take down. There are reasons. One of which is the mystery light fixture that doesn’t work (the one that doesn’t work is over the sink—naturally). Another is ambient light. It’s so very dark in there, and always will be since it has no windows, that having a standard white ceiling will probably help. It’ll help make it feel a little higher, too, and since it’s less than eight feet high that’s a good thing. Plus, with the ceiling down we can see how the furnace in the downstairs closet connects to the heat pump, we can more easily get to the spots in the kitchen where we need to run gas pipe for the cook top, and lots of other things. So, the ceiling must come down.

Backing up

Part of our task this day was to remove the rest of the back of the guest room’s closet wall. It started out looking like this:

There’s that silly furnace in there, and we checked into it. Yeah, sure, we can move the furnace out of the closet, and into the garage where it belongs. For a small fee. Right. How about if we turn it instead, so that we can access it from the library instead of from the inside of a clothes closet. Okay. That’s doable. The sheet rock has to come down, though. That’s one bit of demolition that Dave really got into. There’s no point in trying to save and reuse sheet rock, so the big hammer came out, and a few minutes later the closet looked like this (and then I cleaned up the debris):

Now for the ceiling?

But wait! We have to take the board and bat walls down before we can remove the ceiling. Joy. Here’s what the room looked like when we started:
This is how the library looked when we bought the house.

For the most part, removing the board and bat walls is a simple thing. Most of them are held up by only a couple nails and a whole lot of habit. There are some that are a bit more complicated, though. Like the ones behind the appliances, especially the wall boards behind the sink. Well… we (and when I say “we” I mean Dave) moved the fridge and the range out of the way, but we weren’t prepared to deal with plumbing that day, so what to do about those walls? Dave took out his handy new multi-tool, and cut the boards above the back splash. Ta da! We’ll worry about the lower half of those wall boards later.

Now for the ceiling!

With those wall boards out of the way, the ceiling is much easier to get down. While Dave wrenched at it, I mostly pulled nails out of planks that had already been removed. Once in a while I ran into the library to catch the end of a board as it fell off of the ceiling. This was a dicey thing. I had to put up my arms out, in the right place, and then quickly close my eyes so that falling icky stuff wouldn’t blind me. I actually did catch a few.

Now that most of the ceiling is down, everyone who needs to see where the plumbing and electrical stuff is going, needs to go, can go can actually see what they need to see. It’ll make working on all that stuff so much easier, too.

In closing

My gratuitous view shot of the day isn’t actually a photo of our view. Instead I captured a photo of our very first camellia flower! This flower is probably at least ten feet off the ground, and the rest of the plant soars above it. But look! How pretty.

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We Have Three Fewer Closets

As part of the remodel we’re moving the wall between the master bedroom and the master bath to make the master bath a little roomier. As it is, the door can’t be opened all the way because it hits the counter. We’re going to pull the wall back a bit and replace the swinging door with a pocket door (Laura would say Squee or some such at this point).

To do this we have to remove two of the existing closets and rebuild one of them in a slightly different location. This is how things started.

Master bedroom

The closet to the left with the swinging door is the linen closet and will be moving to a larger space in the hall. The closet to right is Laura’s and the one that needs to be moved.

And this is how it looks now.

Master closet gone

So, that’s two closets gone. What about the third? Ah, well. The future TV room has a closet (with a water heater in it that will be moving).

The library is on the other side of that closet and we need all the room we can get in the library. So we’re going to rebuild the TV room closet to be only 12 inches deep. That should be plenty for DVDs and the like.

Here are before and after shots.

Library
Before
After
After

So, that’s what I did Monday and Tuesday.

 

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Indoor board and batten begins to come down

Monday

On Monday we decided it was “sweep the barn day.” So, we swept the barn. Dave worked on the loft while I swept downstairs. The weather was perfect for manual labor. Well before we were done we were both down to our shirtsleeves, even though it was in the low 50s out there, and the barn doors were wide open.

Dave started by stacking the bales of straw. There are nine of them. The straw and hay ladder will be going to friends who have horses.

I created this pile of, er, sweepings, by attacking this one corner with my broom. I wonder how long it’s been since the barn’s been swept. I’m thinking it’d been quite a while.

More progress! I still have to get in under the sink, behind the wood stoves, and behind the huge air compressor. The easy stuff, the middle of the room, is done now, though. To be Ansel-safe, though, the icky parts in the corners need to be cleaned up, too. No telling what’s back there. I’m sure it’s stuff we don’t want our little boy getting into, whatever it is. Ick.

Tuesday

Dave went up to the house without me, so that I could get some stuff done at my desk for a change. You know, the fun things, like paying bills, balancing checkbooks, and the like. He worked between appointments there. The locksmith came by and changed the lock on the mailbox (the tenant forgot to leave the key for us), the insurance company’s photographer swung by to take some photos, the pest guy came by to say he couldn’t treat for the beetles we have as his truck with that equipment on it needs fixing, but while he was there he treated for carpenter ants and the wasps that we found in the wall a few days before, and… I forget what else happened. I know I’m forgetting someone.

His tasks for the day started with getting up the last of the linoleum from the floor in his office. Well, as much as he could. There’s this one area that’s stuck pretty good. Neither the floor scraper nor the crowbar will lift it. Suggestions, anyone?

We’re hoping that the linoleum in the TV room and downstairs guest room don’t need to be pulled before hardwood goes down, so Dave finished cleaning the carpet pad off the TV room floor as best he could. Those yellow bits are resisting, but super thin. Here’s hoping.

The walls in Dave’s office and the library are board and batten where there’s no brick. Rough cut planks. I don’t know for sure if they are leftovers from the exterior of the house, but to me they look like they might be. Dave might disagree. I don’t think I’ve thought to bring up the topic when he’s been around. Either way, though this is a picture of the outside of the house, and the boards have been painted, this is a good example of what the indoor walls look like, too. This is also shows how lovely (cough) the house looks with more of those white plastic shutters removed.

Next he attacked the walls downstairs. He left walls alone that have switches or outlets or anything else electrical for another day, as we want Ansel to be safe when he comes to visit.

Dave’s wall before

Dave’s wall after

You may have noticed the insulation on the wall. That’s an interior wall. The other side of that wall is the TV room. There’s no insulation on exterior walls in this room, so he left the paneling on those walls for now. What with winter coming on, it could get cold in there with nothing between you and the weather but one layer of 40-year-old cedar exterior siding. Brr.

Dave worked on the library walls a bit, too, again leaving panels where electrical wires could get tangled in Ansel’s sweet little paws.

Wondering what was surprising? Dave found four of these sad little mouse carcasses when he was taking the walls down.