Cleanup

Ok, so it took me a while to finally get around to this. Sorry :). It means that I've just been spending my time on the house, school, and work!
I'm posting this on Fri 5/30, but will attempt to back date it to the correct day.

(Sat 5/3) The basement supports have been added. The cracked foundation is no longer supporting the house. That's a relief :). At some point I do need to patch the cracks for aesthetics and to ensure a seal against moisture, but at least it won't cause any structural problems. In addition, some finish work was done on the front porch. During the week, I screwed the planks down. Today the end pieces were added. All that is left are the balusters.

(Sun 5/4) My parents came to help out today. If memory serves correctly, we did some yard work (raking the rest of the leaves, there were a ton of them) and demo. Andrea and my mom took care of finishing the basement ceiling demo. My dad and I cleaned out the rest of the bathroom. You can see the dust from the demo in the pictures, especially the basement one :).

Porch Replaced!

On Saturday, we got to one of the big projects - the dilapidated porch has now been torn out and rebuilt! Andrea's father and brother helped with this project again - good thing since I wouldn't have known where to begin :).

The old porch was in rough shape. I already knew this, but it was in even rougher shape than I thought. Most of the demo was us pulling it apart with out hands; hammers and crowbars were barely needed.

I didn't have a digital camera with me (mine was lost and I forgot to borrow Andrea's), so I only have pictures from when Andrea got there after work. I took a few midway with a disposable, which I will develop to CD and add later.

Before we tore out the old porch, we temporarily supported it with some sturdy beams. It was an interesting sight to see the mudroom resting only on the two beams, although those were probably sturdier than what was there before.

We built the new porch around the mudroom. We completely tore out the floor. Andrea's father got it right on, so once the frame was built, we were just able to slide the slats under the mudroom. Once the slats were in place, we took out the old beams and let the new porch do its job.

Sam guarded our lumber for us when he was outside :).

Most of the porch is now in place, as you can see in the photo. The balusters still need to be added, the last slats on either side need to be fitted, and I still need to stop by some night this week and screw in the slats (for now we just have them tacked in). Also, inside the mudroom, we need to remove some of the bottom portion of the wall to screw in the slats which are under there. Once that is done, we'll need to extend the wall down to the porch (because it had settled, the porch wasn't level so there is a gap as you move from the front of the mudroom to the house). We will also put plywood sub floor in the mudroom and some flooring, probably tile.

Tuesday Break

Tuesday was break day. I had my staples out, so I'm back to normal again :). Also, I had my induction to Alpha Sigma Lambda, the honor society for continuing ed students at UMass Lowell. Quite a turnaround from my days at UMass Amherst! Andrea came with me - they had a nice dinner, and it was good to be able to put a face to a couple names I've seen in classes.

Monday Demo

Yeah, yeah, I know, my titles are starting to lack a certain creativity. At least there are posts now though :).

This is the work Andrea and I did Monday the 21st. Again, just a couple hours. We cleaned up some of the debris from Sunday, now that I remembered the wheelbarrow. The big item of the day though was tearing out the carpet and ceiling in the basement.

The carpet came out rather easily. I cut it into four sections. It was thin with no pad or glue, so that was helpful. Unfortunately, there was a small section of glued-down vinyl floor under the carpet. This I left for now, until I can get something to remove the glue.

The ceiling in the cellar was moldy in places, and bowed. As I tore it out I discovered the reason for both - the mold was especially curious as there shouldn't be any water or water pipes in that section.

It turns out, the waving was not from water damage, but a bad installation. The supports for the house were very roughly milled, as we noticed when planning the supports for under the kitchen. To compensate, when they finished the basement they installed strips of wood to try to even it out. However, these were small and nailed in rather than screwed in, and spaced too far apart - they couldn't hold the weight of the drywall over time. Given the low ceiling, I am considering leaving the beams open, as they don't look too bad. I'll also take a level to it and see if it's possible to hang drywall directly on the beams - we would gain a couple inches from tearing out the useless wood strips.

As for the mold - well, in one section a whole ton of mouse droppings came down with the drywall. I'd imagine mice were the source of the moisture for that mold... yuck!

Because the installation wasn't sturdy, the drywall came down quickly. The only area which had plaster was the stairway. I found the best way to approach this was to get a decent size hole in the ceiling, and then use my pry bar to pull the drywall away. I will go through and take out the rest of the wood slats later. In this section there was no plaster left on the slats - I imagine it got shaken down over time between the vibrations from impact on the stairs above, and the installation of the drywall.

All in all, as with the other demo, it seems with this house demo is actually already an improvement over what was there :).

Sunday Demo

This is the work we did Sun the 20th.
We were somewhat tired, but Andrea and I put in a couple hours starting on demo in the bathroom. Always a fun way to get out your frustrations!
There was mold behind the shower enclosure of course, so it's good to be rid of it. Luckily only one of the four walls is plaster (that's coming down another day).
I thought I had a photo of the other side but can't find it - the bathroom door is now gone, as is most of the wall on the door side of the room (where this photo was taken from). I avoided the fixtures for now so we could keep the water on as long as possible - I'm not sure how long it will take us to finish this project.


Once we were done with the bathroom - apart from the walls with plaster and fixtures - we started tearing out the carpet and pad from the stairs and the upstairs hallway.
Luckily, everything looks better without the carpet :). It will be some time before I can properly finish the stairs. In the meantime they don't look great, but the subfloor that is there is much better looking than the old, stained, worn carpet. We lucked out with the upstairs hallway - as I was hoping, there was hardwood under that carpet which matches the floor in the bedrooms.

Progress!

Here we go!!!


First, playing catch up here... The pool is (mostly) down, and the dumpster has arrived. I'm working to try to get rid of the rest of that pool...


Today, we put in footings for resupporting the basement and building a new front porch. Took a while to get the holes dug, but we got there. In all, there are 5 footings in the basement and four for the new porch. We went about 3.5 feet deep for the porch, and about 2 feet in the basement.


Finally, we poured the cement for the footings. In the basement, we just poured it directly in the hole - the objective being to create a solid base for the support columns. In the front, we used tubes to create the footings, 10" diameter and about 3.5 feet high.

Next week, weather permitting, we will add the supports in the basement and rebuild the front porch.

Foiled Again!

Well, seems that postponment is the name of the game lately. The dumpser is ready to go, but, unfortunately, I wasn't.

Last weekend I was supposed to gut the bathroom, remove the basement ceiling, and tear up the carpets. Unfortunately, my body had other ideas. I had my gallbladder out on Saturday, so I was good for nothing for most of the week.

With some help from Andrea and her family, we're finally going to get to it this weekend. Planned is resupporting the house (the foundation in the back left corner is settling) and putting footings in for a new front porch. If that doesn't eat up the whole weekend, we may do some demo. Otherwise, that will be next week's project, since the dumpster is set to leave next Friday.

The time wasn't completely wasted though. I have 9 windows on order, and a siding contractor ready to go after we're done shifting the house. Also, I found someone interested in the scrap metal, so the pool is mostly gone. He was supposed to pick up the rest by this weekend. When I'm at home, I'll load the photo of the partially removed pool.