Heater room

The water heater and furnace sat together in a little cubby hole between the bathroom and the little room that nobody knew what to do with. The idea kept being batted around about what to do with this little space. The heating guys said that the furnace couldn't be moved so at first we were just going to replace it, then we decided it would be best to take out the wall that surrounded it. I happened to have Cort over helping out for the day and there was no way that I was going to pass up on the opportunity of using his muscles and willingness to volunteer.

He used the saws all and just cut right through the studs after we'd pulled off the outer wall. It came out in one big piece and we just took it right out to the dumpster. That was so much easier than hauling it out in buckets one stick at a time. I don't think that I've ever admitted that to Dave and Roger, it really wasn't me that day it was all Cort.

After a few more days of discussion the water heater came out and went into the dumpster. That was all Ben one morning early before school. I'm so grateful to be surrounded by men with muscles. The new water heater will be put into the utility room and the heater will replaced with a new one right where the old one stands.

One last chimney

We had one last chimney to go, the one in the kitchen. This one didn't go up through two floors, just one level so it went pretty fast. The rock that sat under that little chimney was huge. There was no way it was coming up. Whoever put that chimney meant for it to stay. But they had never reckoned with  a sledge hammer wielded by me, a woman with a goal in mind. A chimney-less house. Well not really, just an open floor plan.

The Beam

See this little beam up there? It really isn't little at all, it is huge. Once the kitchen wall was completely removed the joists had to be tied into something to hold up the kitchen roof. Crazy right? Who knew? Not me, another one of those times when I'm just amazed at how very little I know about anything. This little house on center street totally would have collapsed on top of us if we'd tried this on our own. Roger is worth his weight in gold. And all he's gotten out of this is the 11 cents he's found under the floorboards.

November 11 - The Utility Room

It was time to face the utility room. Pretty sure this is where most of the old lady house smell was coming from. It smelled pretty yucky in there, but it had to be faced. There is a kind of tile board like ish stuff, then some more wallpaper, then the infamous cork/insulation board and finally we could see the studs. Roger had already cut into the floor trying to find where the crawlspace was so we knew that it wasn't going to be pretty down there, but we really had no idea. There had been a lot of leaking for a long time and where you have leaking you have mold and that is not a pretty sight.

November 8 - time for the kitchen floor

The time had come to pull up the kitchen floor. I'm pretty sure that day I had something really important that had to be done when this point reached us. I bailed on Roger and Dave, I'm embarrassed to admit and now I can't even remember what was so earth shattering that had to be done. The first layer was ugly, it had to go. The second layer - first linoleum - Roger thought might be saved. It might be salvageable, he had some in one of his rentals that he waxes and buffs up every time a renter moves out and it has stayed beautiful through the years. Ummm, well, this became one of those negotiation points. After a bit of give and take, me doing most of the taking, I got my way and it went. What a baby I am. I didn't even pull it up after saying that we weren't going to keep it. 

It may have been beautiful to the original owner who put it in, but I just wasn't seeing it. That stuff really stuck to the floorboards. It came up in huge chunks that had to be hauled out and dumped.

So remember that flooring that Roger wouldn't let me throw out because he had a long term plan for it? That plan has been from the beginning to save every possible penny that could be saved and use up what could be used again. This is one of those places.

This is where the staircase was originally. Roger put in new joists across the floor and used the pieces to fill it in so that Tanner's room will have a floor in it. Every piece fits together just like a puzzle. It always works out, I don't know how it does, well yes I do, it's because Roger stays awake all night figuring out how it's all going to work the next day. And just like that...he does it!

Where does this all come from?

So this is kind of hard to see, but it a little bit scary when you're right there in the middle of it all. See that little pile of rubble there, under the window? Well it just kept getting bigger and bigger. It was tiny on the 7th of November, and I'm afraid that I got caught up in other things and it just kept growing expedientially. There was a time or two that I thought somebody was sneaking in at night and dumping in more debrise onto the pile. It wasn't until the Thanksgiving team came in that it was all finally all dumped out the window into the dumpster.