House Remodel Update #1

If you are new to the blog and unaware of the huge remodel of the house we have been doing since 2012,  you can find many of the posts here.   They're not in chronological order, but at least you'll get a taste for what it's been like here.

I don't even remember when I posted last about the house, and things have been slowly moving along.   The front addition is in, enclosed, with subfloor, windows and insulation, but no drywall yet.  We'll be using that new area as storage for the stuff we have to take out of the old back addition of the house so we can rip it off and put the new one on.  That will happen by the end of this year.  Yee-Haw!

The big news last weekend was the tackling of the entryway, which is a hub of the new design.   It involves:

1. ripping out all the crap inside the old roof over the entryway so we can
2. rip off the old ceiling of the entryway.
3. rip up 6 layers of old flooring in the entryway
4. knocking out the old wall of the entryway.
5. laying new joists over the old basement stairs so we can
6. build beams for under the new stairway up so we can
7. build the new stairway up so we can
8. build the new stairway down to the basement
9. move the front door 12 inches out to the new wall on the new foundation and up over where the new floor will be [12 inches higher]

Eric tackled the first two things last month.  Done.

On Saturday we did numbers 2-4.  

This is what it looked like when we started.    Notice the old entry hall wall.  The ceiling is already down.  Notice how low that ceiling was compared to second floor.   Notice those crazy steep stairs. 

These are the layers of floor we ripped up.   From the top:

• laminate [easy]
• plastic pad [really easy]
• particle board [pain in the butt]
• pine tongue and groove  [serious pain in the butt]
• tar paper  [easy]
• diagonal pine/poplar subfloor [huge pain in the butt]

You can see that the level of difficulty of removal increased as we got lower.  That wasn't just because we were tired.   

The laminate was the non-glued floaty kind.   Best. Stuff. Ever.  I'm a huge fan of it for many reasons.  

The particle board had to be pried out and it fell apart as we worked.  No fun. We used long crowbars with teeth on the ends so we could pry out the remaining nails without bending over.   These are my favorite tools ever.  They're heavy, but useful in so many ways.  We've used them during every part of demolition here. 

The tongue and groove was nailed in with a reasonable number of nails, but it had to be pried out.  It didn't fall apart, but it took a lot of effort to lift.   We worked in tandem to get under the boards and pry them up with the nails.  Sometimes it worked, sometimes not so much.

The final bottom layer of subfloor was a huge pain.  This area of the house had been a screened in porch and had taken water damage.   These boards spanned the spaces between the joists and were nailed to them.  They did not come out willingly and many of them were in bad shape and cracked under the pressure, leaving most of the nails.  Once this layer was out, the floor was open down to the basement.   It took some planning to make sure that there were no missteps in the spaces between the joists.   Joists were 24 inches apart [as opposed to the 16 inches that is code today.]  I'm not comfortable with open spaces like that, so I stayed away and Eric demolished and handed me the debris to bag.   We took a lot of breaks to vacuum the dust and crap so it didn't fall down into the basement area.   

By the end of the night, all the floor was up and a few sheets of plywood was tacked in place so we could walk safely in case of emergency.   

Next up:  A frame around the new basement entrance and new joists.  Stay tuned.  

More Demolition

This is the basement floor, behind the stairs.   Or what's left of that section, anyway.  The tool you see to the right of the green bucket is a rotohammer.   Eric used it to demolish the slab there so that he can pour a footer to hold the columns that will support the next part of the house re-do.

He drilled holes first into the slab to see how deep it was.   If the slab was 10 inches deep, it'd be OK.  The third test hole was only 8 inches and not where we expected it to be shallower.  He drilled a couple more just to see and noticed that the ground felt odd under the holes, so we decided he'd better go ahead and pull it all out.   Because there is nothing more fun than smashing 10 cubic feet of concrete.   Yowza.

Yes, it was a pain, but then we'd never have to wonder or worry if we made a mistake.

We rented the rotohammer and as he crushed the concrete, it went powdery.   Bad sign.   Bad concrete.  We are so lucky that the 3rd hole was weird.   If we'd left it as is and built the columns on top of this slab, there may have been problems later down the road and seriously who wants to deal with that after all the weight is on it?  Not. Us.

Turns out that the slab was indeed only about 4 inches deep, but poured over a bed of field stones.   Some of those babies were pretty big.  And it would never have been solid enough to support the beams.  This was really hard work, but worth it in the end.   Better a couple extra days of hard work than 30 years of watching a crack form under the columns that support your house..

The good news is that part of the demo is done.   He'll have to pretty up the hole and then pour a whole lot of concrete next, but he will be able to use the columns he wanted to use, plus reinforce with rebar, etc. and we will know it's constructed right for the weight it will be supporting.

Old Front Wall Down

Eric knocked the old front wall of the house down.  

The old living room addition on the front of the house was on the left. [Original house pic, below]  We built around that addition, put a room in the empty ell on the right and built the second floor over it.  




The new front of the house incorporated the old front of the house - the wall with the old chimney on it.  The foundation under that front was the only good foundation in the original house.   We kept it.

After Eric put in the new beams, he could tear out the old wall with the window and chimney.  He did.  It was a mess.   [Top pic]

The chimney went first.   It took 2 days of sorting and chipping off the old mortar to clean it up.   We saved all the unbroken bricks and chimney liner blocks we could.    Here's the stack.

We'll use them for paths or path edges later.

We spent a day taking apart as much of the old front wall as we could salvage. I kept the window sashes for cold frame covers.  We took the nails out of the good studs. [pic, right]  Yes, it was a pain in the rear.   A huge pain in the rear.   I assume we will be thankful some day.   That day is not today.



[Today is more a day of swearing than gratitude.]


Here's what's left of the old front room.   If you blow up the pic and look to the back of the room, you can see where the old roofline was where the front room addition attached to the old house.  



Next tasks:

• Tear out old floor and joists.
• Dig out new crawlspace.
• Gravel new crawlspace.
• Pour concrete to join new foundation with old foundation.
• Build new front wall.
• New inside floor joists and subfloor.

So that'll take a few weeks.