upstairs reno: demo days

welcome back!

after a few weekends of solid progress, we are officially carpetless upstairs AND my STUDly husband took the pink bathroom down to the STUDs (with help——see below!). there have been a few surprises, both of the good and bad variety.

surprise #1: the hardwood floors under the carpet in the purple room are in terrible shape. we knew there was wood underneath, but we didn't know there would be a huge spot of water damage in the middle of the room with tons of gapping between the planks. i've been taking bids to have the floors repaired and refinished, which would involve a good amount of patching, and it is spen-D. the contractors said it would be cheaper to just replace the whole floor, so i think we'll end up putting down carpet again, which is fine by me for a kid's room (this will be the nursery).

but the question remains: do we tear up the wood or carpet over it? i personally want to tear up the wood and replace any portions of the subfloor that are damaged. that's just my style: do it now because we won't want to do it later!

surprise #2: the tile under the carpet in the blue room looks suspiciously like asbestos tile. my heart just sank when i saw it. there was already a broken piece (eek!) so we sent it and the mastic underneath in for testing.

we just heard back this week that the tile is NOT asbestos, but the mastic contains small amounts of it. the guy we've been working with was very helpful in explaining to me what this means and what exactly might be hazardous. the asbestos in the mastic is only harmful if we rip up the tile and take something abrasive to the mastic to release it as a dust (which we wouldn't do). we were reassured that carpeting over the tile is a very safe option, especially using the existing carpet tacks. when i told our guy that i am pregnant and this is a room kids will eventually sleep in, he said that if he were in the same situation, he would feel very good about carpeting over the tile. that was very helpful. nonetheless, when we sell the house, we must disclose the asbestos in the mastic, so ben and i are going to take bids on having it all removed just to see.

surprise #3: the stair treads and risers are hardwood! this gets an exclamation because it is exciting to me. i was thinking it would just be plywood underneath that nasty carpet.

after a few hours with these tools, i ended up with a few blisters but staple-free stairs.

these will be refinished/painted/a combo of the two. this view is literally the first thing you see when you walk in the front door, so i want to do something special. i'm thinking of a DIY runner . . . something with stripes . . . yes. i think so.

the bathroom yielded no surprises, as far as i know. our friend bert (of bookshelf fame) came over and like a superstar demoed with ben. i am pregnant and not allowed to do such things——even though i do enjoy a good demo day every once in a bit (see this post) my clinic said no way (and with good reason). they have me on a sort of modified rest so i am taking it easy.

my pregnancy-safe contribution was to sweep up and shop-vac afterward. (with a mask on, of course.) i love using the big shop vac. so satisfying.

that's where we stand. and did i mention that i scored a granite vanity top and sink at menards for $57? i did. and i'm very excited about it.

more to come! we move slowly, but we've got a deadline (baby comes in july, Lord willing!) so we will be hustling!

saturday {5.22.2010}

another hard day's work! i bet you are getting sick of these demo photos. bear with me...we are at the turning point. things will start to look different soon.

[image from imdb.com]

why this picture? because we cut a skuttle hole into the ceiling! ha! ben just rolled his eyes at me. (and then he handed me the wii controller and asked me to beat a mario level for him, which i did. now i'm back!)

ben had to climb up into this odd ceiling space (we have a one-and-a-half story, so we have some strange attic stuff going on) to pull out all the insulation. it looked like poodle fur. i stayed down below and stuffed it into garbage bags. ben cleared the space so we can spray foam insulation, which we have in the kitchen and love! it keeps things plenty cozy.

then we tore down the ceiling in the former bath, to-be closet. ben's mask was very dirty, but the inside was clean. it's cool/gross to see what he didn't breathe in but could have.

and look what fell out of the ceiling!

weird. there seems to be a theme of easter eggs at our house.

then, ben taught me how to place electrical boxes. it wasn't hard. i just followed the incredibly "official" electrical plan we've mapped out. :)

it was a good day.

saturday {4.10.2010}

well, we got the load-bearing wall situation figured out, thanks to my husband's perseverance and dedication! he got the permit from the city yesterday, so we are full speed ahead to make up for some lost time.

but first, a side story. when i came home from work on friday night, i was so confused to see tons and tons of vans, suvs, and cars with trailers trolling around our neighborhood. i also noticed that there was a toilet in the front of our neighbor's yard. what was going on?

it took me a while to realize that this weekend the city would pick up junk and trash from people's houses if they put it all by the curb. and the trollers were looking for treasure! i'm not kidding, people had desks, chairs, mattresses, beds, old christmas decorations, and all sorts of other things out on their front lawns.

so we decided to join in on the fun. we put out three old doors that we had torn down, as well as our very own demo-ed toilet. but this morning, here's what we saw:

a rejection notice. apparently, porcelain isn't accepted into the program. it's okay, we have a dumpster for situations such as these!

anyways, today's work included a trip to cannon recovery (which we have had good experiences with in the past) to look for doors. but we looked at vanities, tile, etc, too.

that last one made us laugh. we didn't have any luck, so we went to order some doors at menards: poplar two-panels with brushed nickel hinges.

when we came home, we pulled a bunch of nails out of the studs to prep for some contractors who will hopefully come this week. then, ben stepped on a nail! praise God that he just had a tetanus shot a few weeks ago. hmmm, i should probably get one of those, too...

saturday {3.20.2010}

more images to tell the tale. God multiplied our time this past saturday. we got the tile floor up in about an hour! at first we were chipping away at the tile and cement layer underneath, but (perhaps because of rot?) we eventually got it to come up in huge chunks.

we also took up the wood floor in the bedroom that will be our bathroom. once we figured out a system, it was fast work. man, did we work hard! it felt good to do that physical labor.

we also had a pretty good system going for cleanup—i loaded up bins and buckets with debris (drywall, flooring, tile, etc.) and passed it all out the window to ben, who took it to the dumpster. that's right, the dumpster is back. hopefully just until june, though!

the last few images are from this evening. ben smashed up a 400-pound cast-iron tub and we transported it out the window. i overheard him on the phone saying that now he feels "good and manly." :)

saturday {3.13.2010}

not much to say...pictures are probably enough. the last one is my favorite!

see the face? ha! :)

dust barrier

on tuesday night we put up our zip wall, which means the dust is now contained in that part of the house. so when we go in, we are free to kick up as much dust as we want!





it's kinda cool. you stretch plastic across two poles, and then install zippers to make a doorway. ben was stuck in there until we put on the zippers! ;)



then we got to work. we have an old 5-disc cd player that's all dirty and perfect for such occasions. first, we listened to the used (which is fitting music for ripping down walls and tile). but the next cd was ben folds. not quite right...so ben asked me to see what was next. when we heard the first few notes of "brightest" by copeland, i head ben yell from the other room, "i don't want to shave my legs...i want to rock!" i almost died laughing and changed it back to the used.







the tile came down easily because it was so rotted. yuck.



i shed blood relatively quickly...but it's not from what you might think. i gashed my finger opening the zip wall box! so klutzy.