I feel like I should be excited. Someone else is doing the dirty work of demolitioning our main floor kitchen (which was remodeled by the POs a few  years ago) and I have the “luxury” of sitting back, having a drink, and not getting my hands dirty. But I can’t seem to enjoy it. I’m constantly fretting about them damaging something they shouldn’t, or the fact that they are throwing a few year old cabinets (even though they are pretty badly damaged) into a dumpster when they could be pretty decent garage cabinets. Is this normal?

At this rate, I’m expecting the reconstruction phase to begin next week. Most likely the plumbing and electrical repairs.

While I’m grateful we aren’t having to pay out of pocket for this stuff, I just wish I had the time to do all the work myself, ensuring it is done right. It does help knowing that all the rooms that are being gutted are rooms that were all new (bathroom in the basement) or recently remodeled with new materials. If they were demoing an original room, I don’t know what I’d do. I’m queasy hearing that they removed our original trim. Did they do so without scratching, denting, or gouging it? I’ll find out when I get home from work tonight. I just wish I had the time last night to remove it all myself.

As I mentioned in my last post, now that the insurance adjuster stopped in for his last assessment of the damage, things are finally getting rolling. Rolling is putting it lightly. Less than 24 hours since then, we have one of those demolition dumpsters out back, contractors were in yesterday looking over our upstairs bathroom to get ready to start working on it. While in there, Casey had asked if there is anyway they could include taking out the current tub/shower and putting in our cast iron clawfoot tub. I wasn’t expecting them to agree to it, but they did. Only one condition… the shower tiles have to be out…. By this morning…

Well, as usual with contractors, they got too busy with something else and didn’t show up at all today. Bad thing? Heck no. Last night, I spent my precious time with a wonder bar and a hammer, knocking out tile after tile.

First I started on the newer wall that enclosed the shower plumbing:

Next, I worked on the back wall (with Casey assisting in cleanup and my blue wonder bar just begging to do more destruction by the window):

Lastly, I did the left side:

No more tiles:

Once I pulled all the tiles off I decided I would attempt to extract the 2×4′s to use whenever I get to finishing the basement. So I start unscrewing them wherever I can. I get to a point where I almost able to get them out, but the tub is in the way. Give up on $15 worth of salvagable lumber? I. don’t. think. so. So what do I do? I rip out the tub of course and find something I half expected, half didn’t expect. The original douglas fir flooring, probably with the original finish.

I already knew that the flooring was cut up before the tile was put down in this room, but I couldn’t remember the extent. So now what? Take up the tile, right? Yessir, that is what I did.

To be honest, the extent of the damage is better than I was expecting. I was honestly expecting to see twice as much cut up. So now we have to make the decision on what we want to do for flooring. We were originally leaning towards ripping the entire floor out and attempting to find funds to get reclaimed douglas fir flooring. Now we are thinking of spending countless hours stripping the existing flooring of the extremely old, stubborn linoleum (any suggestions are welcome, I fought at it for 30 minutes and barely scratched the surface) off of the douglas fir and using a much small amount of reclaimed fir to patch the cut up areas.

So now we are going to have to see if the contractors can work around the existing floor.

It’s amazing how the right people can get the ball moving when it comes to getting work done. My husband and I couldn’t get a plumber to come fix our upstairs kitchen sink in a timely manner last week….today the general contractor that was hired was on the phone and had a plumber lined up to come over tonight to fix our toilet in the basement.  To quote the general contractor, “It’s unacceptable that the only workable toilet isn’t running right.” Ha. Well needless to say, the plumber is here and the problem was tree roots! Yes, that’s right, tree roots! Can any one else relate? I’m told it’s a common problem, but I never thought that was the problem! Now we’re wondering if insurance will still cover it. On a slightly different note, the plumber looked at our water heater and decided that we did not need a new one. The old one is fine; just needs to be cleaned up a little. Shucky darns! I personally was hoping for a new one just so it could be moved to the other side of the furnace; making our basement floor plan a little nicer. My husband did ask him, however, how much it would cost if we did one down the road. It’ll be approximately $900.00 Ouch.

To switch subjects again; while my father-in-law was here today he wondered out loud if the steps going to the basement (currently in the kitchen) were originally flipped so the top of the stairs are in the dining room to go down. It would actually make sense as there is an oddly placed small window in what is now a closet. Yes, a closet in the corner of the dining room. How odd is that?! Anyways, the floor is apparently not original either he said. I told Shane what he said and now he’s trying to figure that out. I sure wish we could transport back in time to see how the house was originally, or at least find pictures.

Here is a picture of the dining room closet. On the right you can see some fake “stairs” that are just storage shelves above the real stairs that go to the basement. Such a pretty window to have in a closet too. So what we are wondering is if you would originally walk in there, turn right, and then go down stairs into the basement.

And from the post yesterday, here is the rear entry currently. Behind me is the kitchen. That purple wall directly in front and above the stairs is the backside of those fake “stairs” in that closet.

When our kitchen gets gutted, we will look at the walls in there as we are pretty certain the main rear entry door used to be in there, rather than this awkward location on the steps.

And to keep with Shane’s water damage theme, here is what extreme moisture levels mixed with cold air does to a nice old door:

I’ll be honest with you, the majority of these posts are just fluff while I wait until I can actually do something productive to the house, other than keeping the snow at bay. With the water damage, I’ve been held back on working on things until the insurance adjuster makes his final call on things. For the most part, that day was today. As I type this, I’m waiting for a plumber to show up to clear out our main drainage line (something must have washed into the basement drain clogging it up a bit). While he is here, is going to make the final call on our water heater, which I expect will be replaced. I feel so dirty having contractors coming in doing this work that I am perfectly capable of, but I can justify it as it isn’t coming out of my wallet.

So I apologize about not stripping (wood that is — there, that obligatory houseblog joke is fulfilled), not replacing the glass in the windows and reglazing them, not flipping the stairs yet, or not ripping out the upstairs kitchen yet. I’m just as excited to get my hands dirty as you are. The water damage totally threw our plans in a loop. Some good, some bad. We were planning on sanding down the textured walls in our living/dining room and repainting. Now, with it all falling off, someone else can have that delightful job. They will also be fixing any cracks in the plaster. That is a good thing. The bad thing is the first item on our to-do list was to rip out the upstairs kitchen. Being that it is now our only functioning kitchen, it is put off for a couple months.

Any suggestions on what to do? I get lots of people reading these, but not a single comment other than one from Casey.

Here is things we want to do in no specific order:

• Strip woodwork
• Fix cracked windows
• Hang an antique light
• Remove paint from hardware
• Fix some broken parts on our dining room chairs
• Set up a home network
• Gut the upstairs kitchen (on hold)
• Flip the stairs (on hold)
• Remove that huge chunk of ice from the side of the house
• Install some new lights on the front of the garage (keep the bad guys at bay)

Ugh, I was supposed to get pictures of the second floor tonight, wasn’t I? Sorry, I still feel like a semi hit me and I would rather sit here and type than run upstairs and take pictures. What a lousy house blogger…

Our house tends to quickly disorientate people when all they have to look at are pictures of the inside. There are quite a few doors for the size of the house, and some configurations that don’t make a whole lot of sense. So I bring you rough floor plans. Here is the main floor:

Here is the upstairs currently:

If you look closely, you can see that the stairs going up start out by the porch. Early on in this house’s history, the owners must have split up the house into two living areas. The house was built in 1928, but all the modifications are using pretty old building materials. It is all lathe and plaster.

As I had mentioned in our we’re back post, we plan to flip the stairs around 180 degrees to go back to “original.” We know that the stairs used to be flipped because when we worked on some plumbing in the upstairs kitchen, we could see the old stair lines in the paint under the floor. Not to mention this current layout makes no sense. This will also get rid of one of the doors in the porch which will be nice. Once our water damaged kitchen on the main floor is fixed, we’ll be gutting out the upstairs kitchen as that will then be the top of the stairs with a small sitting area.

And yes, I still plan on taking pictures of the upstairs tonight . I’ve come down with a cold that makes programming difficult, so I needed this reprieve for a bit.

Ahhh, much better! All sixteen or so commercial squirrel cage fans, and six huge dehumidifiers are now out of our home. Destined for another poor soul’s water damaged house. Good riddance. We almost wondered if we were deaf once they were removed due to the absence of any noise.

Now that I can concentrate without my head buzzing, I can build the damage list:

1. Possible foundation damage between driveway and house… something moved an inch or two, and I don’t think it was the driveway
2. Maple flooring is buckled in places, and almost all joints have raised edges… hopefully it can handle another sanding
3. Kitchen ceiling still has a hole in it…
4. Kitchen walls that face the exterior are going to have to be gutted due to insulation that got wet
5. Stove is DOA
6. Refrigerator works, but who trusts something that was rained on for hours?
7. Lower cabinets in the kitchen are shot… high quality Menards stuff
8. Wainscoting is in pretty rough shape, but might be able to be put back together (not original, so don’t shed too many tears if it has to be gutted)
9. Bathroom in the basement will need the walls facing the exterior with insulation gutted
10. Vanity in bathroom in the basement will most likely be scrapped due to the (once again high quality Menards stuff) laminate peeling off
11. Furnace has been replaced (~$6000)
12. Water heater might be replaced as it was rained on
13. Washer and dryer in the basement might be replaced as they were rained on
14. At least 10% of the paint in the large living/dining room is separated from the plaster and will have be taken off… no idea what the contractors will do
15. Our main sewer drain line seems like it might have plugged up as the toilet and tub downstairs barely drain at all… really sucks when they are the only working toilet and tub in the house
16. Upper bathroom is most likely a complete gut… tile floor is buckled which means it will most likely be pulled. There are a couple large holes in the drywall from trying to quickly fix the leaks. We will replace the fiberglass tub with a cast iron that we purchased a couple months ago
17. Upper kitchen doesn’t have water as there is a small leak (which plumbers apparently do not carry PVC parts to fix). Was fixed today!
18. Our garage is still leaning… any ideas on how to blame that on burst pipes?

Now, why couldn’t a pipe in my basement crack like over at bungalow23? No, it needs to crack in the top most room in the house, above the most critical rooms in the house.

One of the things that helps ease the pain, a new furnace:

Here are some “calm after the storm” pictures of our kitchen:

This is what happens to cheap cabinets when they get wet (sorry for the terrible quality, the light is quite dark and was hard to get a picture at this time of night):

And our living room (not quite positioned how it will end up, just a rough, get it out of the center of the room setup):

Yes, that is a huge area of missing paint. A good chunk of the room could be just like that with a few strokes of my hand, but I’m going to let the pros deal with the lead dust since they are covered by insurance (hopefully).

And here is our terrible back entry way. I’d love to find a way to make this not suck, but nothing comes to mind yet (once again, sorry about the quality, its dark and I’m lazy…):

And here is the room I’m in right now, with the ugly paint and peeling wallpaper border:

As it looks, it is very temporary. I have a nice oak desk (from 1909) that we refinished two years ago that will go in there once the floors are refinished. I have no desire to put it together and then have to disassemble in a week or two.

I need to get back to working. I’ll save the upstairs and basement photos for tomorrow. Hopefully they’ll look better than these as well…

I’m writing this from the prairie of North Dakota. Before the troubles with our new (old) home, we had planned a trip to Casey’s grandparent’s house in Bismarck, ND. That is where we are now, and have been since Tuesday evening. I won’t lie, it is a welcome relief from the constant roar of fans drying out our home.

My last post was posted the day after Christmas, the day we found out our home was more wet than the south coast after a hurricane. That was a day before we were supposed to pack our stuff up from Eden Prairie, MN and drive up. Most (sane) people would have decided to stay put for a while, or at least find another place to stay while the house dries out and is getting repaired. Of course, we were too excited to move into our place, we moved loaded the truck up on a rainy/icy Saturday and headed off to find out what shape the house was in.

Pulling up into the drive way, we see this:

As we walk around to the back door, we see this:

Comforting, right? Just the thing a first time home buyer wants to see.

Walking into the back door puts you on a landing on the stairs that head down to the basement. Directly in front of the door is a wall that has had wainscoting applied a few years ago. It didn’t look like this a month ago:

Taking a left brings you up a few steps to the kitchen. The water flowed in from the upstairs bathroom floor directly through the kitchen ceiling. This resulted in a nice hole:

Looking around quickly in the kitchen, you’d think the hole in the ceiling and a bit of pealing wallpaper were the only things damaged. Look a little closer you’d find the cabinet doors are all separating, and the stove top is rusting from getting rained on.

And another frustrating find was some door hardware we had just stripped the paint off of a few weeks ago:

However, a somewhat nice thing is all of our paint in the living room is falling off of the plaster, all 1/8″ to a 1/4″ of it:

We had been planning on sanding (meh) the paint off of the living room walls as it was extremely textured and simply much too thick. I’m hoping I can literally peel the paint off the entire room, saving the extremely dirty job of sanding it down. Granted this is a few months sooner than planned.

Going upstairs to the source of the entire problem, the bathroom. The day we received the call about this, we had Casey’s dad (who used to be a plumber) attempt to do a quick fix while everything was still wet. The upstairs bathroom had a washer and dryer hookup in it for a stackable, and it looked to be a reasonable candidate for breaking due to the dryer vent right next to it, possibly dropping the temp a few degrees lower than the rest of the room. So that wall was tore out and pipes were capped:

Sadly, when the water was turned back on, the waterfalls in the kitchen resumed. At that point, we figured any other plumbing fixes in that room would require much more time and destruction so he just turned the water to that room off. Problem solved? We thought so. So we turned the water back on and… no leaks. Yay! Upstairs there is also a small kitchen (which will be torn out once this is all fixed, but is rather convenient now). We had the water on for what must have been 6-8 hours and not a leak. Well, just as I was about to go to bed on Saturday, I was walking up the steps and felt something hit my head. Putting my hand on my head, I felt what I expected, water. Ugghh. There was a pin hole sized leak in the water lines running to the upstairs kitchen. Since this was now our main kitchen, we called up a plumber (since insurance will cover it) and he had to demolish some of the plaster (don’t cry, we were planning on flipping the stairs back to the original position, and this would have had to come out anyways) to find the leak. Well, after all that, the guy says he doesn’t carry any PVC plumbing parts (what???) and only installs PEX and copper. Weird.

Assuming I can find time tomorrow, I’ll post an update after the fans and dehumidifiers (hopefully) leave.