When I get home tonight, a couple rooms are going to look a lot more finished. Last night, the painters textured the kitchen and the basement bathroom.

The kitchen pre-texture:

The bathroom pre-texture:

Today, pending no cancellations due to the blizzard (hey, I’m at work…), both of these rooms should be painted. I cannot put it into words how nice it will be to have these painted. There is something about a layer of paint that just makes things feel more “done.”

On a different note, when the painters were working on the main floor bedroom, he had to do some skim coating to smooth out the transition from painted plaster to areas of the plaster where the paint fell off. Well, the painted plaster happened to have a crackle chemical in it. This caused the skim coat to crackle. So yesterday he also worked on applying some nasty chemical to remove the crackle and then primered the room. I’m not sure if he plans on getting anything done in there today, but I won’t complain if he does.

While I’ve been scraping away at the popcorn ceiling texture on the main floor, the upstairs bathroom has been progressing quite well. Drywall has been taped, mudded (is that a word?), sanded, textured, and finally, painted. After living with boring, bland, and/or dark colors, we decided to liven the room up a bit. With yellow:

Okay, it isn’t quite that yellow in person, but it is yellow none-the-less. Once we get the dark woodwork, and the white claw foot tub, toilet, and pedestal sink in here, it won’t be quite as blinding. We hope.

The part on the light fixtures that hold the shades are new, non-lacquered brass. These will be aged to match the fixture better in the future. Casey also had to have her antique toilet paper holder installed, even though we don’t have a toilet in there yet.

Hard to notice is the hole to the left of the chimney. This is where a cabinet will be built for towels and toiletries. We will also have wood corner trim running along the edges of the drywall next to the chimney.

I love the contractor who is doing the majority of the “rebuild” of our home. He is prompt, very kind, and seems to do a good job. Until the job is done, I’m not going to name his company as I don’t want to eat my words two weeks from now when drywall starts falling off my ceiling; knock-on-wood.

As I mention in my last post, our bathroom floor is finally a full floor:

It is hard to imagine looking at it currently that it will all look similar, but I have high hopes that once the old floor is sanded and finished, the two halves will blend pretty well. Will it be perfect? I doubt it. But this is going to be infinitely better looking than the ceramic tiles laid over the original Douglas fir. One of my first fears of going with new fir was that the grain wouldn’t be as tight. Granted the old floor has a few boards that have tighter grain than any of the new ones, the majority of it is very similar to the new floor:

Here is just the new wood:

Here is just the old wood:

From here, he is going to be framing out the vent stack that runs behind the toilet, and then will be throwing the drywall up. This should started, if not complete, by the end of tomorrow.

Do you remember how we had a contractor out to look at our floors and he was totally not on the same page as us? Well, this contractor is pretty darn close to being on the same page. He actually lives a couple blocks away in a 1920s home. He isn’t into the old stuff quite as much, especially when it comes to plaster, but from the sounds of it, he and his wife appreciate the majority of the older home items. He told Casey he even had new wood trim cut to match the original, and has a refinished claw foot tub. He had a few suggestions for finishing the outside of our claw foot tub:

Not only did he have some good suggestions, but today, he actually grabbed the feet for the tub and ran them over to a friend’s shop to have them sandblasted in a booth for us on his way to pick up some more materials. How often do you find contractors that run errands for you?

During this odd weather for North Dakota (rain in February?), we were supposed to be getting some drywall delivered to our porch yesterday. But due to the wet weather, it was put on hold to avoid ruining it. Instead, when I opened the garage door last night, I saw several lengths of Douglas Fir flooring! Yes, our bathroom floor is finally going to be installed.

Today I decided to come home for lunch rather than eat at my desk like I normally do. The contractor, who is a really friendly guy, was about half way done installing the floor. While it wasn’t getting installed the way I would have liked with getting it blended in, I think it will still work. Essentially the left half of the room is old flooring, the right half is new flooring. As of right now, with the old flooring not sanded yet, it sticks out like a sore thumb. Hopefully after a good sanding it’ll blend in a bit more.

I apologize for no pictures, I will do my best to take some tonight and hopefully get them up. I’ve been asked to remove the crumbling plaster in our kitchen. It is the only wall that still has plaster and it will make the contractor’s job easier to just throw a sheet of drywall over it. I don’t mind since the rest of the room is drywall already. So that is in my list of to-do’s along with taking pictures. Also on the list is getting our cast iron claw foot tub painted on the outside. We have decided to use the tub epoxy paint on the outside that is normally used on the inside for repairs. It should be a much stronger finish than regular paint.

I should really post more, I am going a million different directions with this post. Last night when I got home from work, I went down to our basement bathroom and removed some old insulation that was laying down in the exterior corner of the room. Lucky for me, when I pulled it up, I found 1/4″ of standing water. So our concrete is seaping in a bit of moisture. To fix that, I called up an old high school friend who happens to do spray foam insulation for a living. He drove over and said that he could spray an inch of it on for around $1.75 a square foot. So around $250 to get it finished. To me, that is pocket change compared to having to fix mold issues down the road. So hopefully he can stop out soon to spray it down. We’ll then put R11 fiberglass batts over the top of the foam and finish it with drywall. Hopefully I won’t see any more standing water on the floor.

Over the weekend, I also ran a couple runs of speaker wire (12 gauge from www.monoprice.com) to the kitchen to eventually have a couple small speakers in there.

Like I said, a million different directions… I have an excuse though… I went to bed around 9:3o last night as usual. However, I woke up at 12:45 and literally laid in bed until 3:45, when I took a Tylenol PM to knock me out. I finally fell asleep around 4. I’ve never had that happen before. I am going to blame it on the few Diet Captain Morgans and the Washington Apple I had with the previously mentioned high school buddy to catch up. Normally that would help me sleep better, but it is the only guess I have.

I’ve got some surprising, breaking news for all of you: contractors are slow. I know, I know, set your jaw back. Who would have thought? After bugging the general contractor, and giving the subcontractor a push, they contracted (yes, that is correct, 3 layers of uber-efficiency here, my friends)  Roger to come out to throw some insulation up as it had been more than two weeks with bare walls in a North Dakota winter.

And here is that attic space to the left… the insulation you see is on the backside of the bedroom’s closet wall:

There is my project room, the ole do-your-business and turn the fan on on your way out room. To both collect our thoughts and put something down on “paper,” here is what we are planning for this particular room:

• Douglas Fir floors are going to be patched and mixed to blend the new material with the old
• Standard 5′ cast iron claw foot bathroom is going to be placed parallel with the bathroom window (just hauled that pig up the stairs Sunday! due to the really nice, original faucet, we will not be adding a shower to this unit as we have a shower in the basement)
• Walls will be painted (we will eventually look into bead board or subway tile, but not right away)
• Still not sure on paint vs not painting the trim
• Two antique wall sconces will be placed where they were originally before being covered up and having a single light
• We will leave our chimney exposed (I cannot for the life of me find the commentor who originally suggested this. I re-read all the comments 3 times and either missed it or imagined it. I apologize if it is the former for not giving credit when credit is due!)
• We are moving the light switch from outside of the room to the left of the chimney
• Walls will be painted a light yellowish color (you’d have to ask Casey for a womanesque description)

Moving onto our kitchen, that also is now insulated:

Both are temporary insulation jobs until the electrician shows up. We demanded the insulation be put up as I doubt the contractor is willing to write a check out for our soon-to-be-outrageous natural gas bill. While I had family (read: slaves/helpers) around this weekend, I yanked out the second window that was in the kitchen. I’ve got back and forth on this a few times. The entire back half of the room was originally a pantry is my guess. It was about four feet wide and spanned the entire width of the kitchen. That area that I suspected was originally a big window? Well, my mother actually thinks that the window that I just took out was originally over there.

When one of the POs converted what I suspect was a pantry into a bathroom, they moved (according to my mother) the window from that location to the next location to make room for the stand up shower. Well, we’ve decided to not have any window on that wall in order to give us much more options when it comes to laying out the kitchen cabinets. I was torn about not putting one back in, but in the end I decided that I’d take a nice layout over a window that looks into the neighbor’s kitchen.

Also, as you can see, we took out the old “bathroom” door that was in that corner that made cabinet configurations impossible. Not to mention a bedroom with two entrances:

Lastly, we finally got some dollar amounts for a replacement refrigerator and stove. We first ran to Lowes and didn’t much luck. Off to Sears (which was my first, out of high school job). There we found a floor model fridge that was being clearance’d off. A Kenmore Elite model that was originally almost $2000, down to $1100. It was definitely on the top end of what we wanted to spend (essentially the entire insurance money was spent on just the fridge). For the stove, we went a bit lower end and picked up a gas model that had to be ordered. So for now, the doors for the fridge:

[apologies for the white out, the sun is shining away and the picture wasn't reviewed until later (ie: now)]

We had a heck of a time getting the fridge into the house. The doors to our porch up front had to be taken off, as well as the doors on the fridge. In the process of first trying to get it through, we put a nice sized scratch on our brand new door:

(Thanks Casey for taking the picture for me ). You can see the scratch in the reflection, right where the camera is at. That vertical white line, about an inch long that is down to the metal. Any suggestions on fixing that?

Things have slowed down a bit with the contractors recently. It has been almost a week since we’ve had anyone actually doing anything to our house. However, we have had a couple stop out to get information on how to proceed with a few things.

First, one of the supposed flooring “experts” in town stopped by to check out the flooring damage. He is supposedly the best in the town according to our general contractor. While I wasn’t here to talk to him, Casey followed him around as he looked things over. In our living room, where both the tongue and groove sides of the flooring bowed out due to the moisture, and the flooring buckled in a couple areas, he claimed that it all had to come out. Same with the office on the main floor. He suggested replacing the maple (some of it is birds-eye) with oak because it is stronger and cheaper (price doesn’t matter when insurance is going to cover it, by the way flooring guy as long as it isn’t more expensive than what is in here). Then he looked at the steps going upstairs. He claimed that they were not sandable (which I have a hard time believing since they are a single board per step) and should be replaced.

Next, he looked at the upstairs which is all douglas fir, including the bathroom floor I spent hours and hours stripping of linoleum:

He said it all should come out as douglas fir isn’t a very hard wood.

First off, I put too much work into that floor to yank it out. It doesn’t look pretty in the pictures, but I’m certain it will sand out extremely nicely. Secondly, I don’t care if it isn’t as hard of a wood as, say, oak. Two reasons: one is that it is in pretty darn condition being that it is 80 years old, and the second is that I consider a ding or discoloration here and there “character.” It speaks to you. New flooring just doesn’t do that.

As far as the main floor, erm, floors go, I don’t see why it all has to come out. There are a couple spots that I can imagine the nails have failed and would have to at minimum be pulled up and renailed. Worst case is they’d have to replace the boards in that section. I have a few chunks of maple from when the kitchen/bathroom was turned into one room (granted it has a few layers of linoleum, nothing I haven’t seen before, right?) that could be used to fix these sections.

Granted, maybe he is just trying to give a worst case call for the insurance to make sure we can get what we need fixed without insurance breathing down our necks. However, Casey said he made remarks about how the wood they used for our trim is supposedly garbage. Does he think we are going to go pull the 80 year old trim off the walls and run to Home Depot and grab some crap wood to replace it? Sure… we’ll get right on that on boss.

We have a different contractor who is going to do the bathroom flooring upstairs, and if we are happy with the results there, we will have him do the main floor as well as he seemed confident the majority of the floor could be salvaged and seems a bit more on our side.

Besides flooring, we still have an uninsulated kitchen and bathroom and our temps aren’t supposed to get above zero for the next several days so I really hope they can get in soon to get these walls covered. Our heating bill is going to be outrageous…

All in the life of a homeowner right?

It is done. After a week of much sweat, tears, and blood, it is done. Between the lead paint and asbestos, I’m sure to die according the CDC, right?

New tools list:

1. Small flat bar
2. Large flat bar
3. Paint scraper
4. Heat gun
5. Lead & asbestos respirator
6. Safety glasses

I wish I could say this is the last time I have to remove asbestos backed vinyl, however, both rooms upstairs have the vinyl tiles that will eventually be coming up. It was by far the most undesirable job I have ever done. I would rather strip 10 layers of latex paint, 5 layers of lead paint, and a layer of milk paint, and proceed to clean up the remnants, and finish by sanding, staining, and polying trim for a week than remove one bathroom floor’s asbestos linoleum. Especially when the said bathroom has the strongest heat vent in the entire house and you are wearing a respirator. Supposedly when you remove asbestos, you are supposed to spray it down with water to keep the dust down. I just lean my head over and douse it with sweat.

Starting a little more than a week ago, and enduring a terrible cold in the process, I removed all the shower tiles (new tool #1 + hammer), gutted the walls of drywall and plaster (new tools #2, #5 and #6), and stripped the entire floor of asbestos (I have to say that as much as possible to show how manly I was to tackle it, right?) linoleum (new tools #3, #4 and #5 + putty knife and gloves). After finishing this afternoon, I got my hair buzzed and took a shower. I’ve never felt better. What a glorious day!

Here is the floor from a couple angles (feel free to call it dirty names for being such a pain…):

Looking at the pictures, the darker spots are either discolorations (near the toilet drain), or linoleum backing that is in between the slightly raised grains in those locations. Both of which should hopefully be taken care of with a light sanding (which someone else gets to do!). The actual color variations between the boards is due to some still having their last finish, and others not having any finish left at all. I’m pretty certain this is shellac. From what I know about shellac, I should be able to wipe it away with denatured alcohol, and if it goes to unfinished wood, then it isn’t stained. Either way, I’m anxious to see the floor sanded and refinished. I’ve got my hopes set high.

Tomorrow morning, Casey is going to call the contractor who is going to fill in the floor and do the insulation/drywalling to let him know we are ready. When we talked to him last (Thursday), and we told him we’d be done by Monday, he seemed reluctant to believe us. Who’d blame him? The walls were still up and the floor still had linoleum on it. If it were a normal contractor, it’d probably take a couple weeks . We’re really hoping they can get in and either finish the floor or the walls by the end of the week.

To finish this off, I found one picture from several years ago before my father had actually renovated this exact bathroom showing the lovely tub (or the top of it) and the sink. The toilet was the same color in case you were curious:

Someday I hope to find the pictures I took of the initial walk through before they purchased it in 2002. Someday.

I almost wish I let someone else take out the plaster in the bathroom. Even though I knew it was in terrible shape, and that I didn’t have the time to fix it myself, nor the money to pay someone else at this time, I still hated the fact that I was pulling out 80 year old plaster and perfectly good lathe. While it will be nice to get the bathroom done the way we envisioned it before this water damage ordeal, if I had all the time in the world, I would have left the lathe on and replastered.

But since this is what I currently am showering in, I need to get this upstairs bathroom done as soon as possible:

Anywho, this is what the upstairs bathroom looks like as of this morning:

See those two holes on both sides ? Those are openings to the area under the roof behind the bedroom closets. Like all the rest of you lucky home owners that have opened that one spot that hasn’t seen the light of day since the house was built, I was hoping to find some momentos from the builders or original home owners.

This is the closet to the left:

And the closet to the right:

All I get is a Smörgåsbord of insulation… unfair? I think so. So instead, I’ll spend the rest of my day scraping away at the floor, removing the lovely asbestos vinyl flooring from our Douglas fir hardwood. I did stop by Ace Hardware the other day and picked up one of these though:

How does it look on Casey?

I also picked up a giant roll of duct tape and a plastic drop cloth to seal myself in with the fumes and asbestos dust. Hopefully that’ll make it so only I get cancer and not my wife and son.

One nice thing about demoing the room is we were able to see how parts of it were originally set up. There were two wall sconces (which we are looking for if you have any to sell ):

And we could see the outline of the original sink in the paint:

You can also see the line around the room where the original trim was half way up the wall:

With the fake plaster tile, do you think they would have done a wood trim piece, or actual tile?

Lastly, we had the contractor out here who is going to do the insulating, drywalling, and the floor come look at the bathroom floor for his input. He is from a local outfit (Simonsons Lumber) and he claims to have old growth, vertical grain Douglas fir on hand. While I would prefer salvaged, I don’t have the time nor the extra funds at the moment to justify it. I will be asking for a sample first to make sure I am comfortable it will match close enough.

We decided we wanted more of an “open floor plan” that is all the rage today. Cabinets, refrigerators, stoves, who needs those? They only get in the way, and provide places to stub your toes, or for mice to hide in. Kitchen sink? Naw, those just provide another place to leak. And who needs plaster or drywall when you can just look into the studs.

All joking aside, this is where the demolition folks left off. Ironically, an hour or so after I wrote about how uncomfortable I was with them doing it, I received a frantic message from Casey telling me they threw away the original window trim. As I sped home, I pondered where in the world I could find wood to replace it in the event I couldn’t find it in the dumpster. After I parked my car, I looked over the dumpster from the top. Full of wainscoting. No kitchen cabinets, or appliances. So, avoiding having to climb into it, I took a peek into our porch and garage. Luckily, they had actually saved it and put it into our porch. Phew…

As Casey had mentioned in her post about the roots and stairs, we had originally wondered if the rear entry had been in that back right corner in the above picture. However, it appears what my father had seen behind the plaster when he remodeled wasn’t the framing of a door, but a window:

We would consider putting a window back in there except for two things. The first is that the odds of finding a window that matches the rest are slim. The second is that we’d just be looking into our neighbor’s kitchen, so it wouldn’t give us much of a view.

However, I can give you the back story on why the window was closed up. When my parents first purchased the home, there actually was a standing shower right about in front of that closed up window. To the left was a pocket for a refrigerator. That little window was in a small bathroom that was accessed by the door on the right. There was also a small pedestal sink and toilet in there. I’m assuming it was added pre 1950, but I’m not certain. It had metal lathe, but it was still plaster. My parents took the bathroom out as the kitchen was simply much too small. The bad thing is that leaves us without a main floor bathroom, but I think we’ll live with it.

And in case you are wondering what that big thing on the bottom right is, it is an abatement system used to contain the lead dust. My office is directly through that door on the right and there isn’t a bit of dust on my monitors (which show every bit of dust imaginable). So far, so good.