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.

Here is the corner I’ll be tackling next for insulation (depending on an issue that will be described after the pictures):

Excuse the mess. That is what happens when you move into a house that was just water damaged and you know that you can’t really put much out as it’ll all have to be moved around at some point during restoring.

You can see the 7 and some odd pieces of foamboard I have left. Should be enough to do that little left corner, the wall on the back, as well as up to that window on the top right. However, before I can do those areas, I need to figure out what to do with this:

That bottom pipe is our water supply line (just to the right of the picture, it drops down to the floor to the main valve). The top pipe is out main gas line coming in from the meter. While the gas line isn’t in the way of the foamboard insulation, the water line is directly up the concrete. Is this too critical of an area to learn how to do plumbing or is it pretty hard to screw up? I’d like to move it through the joists and keep it out of the way. If you recommend going forward with this myself, would you do copper, PVC, or PEX? I like the look of PEX, but I’m not sure if it well suited for your main incoming water line.

The gas line I’d be more likely to hire out. I just don’t like the thought of a pin hole in a pipe leaking natural gas into my basement. Here is where the gas line comes in (you can also see another water line run):

Once I figure out how to do this plumbing thing, I’ll get lots more practice over by the washer:

That knob valve is for the exterior water faucet. Looks like at some point someone didn’t like the amount of pressure they were getting off of that line that runs to the washer so they decided to T off the main incoming water line and run one straight over here.

And here are some pictures for Todd at Home Construction Improvement. These are the boards between the joists I was talking about in the comments on the last post. They might be able to be removed. I’m not sure what their purpose is nor what is behind them. I think they are just holding in rock wool if I were to guess.

Here is a few joists over in a another area I’m not exactly sure what to do… expanding foam?

And some dreaded knob and tube wiring that is going to be in the way. They run directly between the joist and the concrete. I’m not exactly sure where they are going to be honest. Either to the porch light (less likely) or to the main floor bedroom outlets (more likely). I’ll have to look into it a bit further to determine it.

During a leisurely stroll through Lowes a week or so ago, Casey and I managed to find ourselves getting ahead of ourselves by looking at foamboard insulation to start insulating the basement. We were just looking — seriously — when we found a deal too good to pass up. Foamboards that were originally $13 per 4×8 sheet were being clearanced out for $3 a sheet. We had no intentions on starting this basement project for a while. However, who can pass up a deal like that? We went home to think about it, and early the next day while I was at work, Casey ran over to buy every last one they had in stock. Fourteen when it was all said and done.

Of course, buying some sheets of foamboard can’t be as simple as buying them, loading them, and bringing them home. No, of course not. She borrowed her parent’s Chevrolet Blazer. Who knew that 4×8 sheets do not fit into a Blazer? So I borrowed my boss’ truck and ran out there to pick them up, when the wind chill was in the -30* range. It isn’t fun tieing sheets down to a truck without gloves when it is that cold outside.

All said and done, we had 14 sheets of foamboard insulation tucked away in our garage.  Now I was on a mission.

First, I moved all my junk away from the walls. It is amazing how much smaller a room gets when you take everything from the sides and put it in the middle. Next, I washed the concrete walls off and put a fan on it to let it dry. Well, before this was done, I had to also remove an outlet that was nailed into the concrete. That is harder to do than you’d think…

Next, I put some foamboard adhesive (yes, that is what it is called) on the back of the foamboard and slapped it onto the concrete. The stuff doesn’t hold well at first, so I pushed some boxes of tile up against the bottom, and used some masking tape to hold the top and side edges down for the night. By morning, it wasn’t going anywhere. As I worked with it more, I realized that in my basement, with the uneven walls, it works better to apply the adhesive to the high points on the concrete rather than to the foamboard as I’m sure that the low areas are never in contact with the foamboard.

Here is the one corner of the room insulated up to the joists:

All-in-all, I’m quite pleased with the method and the result (looks a lot better than the rough 80 year old concrete!).

From here, I will eventually frame up walls against the foamboard and use R11 (possibly R13, depending on if I can hit a sale) between the studs. If you want to learn more about this method, check out Todd’s website, Home Construction Improvement for the intricate details. I bugged Todd a couple times with some questions and he has helped out quite a bit in answering them. Thanks again Todd!

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 has been a whole month since the first post on the blog. In a way, it feels like forever, but at the same time, we still aren’t fully unpacked yet. Since that first post a month ago, we’ve been on a bit of a rollercoaster.

We were pretty excited to be a few days away from closing, giving you the low down on our house. Then we talked about our leaning tower of garage. At that time, our big decisions were when we wanted to tear that down and rebuild it, and when we wanted to finish the basement. Boy, were we in for a surprise when our house took a shower and damaged just about everything.

From there, the garage and basement refinishing dropped down to the bottom of the list as we listened to lots of loud fans and dehumidifiers. To help keep our minds off of it, we spent some time showing you our house’s layout. That didn’t help much, as I got quite antsy as you might recall (assuming you didn’t get bored before getting that far back…). We did get a couple good suggestions of out that post though, drinking and then working on little projects (make sure you leave some time between those two activities…).

Then we tried to be house historians and guess how the back stairs might have been. While wrong, it was nice to figure out what originally was set up in that closet (there wasn’t one)…

Then we finally got busy, with contractors showing up, tearing things down, and overal getting things done. That is a good. Thinking about demolition guys taking out the original trim work, well, that is uncomfortable. Don’t worry, all that fretting was for naught as we came home to our gutted out kitchen (at least the exterior walls that had insulation).

Then things got dirty for me as I began removing linoleum from our hardwood floors in our bathroom, which was the root of all our water problems. All the while, it got cold here, record cold. Around that time, we asked the (apparently four… minus me, makes three) readers of this blog if we should paint or not paint the trim in the bathroom upstairs. While those four (ok, three) people were voting, I was working my tail off on gutting out the bathroom walls.

Once the walls were out, I worked on finishing removing the linoleum from the hardwood floors. While I was doing that, Casey had her own projects she was working on.

Overall, it has been one heck of a month here in our new home. It wasn’t what we had expected, but in the end, we’ll have the house the way we want it, and will knock off a few items from our long term goal list that we weren’t expecting to get to for a long time (like getting our bathroom back to hardwood floors, or putting a clawfoot tub in).

While I’ve been slaving working away on the bathroom, Casey has started up a couple projects of her own.

The first project is one that she has been wanting to tackle since we first lived in this house while attending college years ago: the upstairs newel post and railing. As with the rest of the trim in the house, it had at least half a dozen layers of paint on it. Thankfully, there was a very shiny layer of shellac or varnish of some sort that allowed the heat gun to make quick work of it.

Her other project has been stripping paint off of door hardware. It wasn’t until I started reading house blogs a few months ago that I knew the easy way to strip metal hardware. Before I knew the easy way, I was taking a heat gun to them and doing the best I could with that. In case you don’t know what the easy way is, you just simply remove the hardware from the door, and place it into a pot of hot/boiling water with some dishwasher soap in it (or even dish soap works). Let it sit for 30 minutes or so, and the paint will practically fall right off. Once you have the majority of the paint off, use some denatured alcohol in a cheap spray bottle with some steel wool to clean it up. If you don’t want new looking hardware, don’t spend too much time with the steel wool otherwise it will clean it up a bit too much.

And lastly, the other “project” Casey has been working on is getting the house turned a bit more into a home, given the state of construction it is in constantly. For the first few weeks, we mostly stayed in the very small upstairs, as the main floor was dusty, dirty, and simply, a mess. After going after the floor several times with a mop, she was able to get furniture positioned in a more comfortable way. She also brought some of our son’s toys down to make it easier to keep him entertained. Due to the fragile paint, nothing is on the walls yet though.

For now, I’ll start out revealing the upstairs that I was supposed to do a while back

First off, our temporary “master” bedroom:

Our son’s bedroom before his bed was placed where I am standing:

And a picture of half of the insanely tiny upstairs kitchen (with half fridge) and my son helping (un)load the refridgerator:

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.