And with our appliances put in front of their respective locations:

Later this week, there is (yet another) contractor coming over to do some work we weren’t sure was going to be done or not. He is going to be doing some patching and replacing of maple flooring on the main floor. There are a couple spots where someone had put outlets mounted on the floor. While the one that is an inch away from the wall wasn’t that bad, the one that was right in the middle of the floor had been driving us crazy. So those two spots are going to go away. Then there is another location that had a cold air return in the past, and it was “patched” up by just placing 4 maple floor boards in the rectangular opening. While the floor is a good match, it isn’t blended at all, so it sticks out like a sore thumb. That’ll be fixed.

One of the worst flooring areas is where there used to be room dividers between the living room and dining room (ugh at whoever tore those out!). This area was patched in quite poorly with cut marks into neighboring floor boards. And after the burst pipes, they became quite bouncy and loose. I’m excited to see how this is going to turn out.

Onto the main floor bedroom, there is another cold air return that was patched again. This time with one solid board (at least 6″ wide by at least 2′ long). If the other one sticks out like a sore thumb, this sticks out like a monster truck at a Mini Cooper convention.  As Brendan would say: buh-bye. The other spots in this room aren’t quite as bad. There are a couple <1″ holes drilled in near the trim that will go. And in the middle of the room, there must have been a bad squeak, as someone put in around two dozen bright, wide, silver nails into the floor boards. This area will be cut out and patched.

Anyways, to sum it up. Tomorrow Andy will be back to start the upstairs since we need that done in order for the guy to come do the floors. His helper will finish up the bathroom downstairs. When he is done with that, Roger will be here patching in the tile, installing our pine baseboards, swapping out the toilets* and hopefully moving the washer and drier in there! Can we say finished basement bathroom any one?!?! In case you can’t tell, I’m very excited!

*I should probably explain about the toilets. In the upstairs bathroom we had a new one and the one in the basement bathroom was in the house when it was bought. In all honesty I hated that one, probably because I wasn’t used to it. Well all it took for me to change my mind was a plumber telling me it was old enough to be original to the house. So now I’m putting the “old” one in the upstairs and moving the new one down!  Funny how that works huh?!

To make my post complete here is a picture of the kitchen as of today:

Here is the actual floor plan for the kitchen:

Counter tops:

Cabinet door style:

And this paper will be applied to the ceiling (and then painted):

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.

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.

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?

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.

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…