Month: July 2012

First Floor Demo

July 26, 2012 / / 2 Comments

Wow. We had our first floor Demo Party this Saturday, and boy did we demo!

Kitchen Demo

Compare this to the photo from the previous post, which was taken in roughly the same place. Friends and family joined us for a party of mass destruction. We took down all of the tile, drywall, plaster, and lath on every wall on the first floor and hauled it out to the dumpster. The “crew” worked incredibly well together, moving seamlessly between the different tasks with almost no coordination or direction until it was done. We grilled up lunch and dinner since the work took over eight hours to complete, and it was capped with some needed relaxation in the back yard around the table.

It feels like we’ve taken a giant step forward, since now we can start to envision the process of putting it back together. It also feels like the “no turning back now” point, both exciting and frightening at the same time. There’s still a lot of work to be done before we can start building anything, and it will continue to be a slow slog, since not every day can be a sudden transformation like this one.

Sarah and my thanks go out (in approximate order of appearance) to David, Collin, Eileen, Rob, Nicole, Sei Youn, Eriq, Ariel, Dean, Siobhan, Will, Mike, and Lee for the tremendous amount of help they gave us. We owe all of you!

First Floor Demo Prep

July 9, 2012 / / 1 Comment

We’ve continued making progress on the first floor. The biggest step was moving the washer and dryer down to the basement. After clearing a few remaining odds and ends, the first floor kitchen is finally starting to look a little empty.

First floor kitchen

We ran out and bought a dolly to get the washer and dryer downstairs. We wound up going out the front door, down the steps, out the gate onto the front sidewalk, over to the other gate, back along the length of the house, down the back steps and into the basement. Somehow, that was easier than going down the back steps, mostly because there wasn’t any room to turn on the landings. Let me tell you, that washer is heavy.

Washer and dryer

After installing the vent through the boarded up window we got everything hooked up and working. It’s an extra flight of steps to do laundry, but it works. We’ll need to cut a tarp from our giant roll of plastic to protect them during demo.

Electric removal

With that out of the way I started removing all of the wiring from the first floor. Most of it was already disconnected, but there were still switches, outlets and light fixtures. I thought I’d gotten most of it a week or so ago, but there were several outlets hiding behind our piles of debris. Some of the flexible conduit is still in the walls, but all of it is disconnected. There’s quite the mess to clean up, and we still have trim to remove in the kitchen and back bedroom, but we’re getting closer!