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The Next Step…

February 29, 2012 / / 1 Comment

So, the next step in this process (now that we have the basement mostly cleared out) is getting an architect and having a blueprint made.  At one point we debated either trying to skip this or do it later, but with the possibility that the structure work would be changed by the blueprints we decided to do this first.  It was just the logical choice when we sat down and went over the big picture.

Below we have a rough sketch of what the backyard and garage will look like when it is done.  Matt did this all from scratch and you can see that he’s very talented.  If he had decided to finish his degree in architecture, I am sure that he would have made a great architect.

Back Yard Model

With Derek needing a little less maintenance these days, we plan on finishing the demo in the basement shortly and possibly starting the next project (which hasn’t been determined yet).  We are both super excited to be going onto the next step/project, especially after seeing Marcus’s renovation progress at his Open House this last weekend.   We were glad that he hosted it, as he’s much further along in his renovation.  We were able to see what ours will similarly look like in the future (in terms of the guts of the walls and some of the utility setup).  You can see Matt, Derek, and I in the video on Marcus’s post about the Open House.   I can’t wait until our house is looking that good!

Basement Demo: Are We Done Yet?

February 23, 2012 / / 0 Comments

New debris pile

Last post I was proud to display the empty section of the basement that was previously filled with drywall debris. Well, there’s crap in it again, mostly due to moving an existing pile from one room to another in order to  consolidate. Then we added some more debris from the bedroom ceilings, from around the windows, and from the ceiling above the gas lines and steam pipes. Oh well, back to bagging.

Almost no bags

On a more positive note, the last two weeks have gotten most of the room full of already-bagged debris out to the curb. While that just means we need to get to work bagging the stuff in the first photo, it’s still progress and means things are looking a bit better overall.

Basement lighting

Ugh. Sorry these pictures are so blurry. I should really use the camera instead of my phone, but when I use my phone I tend to actually post to the blog, whereas when I take them with the camera they sit on the camera for a long time before I upload them to my computer, and then sit on the computer until I upload them to Flickr, and finally sit on Flickr until I pick some out to put into posts.

Anyway, I re-routed the electrical in the basement so that instead of having separate rooms each with a light switch located in the center wall, there’s a single switch by the basement door that turns on all the lights. In addition, the boiler and the freezer are now on their own circuit, which simplifies future changes. This was especially important since the center wall will be going away once we get the structural work done.

Drywall!

On a separate note, this past weekend we got our previously mentioned two tons of drywall. It’s in a neat not-so-little pile in the garage. Rob and sons arrived with the trailer Saturday morning and we quickly unloaded it. We’re probably not going to be installing new drywall in the near future, but when we do, we’ll be ready.

Basement Demo: Cleanup

February 7, 2012 / / 2 Comments

Debris bagged

There’s still a lot of work to be done in the basement, but it’s definitely over the hump. Sarah and I got the remaining debris bagged up, ready to be taken out to the curb. I pulled down all the studs left on the South wall. There’s still drywall on some of the ceiling, mostly in areas that have gas lines and electrical in the way. I’ve decided to leave the crazy gas lines for the time being, since hopefully we can just run a new line when the new HVAC equipment goes in and skip consolidating and re-routing the five existing lines.

Lumber pile

I’ve been piling up the lumber in one of the rooms. We’ll go through it and remove screws and nails so we can use some of it for forms and temporary supports. A lot of it is moldy, rotten, and/or chewed through, plus Sarah is convinced they’ll spawn cockroaches if we try to reuse them permanently.

I also need to get the light switches for the lights we’re keeping out of the center wall. I’m not sure exactly where I’ll put them, but there’s definitely more electrical to be done in preparation for the structural work. Focus will probably shift for the next week or so to getting a space in the garage cleared out for some drywall we’re getting from Sarah’s sister and brother-in-law. They scored a couple tons of it from Freecycle and don’t need all of it for their house, so we just need to make room for it, since it’s all 4×12 sheets.

Plumbing Patch

January 31, 2012 / / 2 Comments

Drain Problem

As with most things in the house, the drain plumbing is atrociously wrong. There’s a cast iron soil stack that’s mostly ok, except it ends in the attic a bit shy of the roof. There’s new PVC that ties into another cast iron soil stack that does make it out the roof, though it has some holes in it. The base of the PVC is cracked off about a foot from the basement floor and has a smaller diameter PVC pipe going into it. It also has some side drains, one of which is broken off.

In the above picture you can see the problem. For reasons that aren’t entirely clear, we didn’t have any problems with this until recently. I think it was so caked with dirt that the back pressure never managed to escape. Maybe it was just time, maybe we bumped it during demo or something, but a few days ago we started getting water out of the side drain when we did laundry, hence the soap. However, as you can imagine it didn’t smell like laundry soap. It smelled like festering sewer water, which is exactly what it was.

Because the pipe is snapped off and literally cemented into the ground, there isn’t a clean way to fix it. I tried prying off the outer ring to get something I could screw onto, but didn’t have any luck. I didn’t want to crank too hard on it and wind up with a much bigger problem, so I went to the hardware store and played with the PVC fittings for half an hour, at one point having eight different inter-connected pieces in my hand. I finally settled on four pieces that I could combine into several possible solutions. My past experience with plumbing has taught me to over prepare so I don’t find myself back at the hardware store return counter multiple times in one evening.

Drain repair

There’s a good chance that we’ll need this pipe when we move the laundry back to the basement, so a more permanent seal wasn’t in the cards. I decided on a 2″ to 1-1/2″ rubber gasket adapter, followed by a cleanout and cap. The gap at the top of the pipe that the smaller pipe fits into I filled with spray foam in a bid to prevent gas and possible water from escaping. It’s far from pretty, but like much of what we’ve done to date it’s temporary. It only needs to last a year or so until we come back and re-do it all. I’ll let it all dry out and then run some water through the washer to make sure it doesn’t leak. Then I can sweep up the mess. In the mean time I sprayed the hole thing with a generous helping of disinfectant to hopefully cut the smell. Blecgh.

Basement Demo: Visible Progress

January 20, 2012 / / 0 Comments

Wall removed

Having a baby definitely makes it more difficult to do rehab, but bad habits are even worse. I can say with certainty that we haven’t made as much progress as we could have, to say nothing of how much progress I’d like to have made by now. Last night Sarah and I tackled the last remaining walls in the basement and vowed to get back into good habits of working on the house regularly. Without good habits this project will never get done.

Missing insulation

Any good session of demo in the house features the usual discoveries of obviously wrong work. In this case we found a couple of gems. Above is a prime example of how insulation was installed throughout the basement. Notice the cavity on the left has none whatsoever, and the cavity on the right has it kind of shoved in. I estimate about 40% of the walls had insulation and about 3% had it installed reasonably well.

Sarah demos

This blurry picture is of Sarah prying the wall off the back of the chimney. The rest of the wall came down as well. This is in what used to be the kitchen, and the other side of the wall is the utility room with the boiler and hot water heaters.

Hole in the chimney

Here’s what we found underneath: a gaping hole in the chimney. This may partly explain the ghastly fumes in the basement that cause us to always wear masks, even now that most of the mold is removed. We blocked it temporarily with a piece of patio block, but we’ll need to improve it to be safe. I was already concerned about carbon monoxide and particulates in the air down there, and this certainly doesn’t help.

We of course have more mess to clean up after our progress, but having a sense of accomplishment is important in trying to establish new habits. With some effort and diligence we’ll get into the rehab groove and it will become automatic.