Thursday, 10/28/10

Today a ton of work got done. The brick repair guys came this morning and finished around lunch time. They worked way faster than I thought they would. Shown here is the kitchen window, which was resized. They filled in brick here, around the window that was in the shower, and above the crawl space door. They also added new mortar to anywhere that bricks were loose.

While they worked on that, Johnny and I worked inside. I started the day by putting in fiberglass insulation into the holes we riped in the walls, giving special attention to the bathroom. Working with fiberglass is terrible by the way. It gets everywhere and makes you very itchy, even with long sleeves on.

Johnny finished up the plumbing in the crawl space, which included fixing an old pipe that had come loose during our work. After that we both worked on putting down the kitchen floor as well as the closet floor. Besides for photos showing all of this, I am also posting one of how the green and big the grass has gotten. I will mow it as soon as it stops raining.

Wednesday, 10/27/10 Emails, Sanding, and the Dump

Wednesday was a day with many different things going on. In the morning Josh and Parke were finishing up sanding the ceilings (it is finally done), while I sent emails and made some phone calls. I also met a drywall guy over at the house and talked through everything I wanted done. He will get back to me soon with a price. After Josh and Parke finished sanding, they loaded up the truck with trash -- specifically old windows and pieces of wood -- and made several trips to the local dump. I also spent some time on Home Depot.com looking at bathroom mirrors, lighting, and trim.

Dave, the electrician, also worked on Wednesday and finished up everything that needed to be done before drywall work was done. This work included putting in boxes for smoke detectors in the hall and both bedrooms. The hallway box is shown below. Also shown are the scraped and sanded doors, which are ready to be touched up, primed, and painted.

Tuesday, 10/26/10 Scraping and Sanding

Today was mainly about scraping and sanding. The focus for the interior of the house is to get everything ready for drywall repair. So, doors were removed then scraped and sanded. The door jams were given the same treatment. Outlet covers, door knobs, and hinges came off and were thrown away. Even the ceiling continued to be scraped and sanded, hopefully that will be done tomorrow. Other small projects like removing the shelves from the closets were also seen to. Working today was Josh, Parke, and me.

Monday, 10/25/10 Exterior Work and More Planning

Shown here is a picture of the new kitchen window. The old window was too low, it went past the counter weight. So this new window was picked to be higher and to make space for wall cabinets. Although both of these photos are of things not done today, I thought you would like to see them anyway...

This morning started out really well. Johnny was working on getting the exterior ready for some brick repair, aka removing bolts and other strange things that were on the house. While he did that, I finished making my to do lists and even ordering them by what needs to be done next. For some reason that seems to take way longer than it seems like it would.

I also had to take my dog (Lucy) to get her stitches removed. I just adopted her about two weeks ago and had her spade. So it was time to get her stitches taken out. Well it turns out Lucy gets car sick, or is just super nervous about being in the car. Either way after coming home from the vet, I spent a large part of the early afternoon cleaning dog vomit out of my car. Not how I had hoped to spend my afternoon...

My window guy came by later in the afternoon to fix a small problem with one of the windows Johnny and I put in. It wasn't serious, just a spring in one of the latches was broken. Johnny also started working on installing the kitchen floor.

Below is the opening in the bathroom that is now sized for installing the glass block. We are treating it like a window and installing a sill and molding on the exterior to make sure it will not leak.

Friday, 10/22/10 Organizing and Shower Window

Sorry for another day with no pictures. I promise to have some very soon for you to look at. Friday was a day that I spent most of it organizing and planning while Johnny worked at the house.

In the morning Johnny and I went to Home Depot to buy more supplies, after talking over the next few steps at the house. The main things we bought were for the shower window and for replacing the crawl space door frame. When I bought the house, there was a nice window in the shower. It was really weird looking, not to mention a great place for water to seep into. So I'm replacing part of the window with glass block and tiling over the rest. Johnny spent most of Friday resizing and then fitting the opening to be the perfect size for the glass block.

After Home Depot, I spent the day trying to get organized for the rest of the remodeling. I worked up new lists and the like for what still needs to be done. Monday will mostly be me finishing those lists and getting them in the right order.

Thursday, 10/21/10 Kitchen Window and Vapor Barrier

Thursday was a day that I really didn't get anything done. One of my good friend's grandfather died and the funeral was yesterday. Since it was in the afternoon, I did not do much work on the house personally. But going to see my friend and his family was much more important than working another day on the house.

While I was away, Johnny and Josh did get some work done. Josh spent a while down in the crawl space installing a vapor barrier, which means he was just unrolling a massive piece of black plastic. He was also helping Johnny whenever Johnny needed help.

Johnny worked on installing the kitchen window. Since the new window was a smaller window, he had to build a new frame to put the window in. After he finished building up the frame and installing the window, he started removing the window from the bathroom. That window is being replaced by glass block.

Wednesday, 10/20/10 Crawl Space and Dump

It seems to be that I am getting in a habit of being late in putting up posts and in putting photos with them. Anyway, yesterday Parke and I were the only ones working. We spent a while cleaning out the crawl space. I did some of that with him and then switched to getting up the remaining kitchen floor. This was only the edges that had be chiseled out. That seemed to take a very long time to do. While I was doing that, Parke was continuing to clean all the random junk and piles of cinder blocks that were in crawl space. The reason for him even bothering was so we can put down a vapor barrier. When we finally finished, we took a load of trash to the dump and the day was over.