gambrinous with griffonage

It's been three months since I last blogged about the "little" construction project.

Here's where we stand at the moment:

(click to see it on flickr)

This has pretty much consumed my weekends, and some time before work each day and after work on some days.

We're waiting on the windows to come in (we had to custom order them). And the HardiPlank lap siding.

That will finish off the exterior of the now new addition.

Then we get to start the inside of it....

We last left off with the discovery that two of the back walls of the house had slipped off their foundation at some point in it's history since 1892, and had been well camouflaged by a previous owner.

The Husbear and I found a way to correct this problem! And it's relatively simple. Relatively.

We will simply increase the footprint of the house by adding an entirely new Master bathroom, and remove the existing back walls. (Which also means we will be moving the Master bedroom downstairs in the near future.) I think the Husbear must employ some mind-control device on me to get me to agree to such things.

I said "simply". We know how that goes....

Unfortunately, we had a 60+ foot tall problem sitting right in the middle of the proposed area for the new Master bathroom.

A great big tree.

This picture was taken in 2005. I thought I had taken a more recent picture of it, but alas. The tree had grown a wee bit since 2005. So much that it towered over the roof of the two story house by at least 30 feet. At least.

Just like Earl, the tree had to die.

I hate being up on a ladder. And I hate chainsaws. Put them both together, and it's worse than my dislike of clowns and politicians! But after some creative cutting of the larger branches, and some narrow misses on bringing said limbs down on the house, we were left with the trunk and the stump.

Ugh. The stump.

The Husbear and the stump.

First we axed it for a while. Then dug and cut around the roots with trowels, hammers, and a sawzall.

Then we bought a pressure washer and blasted out the dirt so we could see the roots. After that, it was a "simple" matter of cutting the remaining roots and pulling on the stump with a cumalong. "Cumalong". Heh heh.

Yea! The stump is removed!

Now that the stump is out of the way, I can string out the area for the new foundation so the form for the raised concrete foundation could be built.

The form is almost ready. Hopefully we'll be able to start pouring the concrete this coming weekend for the walls of the foundation. If it doesn't rain. Again.

Can you tell we're wore out?

So... the day ended with it raining in the kitchen:

The hot water pipe going into the upstairs bathtub popped. It flooded the upstairs bathroom, then seeped through the tongue-and-groove flooring into the crawlspace, then through the tongue-and-groove ceiling down into the kitchen.

In the kitchen, it ran through the cabinets and onto the floor. It also ran through all the overhead lighting.

So, the kitchen got an unscheduled bath today.

And we think we know why it popped: too much pressure. We moved the hot water heater and the washer and dryer to their new alcove today. While doing so, we added a check valve on the cold water supply going into the hot water heater. With no ability to back-flow as it had been doing before, the heated water system over pressurized, and found the weakest link.

Anyway, here's what the alcove looks like with it's bits in place:

The alcove had to be completed first so we could move the washer and dryer from their previous locations. With that done, we could start gutting the rest of the old laundry room and bathroom, which ended up looking like this before the previously mentioned internal rain interrupted said gutting today:

While gutting the area, we discovered something ugly. Well, uglier than all the mold we found? And uglier than the fact that we found absolutely no insulation in the North-facing walls? We found that the back wall of the house is not sitting on the slab at all. It's sitting directly on the ground.

Can you say NOT FUCKING GOOD? Yes. I just cussed.

How did we not notice this on the outside, you ask? The previous owners had glossed it over with siding. Just like so much other stuffs we've found that they, and even more previous owners, had done.

So, what started out as a leak in the main water line, turned remodel, has now turned into a major structural undertaking!

Frak.

It has been a month since we started the "forced" remodel thanks to the old pipes finally giving out. The old pipes in the house. Not in me. Those aren't that old yet.

click to see it on flickr

So far:

• the water line has been entirely replaced from the well to the house, and all the water lines throughout the house have been replaced;
• a filtration system has been installed at the well (What it's filtered so far has been NASTY! I hate to think we've been drinking that for the last 8 years.);
• a new water heater has been installed;
• a raised concrete footing/pedestal has been poured to set the new water heater and washer and dryer upon, and a portion of the slab floor that was once sloping has been leveled;
• new electrical lines have been installed (In doing so, I found three lines coming into the service panel that appear to not be connected to anything! What the Hell?);
• new ceiling joists have been installed in place of the existing joists;
• new lighting has been installed;
• gaps have been filled and insulation has been installed!;
• the existing HVAC duct has been diverted and tapped in to for the new area;
• a dryer exhaust vent has been installed.

Hopefully I'll be able to start sheetrocking the first area this weekend, if the weather cooperates. Once that is done I can move the washer and dryer from their existing location to the new pedestal, after which I can start the demolition of the area they were in so the new walk-in shower can be installed.... eventually.

Yea!

And to think we've only really touched about 1/3rd of the area that needs to be remodeled.