I mean besides the Academy Awards.

Today’s plans were to run a new electrical line to the new remodel, and to take down another section of ceiling.

When I pulled the first part of the section of ceiling down, this is what fell upon me:

Enormous piles of crap.

Disgusting.

We have no idea where it came from or how long it’s been there. But since it was dehydrated, we’re assuming it’s been there since before we purchased the house as there have been no openings for anything to get in since we’ve been here.

All of this after having to slither my way under the house to run some new electrical wiring to the area we are remodeling. The Husbear was kind enough to take a few pictures of me whilst I was trying to work:

So nice of him, wasn’t it? I feel so… disgusting.

We didn’t get as much done today as I was hoping to do. I guess there’s always tomorrow.

Note: Post updated 2017-02-15 to update photo locations to blog from flickr.

Some of you might remember we had another leak a few months ago outside in the main line to the house. (I tweeted about it, but I don’t remember blogging about it.) We patched it at the time, but we knew we would have to replace the water line into the house. We were hoping it would hold off until it warmed up this Spring.

So much for wishful thinking.

Some of you might have seen the following tweet a few days ago:

The next morning, I got up to get ready for work. The well had run empty.

The Husbear and I decided to crack the slab in the bathroom where we could hear the flow the loudest. We were hoping to find the leak and be able to patch it.

Once we got through the extremely thin slab, we didn’t find the leak. At all. And the water lines went in a completely different direction than we expected.

Since we couldn’t find the leak, we decided we would just break up a channel in the slab to the interior wall, and then run a new water line into the house from the well. (We have already laid in the pipe from the well to the back of the house this past summer, before we started pouring a concrete deck along the back of the house. We figured we were going to have to replace it at some point.)

I had to pull the sheetrock off the wall where we would be running the waterline to. What we found was rather alarming. Frayed electrical wiring. And not just in one place. We are surprised that the house hadn’t burned down at some point.

And on top of the frayed wiring, we found mold. Lots of mold.

I’m not sure who built the shower (judging by the date on some newspaper used as “insulation” that I found, I’m assuming it was the people who owned the house immediately before us). But their DIY skills were extremely lacking. Extremely. Lacking.

The discovery of the mold and the bad wiring changed our plans. Big time. Instead of just replacing the main water line into the house, we will now have to gut the bathroom, the laundry room, and a hallway.

If you could only read my lips… they contain curse words.

We got the channel broken out Sunday, and today (Monday) we got a majority of the rooms gutted. The hardest part was probably carrying out the cast iron bathtub that had a 1954 date stamped on the bottom of it. It was damned heavy! (It now rest on our back deck for the moment.)

This is what the shower area looks like almost completely gutted. There’s all sorts of wiring that will have to be replaced. It’s all old 2 wire, with no ground! The HVAC duct was run a couple years after we moved in. I couldn’t handle no central heat and air conditioning. And those new studs and insulation you see are from the office remodel a few years ago.

We will be changing the old shower area into the new laundry room. The old laundry room will now become the new shower area for the bathroom. The Husbear is excited about getting a new laundry room for some reason. And a new bathroom.

So, the water leak has now turned into a huge tear down and remodel project. Fun times. I love our old house, but sometimes you just have to wonder if the ghosts have it out for us here.

There are more pictures over on my flickr account.

I’m sure this will keep me busy for the next few months….

Although it would be nice to have the “Yard Crashers” crew come do something with our yard.

Anyway…

This is what I spend Monday doing. Or building, actually.

This is the pergola over the side door. It’s the first of four large pergolas that will be built. The other three will over the back porch at different heights.

When completed, they will all be covered with clear (or smoked) corrugated plastic roof panels so we can use the outdoor space during rainy weather, and we collect rainwater runoff for the ponds and flowerbeds in the yard.

I’m wore out.