Tearing Stuff Out - Inside and Out

Our son and his girlfriend came up this morning to take a look at the progress we've made and to give us a hand making more.

The laundry room.

Half wall and a portion of the raised floor removed.

Lawn mowing has commenced.

Front lawn mowed.

 Let's get rid of some of those ugly, mosquito-infested bushes that are planted around the whole house.

What is this?  Those ugly bushes were hiding prettiness in their shadows.  Can't wait to see what this becomes!

Look how much nicer it is already!

This ivy is not my friend.  Why is there so much of it?

I am so glad to have it cleaned out!

No clue yet what's growing over here (now that we've got it all raked out and can see things), but we'll find out!

So, the other bushes are just going to have to wait until the hubs can come back with stronger straps.

Back inside to finish removing the raised floor in the laundry room and then the flooring under that.

 

Are they serious with these screws?  These were what they used to put together the raised flooring section.  Ridiculous!

Cleaned up, so we can call it a day.  Not too bad!

Happy Birthday to Me!

What girl doesn't dream of spending her birthday (or some part of it) in a demolished bathroom?

Here's how it used to look:

And this was back in March (2018-03-03) when we first started poking it with a stick to get at the leaky plumbing:

We haven't decided yet exactly how we want to remake it.  Will it be a half bath?  We don't know.  We'll be sure to let you see when it's done, though. (;

More Demolition (Did You Think We'd Stop?)

Now that the upstairs is slapped together, we figured we'd do some more work downstairs.  And by "we," I mean the hubs.  He really knocked it out of the park, removing the rest of the soffits in the kitchen (except the one with the can lights that used to have the kitchen sink under it), taking out the closet in the laundry room, and completely ripping out the downstairs bathroom.  We'd already seen 7 layer of floor in the kitchen, but three layers of wall in the bathroom, really?  Wasn't the space small enough already?  Oh, and remember the chimney in the kitchen?  Buh-bye!

Gravity assist

Of course, this all made for lots of dust and debris, which is where I came in ... with the Shop-vac.  I also toted the bricks outside (whole ones in one stack, broken bits and mortar in a separate pile) along with the reusable lumber (another pile).  A good time was had by all.

Making a Mess

As if my beautimous bathroom weren't enough for one day, our son came up to help us with a little demolition as well.  Remember the original chimney in the kitchen?  The mortar-coated chimney that's taking up precious real estate?  Well, that took a bit of a beating today.

Heads up - this post is packed with photos and videos, so it may take longer to load than normal.

These initial pictures show the progress of the mortar removal.  The boy was armed with two 5-pound sledge hammers, one with a chisel side.

Of course, the hubs couldn't let the boy have all the fun.

The initial bricks removed ...

And yes, we're all wearing safety goggles and masks.  There's tons of soot in that chimney and lots of flying debris.

Here, the boy got a little exuberant.  He then closed with a video game reference. (=

 A big chunk of the front portion is gone so far:

And the hubs took over.  The bit where there's a single width of mortar holding up the entire back portion and all the chimney still above the ceiling gets me every time.

The soot went everywhere (even upstairs a bit, though the bathroom was spared).  Even with masks, we all breathed some of it in, so we called it a day.  Good fun was had by us all.