Summer Break (Somewhat Literally) Is Over!

So, we decided to take the summer off from working on the house, mostly because, without air conditioning, it was simply to hot inside to function.  Instead, we focused on maintaining the yard and hanging out on the sailboat.  I'd say we were sailing, but the wind did not cooperate this year.  Oh, well.

In other news, when we ready to start working on the house again, the hubs broke his back.  The ladder on which he was standing (13' above the ground) broke, and he fell.  By the grace of God, his breaks (L1, L2, L3, and L4) did not require surgery and did not cause him permanent injury.  He was in quite a bit of pain for several weeks, and was out of work for several days (yes, only days - can you believe it?), but he is otherwise unscathed.  These are photos he took of, as he calls it, "the scene of the crime."

A few weeks after his fall, I slipped on the back steps to the deck and broke my ... pride.  I still have a large goose egg on my posterior (3 1/2 weeks post fall) and bruising, but most of the color has left.  Also, I am far more comfortable than I have been.  As long as no one touches it, I'm okay.  I'll spare you any photos. (;

And so, now that we're both mostly healed, we've begun home projects again.  The first involved the hubs crawling into the rear crawl space under the house to connect pipes.  He installed our temporary kitchen sink!  One of the base cabinets is standing next to it, and we have a propane camp stove (with oven!) to prepare meals.  Our first non-microwaved meal cooked indoors?  Grilled cheese sammiches!  Oh, how I've missed the simpler things!

 

 

 

I even did a few dishes!

First, a celebratory bit ... We got a platform bed frame!  For free!  No more getting up off the mattress from the floor!  We will eventually be building a platform frame from plans I found online, but in the meantime, this is heavenly!

Today, while the hubs worked outside, rearranging the garage, and reorganizing other things, I did likewise indoors.  This is what the front rooms looked like this morning.

This is how they looked after phase 1.

I moved all of the kitchen cabinets into the front corner.  The bathroom wall cabinets are in the corner to the far left.  The area in what will eventually be our TV room was emptied to make room for this stuff:

Since the refrigerator is already in this space, I decided we should make this our makeshift kitchen.  The sink will still be in the actual kitchen space (once it gets connected, that is), but the microwave table and the pantry goods will be in here.

For what it's worth, I got all of the stuff out of the fridge room and sorted into categorical stacks in the front corner of the front room.  I just neglected getting photos.  It was ridiculously hot, and we got showers and went into town for air conditioned eats and an air conditioned movie.  I'll post an update later.  Happy Memorial Day, everyone!

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.

Saturday!

Saturdays mean the hubs is putting in time at the house, too, so I will have company and help if needed.  Sometimes it means his friend will be coming to help, too.  This was the case today.

First thing this morning, I did something I should have done at the beginning of the week.  I cut a pool noodle in half and cut a slit up the side ... and I covered the copped pipes for the kitchen sink.  I cannot tell you how many times I walked into them before doing this!  So many bruises.

Today we scrubbed the upstairs bathroom down with hot bleach water.  It's still not awesome, but it's far better than it was.  Added bonus, I don't feel dirty just from walking in there.  To give you an idea of what we were dealing with, this is a shot of the mirror wall after we took down the mirror, so you can see the color the walls were before they were nasty.

 

 

This is after we cleaned, and by "we," I mostly mean the hubs.  While he was busy doing this (because he could reach all the way to the top), I was pulling carpet staples from the floors in the bedrooms.  Those buggers are stubborn.

 

 

I also scraped and cleaned the windows in the bedrooms.  The front one was the most difficult, as it is broken.  It appears that a child drew on it with a dry erase marker after it was broken.  Some of the drawing lines followed the cracks in the glass. Scary.

 

Still, it felt good to have it clean.

 

Just Saying "NO," Part 2

I had so much fun knocking things down yesterday that I decided to take a swing (see what I did there?) at it again today.  This time, I left some of the drywall up ... for 2 reasons.  The first is that I thought my husband should get the chance to smash some of it, too.  (Sharing is caring.)  The second is that I didn't want to accidentally fall through the hole in the back of the kitchen floor ,,, mostly that.

 

 

And because I know you all wanted proof that I did it, here's a shot of me covered in drywall dust.

Just Saying "NO" to Soffits

You may have noticed in the before shots of the kitchen that the previous owners built in soffits to fill the space between the ceiling and the cabinets they installed.  Here's a quick pic to remind you:

We already know we don't want to keep these, as we're going to move the cabinets up to the ceiling to gain space between the upper and lower cabinets.  So, today when I got tired of sanding cabinet doors (translation: a tiny bit bored), I did this:

I didn't have any safety goggles, so I wore my sunglasses to avoid having anything fly into my eyes.  (I suggest safety goggles, as I still had plenty of drywall dust getting in anyway.)  I then grabbed my hammer and just started swinging away at the soffit.  I broke loose all of the drywall from it and left just the 2x4's exposed.  I can't let the hubs miss out on ALL the fun, can I?

The Sweet Smell of Sawdust

After I cleaned all of the cabinet doors that weren't attached to cabinets still, I needed to sand the finish off (or so I thought - more later).  So, I swung by my local Home Depot and picked up this beauty.

 

 

 

Using this little sander, I was able to transform the cabinet doors like so:



Before / After

 

I also transformed myself into a dust-covered version of myself. (=

 

 

So, I was told (after putting all the extra effort into the sanding) that I just needed to rough them up a bit, not sand all the way to the wood.  I'm not letting it get me down, though, because the smell of sawdust when I got down to the wood brought back so many good memories of helping my stepdad in the garage that it was totally worth it. <3

 

Here's another comparison shot to show the incredible difference sanding made.

 



Cleaning Cabinet Doors

Today I had the house all to myself.  I cranked up the tunes and went to work.  First, I replaced the pulls for the ceiling fan in the dining room with some cute (and not crud-covered) ones I got at Menard's the other night.  Much better!

Next, I gathered the cabinet doors that were removed on Saturday.  I removed the hinges.  Well, I removed some of them.  My husband took care of the rest when he came at lunch time to plow the driveway and have lunch with me.

Than it was time to clean them.  They were pretty gross.

My husband's mother had told us about this cleaner she found at the Dollar General that cost like a dollar a bottle.  So, we picked some up when we stopped in for a couple of other things.  This stuff lives up to its name.

I sprayed it on and let it sit for a couple of minutes (not too long, or it'll just add a layer).  Then, I wiped it and the grossness off the doors.

I did have to put a little bit of elbow grease into it on a few spots, but look at this door after I was done!

 I almost couldn't believe it, and I was there.