Demo, Week 2

WHEW! What a week. A productive week, but WHAT A WEEK!

I am proud to say that we no longer have a wall in the middle of the kitchen (what was formerly known as the refrigerator and washer/dryer 'cozy' and our kitchen is now extended by 3 feet!

Here is the week in pictures, through lunchtime today because I haven't downloaded the post-lunch pics!

First, we brushed up on how to properly fall off one of our ladders and also how to properly stand on the other ladder. Whew, so glad they spelled THAT out for us.













Since whichever previous owner had not properly expanded a certain beam across the kitchen we had to do some supporting of a roof beam before we could get the 3 remaining studs. We needed a board that would run the width of our kitchen. Our 15 foot wide kitchen. That's a long board. Monday-Thursday we did additional demo work and finished packing up more of our dishes and kitchen items. We had to knock more drywall off the beam we were going to be reinforcing, which was very sad because that thing was a pain in the ass to paint when we painted the kitchen. We also made a trip to Home Depot to get the required board. Of course we knew it would hang out the back of the car.......but hey, who needs a truck??? One "concerned" HD employee came out to inform us we needed reflectors (we were there about 9 pm....) and told us by law things can only hang out 4 feet from your car. This board hung out about 7-8 feet. So, we asked if they sold reflectors. "Ummm....I don't know. This is my first day. I just know you need reflectors because that's what they told us in training today." Well, ok. But he was very nice and went back in and found some for us and even gave us some screws to screw them into the boards. Luckily we made it home without someone running into us. HD is only 7 or 8 miles from us, but of course we always have to go right through downtown with whatever crap we have hanging out of car, and it just so happened to be the first day of the NHL playoff game going on downtown!

While we were gone Pippin managed to entertain himself by tearing the empty pizza box from that evening's dinner to shreds. He is normally not a destructive dog, but whenever we're highly stressed and working on some massive project like this (and can't spend as much time with him and walking him as normal) we lose a few things. During the hardwood refinishing fiasco of Christmas 06 we lost a couple of fake mistletoe balls and a pillow or two. Apparently he is also not a big fan of the peppers that come with pizza, and they must've been a bit spicy for him because his full water bowl was bone dry. So we chased him around with the fly swatter for a few to make him feel loved.













With all our supplies now on hand we started reinforcing the header beam. Our neighbor is an old pro at this sort of thing so we invited him over to see our progress Friday night and he started telling Brent what to do. We figured we might as well get going on it and by the time he left Friday night we had built a temporary support beam and removed the final 3 remaining 120 year old studs. It was so strange to see them all gone! Our "homework" was to finish the header going across - 4 different layers of wood support. We also had to make another run to HD for a 12 foot board, not nearly as exciting as a 16 footer! We fell into bed around midnight.













When we got up we got started on a new post to support the beam underneath the header that would be flush to the wall. We had to start ripping up part of the floor (exposing another lovely layer of outdated linoleum). Pippin was no help. Our neighbor came over to help again and helped us get the new support beam in. He also helped us cut the massive 16 foot beam (that went on top of the old one to form one long beam where we had the two pieces fitted together). That was a project. That board was so incredibly heavy to lift, and having these massive tall ceilings makes it an even larger challenge. With some massive hammering it was IN! We were able to cut the support post and I'm proud to say the ceiling didn't shift or cave in! And considering the massive torrential storms we've had today, if it was going to, it would!












After an early lunch (we had done all this by 10:30 this morning!!) we started ripping the floors and cabinets out. We got a massive portion of the room done, and tomorrow we will finish ripping the cabinets out (I will miss having a sink!!!) and ripping the old floor out. We think we can leave ugly linoleum bottom layer because it's even with the floor beneath the carpeted portion of the kitchen - which (we discovered today!) used to be a porch! A nice little wood porch. Hopefully we can just add some sort of subfloor on top of it and have everything as level as anything ever is here! I'll add pictures from the rest of today sometime later tomorrow. We've made a load of progress already this weekend and we're so thankful for our super handy neighbor! It would have taken us more than twice as long to do it without him!!









Have a great rest of the weekend and good luck to anyone running the Boston Marathon on Monday! I really hope they have good weather for it!!! It sounds like it may be one to remember!