More progress.

Over the last week or two I've been working on getting all the electrical pulled for the outlets and lighting. I'm doing a bunch of can lights in the bedrooms, bathrooms, living room, and kitchen. The bedrooms are wired up very thoroughly for future needs and one of the bedrooms is being set up for a home office with a fully powered closet to support printer, fax, etc.

I also have been working on the fire wall between the garage and kitchen. It was tore up pretty bad from getting all the plumbing installed, which is now done. So, I re-sheetrocked the wall, taped and textured it and yesterday got a final coat of paint on the wall. It is officially the first completed and done piece of the house. Feels good.

Master Bedroom. Tore the sheetrock off to make way for electrical and insulation.





Bedroom with outlets pulled. Next here will be insulation followed by sheetrock.






Here you can see the damage to the garage fire wall, so I just re-rocked the whole wall.






First coat of tapping compound. Looking in towards the kitchen from the garage. This entire wall is new. On it will be the washer, dryer, furnace, water heater, sink, and water softener.



Fire wall done. Textured, primed and painted. Plumbing loops sticking out for future hook ups.





Living room. New outlets on back wall.



Here you can see I've pushed the hall ceiling up a foot to full 8 feet. It was lower before. New can lights installed.




Bathroom plumbing done and all new electrical going in.




The wall I framed up between the kitchen and the living room. On the other side of the stud wall there will be two ceiling height pantry cabinets. Through the studs on the other wall you can see, there will be another archway opening leading from the kitchen to the front door so you don't have to walk around through the living room to the opening you see here. The picture below shows the half wall which was where the opening is to the kitchen in the shot above.






I'm thinking if I keep the same pace I've been working at over the last few months, I could be done with this and ready to move in in six to nine months. We'll see. It's overwhelming and at times I'm so burnt out, especially since I usually go straight from work in the morning to the house and work till 8 or so.

Major Progress

It's been a long time since I've had an update. I went through a long spell trying to find some motivation. I was being sapped by a sense of non-stop demolition work and I think it was getting to me never seeing much progress as far as new construction. Well, about a month ago I found some motivation. I've been spending nearly every day off at the house working. I leave work at 7am after a 24 hour shift and head straight to the house till around 8 to 10 at night. It's been a bit back breaking. Making some great progress now though. 90% of the demolition is done, at least all of the major stuff. Over the last few weeks I've been working on getting the framing done in the bathrooms. I had the wall between the two bathrooms, a linen closet, the bathtub framing (it's a drop in tub), and a couple pocket doors to frame. Those are all done now. My plumber, who has been a huge help on everything else I've been doing too (he's a general contractor and very knowledgeable), is just about done with the plumbing. All the copper water pipe is in, most of the sewer/drain lines are in and in the next couple of days the gas will be done. Soon I'll get going on the electrical and some sheetrock. There is much left to be done.

This was the kitchen when I bought the house


The other half of the original kitchen


This was the kitchen mid demolition. Down to the dirt. There was some pretty bad rot near the window where the kitchen sink was


The kitchen after I put in new subfloor


This was the guest/hallway bathroom when I bought it. The tub is just to the left of the picture. Pretty small.


the tub


This is the entire master bathroom originally. Love the blue, eh?



Both bathrooms near the end of demo. My friend Joe, lending a helping hand.


A bit out of order, but mid-demo in the bathrooms


Blowing out the wall between the master bedroom and both bathrooms to get rid of more rot. That was the end of it. I managed to get every last bit of mold and rot out of there, which is what started this whole project.


Support in for the subfloor in the bathrooms


Bathroom subfloor in.


To the right is the opening for the pocket door into the master bathroom


Looking into the hall bathroom. On the left is the framing for the drop in bathtub. All the wood you see will be covered in tile.


View into the hall bathroom looking toward the front of the house. The tub is on the left and the sink is straight ahead. Through the wall is the master bathroom.


Looking down the hall. Hall bathroom on the left. Front door is down the hall to the left.


The hall did have a dropped ceiling which was lower than the rest of the house so I dropped the ceiling so I can raise it up to the full height.



More progress coming soon.

Finally back at it.

Today I got back to work on the house after a long hiatus. Life's been a bit crazy for a while. It hasn't been much less crazy, I just need to force myself to get back to it. The photography business has been picking up in recent months and has kept me tied up as well as the day job and some travel.
Today I attacked the water pipes and drainage pipes. They were a mess inside and needed badly to go. Next up is to begin getting the sub floor in so the plumber can come in a take care of the plumbing for the bathroom and kitchen. Someday this project might actually get done, but I doubt it.

This is both bathrooms as they stand now, except the plumbing is gone. The toilet remain for...well, ya know, emergencies. Salinas has great burritos.

This is what the inside of the kitchen sink drain line looked like. This is 50+ years of build up. This is what your arteries look like when you smoke, eat fast food every day and watch too much TV. Quit looking at my filthy pipes and go for a walk.

It's a 2" pipe. Gross. That stuff is hard as a rock too.

Plumbing. Done.

Old cast iron drain pipe. Heavy stuff but doesn't stand up to a sledge.

Anyone need some asbestos?

I was peeling back some sheetrock and the top layer of wall paper came off and revealed what mush have been the original wallpaper from 1960.

It was either make some progress in the house or cut down 6 1/2 foot tall weeds. The weeds will wait. Welcome to the jungle.

Someone stole my floor

Today was a very busy day at the house. My friend Alex Bausch, Salinas firefighter, came out to give me a hand relocating a bathroom wall and giving the bathroom a substantial increase in square footage. The wall needed to be rebuilt anyways because of the rot and mold, so why not move it out a few feet. He managed to get it completed in just 10 hours. While he worked on that I worked on demo of the kitchen floor so that I can add support and cover it with plywood for the tile. The joists are 48" apart and the 2x6's are just not sturdy or stiff enough to support the tile in the kitchen or bathrooms. The kitchen is about 11'x18' so it took most of the day to pull the floor up.

A big thanks to my aunt Maureen from the Boston area who sent a generous Christmas gift certificate to Home Depot and helped towards getting this new wall built. She's got a nice new window with her name on it now (figuratively speaking).

The kitchen has gone from this to...

this

Alex doing demo to the existing exterior bathroom wall. This is the rotted out one which needed replacing. The wall would be moved out to the rafter you can see in the very top left of the picture, about three feet. The board laying on the cement at the bottom of the picture is where the bottom of the new wall will go.

This is looking from the inside of the bathroom at the same wall. You can see out the existing window space. This is a good look also at the condition of the floor and the joists. I tore this floor up a couple days ago.

Partial progress of the kitchen floor demo. A good size portion of this floor needed to be torn up due to mold, mildew, and rot so why not just tear up the whole thing. This will make it easier to get even and level when I lay down the new floor. The far wall where the plumbing is, is where the kitchen sink was, the culprit to all of the problems. I am on a mission to rid the house of every mold spore.

Here Alex is standing where the wall was between the entryway and the bathroom. This wall was rebuilt as well to eliminate...you guessed it, mold.

Here is the new wall built in place of the old one from the shot above.

The new exterior wall. You can see the original one behind it which will be removed and you can also see part of the new window opening which will match the original window. To the far right is the front door.


A brand new window for my brand new bathroom wall. I estimate this gave me about 21-25 additional square feet in the hall bathroom.


New walls alongside the front door and entryway.

I had to leave in a rush tonight so I didn't get a picture of the completed wall with the siding up but I will post one when I can.