My Renovation: January 2010

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.