Soon, we can rest

So, the final stretch. This week we took out the last remaining walls and started taking apart the bathroom. This Kathy checking out the the new view inside the bathroom. There is a lot of hardware involved in the bathroom. Tons of pipes of course but even more different types of tiles everywhere.

The tile walls were actually fairly easy to rip down. They are so heavy that once it starts to come off the studs, the rest of the weight takes it down all by itself.

That sounds kind of nice. The problem, though, is that we then need to figure a way to get it out of the house. Good ol' Davis family sledge hammer took care of that issue.

We continue to take down the west part of the house otherwise known as the bat hotel. We have had three run-ins this weekend with bats. We can see now where these stupid things come in. Anyway, we invited our friend Chris Kauffman over and he took on as many task as he could. I bet he would worked all night, but that would of kept us up with all the pounding upstairs, so after we took out the dreaded tub, bathroom walls, various doors and over half of the carpeting we convinced him to come with us to get a beer and some grub.

Saturday, we mopped up basically. Kathy completed her fourth tour of scooping out insulation out of the knee walls. Then we took out the rest of the carpeting and then found all the different types of tiles. This is what remains - the ripping out of various types of tiles. In this picture you can see three of the four types of tiles in our upstairs. Over the next week or so I expect to get these removed.

Dust to Dust - dumpster to dumpster

So we survived the last three days of destruction, with today, Sunday, being a very light day.

On Friday we started with the meat of the project by taking down the lovely pine paneling. My buddy Kevin suggested we could just add the lava lamps to fit the scene upstairs and save us all this trouble.


This is me ignoring Kevin and working on taking down the panels. They popped off fairly easily. Later on Friday and Saturday, our nieghbor came over asking if the could go through our dumpster and try to salvage some of them. Actually she was asking for her father, whose wife could later be heard saying, " What are you ever going to do with those boards!"

Once the walls were coming down, Kathy excitedly started crawling around in the knee walls and started scooping out the insulation.

This kept Kathy occupied for many hours as she multi-tasked in trying to find out where "Those stupid squirrels are coming in!"

We found four different types of insulation, some that cause cancer, some that cause hysteria and some that itch. Ok, I am not sure any of those happen - except the itching.


The Process

You would expect some sort of measurable process with Kathy working on it, wouldn't you. Basically, we tear stuff down. If it is small and can be stuff in a garbage bag, we do that and throw it out the balcony to the back yard. You can see the pile of garbage bags in the middle of the picture. The bigger stuff, most of the wood is tossed down. Usually we need some fresh air we head down and fill up the dumpster.

It seems to work out just fine. Only a few pieces have landed in our neighbors yard. But they seem to like us for some reason.


We have filled two dumpsters thus far and we expect to fill at least two more tomorrow.

Progress update


We had some help from Kevin taking down the remaining paneling. He did other things like tear down various pieces and really helped get some of the various insulation cleaned up.

He also begged a waitress later that day to get some cheddar cheese for a burger and then ordered a chicken sandwich with swiss instead.

As of this evening we have most of the walls done and need to get the bathroom taken out and remove the carpeting and stuff like that. Here is the shot about an hour ago.

The preamble

So, here we go. We have finally decided to take on remodeling our upstairs. We will try and update as much as we can for those far-flung interested folk. Who knew lies beneath them thar walls we say!

We started with something less than ideal.
Not much to look at unless you like to look at a bathroom that Kathy claims you can all three major functions without moving. But really how hard is that in any bathroom, but we get her point. Then the fine pine paneling that accented the white tarp-like rugs. Hmm Martha Stewart would be jealous.

We met with five contractors that had lots of ideas and wah-la we picked a guy and they are coming in two weeks. So off we go to demo before they arrive.

The first two days involved moving the funiture etc. downstairs. We spent the next day bringing loads of stuff to Goodwill and started tearing stuff down tonight.

Here is the progress thus far.

Here is shot of the bedroom before the I started chunking away at the ceiling.














And after a couple of hours chunking away.













So the fun begins more updates as it seems necessary if nothing else I am not dead-tired.