You guessed it! Demo Day 5...

Wednesday was our 5th day of demo work. Our main focus was the library (otherwise known as the fireplace room). We pulled off the rest of the paneling on the walls. It seems like the entire house got a makeover in the 70's.

Here someone drew a picture of the fireplace on the wall...next to the fireplace!

We also worked on the floor. A third of the flooring didn't have that masonite fiberboard. It had some kind of thin plywood instead, which meant the entire sheet came up all at once, making that section of the floor SO EASY to uncover. This room used to be two rooms, but thankfully the wood floor ran underneath of the wall that used to be there, so it looks to continue seamlessly throughout the room. The only issue is that we uncovered a patched area where a furnace vent used to be. Originally it would have been up against the wall that separated the rooms, but now it's just going to be in the middle of the library. Not really that big of an issue though, people have register vents in the middle of rooms!

 Forgive my phone...anytime I take pictures with my flash on it, I get the red lines.

Luke of course spent a couple of minutes chipping the plaster off of the chimney in the kitchen again. I swear he's in love with it! The plaster is in such bad shape, it's coming off a lot easier than anyone expected.

The weather was very overcast, and it actually started sprinkling, so we lost daylight rather quickly inside. We took a quick peek upstairs under the carpets in the front loft and office where they meet the hallway. It looks like the fiberboard covers painted wood floors up there as well. We just aren't sure of their condition. It also seems like the fiberboard is molding in some places. Ick!

Here's the rain clouds rolling in...

On another note, we've had numerous people stop out and ask about the property. Four or five of them were actually interested in buying it, and a few others were from somewhere in the vicinity and came to see what was going on and congratulate us on our purchase. It seems like a lot of people have had their eye on the property for quite awhile. I guess it's a good thing I made Luke contact the bank in California that owned it, because if it would have actually went to market, it would have been sold long before we were able to purchase it!

The plan for today it to continue pulling up fiberboard, and start hauling out smaller debris that is piled up on the floor downstairs. We are hoping to gather up a little more help on the weekend, which will make ripping out the carpets and paneling upstairs a lot easier. My boot for my plantar fasciitis doesn't allow for very good balance going up and down stairs, especially carrying debris, and trust me, those little pieces of fiberboard add up into piles real quick!

Demo Days 3 & 4

Monday and Tuesday were both half day demo days. Luke worked until after lunch and then we headed over to the house for 3ish hours in the afternoon and worked until the sun went down. Tuesday I went over in the morning to chip at the floor in the living room for almost 2 hours, and then we brought the girls with us that afternoon.

The electrician has been there the past few days working on the new 200 amp service box. Of course I've been over there both days and failed to take a picture... The garage door company was also out measuring for a new garage door on the shop. We've been busy chipping away at the floor in the living room. I don't know why anyone would ever put that many nails into hardwood flooring to put down fiberboard and carpet.

This is the end of day 3, and then the end of day 4 in the living room. We now successfully have half of the living room floor uncovered. The floor looks pretty decent, but we did find a boarded over register vent, so we will have to reroute a furnace vent to that spot.

We spent most of day 3 pulling out the paneling in the kitchen. It had two different types of wallpaper on it, so it had to go! In doing so, we've decided that for right now, we will not rebuild the wall area above the cabinets. One day we will actually buy new cabinets, and in the event that they are taller, we would just have to rip it all back out to place cabinets higher. The only place where this becomes an issue is where the cabinets turn out into the middle of the kitchen, so we will just build a small wall to help hold those in place.

We found this calendar behind a cabinet. Apparently the kitchen was redone in June of 1974!

We also uncovered the chimney in the kitchen. We've decided that we will leave 2 sides of it exposed, so Luke started chipping away at the plaster that covers it.

On day 4, Luke kicked through the wall in the eat-in area of the kitchen that faces the laundry room. The plan is to cover over the current laundry room door, and have access to the laundry room through the kitchen. I'll have Luke build a barn door eventually that we can hang as a divider between the kitchen and laundry area. Eventually on down the line I can imagine the back part of the house being redesigned a bit so there is maybe a sliding patio door instead of 2 separate back doors, but for now, having a mud room/laundry room that opens into the kitchen right next to the backdoor (with the small porch) that will be used the most makes sense to us.

On the other side of the eat-in area of the kitchen, we knocked out the upper cabinets that were there. I'm not sure when we'll start knocking out the wall for a pass through. We need to figure out how big we are making it, and get the lumber to frame it out before we start punching through that wall.

The dumpster also arrived, so everyone can feel free to stop by and transfer our huge pile of construction debris!

The rest of the week we will continue to pull up as much fiberboard as we possibly can, and start moving stuff from storage and dad's yard hopefully. We also still have all of the carpet upstairs that still need to be pulled up. So I'll leave you with a sunset :)