Floors and Fire

The past week has been filled with work and Christmas preparations. It just doesn't feel like Christmas this year. We don't have a big tree here in Tiny Barn, our decorations and stockings are in storage, everything we bought is hidden over at dad's house, and we are going to shove the majority of their presents in bags because wrapping would just take up so much time right now!

We had a few very cold days before it warmed up this week, so Luke wanted to play around with the fireplace and see if we could make it work. It has a wood burning insert that was basically rusted shut from sitting so long, so he worked the controls loose, cleaned out the old ash, and we ripped up some newspaper and collected some pine needles to burn. After successfully seeing smoke come out the chimney, he bought a few firebricks to replace a missing one, and built an actual fire (small one) to make sure it was drafting right. So far so good, although we won't make anything too big until we do get the chimney inspected.

 

We focused on the floors upstairs, pulling the fiberboard and plywood off the floors in the back loft, and finishing off Luke's office (the John Deere room). We still have the front loft and hallway to rip up, and then the upstairs will be ready for a thorough wipe down. As soon as the heat works, we can then mud, sand, prime, and paint all the bedrooms upstairs, before tackling the floors.

There was mostly a thin plywood in the back loft instead of fiberboard, but it seems that they decided to use some glue to hold it down, so the floor is pretty messy right now.

The John Deere room (Luke's office) has a nice big plywood section in the flooring from where the chimney came up through, so we'll have to patch that up somehow.

The electrical guys have started working on pulling out the knob and tube wiring, but so far the furnace guys are MIA. We need them there so we can have heat, so the contractor can start his drywall work! We still have light fixtures to order and pick up, trim to tear off the walls, and some downstairs flooring work, as well as the upstairs floors that still need peeled up. We spent Christmas Eve working on hooking up the electrical box in the shop, and driving in ground wires. We had to go look for gifts for the hillbilly gift exchange anyway, and the shop certainly has a lot of junk to sort through. We took the opportunity to burn some cardboard from the shop too, and just enjoy the view since the weather was so warm!

Demo Days 6, 7, Santa, and 8!

Thursday and Friday were spent working on flooring. Thursday we finished ripping out the fiberboard in the living room, and on Friday we finished the library.

Here's the living room. Mopping it over really brought out some of the original stain color.

The girls hung out with us on Friday while we finished the library.

Here's the library. It still has some staples on the floor, but we'll get to them.

Today we had our Build and Grow at Lowe's. We built a holiday train and then got to visit with Santa! This is Henna's first year that she actually spoke to him, although I had to walk up with her.

My dad and brother came up to the house today, which was a huge help! We filled the dumpster with everything we had in the front yard, only to pile more carpet and paneling in the yard while we wait for the dumpster to get taken away and emptied.

Our focus was the upstairs. We got the carpet ripped out of the 3 bedrooms up there that had carpet, pulled out the plywood that was down on the office floor, and pulled out most of the paneling in the hallway and staircase.

Here's the front loft bedroom so far.

This is the John Deere bedroom. It'll be Luke's office, and since it had plywood instead of fiberboard, we got most of the flooring uncovered today.

Here's the back loft bedroom. We may work on this some tomorrow since it has plywood down instead of fiberboard.

And finally the staircase and hallway.

We also had to take a time out and fly the plane a little more.

Tomorrow we will be back at it again. We may try and take off all of the doors upstairs and put them in the garage so we can scrub them down later, but mostly we will probably be working on uncovering floors...

This is what we have to look forward to. Piles and piles of tetanus!

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 :)

Demo Day 2!

Sunday was our official Day 2 of Demo work. Luke had a photo shoot in the evening, and with a late morning to say good-bye to Nana and Papaw before they left for West Virginia, we only had a few daylight hours to work.

Of course, work couldn't start until flying was finished. Luke had already been out Saturday after the girls' party with his brother, so Sunday was dad's turn. There is talk of building runways with lights and R/C race tracks...

We succeeded in pulling out the stove, since it was something quick to grab and wasn't bolted down like the range hood or dishwasher that still need pulled out.

We also got the drop ceiling frame out of the kitchen. Tearing things apart made us realize that the kitchen used to be two separate rooms, and the library was also split into two rooms before.

This is the guest bedroom floor. Originally we were going to have our contractor replace this flooring, along with the flooring in the living room and library. We've ripped a tiny section out of the living room and found hardwood, and this is the section we ripped in the guest bedroom. The fiber board has been nailed down practically every inch, so ripping this out of at least 3 rooms (it may be upstairs under the carpet too) is a slow going process! As long as they aren't totally shot, we plan on refinishing them!

 Here's part of some treasure we found next to the chimney that runs up the kitchen wall. Someone must have been doing some research on Native Americans down around Bolivar. Pretty interesting, but it would have been cooler had it been something to do with the house.

These are the cabinets by the eat in area in the kitchen. You can see the gap between the cabinets and chimney where the papers were shoved. Our idea for this is to actually knock out a good section of the wall and make it a pass through to the living room. We plan on painting the kitchen cabinets since we don't have the budget to replace them right now, but these upper cabinets are seriously bowed, and more than likely we will break them taking them out.

The electrician and furnace guy are set to come out this week to do their thing. We've got to get propane service set up ASAP. Our general contractor probably won't begin until next week, after heat and electricity have been established, which means we have this week to tear out as much as we can. The more we tear out, the more money we will save, since the contractor won't have to do that work. Our big problem is that Luke works 9-5 everyday, and it's pretty difficult to work up there in the dark. We also need to get a U-Haul fairly soon and get everything out of storage and into the small garage, that way we can eliminate our storage bill.

We have no idea how far we will get this week. Everyone works, vacation is a myth for Luke, he still has editing to get done, and we have the girls. I may end up leaving the girls with Luke while he works and I just go up by myself and start chipping away at the fiber board. It all needs done!