WOW! It's been a long, long time! I'm sorry, I've been beyond G O N E...
Well, let's see...everything's been running, just not smoothly. Since my last update, way back when, I've been doing the usual, NOT!
After my brother left, Drew and I started the remodel of our upstairs bathroom. Just a quickie, nothing major. YEAH, RIGHT!
We removed all the wallboard, linoleum and misc debris, only to realize that it was going to be A LOT MORE COMPLICATED than we had originally planned.
We gutted the entire bathroom; ceilings, flooring/sub-flooring, window, walls, sink, toilet, and bathtub of which I might add weighed over 500 lbs! The danged thing is cast iron with porcelein overlay, H E A V Y! And, not to mention, still located in the spare room upstairs. And of course, Drew moved all the water lines around to accommodate the new layout! He also had to lay out new drainage for the shower which was set in the old closet space.
We, and I'm using that term loosely, ended up removing a small closet in the master bedroom and taking it in as part of the bathroom. The master bedroom had a "dressing room and closet area" located on the wall with the bathtub. Since we wanted to get rid of the bathtub and put in a walk-in shower, we decided to take in this small closet area for that purpose. Besides, the closet had a 4 inch cast iron vent pipe located on the right side, which would remain.
The fun part, taking 8+ weeks. Yes, you read that correctly. 8+ weeks it took to remove all the walls! Now the bathroom started out as a 5' x 7' space, but the walls were over a foot thick! Not to mention that the bathtub/shower combo had been leaking for a long time, therefore the inner wall (between the bathroom and small closet area) was completely rotten.
This house was built in the late 30's early 40's, no less, by a Hydraulic Engineer and family. So, the walls consisted of 2x4 studs; 1x6 vertical runners; 1x6 tong & groove horizontal wallboard; 1/4" sheetrock; and two (2) layers of shower/wallboard.
Right in the beginning of it all, Drew gets a promotion at work and starts working six (6) days a week, 12 hours a day! He managed to demo the floor and ceiling and I took over from there, which explains why it took 8+ weeks! LOL!!
After a while, my days just consisted of going to work, getting off work, picking up T-man (and sometimes dinner as well) and going home to work on the demo. Filling the trailer parked at my front door with wood, moving trailer to the fire pit, unloading wood onto fire pit, setting fire, moving trailer back to front door. Did this about 5 times before I completed the demo!
Luckily, as soon as I finished the demo work, Drew was back to a regular shift and we (again, using that term loosely because this time he did most of the work) started to re-build the bathroom.
Needless to say, I am very proud of the work Drew did. It looks G R E A T!
Since this house was built so long ago, we are having to insulate as we renovate and replace weighted windows with energy-efficient windows!
But the biggest surprise we got in all of this, was finding studs which had fire damage! We never knew that the house had fire damage, LOL!! And of course, the house was already on the land and the land (100+ acres) was what we wanted when we bought it!
This weekend, Drew will finish the last of the molding. I get to finish the construction of the built-in medicine cabinet! The last thing, building the linen closet. Since I have been unable to find the type I want, I have decided to build it, myself!
Next up, renovations on the exterior back wall (both floors), replacing the remaining windows with energy-efficient windows, replacing the heating/cooling systems (both floors), renovating the downstairs bathroom, and renovating the kitchen/sunroom.
