sore.shoulders

hello hello all! :]

so a little update action is in order i think. 

house.

the biggie obviously is the house. thats really all our excitement these days. 

thursday - thursday after work and still bubbling with the excitement of the new house i dropped karen off at class and went straight to the house to check things out. excuse me, OUR house. hehe! well when i got there, to my surprise i found a notice in the window from the city. this wasnt the first time this had happened, you may remember the condemnation orders we found once that the sellers neglected to tell us about or do anything about, so here we go again. this time its a barricade order. great. since the door still hadnt been repaired [after we told the seller a number of times] the city had come by and found it open to trespassers and given that its also considered a safety hazard in its present condition by the city [and no one wants to get sued...], the city issued orders that the house either be secured from trespassers or else theyd barricade it themselves, the seller had 3 days to comply. um... yeah those orders had been issued long ago, i was shocked they hadnt already barricaded it. so i immediately called the numbers to find out who i needed to talk to and what i needed to do, etc. got no one. the guy im supposed to talk to is only in the office from 8-10, m-f and the rest of the time hes out in the field doing these inspections and such. fantastic. guess i'll try again tomorrow...

friday - so friday i went to the house to meet with a new window guy. [for those of you that remember, a few months ago we got initial estimates on a lot of the work we're going to have to do, i.e. the brick wall, the roof, & windows being the 3 biggest jobs] so i was supposed to meet him at 4, and i got there at roughly 3:50. i had tried calling the city again in the morning to no avail and had left a message for the guy i was supposed to talk to. i hadnt heard back, so i tried calling again while i waited for the window guy. no luck, they were gone, it was basically an answering service i got hold of. even better... what now? no clue... 

well the house was still open, luckily, so the window guy arrived at 4pm, right on time, and damn he was a fast talker. it seems a lot of these contractor, subcontractor types are. or maybe its because im in yankee country and im used to texans talking nice and slow, lol, i dont know. but i had to listen pretty intently to keep up, lol! so we walk through the house, he takes a look at all the windows, we discuss my options, and then he gets busy measuring every window in the house. 

now for those of you that remember from last time we got an estimate from homedepot and it was a pretty decent one we thought. $225 per window installed, an extra charge for those on the second floor and again for the finished attic. the windows were very nice, but on all of our huge windows on the first level we were going to have to do some shimming [for lack of a better term] to get the window openings down to their maximum size. but overall we were pretty happy with the estimate they gave us. well this guy, man, what a deal. no only did all of our windows [save the two floor to ceilings in the front room that are just ridiculously large] fit within their maximum opening size [so no shimming!], the windows were even better [welded corners this time around], there was no extra charge for any windows on any upper levels, and they also had an option for a trim treatment in which they encase the window trim all the way around in a vinyl casing to protect it from the elements and save us the pain of having to paint trim every couple of years. we havent decided for sure on that, it adds 50 bucks per window, but we're definitely considering it. oh and the windows are pretty much the same price installed as home depots base price - these are $235 each with the lowE + argon insulated glass. 

so we're really happy with this guys quote. he's willing to work with us in phases if we need to and overall he was just really friendly and offered us a great deal. so we're most likely going to go with them. [thanks mom-in-law for the recommendation!] and on top of that the guy gave me the name and number of a mason friend of his who he says does great work, very dependable guy, whos currently looking for work. sweetness, another mason! so far we've only gotten one quote on that damn wall, and its a little high we think, so im definitely looking for more options. [ill be calling him later this afternoon]

saturday - saturday morning we decided to get up and go to the tile place near our apartment to see what options we were going to have to work with and start formulating some plans for the work we want to do in the bathrooms and such. after that we were headed over to the house to measure doors to see about possible replacing or at the very least new door hardware in order to secure the house and hopefully avoid the barricading. 

well the tiling place was really cool. there were so many more options than we'd expected! we'd looked at homedepot briefly when we were there for the tiling seminar and their selection was fairly limited, to say the least. but this place was like a tile paradise! they had everything you could imagine, and a lot of stuff you couldnt. we found a lot of what we were looking for there and a lot we werent looking for, lol! overall it was a very successful trip and we're definitely brainstorming about our options now. 

after the tile place we went straight to the house, although we'd spent more time than originally anticipated at the tile place, it was now 11am. yeah, you guessed it, when we got to the house we found that the city had already been there and barricaded - boarded up a window, the back door, and put a pad-lock on the front door. we were stuck. locked out. crap. 

well... i called the city, to no avail, no one works on saturday in the offices that could help me. so we were screwed till monday morning. at which point we'd have to go to the building & inspections office to see about getting a key to our house. well, we were planning to go to homedepot anyway, so instead of doing door stuff we decided to get stuff to do yard work - push brooms, rakes, yard bags, etc. 

after a few hours and trips to not only homedepot but also walmart and mejier, we finally had most of what we needed, including a haircut for chris [oh man did she ever butcher my hair... ugh...i miss you christina!!!] and a few groceries we needed as well. however, it was now about 3 oclock and we hadnt eaten since 8am, so we decided to head home for lunch. after lunch, haha, we didnt want to do anything, we were full and sleepy after all the running around, so we stayed in and watched a couple of netflix, leaving the rough stuff for tomorrow [sunday].

sunday -  so sunday morning we did our usual. a little breakfast, and then off to church for a couple of hours. after church we headed home to do a little research on some remodeling equipment we're thinking about getting [more on that at a later time] and then had lunch before heading over to the house. we got there at about 1:30pm and unloaded the truck of our newly acquired supplies, ready to do some house work!

so we started by raking in the back and then sweeping some, and uncovered that theres actually a concrete slab in the back where the back door is stretching out under the entire stair case. who knew?! it was covered in leaves and a thick layer of dirt every time we were there, so we thought it was just dirt, lol! [not to mention there were a few trees growing through some cracks in the slab, leading to our deception] next we decided to do some maintenance that our neighbors could enjoy and moved to the front and side of the house. we did more raking on the side initially and then the front yard and sidewalk in front of the house, and then came back with a push broom and finally a regular broom for detailing and got all the dirt and dust off the porch, and walks, and it looked sooo different. i thought we could always see the concrete on the side of the house but we pulled 2 trash bags full of dirt and leaves and trash out of the side and we could actually see the sidewalk for the first time! we even uncovered a drain that we never knew was there, lol! so after a few hours of raking & sweeping & bagging we had about 7 bags of crap wed picked up and the house looked great in the front. 

in the process we'd actually met a couple of our neighbors whod been out walking their dogs and noticed us working and decided to say hello. the neighbor directly across the street from us [in one of the newly built houses] was so friendly and a wealth of knowledge - she gave us at least a half a dozen names of people to get in contact with for trash, recycling, a neighborhood e-newsletter, and other various neighborhood related things. shes really nice, and seems excited to have some new neighbors. we probably talked to her for at least a half an hour and she made a few trips inside her house to get us numbers and email addresses, haha! very cool. shes very soft spoken and calm and for some reason her mannerism's and the soft spoken-ness really reminded me of jay, haha! [miss yah roomie!]

so after what had to have been a good 4 hours of the raking and sweeping, we decided to tackle the stairs in the back. they were rotting, because i assume they were never weather treated, and the whole thing was just built very shotty to begin with. we wanted to keep the top deck if possible because theres a door onto it from the house and we'd like to modify it into a nice little balcony off that door in the back. so we climbed up very, very carefully and swept off the decks and stairs to get a good look at what was underneath. after a lot of discussion we decided that the decks were in pretty decent shape, but that all the stairs were pretty rotted and would all need to be rebuilt if we decided we wanted them, but would need to come down for sure. so we started the fun part of remodeling - demolition. 

haha, and it was fun for the most part. there were a million nails in this thing [whoever built it's justification for such a terrible structural design i assume] so it was a serious pain in the ass at first. however, at some point i just decided to hell with pulling nails and started ripping up the pieces with my hands. [thank god for work gloves, im far too impatient when it comes to destruction, lol] so after so many jerks here and there with my massive muscles, *wink wink* i tore the top stairs out without too much trouble. so we chucked those down to the ground and surveyed our progress. 

we were feeling pretty good and started in on the railings on the second deck. those came off alright, with some persuasion, and we decided the 2x4's under them were actually in decent shape. on to the bottom stairs. so i took out a few nails at the top of the bottom stairs while karen made her way to the ground [these stairs were built as one "solid" element on the ground and then just hoisted into place and toe-nailed into position with a handful of nails to secure them... lord...] so then i got down on the ground and we attempted at first to de-nail a few pieces that were connected to the posts, but after i got impatient with that, i just started doing it my way. i grabbed the whole stair element and started jerking on it until pretty quickly i yanked the entire left half completely off and we lowered it to the ground for dismantling. then i jerked off the second half and we did the same. however, in the process we discovered that this thing was built even shotty-er than we had originally concluded. 

the posts went from the ground all the way up to the top, but at the ground level were encased in what appeared to be a concrete footing. having poured a number of concrete footings with dad in my life time, i just assumed that the person that did these had dug out a whole 1-2ft deep and had filled with concrete in roughly a ft diameter up to where we could see it capped off, and that they were pretty securely in the ground - probably entombed in a few hundred pounds of concrete. ha. nope. during my *ahem* careful dismantling *ahem* of the stair elements, we discovered that the posts were simply resting on top of these little concrete mounds and just appeared to be encased in them, and every time id jerk, theyd pop up and then back down. good lord... who built this thing??? so now we've decided that the whole thing is going to have to come down and be rebuilt if we want a balcony - which we do. luckily some of the wood is salvageable for re-use [mainly the 4x4 posts and some of the structural 2x4 members that were most likely treated lumber to begin with.]

so after all that we were beat. especially me after my impatient ripping destruction, lol. that thing must have weighed a few hundred pounds, but with my adrenaline going i barely noticed, haha! [man i love adrenaline] so we did a little clean-up in the back and decided to call it a night. we'd been there about 5 and a half hours, and things we're looking really good. 

the pictures probably dont do all the work justice, but trust me, the transformation was pretty unbelievable for just one days work. and now hopefully you understand the title of this post, lol! right now my back and shoulders are pretty sore after all that sweeping and deconstruction. but it was a lot of fun, and we're pretty fired up to get some more work done. 

well kiddos, thats all ive got for now. tip your waiters, and drive safely. you dont have to go home, but you cant stay here! ;]

post.script: currently listening to apocalyptica's new album, its pretty amazing!