so anyway, i figured id fill you all in on our weekend.
saturday.
saturday we woke up and got a nice early start. we met the mason out at the house around 8:30 and they were already setting up and getting started, awesome. after making sure they had everything they needed and getting them underway we decided to leave them be for a while to do their thing while we planned the rest of our day.
we went and had a short breakfast and discussed the days to do list and figured out our plan of attack. the first thing on our agenda was a trip to the store to get some lightbulbs for the new light fixtures, a ladder, and few other odds and ends.
well everything didnt go exactly according to plan, lol. we went to walmart to get the ladder and lightbulbs right on schedule, but then when we were leaving walmart we decided to stop at the dollar store. theres all kinds of awesome finds in there for super cheap, and we always forget something, so we thought maybe we'd catch ourselves in time to not have to go back to the store in a few hours. at the dollar store we ended up finding all kinds of cleaning supplies for really cheap and a few other items that we needed - but we probably browsed the entire store in the process, lol.
after the dollar store we noticed the burlington coat factory right next door and i mentioned id always wondered what was in those things. it says clothes and home decor, etc on the sign, is it like a tj-max or something? well we decided to check it out, why not? haha! well we had fun there, all kinds of goodies! i ended up getting some new socks and some new work shoes [my poor old ones i think ive had since high school, not exactly the epitome of fashion these days! lol!], and theyre pretty snazzy id say. we also toured the home decor section and found some christmas stockings we liked for a bargain so we figured wed go ahead and get em =]
anyway, after way too much time shopping, lol, we decided we were done and wed better get back to the to do list. we dropped off some stuff at the apartment and then went to the used appliance store to see if we could finally get the rest of our appliances! [we still needed a dryer and karen wants a garbage disposal] well we ended up finding a commercial sized dryer that looks nearly new to me for a great deal, so check one off the list!
after picking up the new-to-us dryer we finally made it out to the house for our days labor - granted, it was a little after noon by now, we'd managed to waste a lot of time shopping, lol! when we got back we checked on the demo progress of our masons after unloading the dryer. they were really getting into it and everything looked great, so we went inside and started our work.
as i already mentioned, we bought new hanging light fixtures for a great deal at the salvation army a little while back, and that day we'd bought some new lightbulbs [energy saving, highly efficient, compact florescents of course!] so obviously those items were on the agenda for the day.
we spent a lot of the afternoon modifying these guys and at one point had to run to the hardware store to restock some modification tools ;] but didnt end up getting around to installing them on friday. as daylight wasn't limitless and they werent completely finished yet, we decided to finish them on sunday and move on to other things.
the next thing on our list was some demo. we are curious about whats actually behind the plaster in the exterior walls - is there exposed brick? wood lath? wallpaper? mold? something even more dreadful that we cant imagine? haha, so we decided to tear up a corner of the stair wall that was already in need of patching anyway to find out. well it appears there is in fact brick behind a layer of some kind of cement/plaster combination - which is in pretty bad shape and crumbles easily if you mess with it - but the brick looks great from what i can tell. good to know! moving on.
next we want to rip the carpet up off the stairs because its just hideous and totally out of place - so we started ripping, lol! turns out there are really nice wood stairs under the carpet and padding, however some idiot painted them an obnoxious red-orange color at some point... so we're going to have to figure out what we want to do with those. after uncovering one tread and rise we decided we knew what we were in for there, on to the next item.
so heres where the fun really starts. for those of you who havent seen the pictures of the house, you can do so by following the link on the left sidebar. but for those of you that have, you may remember that the stairs to the finished attic were enclosed in this really ugly surround that appeared to be a bead board of some kind with a door. also, in the attic there was a dividing wall that someone put up at some point [and very, very, poorly i might add...] that was just terribly ugly and we wanted to pull out. i like the idea of coming up into the attic in a nice open space with that skylight flooding the whole thing in light. so we decided to start demo on these little elements. =]
well this was a fun project to say the very least. at first we were trying to be really careful and we took the door off its hinges and tried to deconstruct the door frame, but soon found that in this little surround there were no nails or screws to be found... weird... we searched very carefully to find hardware we could remove and disassemble this thing piece by piece, but there was nothing in sight.
after climbing up to the attic and inspecting the railing/top of enclosure we were still having no luck and trying to pry anything off wasnt working either, this thing was pretty solid - should have been my first clue it wasnt just a bead board, lol! well after tinkering with it for a while i got impatient [anyone noticing a pattern here?] and sat on the ground in front of the railing, reared back, and kicked with full force, haha! oh-yeah, it buckled, hehehe! but it worked, and very easily. so i kept kicking and popped a nice piece of it off at which point we discovered this thing was quality even if it was ugly. 3/4" tongue & groove with some pretty odd square nails hidden in the joints [which is why i couldnt find them...] so we've pretty much decided this thing was original to the house or at least pretty old - definitely not the shotty construction of all the other additions that some owner had put in along the way. well it was definitely sturdy and after seeing my success karen sat down too and the two of us pretty quickly knocked the rest of this thing out and then slowly and carefully [heh] dismantled the parts and made a nice pile at the base of the stairs. after pulling some nails and cleaning up the area where the surround used to be, we were pretty satisfied and decided to move on to the wall.
at this point it was starting to get dark out and the masons were leaving so i went out to survey the days demolition work and see what was left to do.
obviously theyd made some awesome progress - both chimneys down and the holes temporarily patched and the entire section of the wall down too - theyd even begun some re-bricking!
so they left and we got started on the rest of our fun for the evening. we started carefully removing some screws and trying to disassemble the dividing wall's elements but i gave up with that fairly soon as well. the screws that were holding the drywall to the studs had been painted over pretty well and were impossible to find, so eventually i just started popping the drywall off and trying to do it as carefully as possible to salvage the drywall if we could. karen took my handy drill and came behind me unscrewing studs and after maybe half an hour to 45 minutes we had the thing pretty well down. it was awesome! we were so excited with the space even though there were still a few studs left up! additionally karen pulled up the carpet in a corner of the attic and we discovered that we had some really nice 3/4" t&g hardwood floors in the attic as well! score! theyre definitely in need of some tlc from the corner we looked at, but after a little refinishing wed have a seriously gorgeous hardwood floor up there! [which also leads us to believe that the other places weve seen a little wood under the carpeting is probably the same stuff!!! awesome!!!]
well by this time it was definitely dark, and around 6:30pm, so we decided to call it a day and go home to have some dinner and watch a little tv. after a pretty long day it was nice to relax in preparation for sunday's adventures, and we were really satisfied with all we'd accomplished!
well... i hate to leave you hangin, but lunch is over so we'll have to continue this saga next time! stay tuned, theres awesome weekend results yet to come!
[and if you havent already, go vote on yesterdays blog!]
...to be continued...
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