Tilting Skyward

We finally have the roof replacement underway. Mac has been up there stripping, putting down new plywood and shingles, and repairing the crumbling chimney.

  Here he is working on the chimney flashing a week or so ago. Over in the lower left corner of the picture above you can see the new skylight he just installed in our master bedroom. Below is the view from inside.

 

It is surprising how much brighter the room is all day now. I see that willow across the street gilded in morning sunlight when I rise. On clear nights I can see the stars and sometimes the moon shines in and floods the room with a magical glow.  Mac is currently installing another skylight in the little guest room.  The happy result is that our upstairs is now a bright haven of golden light each morning.

 

The only down side is that now when it rains,we can hear each drop.  Before the skylights, the upstairs was incredibly quiet, due to all our insulating.  During hurricane Irene a few months ago we were looking out the second floor windows, watching the driving sheets of rain and the trees outside bend and twist wildly in the wind and we were amazed that we could not hear a sound.  Now when it rains hard at night, the sound wakes me up and keeps me awake (not Mac, though- he could sleep through a stampede).

There are handles to be installed that will crank them open to let air in, and special blinds to shut out the hot sun in the summertime but those can wait until spring.  Right now we are focused on finishing the roof, getting a floor installed in the attic so we can have storage space, and getting the living room to a usable state.  One day at a time!

A Mini Tour

I have not had much free time to write lately because trying to put the house together while working full time keeps me pretty busy. We still have a lot of boxes around and no idea where to put the contents.  My daughter, when visiting recently, asked how it was possible to move from an apartment into a house and actually have less room. Not sure, but apparently we did it!   Actually it's because we had a lot of storage at our former dwelling place - a full attic, two story garage and two story barn out back.   Here at the new place we have no out-buildings at all, an attic with no floor (just insulation above the ceiling) and there were only two closets in the whole house, one downstairs and one upstairs. So, the first thing Mac did was build a closet in the master and one in my son's room.

As I write this, he is outside constructing a small shed to keep the recycling bins and the lawnmower in to keep them out of the rain. It hasn't solved the whole problem but we've made a start.  Here is what the upstairs looks like right now.  Scroll down a few posts to see the pictures from a couple of months ago for comparison.




Here is what the hallway Mac built looks like now. He still has to put the window trim and the radiator cover on.

Here's the new half bath.

This is the little bedroom where my daughter will stay when she visits. We were calling it the office until we realized there won't be room for a desk if we keep the bed in it, and of course we want her to have someplace to sleep when she comes to stay over. And there is a small stand of shelving and a T.V. as well.
We had to take space from the two smaller bedrooms to carve out the half bath and the hallway.

This is the master bedroom.  The skylight has not gone in yet - that has to wait until Mac does the roof.  But it will be right over the bed.  Here too we still have to do all the window trim.

Although most of the work we have done has been upstairs, as you can see it is still a work in progress. 
The downstairs is another matter entirely.  We really have not done anything to it.  Because the frame of the house needed such extensive repairs, we didn't have nearly enough money to do what we needed to.  There is still much that needs to be done and because of time and financial constraints, it will take years.  But at least it is livable.
Here are some shots of the kitchen.

...And our little deck out back.

Mac is planning to demo it, maybe next year and build a patio instead.   It was not done correctly in the first place and because of that, it's causing problems with the sill of the house, but for now it's nice to have a place to sit out there.



 I would show you the parlor and living room, but they are not too photogenic right now.  We have most of our furniture crammed into the parlor, because Mac has all his tools and table saws and building supplies in the living room.   He needs a space to work that's out of the weather and as previously mentioned, we have no garage or barn yet.   He intends to build one as soon as our budget allows, which may be a long time away.  We also have an in-ground pool, but it has not been operational for many years and is over grown with grapevine and bittersweet.  There are cattails and reeds growing in the bottom of it and it is currently serving as a frog nursery.  Mac says he hopes to get it back in shape and running by 2014.  I'll post some photos of it soon for the curious.

All things considered, I feel very blessed.  I now have everything I ever wanted in life.  How many people get that?

Constructing Stuff

I spent today pulling up old carpet and preparing the upstairs of the house for the new Stainmaster.  My sister, her husband and my brother came by to help.  The carpet came right up, but the old padding was stapled into place and so we had the pleasure of prying out all the old staples.  It was actually a breeze, though, because we had so much help with the task.  Thank you, guys!

Here you can see the new half-bath with the new piping in place. 

Tomorrow the new fixtures should be installed.

Once the plumbing phase is done, the electric will be next.  Mac is still occupied with the fire block.  This involves installing heavy blocks of wood in all the spaces around the outer walls.

 If there were to be a fire this would slow the progress of the flames. 

Without it, a balloon frame wood house such as this would "go up like a tinder box", as they say.

What you see above is just a small example of what has been taking us so long to get the house ready. 

All the new light colored wood you see here is a brand new supporting skeleton for this old house.

Below you can see the framed out skylight in the master bedroom (my favorite thing in the whole upstairs!!! :)

It's "crunch-time" now and we are full steam ahead for April first!  Pray that we can be ready.

Let The Fun Begin!

It is twelve days since we signed the papers and took possession of the little house on the quiet street.  Immediately, the demolition began.  The entire house(every room) had been paneled in inexpensive (and not very attractive) laminated wood paneling.  It had been improperly installed, sometime back in the dark ages of the seventies (we guess).  As a result of the inept workmanship and poor materials used, it had begun to wave and buckle away from the studs and was relatively easy to tear off the walls.  What we found underneath was ancient, splintery lath and horsehair plaster.  I am really struck by the fact that each of these little strips of wood had to be cut by hand and then installed one at a time, with at least three nails hammered into each one.  There must be thousands of them.  Can you imagine the time that tedious labor consumed? 

My astonishment was increased when I had a look at some of the nails and saw that they too were wrought by hand, judging by their inconsistent size and rough, anvil-hammered appearance.  I think we really take for granted the ease with which we can do things in this day and age.  When this house was built in 1900, there was no Home Depot to run to, just down the street.  When you needed some more materials, you had to go out and cut down a tree or fire up the blacksmith forge in the barn.  Thank goodness for modern conveniences, that's all I can say!

The pile of wood you see above is just a small number of the pieces of lath we tore out.  Behind that, up against the outer shell of the house we found clumps of something Mac calls "rock wool".  Its consists of little balls of cottony stuff that apparently passed for insulation, somewhere back in the mists of time. Now it is filthy and hangs out of every crevice.  I desperately hope it doesn't have anything like asbestos in it.  Mac doesn't think it does.  We are wearing masks and safety glasses as a precaution, for whatever protection they might provide. 

What it does have in it are tunnels throughout, ending in little round openings every few feet just about the circumference of an average mouse.  Occasionally, a small acorn falls out with the clumps of wool.  It seems there were some unseen residents nesting behind the walls in the grubby fluff.  We have to remove all this old stuff so that Mac can properly insulate the roof and walls, keeping in the precious heat, thereby reducing our future fuel bills.  Once that is done, he will put up new drywall and a plasterer will come in.

With some help from my sister and her husband, Mac and I now have the entire upstairs gutted down to the outer walls.  It's a little frightening to think that we will have to move in exactly eight weeks from now.

What you see in the shot above is our master bedroom.  The more Mac tears out, the more I struggle to stem my rising panic... kidding! (sort of.)   He will start framing out a half bath and small hallway in this area this coming week.  He still has to attend to his day job if we are to be able to pay the bills, so most of the work will have to be done at night and on the weekends.   Luckily, I had today off from work in honor of Martin Luther King Jr.(thanks for the dream, Dr. King!)   I have spent most of the three day weekend following behind Mac with the shop vac, sucking up the never-ending clumps of rock wool, splinters, old nails and mouse droppings, so that he can have a relatively clean area to work in.

We were surprised to find that there had been a fire in the roof at one time.  Several of the planks and rafters were badly scorched.  It is something of a puzzle, because there are no wires anywhere near the blackened wood, and the chimney is not close to that area either.  We have not yet been able to figure out what might have happened.

Yesterday, Mac went down into the basement and started to jack the house up so he could shore up the floor joists.  The supporting columns down there were actually only temporary columns that had been permanently secured to the floor and left there, some time ago.  These had become all rotted and rusted - not a good situation at all.  He knew that they were unstable and quite unsafe, but he was still surprised when one of the old supports let go with a loud boom as he was working down there.   I felt the house shift, but Mac had already secured everything with new temporary supports before he started working, so everything was okay.  I wondered aloud what might have happened if he hadn't.  "Well, the living room would have collapsed into the basement, right on top of the furnace."  he answered, matter-of-factly.  I'm so glad he knows exactly what he is doing, otherwise I would be freaking out right about now.

I will try to document the ongoing work at regular intervals so you can follow our progress. 
After this project, if I never lay eyes on "rock wool" again, it will be too soon!