Amazing.

It doesn't get much more amazing than these before/after photos of our floors. But first, I'll extend the suspense by writing a bit about them.

The floors in our house are just planks of old growth pine. There's no subfloor. And while old growth pine is much harder than new pine, it's still a soft-ish wood.

Additionally, all of the floors had been covered with tile, linoleum, carpet, and more. They had been through water damage and leaks. They had a gazillion nails and staples pounded into them (remember this from 18 months ago?).

Our expectations were pretty low. We knew there would be irregularities in the wood. We thought parts might turn out OK. But wow. Just wow. We hired a terrific contractor, who is EPA certified for all of that nasty old dust (maybe there was lead, maybe there was asbestos). Three days later, it was like magic.

So here are the pics. Amazing.

Stairs before:

 

Stairs after:

 

Hallway before:

 

Hallway after:

 

Front room before:

 

Front room after:

Master bedroom before:

Master bedroom after (with bonus Mike!):

Next up: lighting and trim!

Second floor drywall is done!

Done done done!

Check out the finished stairwell:

I like the math magic shown in the last picture. You can tell Mike has a minor in mathematics, right?

So we close out 2011 with all walls up, and with mudding and sanding next on the list. It's a pretty good feeling. This year, we've rebraced the attic stairs, insulated all second floor walls, hung ceilings and walls, added a new garage door and opener, replaced our fence, grown and harvested a lovely little garden, stripped paint, cleaned plaster off of brick, and done our best to maintain social and professional lives.

The pictures below are a good indicator of our progress.

Drywall pile when it was delivered:

Drywall pile today:

See ya, 2011 - bring on the mudding and sanding in 2012!

Jacked up

Our house is crooked. I think that's pretty normal for a structure built 120 years ago. But since we are taking out the walls, we have the opportunity to try to straighten things out a little.

Remember what the attic stairs looked like back when we had walls? No? OK, here. See how the angles aren't really 90 degrees in that doorway? That's because the attic stairs are sagging over the front hallway. They're so crooked that the attic door does not close.

So we got out the floor jacks.

This one holds the first floor hallway up and braces the whole contraption from the ground (basement) up.

Then this one sits on top of that. This is the jack that does the lifting.

The next image shows exactly what we are lifting - the attic stairs.

And this last one shows how crooked they were on Day 1, when we set up the jacks.

The above pic also shows some of the dozens of rolls of insulation we've added to the house's exterior walls. It's my hope that we can turn the furnace up past "frigid" to "tepid" once we have the house insulated.

So every couple of days, we've added an inch or so to the first floor's jack. We're now to the point where we can close the attic door - it won't latch, but I don't think it ever will. But there's a definite improvement.

Next up? Bracing the stairs so that they stay in their new upright position.

Dear Crafton residents interested in our brick pile...

I know it's been tempting. It's been sitting right THERE for 14 months.



But the brick pile is mine. All MINE. And you can't have it. See, we built a pretty darn nice set of stairs built from it.



Next comes the actual walkway to the house. So hands off my brick pile!

The great flood of oh-ten

Last night, I got home from work and said to Mike, "I think I'll finally update our blog tonight after dinner." We've started moving ahead on the HVAC, and we've rebuilt our front walkway's stairs. There's lots of progress to show.

I started dinner (burritos with my new favorite veggie - fresh jalapenos) and Mike sat down with our laptop at the kitchen table. In between updating his Facebook page and laughing at Awkward Family Photos, he checked the weather.

"Tornado warning!" he exclaimed.
"Watch?" I asked.
"No, warning," he replied.

(End fiction-style dialogue.)

Basically the storm from hell was headed right for us. So I turned off the stove and we got ready to head for the basement. Ten minutes before it reached us, the National Weather Service let the tornado warning expire, but we were still in for it.

Round 1 of the storm hit hard. Sheets of rain, some hail, constant lightning - it was really something. When it settled down, so I started dinner again. As the taco meat cooked, I decided to check the basement. Sometimes in heavy rains, water seeps up from between the cracks in the cement floor.

Mike must have been unhappy to hear me shouting from the basement: "Oh sh--! We have a huge problem!"

Oh yes. A river runs through it.

The parts of the foundation that are outside of the basement were pouring water into the space behind this door. If you click to zoom in, you can see the water flow - this shot was taken after the main flood:

Interestingly, the water wasn't coming from the doors themselves. It was actually coming through the foundation. You can kind of see the situation in this image:


That also meant that the water was coming from under that door and a river was running through the basement to the drain in the floor. Just then, round 2 of the storm hit.

KDKA, our local news station, says we got 2" of rain in an hour. I believe it.

I guess the pictures don't do it justice, but during round 2, it sounded like someone was filling a bathtub behind the door. When we finally did open the door, it looked like a garden hose was being sprayed through three places in the stone wall.

We set up a channel system with towels and 2x4s to direct the water to the drain and hoped that the drain would keep draining. If it had stopped, we would have lost everything in the basement. The water flow was unbelievable.

Luckily, in the end, this is all we lost (and most of it was due to go to the Salvation Army anyway):


We did much better than the people half a mile west, who had 4-6 feet of water in their basements. We're very lucky.

New project with high priority: sealing the foundation by those doors and rearranging our stuff to be on shelves above the basement flood plain.

Photographic proof of dumpster week

I normally loathe putting pictures of myself on the web, but y'all just need to see this. THIS is how dirty it was doing demo work in our house:



We actually had friends drive by, and when I walked out onto the front porch to wave, they didn't recognize me. The insides of our walls are so dirty. I just don't get it. Did the original owners heat the house with coal and not vent the fireplace at all? Ugh.

So let's go on a tour of the demolition area. This picture shows the former location of one of the two walls that separated our house into two apartments.



It used to be the wall that held the door shown on the left of this picture:



(How 'bout that weatherproofing, eh?)

Now that hallway looks like this:



Our stairwell looks like this:



When we were done with the walls, and the crappy tile that covered the original wood floors in the front bedroom and downstairs hallway, there was still room left in the dumpster. Well, we are not people who will send a dumpster away half empty. So Mike sledgehammered our cracked concrete front walkway.

Here's a nice view of his handiwork, and the caution tape we posted until we get a new brick walkway put in. To the right, you'll see the pile of bricks that will be the walkway. Front center, you'll see that we moved our awesome mailbox closer to the road so that our mailman escapes major injury (make sure you click on the picture for the full-size view):



(Digression about the brick pile: as of today, three different people who are total strangers to us have driven by and asked if we are planning to use the brick. I am embarrassed by this as, yes, the brick pile has been out front for a year. But we were busy! We got married! And we work full time jobs! So for all of you locals...yes, we plan to use the brick pile. Soon. Thanks for asking.)

We hadn't had enough fun yet, so we then pulled down the shrub monster. My dad came over with his chainsaw, we cut them down, and then we used Bessie to pull out the roots. Mike was in his glory - using Bessie to rip things out of the ground.



Finally, last Monday, we sent the dumpster away. This pic was taken before we loaded the shrub monster's remains on top.



Best thing about the shrub monster's demise? I get to put my garden in its place:

Demolition weekend

I'll start this post by apologizing for the lack of pictures. I'm too tired to pick up the camera to plug it into the computer.

We spent Friday night, all day Saturday, and all day Sunday doing demolition work and filling our 20 cubic yard dumpster.

As of now (Sunday night), we have removed all walls, ceilings, carpet, and wood trim from the second floor hallway. We have also removed all walls and all of the trim (except baseboards) from the 1st to 2nd floor stairwell. Mike also used a variety of implements of destruction to remove our front walkway, which was made of crumbling concrete.

Dumpster status: 65% full.

When we bought the house, we had a bunch of people say, "You never know what you'll find in those walls." Imagine how excited I was when I found a large roll of yellowed paper in the wall on the first floor. It looked like it could have been a treasure map or the original plans to the house. As I excitedly chipped away at the plaster and lath, gently so that I wouldn't damage the paper, I had dreams of gold or floor plans running though my head. I pulled off my work gloves, brought it out onto the front porch, gingerly unrolled it, and then Mike said, "It's a window blind." Yep. At some point, someone either purposely or accidentally sealed a window blind in the wall. No treasure. No floor plans. Just a really, really old blind.

So that I don't continue to ramble in my fatigued state, I'll wrap this post up with a list.

Good things from this weekend:
- Discovered original wood floors in good condition on second floor
- Ripped out loads of old nasty dusty plaster and lath
- Ate pizza and Chinese food all weekend - no cooking!

Bad things from this weekend:
- Found the scariest wiring setup yet in the ceiling
- No treasure map, bag of gold, box of money, or floor plans in walls
- Tired and sore

Things left to do:
- Remove remaining trim and carpet
- Destroy the shrub monster
- Carry more crap to the dumpster
- Go to sleep at 9:00 p.m. on a Sunday.

Goodnight, all.