The new beam is now installed and the floor above is leveled out.  Very relieved that the ceiling won't fall down on our heads now.

Here's a picture of the living room from the other corner - we widened the doorway into the hallway.  It will look much better than the small doorway that was previously there.

David fantasizing about putting a nerf ball hoop in the living room and playing basketball.

Later in the day - David had the matching faux beam in place with electricity running through it to power the main light in the room.

Here is a before picture of the "Walkthrough Room." 

Here is the same room after drywall and a coat of mud.

The light switch that Grandpa G. helped David figure out.  He could not figure out why power was not getting to the light.  The switch was bad.  So here is the new one installed.  The light works now.

Jessica has been working very hard to get all the carpet tack strips and the staples out of the wood flooring.  One of the major tasks was getting them all removed from the stairway going upstairs.  Here is the staple free stairway.  

Hopefully the living room will have drywall on the ceiling and walls by the end of the week. 

Our dumpster came on Monday - so we've been working hard on getting everything out of the house, especially the carpet!  Here's some new pictures of what the house looks like with fewer walls and no carpet.

This is one of the downstairs bedrooms - luckily we don't need to do too much work in this room.

This is the other downstairs bedroom, it's been the room David's already spent many hours in.  In the last blog, it was green - he has torn out all of the plaster walls and will now have to hang dry wall.

This is the dining room - floors look pretty good throughout the house.  Few places will need patching but overall good.  I haven't pulled up the staples and tack strips in this room yet :(

Here's the living room - staples and tack strips are finished in here.  Thank you to our friend Beth for coming on Monday to help with the removing of the red carpet!!

Another view of the living room.  This wall will eventually have some form of built in shelves on it.  The lighting is a little weird so it kind of looks like a boring garage in this picture. But I promise the floors look quite nice, there is some white paint on all of the floors that needs to be sanded off.

We also got a fridge today - bought it from a friend.  However I refuse to plug it in and use it right now since the outside world is a big fridge/freezer. 

Big demolition day.  

David had already torn out a lot in the bedroom downstairs earlier this week so when I arrived the downstairs bedroom (the first pictures from the post on 1/10/12) now looks like this...

 

 Next to be completely destroyed - the living room.   There was the drop ceiling, as well as thin pieces of triangular shaped boards holding the old studs to the new ones - we're presuming that was in place of putting a much needed beam in the room?  David's obvious solution on how to get the thin triangles down - annihilate the thin boards  with a sledge hammer.  I stood hiding behind the doorway.

The wall with the fireplace had paneling - that needed to come down.  Mantle sorta fell off with it.  Oh well, we were going to replace that...at some point.  

You can see in this picture that the ceiling will now be about 1 1/2 feet taller with the drop ceiling out.

Finally I found productive work in another room and took down more popcorn.  Happy to say all ceilings are now popcorn free.  Came back in the living room and started taking off baseboards - David says "I wonder what's behind here..." I turn around as he's hammering through the wall.  Who gets to wonder what's behind a random part of their wall and punch a hole in it? (someone that knows he can patch it!)

Still not entirely sure what his plans with the hole initially were - but after a few minutes of deep thought - we decided the wall and closet should come out and make the doorway bigger. 

Shortly after all of this, we were both feeling a little trapped by the massive piles of drywall and boards around us.  Time to call it a day and return on Monday when the dumpster arrives. 

I did remember to take a picture of the outside of the house.  And check our mail - we had our first piece of real mail, a package from David's aunt and uncle - Jim and Annie.  THANK YOU!  I was SOOO excited to get a fun package from you.

Day two on new house

January 10, 2012

Second big work day on new house.  I joined David this evening for some assistance...and demolition!

Yesterday and today he worked on plumbing for the upstairs bathroom - rerouting it through the hallway instead of a bedroom.

This is a picture of the bedroom, it had a drop ceiling but now that the plumbing is better he can make the ceiling over a foot taller.

 

 This is the hallway he routed the plumbing through - it also had drop ceiling so we'll be able to make it taller as well.  Minor issue today - he left a rag in the middle of this pipe...still unsure how we'll get that out.

 

 Then we decided to tackle some of the cottage cheese or popcorn on the ceilings.  First started with an upstairs bedroom.  David had the brilliant idea of spraying the ceiling with water using his paint sprayer, worked great and took us only about 20 minutes to finish this room.

 Things were going great but the sprayer stopped working.  We moved to the living room.  Still undecided whether to jack up the current beam or tear out the current ceiling (also a drop ceiling) and put in new beam and raise up everything. 

David inspecting the ceiling through a 'small' hole.   


After a little discussion and a period of staring at each other...we decided to rip into the ceiling.

 My demolition hole after about 10 minutes...
 

 

David's demolition after the same amount of time

 Our finished product

Ends up it's a good thing we tore out the ceiling.  The beam was not even real - it's a completely fake beam.  WHAT?  Who does that?  Definitely explains why the bedroom floor upstairs was sagging.