Dust, Dust, and More Dust. The Wall Comes Down.

Demolition is So fun! I started with removing the sheet rock from the wall to be removed. The previous renovation on this wall by owners in the past included removal of the plaster, but not the lath. And I found an old doorway buried in the wall. This was interesting to find! I also realized that there was some of the original "post and beam" structure that we may be able to incorporate into the redesign of the room. So the picture above shows the sheet rock off, and the lath off.

While I was working on this side, I let Grace and Morgan color on the other side with crayons RIGHT ON THE WALL. It's like a carnal SIN to write on a wall with crayons, so, since the wall was coming down anyway, I figured I'd let them have at it. Here are their master pieces...

Grace told me that it's a picture of her and I walking back from the store.
Those are buckets of paint for HER new room in the wagon.



Morgan loves to color flowers and she's so good at it! Her excitement
was indescribable! She kept saying, "I just can't believe we're coloring on the wall!"

 So, after the kids were in bed, I laid into this side of the wall, removing the sheet rock, and the lath giving the first glimpses of just how big the new space would be!

Jeez. What a mess! In the back ground you can see the new wall that I built before this demo. Now the next step is some major clean up, and then building a couple of false walls on either side of the wall to be removed. This will allow me to install a pair of LVL beams to carry the load of the floors above. Then the temporary walls can be removed, and the rooms will become, for the first time, ONE. We're excited! We do lots of talking about what we're "going to do someday", but THIS, IS HAPPENING!

I'll keep everyone posted soon!

Cheers,

4DAUTRZ

Fire and Ice, A Night Out!

Bryan Adams was on FIRE at the State Theater this past week! My bride and I had a really great night out in Ithaca! We ate at out at a posh little eatery called Blue Stone where we had a really nice meal, and then walked form there to the theater, just a few blocks away.

When we arrived at the theater, we noticed that the doors were wide open, and the ticket takers were all wearing winter coats, hats and gloves INside. It turns out that their boiler had decided to quit working at 8:30 that morning, and they informed us that there was no heat. They said they'd been running space heaters throughout the day, and assured us that with a full house, it would be warm enough.

It actually turned out to be just fine. They were serving free hot chocolate and coffee, and the temperature of the theater was perfect for being packed in like sardines.

I was totally impressed with the concert. His music was spot on. His voice sounded just like it does when you hear his songs on the radio, and the music, with acoustic guitar and piano was a really nice unplugged twist to classic music from our younger days. I'd highly recommend buying the album for his Bare Bones tour.

Check out his Bare Bones tour schedule HERE



All in all it was a great night out! My wife and I were a little tired the next day as it was on a school night, but it was well worth it! We had a great dinner, a night out, just the two of us, and we can now add this chilly night at the theater to our long list of stories that make up the story of "we".

Cheers,

4DAUTRZ

A busy couple of days all! I promise that this weekend I will blog again! I've got a blurry picture of Bryan Adams for you, and lots of pictures of where that wall USED to be so stay tuned :-)

Back to the 80's BABY!!

A little R&R tonight! My parents are coming over to watch the little ladies, and my bride and I are going to see Bryan Adams at The State Theater in Ithaca!  We bought the tickets the day they went on sale back in October I think it was.  Anywhoo, I'm having visions of holding up a lighter and swaying back and forth to "Summer of '69", but this is supposed to be an acoustic concert. I guess it's like an unplugged tour for him. I'm always a little apprehensive going into a concert because you already have a preconceived notion of what this artist is supposed to be, and then sometimes, the concert just isn't what you expect.

Either way, it's some quality time, "alone" with the love of my life. That's going to be the highlight of the evening. I really don't care if I hear Bryan's unplugged version of the alphabet song, as long as she's there by my side. We'll catch a dinner somewhere too. I don't care where. We'll probably just park near the venue, and then walk until something catches our eye down on The Commons.

I'm really excited! She and I don't get out enough, and the time has come!

I'll give everyone an update about how the concert went tomorrow!

Cheers,

4DAUTRZ

OK, So Change Of Plans...

My goal was to wage war on the wall to come down yesterday, and then I had a thought. If I make that amount of mess, the living room is going to be filthy. So, I decided that the best thing to do would be to erect the wall that would become the separation between the living room and new bedroom first, thereby sectioning off the living area from the construction area.

I got on the phone and called the local home store and asked if they could deliver the materials that I'd need to build and sheet rock the wall. They fit my delivery into the schedule JUST under the wire! The truck driver was super nice, and unloaded all of the 2x4's from the truck and handed them to me through the window of the room I was working on to save time, and then I gave him a hand bringing in the 4 sheets of 10' half inch sheet rock.

After the delivery truck left, I concentrated on locating where the new wall would be built, and cut the carpet where the new bottom plate for the wall would be placed, and removed the carpet in the rest of the room. There were also about 15 million staples in the floor that held the padding for the carpet, so I spent the rest of my night pulling staples, and cutting door mouldings and window mouldings, where the wall plates would be placed the next day. Here's what the room looked like at quittin' time last night.



Not too different. Carpet is gone, and my knees are killing me :)

This morning, I had a great feeling. One that I never get tired of. All of the prep work was done, and I just had to dig in and get building! So, I started by getting the bottom plate screwed to the existing hardwood floors. Then, I plumbed the two wall plates up, and screwed those to the walls, leaving them an inch and a half shy of the ceiling. Then, I located where the nailing was in the ceiling, and cut and placed the top plate on top of the wall plates, and screwed that in place, as shown below.

Progress!

Naturally, the next step was to start at one wall, (I chose the right) and lay out my marks for 16 inch centers, all the way across the bottom plate for where the studs would be located. So I did that, and then began putting in the studs, nailing the bottoms first, and then plumbing them up to the top plate, and nailing the tops. This is where the "crookedness" of the house was severely highlighted. The outside wall of our house tips in toward the house pretty seriously due to settling of the center of the house, and our 2 foot thick stone foundation not settling even a bit. It hasn't fallen down in the last 200 years, so I'm not worried. Here's what the wall looks like with all of the studs in place.

Morgan and the twins, Emma and Lily couldn't pass up the chance for a little photo "OP"

This next picture is just for laughs. The twins had just come down from their nap as I finished installing the studs and my wife told them that I had built a cage in the living room. So naturally, I did my best Gorilla impersonation. As you can imagine, the kids fell down laughing. And with my luck, THAT is what they kids will talk about at school when their teachers ask, "So what did you do this weekend?"

OOH! OOH! OOH! AAH! AAH! AAH!

Next up was the sheet rock. OH! I almost forgot. Before the studs even went in, back when I only had the bottom, wall, and top plate in place, I looked at the piano. Then I looked at the "other" door that went into the living room. Then I looked at the piano again, then the door, then the piano. YYYeah. It wasn't EVER coming out of that room if I didn't get it out now.

So I had to cut a section of the bottom plate out wide enough to roll the piano through, and out the other door into the dining room. My wife was a COMPLETE trooper when it came to this! HOO-rah- She and I muscled the piano out, and she helped me move the sheet rock into the other half of the living room which was the side it would be placed on.

Which brings us back to the sheet rock stage. By now, it was getting to be late afternoon, and my parents arrived, as they were coming over for dinner. My parents follow the blog through email, so they knew there was some sort of plan to do something with a wall, and when they saw the wall with all of the studs in place, my dad said, "So you wanna hang the sheet rock?"

I said, "Yeah! Sure! as long as you know that's NOT why we invited you over." he laughed. I didn't invite them over for that reason, but it did have all the ear-marks of a "roping in". Truth is, I really wanted to see them, and my parents love the roasts that my wife cooks, and it gave everyone a chance to just catch up and spend time together. And, we did get the sheet rock hung, as shown in the last picture.

Yep, you guessed it. That brown recliner in the picture is where I'm sitting, writing this right now. When I write in the next few days, I'll include pictures from "the other side" of this new wall. The next step is pretty easy and FUN!!. Demolition of the wall that will open up the new bedroom space. I can't wait!

Cheers,

4DAUTRZ

End of Round One!

Ok, so there's a section of the wall opened up, and it looks pretty good. There is one wire going straight up through the wall. There are also a couple of outlets in the base board that'll have to be taken care of.

The wall to be removed!

On the other side of this wall is the bedroom that we moved into last weekend. Now my job is to un-do what we did last weekend. I have to move all of the furniture back upstairs. This is just until I remove this wall and build a full width archway that supports the wall upstairs. So I'll be back in about an hour. After I move the furniture back upstairs into Grace's "Someday" room, I'm going to remove all of the sheet rock and lathe that is on this wall. Hopefully by the end of the night, you'll be able to look right through this wall, as only the studs will be left.

OK back to work...

Oh Boy, Here We Go...

Well it's Saturday morning and I've decided it's time to just do it. I'm going to begin the process of building his and hers closets out of some of the living room. This will give us the closet that we lost by giving Grace our room. And, we can't really begin renovating her room until we get our old closet cleaned out, so this was inevitable.

There's still a debate as to if we should take a HUGE chunk of the living room to make it bigger, or just a small chunk to add closets. Either way, I need to cut into the wall that our new bedroom, and existing living room share. Our house was built in 1810 so Lord only knows what's in there. I know there's a bit of plumbing in one section, and there are outlets along the bottom, I just don't know where the feeds for that electric come from.

Ever seen the movie Money Pit? Ya know, the movie where Tom Hanks and that bartender lady from Cheers buys the big, old beautiful old house and try to renovate it? Well call me Tom Hanks. Here we go! Actually, Tom Hanks got to just go to his job and had contractors do all the work. Huh. Well, so I get to be Tom Hanks and Ty Pennington all in one! That's not so bad.

Here's a pic of the wall as it stands today. Furniture and all. The wall that will be the root of heated arguments, probable calls to electrical and plumbing contractors, and ultimately gazes into the checkbook that will be followed by temple rubbing deep breaths, and outcries of, "What were we thinking?"

Hey, that's the stuff life is made of! I'm not afraid. We always make it through. It will be a bonding experience for my wife and I right? RIGHT?

Stay tuned...

Another day, another daughter,

4DAUTRZ