More holes cut for doors, foundation planning

Today was full of stress, a lot of back and forth between different ideas about the new addition's foundation. Time was taken away from cool stuff like cutting new doorways, and absorbed by the question of what kind of piers we needed to be planning to pour. Until a large enough hole was dug around one of the house's original piers, we couldn't see it well enough to determine whether we'd need to spend 100% or 500% of our pier budget to match it for the addition. We finally determined that it was 100%, long story short. Whew.

Opening Walls!

On Friday Bill and Bob began cutting open the walls as per our architect Craig's design, and it really looks and feels fantastic in there. I've provided a closeup picture of the shiplap and the way it joins together, which is interesting. Also, in some old fiberglass insulation I saw what looked like a bunch of receipts or something - go figure - crazy old house.

Oh crap - more flagstones!

Today we discovered yet even MORE flagstone patio underneath backyard dirt, and had to commit time and effort to breaking it apart, so that it won't interfere with the new addition's new piers. Also, we can use all these limestone flagstones in the new patio, which is great!

Addition is now completely gone

We found a flagstone patio underneath the old addition! That means we have a bunch of free flagstones out of which to make our new patio! Bill and Bob and Amanda are doing a great job of carefully denailing, sorting and stacking any and all reusable materials, too.

Extreme Demolition!

Bill and Bob (and Amanda) got very busy yesterday and today on carefully demolishing our house's crappy rear addition. And Matt took down a whole gigantic dead oak, sawed it and stacked it meticulously behind the garage for firewood. Yeah! Progress!

Kitchen Removal

the other day we sold our entire kitchen on craigslist, and are very grateful to Bill and Bob for uninstalling the whole thing in a fraction of the time it would have taken me or Laurel to do it ("Before" kitchen picture included here for reference). Also they began to remove the doors and closets in the next room, and de-nail and stack the re-usable wood in a neat little pile.

Cieling Cleared!

Finally cleared the cielings (minus the kitchen, on hold) of drywall! Look at this mess. I ripped a large piece of the ancient cheesecloth intact - just by accident - and it had the name of the company printed on it. A little time capsule.

tore down more ceiling drywall today

forgot to bring my camera, but took pictures of the havoc wreaked on my person after i got home. smacked my thumb pretty good. my arm - despite the fact that it's the dirtiest i've ever seen it - only looks slightly dirty in the picture. oh well.

Laurel prys beadboard from the wall

Truck Loading Day!

Today I loaded up my dad's truck with ALL of the kitchen floor tile, cosmetic beadboard, cieling drywall, acoustic tiles, ancient wallpaper & cheesecloth, and rotted oak flooring, in preparation for a trip to the dump. It was a lot of work, but now it's all neatly tucked away in a landfill South of Austin, and out of our house. And the dump only charged $18.34 for a whole truckload!

further cieling material removal

Removed some more cieling materials (in the middle and back bedrooms) the other day. Bit by bit, getting down to the original pine shiplap.

Removing ceiling drywall

Today I tore down probably 1/5 of the drywall ceiling in one of the bedrooms. It was very slow, messy work, but gratifying nonetheless to see more beautiful shiplap under all that gross drywall. It was also interesting to see the fabric/wallpaper material that was originally installed in the house.

Removing kitchen tile

Removal of the kitchen tile is one of the first demolition activities we can do ourselves, so yesterday we chipped up a bunch of it. Under it we found some ancient linoleum, and under that is the original oak flooring. Unfortunately it looks like it's rotted quite a bit, and will need to be replaced. Boo.

Removing ivy from front of house

We found out that ivy is okay if it's growing on something impervious like a chimney, but NOT okay if it's growing on something like cedar shingles, so we tore a bunch of it off, which was a lot of fun!