Another Room Demo'ed

I thought I was making good progress this morning.  I woke up fairly early, made it a priority to get out to the house at a respectable time, and was ready to go at demo for the day.  And then...my friend showed up!  And we talked houses and spiritual stuff for an hour or more!!!  ha!  Sometimes you just have to focus on the important stuff.

How we started the day.  The living room still has lots of lath to come down.

He is my protege...and yet he kind of motivated me for this big renovation!  He asked me to walk through a house with him, knowing that I had done some flips in the past.  I told him to go for it!  And if he didn't, then I would!  Well, he ended up getting the house and COMPLETELY transformed it (probably $20,000 more than I would have done).  He knocked down walls, moved rooms, added walls, and just rebuilt the house from the inside out.  I had never really seen this done before, and so it was neat to watch the process.  It's fairly straight-forward...remove a wall, add a wall.  It really is that simple.  But I had never done that.

So my protege gave me, the mentor, the courage to go at a big project!

However, even he said, "Wow, man, you have your hands full.  I know what I have in my house...and you are way, way, way deeper than what I am doing."  It's true.  And I've thought about it.  I refused to put $350,000 into the house.  It could easily take it, but I just have no desire for that.  My goal is to live out here for $250,000.  A restored country farmhouse on nine acres.  YES, it is very difficult to do.  YES, it requires lots of "no's" to people.  But I am trying to maintain that goal!

Can it be done?  We'll see.  But after he left, I was ready to demo.  The walls all have to come down, and whether it's me or someone else doing it, it HAS to be done.  I'm learning that contractors can't see past the mess inside, so I want to get the walls down, get a hollow house, and THEN get a contractor inside.  He can then build it back up.

So we started on the blue room.  I had an uncle who was coming to help (he is a big fan of what I am doing and has asked for weeks to help), so I was ready to go at it.  A room a day.  Let's get this house demo'ed!

But Dad and I got a late start around 11:00 A.M.  My uncle showed up around 12:30 P.M.  But we all went at it.  Bang with hammer, remove plaster, remove lath, repeat.

A Tom Sawyer moment for me.  "C'mon, guys, try it out!  It's fun!"

The living room front wall.

I totally deconstructed the closet in the blue room (the old parlor) and was excited to find a newspaper from 1968.  It's in great condition, the the front story highlights Robert F. Kennedy being shot.  A neat find.

The closet in the blue room.  I totally dismantled it.

In the middle of dismantling the closet.

An original newspaper from 1968 was used as the lining for the closet shelf.

The newspaper was used as lining for the closet shelf.

How does $1795 sound for a car?

I'm eager to read more of the news from 1968.

I fully expected to find a walk-in door in this closet based off the lithograph from 1873.

The lithograph is spot-on!  Notice the entry door all boarded up.  This was off of the front porch, likely an entrance to the parlor.  Based off the insulation hole in the "new" wood, it looks like this door was covered up in or before the 1960's (when the insulation was blown in).

The living room in the middle of demo.

The plaster makes such a mess!

A view from inside the parlor room.  Notice the "new" wood.  This used to be a door in 1866.

The walls came down fairly easily, but we again ran into that blown-in insulation mess.  It just fills the air.  I could hear my uncle and Dad coughing repeatedly.  I don't like that.  But we kept going at it.

Probably the hardest part of demo...this nasty blown-in insulation from the 1960's.  It turns to powder upon touch.

The dining room looking into the living room.  The walls are coming down!

Demoing the parlor room.

During our breaks, we noticed that the pigs weren't eating out of the feeder.  I checked to see if it was empty, but I learned it was fairly full...but it had coagulated at the bottom.  Somehow the bottom got wet, and the feed stopped flowing.  I couldn't break it loose, either.  NOT good.  I just fed the pigs a bag in the trough.  They were HUNGRY.  They had been foraging in the grass all day.

I would work on this project a couple of times today, trying to break the feed free.  I was finally able to loosen it up with a curved metal rod, and the pigs just pushed me out of the way for food.  Savages!  I'm still not sure how it got wet, as I saw no leaks.  But it's almost like the pigs ate in the rain, maybe?

It was so neat to watch my uncle work.  He is retired, but he was EAGER to help.  He was constantly ready to go (I work hard but like breaks), and he was ALWAYS searching for where to help.  He asked if the shelves in the small bathroom are coming down.  Yes, yes!  So he went at them with a sledge hammer.  And what about the kitchen cabinets?  Yes, yes!  He pulled the drawers out and threw them on our lath fire.  He was just EAGER.  I love it.

My eager uncle going hard at demo!

The old bathroom cabinets.

The old bathroom cabinets.

All gone!  Not only did it expose an old wall-covering, but it exposed ceiling rot from the roof...yet another reason why the full demo on the inside.  All of this can now be fixed!

Water rot in the ceiling.

Burn, baby, burn.

The cabinets are pulled out.  The rooms is slowly coming apart.

More termite damage.  One board in the downstairs parlor room.

As the walls came down, the beauty of the house is seen even more.  I knew this house was old, but today I found WOODEN pegs in the post-frame construction.  The pegs are in the corners of the living room.  So neat.  It's built just like an old barn!

The post-frame construction in the living room.

The massive logs both vertical and horizontal holding the living room together.  They are morticed into each other and held in with wooden pegs!

The view from the living room into the parlor room.

I LOVE how this house is built!  Look at that wooden peg!

One of the massive beams holding up the house.

Another termite-damaged board in the living room.  One of three so far I've found in the house.  Not bad for 163 years.

My dad working in the living room.  It's a family effort!

One of the HUGE boards holding up a corner of the house.  It's a log, really!

Another wooden peg holding the home together.  I love it.

Around 5:30 P.M. tonight, I met with a handyman that had responded to a post about demo-ing the house.  He walked through, said he wasn't afraid of the work, realized it would take a couple of dumpsters, and said he had just completed one house doing the same thing.  He said he would get back to me tonight.

Well, he did get back to me...at a surprising bid of $2500...$3000 at most.  I told him he had the job.  I don't mind doing the work, but it's evident that I myself will have at least $1000 in dumpster fees.  And I still have the entire upstairs to do.  We average a room a day, so I am still looking at 5 FULL days or so of work.  And that is not even hauling it off.  So likely more than five days.

With the dumpster fees, his $3000 bid was really $2000 in my eyes.  And $2000 for let's say 7 days...$300-ish a day.  Yup, do it.  It's a no-brainer.  I can always go do what I do best (fly) so that he can do what he does best (demo!).

I'm somewhat nervous about his bid but excited at the same time.  This REALLY frees me up to do some other work.  And this is the first real money I have spent on the house.  I'm committed now.  It's time to get it gutted and start looking for a contractor to put it back together.

The living room plaster and lath is all down!

A view from the kitchen.  What have I done?!

All along the bottom floor are these two-inch holes drilled in the 1960's.  These were drilled from the outside and were used to blow in the insulation.  They are SUPPOSED to have plugs placed in them after the wall cavity was filled.