We're back.....

March 13, 2011

After a hiatus, we are back to working on the house (or at least Alok is). We apologize to our blog readers and promise to keep you up to date more often! We were going through the "why us" phase of house renovation and are now past that and back on track (with hopes of moving in during 2011.....)

I pulled up to the first time in about a month (literally....bad, I know) and found this ladder up against the house.



I'm pretty sure that was used to assist in the removal of the pipes from our house. Speaking of which, we pretty much have no pipes in the house. 5.5 baths and only 1 is still attached (but is attached to nothing). This appears to have been a fairly smart move, as the current pipes were rusted and some of them were barely connected (Read: sewage pipes that weren't connected... not only gross, but smelly and unsanitary).

This picture also highlights the fact that we need to do some outdoor work once it gets a bit nicer. Bye-bye peeling paint. Hello bright blue colored house.

Moving on inside, Alok has been hard at work tearing down the pipes and opening up this front hallway area. Here is this area before:


Here is the area now:





This is the hallway that used to lead to the basement and goes into the apartment area. With no more doorway and no steps above head, it is actually nice and open.

View from the apartment area back through the hallway into the foyer:


Here are more pics of this area, going into the apartment area:

view from the hall into the apartment... that area straight ahead is the butler's pantry area


The same area


Apartment area/apartment bathroom/butler's pantry (from L to R)


Apartment


Lovely wallpaper that was hidden

Here is the door that used to be in the hallway:


I'm sure we can find use for that somewhere. The goal here is to open that front area up as much as possible.

While I was taking my photo tour and coughing (bronchitis + this house is not good), Alok was up on a ladder taking down pipes:

Yes, that is Alok. Not to be confused with Marty McFly in BTTF part 1. Alok was working on taking down pipes, as seen here:

Old, rusty pipes

As I was taking this picture, I was thinking that he really needs to be careful. That thought was followed by him falling off the ladder later in the day, fortunately without the saw in his hand. No worries, he's OK.

The pipe removal has led to more demolition in several areas. Here they are:

Upstairs hall closet before:


And after:

(That's the master bathroom on the other side of the wall)

Here is the current master bath before:


And now:




The upstairs hallway bathroom has also been destroyed. Here it was before:


And now:





Let's just say there was a LOT of mold in here. Yuck.

He also demolished the little half bath in the upstairs yellow bedroom, which is actually no longer going to be a bathroom. Here it was before:


And now (it has spilled over into the yellow bedroom):








Of course, the apartment bathroom has also been further destroyed. Here it was before:


And now:




It hasn't all been destruction. Alok reinforced this area of the house that was falling down:


Here it is now, all structurally sound:






That's all for now. More to come soon, I promise this time.

Jessica