With a little help from my friends....

May 28, 2011

Or a LOT of help. We accomplished more today than we probably have in 6 months at the house, due to the following cast of characters:

Jim Schuetz, Josh Jones, Aaron & Maggie Strong, Pat Taylor, Eric Basinger, Kelley Byington, and Judge Schuering.

Last but not least, we also have to thank Julie Schuetz and Emily Jones who babysat 10 kids under the age of 7 for about 10 hours to make this all possible. I think that those of us working on the house had the easier and less tiring job!!


The arrival of Maggie and Aaron. Maggie with clippers in her hand, ready to clip off some things in our yard


Maggie working on this bush waiting for further instruction on the inside of the house. We told her to have at it

Before we get into what we did today, here are some random pics:

Look at what was in our dining room:

Poor guy.

On a happier note, Alok had finished another bathroom floor, which needs to be done prior to plumbing:

Bathroom under the stairs on the first floor

He had also taken out the closet that was in the master bathroom to make it even bigger:


So let's see what got done today. First, we have Judge Schuering to thank for our yard (he is our secret helper...and by helper, I mean that he did EVERYTHING!). Maggie also helped him out there and has promised to come back with her mom to spray paint trees that we need to cut down (we have some dead trees). Judge Schuering did a ton of yard work yesterday, which you saw in the blog, but continued today. We can't thank him enough.

Here is are a few shots of the process:







Here is our yard now:





























Lookin' good! Again, we thank you, as do our neighbors!! We can't wait to be able to use it for parties when we move in. Thanks to the work today, we are much closer!

We also got the entire yellow bedroom completely demolished and cleaned up. Here it is before:


Hallway into the bedroom


















During:

The smoke starts to rise out of the house... OK, that's actually just the plaster dust starting to fly. And I thought it looked bad then! Just wait....


Pat thought he didn't need goggles. He thought wrong. It was nothing a little water wouldn't fix.


Nasty insulation






Aaron tearing things down


There was more mold here (of course). This is one of the bad areas on the roof.


Pat went crazy with a two handed crowbar rotation like I have never seen (I'm pretty sure no one has seen that!)


Josh was also a demolishing machine. We should have had a contest to see who was faster, Josh or Pat.








Why are the pics so foggy? Oh just millions of dust particles flying around. It was a BYOR (bring your own respirator) party.

















Wondering if he can make the throw into the dumpster. Pat enjoyed throwing 2 toilets out this window today and made it to the dumpster...which was not a straight shot down.


No, the house is not on fire. That's just plaster.




Break time prior to clean up!


Break time....Need a bathroom? Girls get to drive to the gas station while the boys get to pee in bottles.... gross!! I can't wait to get plumbing!!

BTW, this room was totally taken down in record time. The walls were all down in a matter of maybe half and hour. The ceiling took longer. Now cleanup, that's another story!

Pat was able to get a chute for us, which saved a lot of clean up time. Here they were trying to figure it out (this is after having to figure out how to hook it together):


Alok and Jim


Jim troubleshooting


It's working


Alok's looking a bit dirty in the dumpster


Alok waiting for more

And after the demo/clean up:

Entrance into the demolished yellow bedroom








You can now see straight through from the laundry room (on your R)






This is what was behind the wall in the yellow bedroom. YUCK!

Jim also worked hard on framing out a few things: The HVAC closet (we're putting a system on the 2nd floor for both the 2nd and 3rd floor), the closet for the bedroom that's currently connected to the master, and the closet turned part of the master bathroom. Here he is working:




Things get a bit dustier as the bedroom is demolished



Here are the before and afters:

Bathroom closet before:


And after:


All ready for drywall! Well, once we get pipes.

Hallway before (this was part of the bedroom next to the master's closet/doorway into the hallway... I'm way to tired to find a before picture since I didn't get one today...sorry!):














And after:



View through HVAC room, through closet to the bedroom


Reversed view....



You just can't see this very well in pics, but it was very helpful and a lot of work (and looks more impressive in person... the lack of walls don't allow for good composition)

Aaron also completely took out the covered area that was blocking the area from the foyer into the parlor area. Here it is before:






Aaron working on it:






The other side

After:


The front door is on your right and a fireplace is on your left.

We also pulled off a TON of baseboards, molding, and pulled out a ton of nails and staples as well. That was not thrilling enough to take pictures of.

We also are now a carpet free house! All of the pink carpet is gone. And look at what we found underneath on the first floor:


Here is the dining room before:






And after:


Those are nice floors like you saw in the other pic, they are just dusty!

Front room before:


Front room after:

The same floors again

Foyer before:


Foyer after:







Stairs before:





Stairs after:

Gotta love the paint. There are 3 different colors to represent 3 different sized runners from the years







Master bedroom before:




Master after:






Nice floors again!




Bedroom next to the master before:






And after:









check out the floors!

We actually have some nice hard wood floors! It's about time that we caught a break in this house and actually discovered something nice for once. The same floors are in the foyer, front room, and dining room and are in great condition (despite the random holes that were previously carved in for electric, etc). The stairs are their own thing. The upstairs hallways and 2 bedrooms (master and one next to the master) have different hardwood that is also in great condition. We'll need to get hard wood for the apartment area and butler's pantry on the first floor and the laundry room, offices, and yellow bedroom on the 2nd floor. Not too bad!!

In addition to ridding the house of the carpet, they also helped us clear out other debris and move wood that we are keeping. It was unbelievably helpful.

Due to all the help we had today at the house and those babysitting, we are now OFFICIALLY done with demolition! That doesn't mean that we won't still be removing some things from the house, but all of the major work is done. We are also pretty much plaster free (there is a just a bit left behind base boards we still need to pull out, but that's nothing). Unfortunately, it doesn't look like we'll be plaster dust free until about 2020. That stuff is gross. Although I was dirty enough today that my hair somewhat resembled the color and frizzy-ness of Doc Brown, our wonderful State's Attorney, Josh, wins the prize for the dirtiest worker:


This is before lunch. He actually had to go home and shower mid-day because he was so dirty!

Here are some end of day pics:


The lovely house is looking MUCH better despite its multi-coloredness


We figured it was easier to throw this air conditioner and carpets out of the 2nd floor, master bedroom window rather than carrying it down. We were right (although there was a near miss with the big window in front)


Awww, cute Strongs!!


Jim and Alok trying to wrap things up... literally.


This dumpster was empty at the beginning of the day. Alok would usually take 3 weeks to fill it. AWESOME!! Anyone want to guess the weight? We'll see how many tons were removed in 1 day.

That's all for now. Again, we really can't thank everyone enough! Although we did have some near horror movie experiences:


Soon to be wedded, Eric and Kelley.

We also had a quick stop by from Rachel and Josh Baird who happened to be in town. Next time, they'll bring their work clothes. I know you always want to spend your vacations working on a house! It was good to see them, although the plaster dust was flying and they had to take a tour with respirators :-)

See you all tomorrow, right? JUST KIDDING!! I think we'll all be lucky if we can walk tomorrow.

Jessica

(BTW, I am so tired I can barely move, so please forgive any and all typos in this blog. I'm not proofing it!)