For a tiny bathroom, removing the tiles/walls is taking an awfully long time. Our house was constructed with metal lath and plaster and the bathrooms were tiled in a lovely 50’s style: one is pink with black and the other is/was yellow with black. Busting through the plaster and lath and tile is involving a lot of work with the sledge hammer and then sweeping up garbage cans full of debris, putting it into the bucket of the tractor and driving it around the house to the dumpster.
At lease the tractor makes the work a little easier.
Craig and I have been busy baking the cake for a 250 guest wedding and today, we have to deliver.
Meanwhile, here at the homestead, the guys are preparing for rain. The plan for the day was to do a minimal amount of framing work and then to make sure that everything was buttoned up tight against the rain…. Oh yes, and the electrician came and hooked up the power for the AC.
The tree cam is back! We have some good footage of today’s work.
On the inside: the plumbers came and disconnected the fixtures in the yelow bathroom. On the outside: the bedroom wall was knocked down and the new exterior wall was framed.
Kevin-the-contractor gave us good news: the trusses will arrive on July 6th, which means that we should have a watertight roof over the house by July 10th. That will be a relief for everybody.
say goodbye to our former north wall and hello to the new north wall framingFraming an exterior wall
Monday the crew increased from two to three and the speed of work picked up. The tree cam wasn’t up because there was a chance of rain and I hadn’t finished the mount for the waterproof box so we don’t have much in the way of movies but we do have some stills.
A temporary wall was put up in the meditation room, about 4′ in from the old exterior wall and then, boom, boom, bang, bang, out came the old exterior wall. Then there was some more bang-banging and all of a sudden we had a new exterior wall framed.
In the middle of all of the banging, Craig and I scrambled out to the almost demolished exterior wall and scavenged the hardware from the windows so that we have spare hardware for our remaining 60 year old Anderson casement windows.
Friday there was some more progress insulating the floor and the guys moved inside and tore apart the meditation room. When they removed the wallboard we finally learned what the house is currently insulated with: rockwool. …. It’s pretty good stuff, but you can’t put enough of it in a wall framed with 2×4’s.
In other news, the HVAC guys (in orange) came and reconnected the AC… whahoo! I’m not normally a big fan of AC but, with the construction going on, we can’t open and close windows at will, so a little help cooling down the inside of the house is fantastic….. plus, once the guys start working inside they will appreciate it.
And….. the camera moved outside to the cherry tree. We need to make some exposure adjustments, and I’m looking around for an inexpensive wide angle lense adaptor, but for the moment, it works.
At the end of today’s movie you can see a big tarp being secured over the wall and the new foundation. That’s because it’s supposed to rain all weekend and we wouldn’t want to flood the new foundation or have rain driven in through our exposed walls.
We made pizza on the grill for the guys today. Yum. …. and, while they guys weren’t eating pizza, the foundation wall was built and the roof overhangs on the east side were cut off. Yay.
Pizza day Craig & the guys
Pizza Day masons
Pizza break, mason
First half of the foundation wallSecond half of the foundation wall
