Monday, was a laundry and other stuff kind of day, so I did not step foot in the room. Tuesday, I removed the butcher block counter top, the house’s previous owner used it to reload his ammunition. He was in interesting Chap. I removed the closet walls, and I was able to eliminate the drop ceiling. Here are some pictures showing the days progress.
Below is a shot of some writing I found on one of the walls I exposed when tearing down the paneling. It is some history of our neighborhood, it looks to be a spot wear the kids who lived in the house and their friends would record their height and age. What is even more ironic is three of the names are adult’s I know and a couple of them still dwell in the same neighborhood. One is Bethany’s best friend’s mother…Pretty neat stuff!
In the image below, on the right, you can see my plumbing/electrical chase that was installed almost four years ago when we were renovating the attic into our family room.
Below, you can see that I now have two more shop/garage/basement lights for my various man caves. I actually found four brand new bulbs for these fixtures above the drop ceiling. So for those of you sporting the drop ceilings, you may want to take a peak, you never know what the previous owner of your dwelling may have left you…
On to yesterdays progress. It was a solid day of filthy, dirty, wall guttin’. I started at 8:30 in the morning and finished(completely running out of steam) at around 7:30 that evening. I am usually not a big fan of safety stuff, I have been known to remodel/renovate in Crocs, Flip-flops, sandals and even my bare feet(mostly the finishing touches, painting and installing cover plates). I usually wear my oldest pair of sneakers to gut rooms. I almost always can’t seem to find or find the time to find my safety glasses. This drives my father absolutely crazy, being he played an intricate role of maintaining a safe workplace/environment at his job he retired from.
Yesterday morning was a bit different, I had an internal dialogue with my self, it went something like this: “Bryan, you are now almost 40.5 years old and you know you won’t recover as quickly from doing the same thing you did ten or even three to four years ago, you better take the safe or more careful path while doing this demo.” So I sported the safety glasses, dust mask and official work/steel toed work boots, see below:
And am I glad I did, within the first 15 minutes below is what was stuck in the bottom of my boot.
I tried to keep count, how many time something struck my safety glasses, it happened at least six times, and not just tapped, after the items struck my glasses I even said “that would have really hurt…” I actually also kept the mask on all day, and did not have any black snot coming from my nose at the end of day, If you have ever gutted in any renovation, you know what I am talking about. It’s just gross!!
Below are some shots I took this morning, I still have some lathe to remove and should be done with the dirty stuff by end of day.
Gutting a 150 year old house can be fun, because you never know what you might find. Below are a couple of things I have found that are interesting and says something about the character of who may have worked on it before me. In the first shot it shows the small dormer that is on the front of our house, we think that this is where our tub is going to go, we plan on replacing the window with something that is either privacy or something decorative, like stained glass or something. As I removed the paneling, I found these side light, style windows that have been covered up. Whoever covered them on the inside really did the bare minimum, I guess they figured they were just going to be hid. Questionable workmanship…
Below is the remnants of a knob and tube circuit that is dead, but still presents itself and requires me to check it for voltage.
Below you will see a outlet box linked to a junction box that was hidden inside of the wall. Who ever updated the electric back in the day, really should have known better. You never cover up a junction box. NEVER!!
So there you have it, thanks for checking in on my progress of this renovation, I have to get moving, the longer I sit at this desk, the harder it will be for me to get at it again….
This post of Renovate This House is brought to you by IcyHot pain relieving cream.
Now go #renovatethis!!
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