We have survived the first 3 weeks of the reno! Like any entertaining renovation, there were some um… interesting finds once the walls came down.
First a few pics of the demo in progress:
The thin strips of wood on the ceiling are original. Kind of neat to see.
Then the sub floor came up and you could see the floor joists. This was also the first view of the demo when it finally hit me that we really were tearing up the place. Seeing your theromstat just dangling on a wire really sends the point home:
A few days later Mike surveying his domain, right about where the old toilet used to be:
The floor is crumbling beneath us
And this is about when we had our first surprise! Let’s just say that the old owner must have had some shady folks come in to do some work. Apparently, they ran the pipes under the floor by cutting holes into the floor joists and they did that allll the way through to the back bedroom - through every single floor joist. Essentially they compromised the stability of nearly the entire second floor. Our contractor Peter actually said, and this is an exact quote:
It is in fact the plumbing that is causing the most problems, its really a mess and certainly the worst I have ever seen
Such comforting words to hear from one’s contractor!
He also said that the plumbing wasn’t pitched correctly. I’ll let you imagine what that means.
Someone was “lovin’ it” a bit too much
Then Peter sent us this picture:
Yes, ladies and gentlemen, that is a McDonald’s bag that was stuffed into a vent pipe that is supposed to go through to the roof! It has probably been that way for 15 years.
Stairs demo
A couple pics of the stair demo:
Framing
And with that, demo was over. Now on to framing out the new layout! You can see the bathrooms taking shape and our new color coded plumbing. So pretty.
In the pic below, you can make out where the linen closet will be. The lavender wall on the right behind the frame was the old bedroom wall - that will now be the hallway closet.
And now…a puppy picture
We recently took Thambi to a dog park that has a little creek. It was his first time near “wild water”, i.e. not bath water. And he ran and jumped right into it! A true natural. Here he is, soaked and muddy, with a happy twinkle in his eye:
