Dust, dustier, dustiest

Today was supposed to be the day that I went downtown to get permits for the renovations. Unfortunately, the drawings and paperwork are yet to be completed and so no permits were obtained. Instead, Tanner and I set to work on other, seemingly minor, fixes around the house. The terrible patches around the windows were ground down to something closer to flatness, the big metal security screen door thing was removed, and the windows in the living room were de-drywalled.

The plan in the living room is to install traditional looking casings, and to do that the old, terribly done trim-out had to be stripped. This process was made easier by the fact that the old owner only had about 12 nails in his posession at the time he was installing the windows, and so the corner bead was only barely nailed and some of the strips of drywall were not nailed at all. This job was made harder, however, by the fact that it generally sucked and pretty much any time you have to take down old wall board its going to suck. The difficulty was further compounded by the fact that the original workman laid a ton of mud around the windows, and so a ton of drywall had to be sanded off. I started with the regular pole sander but got nowhere. As a last resort, I switched to the old belt sanded with the 60-grit belt which quickly removed the offending mud but filled the entire house with a huge amount of super fine dust.

I totally dropped the ball because I was pretty frustrated by this point and didnt close doors or anything and everything in the entire house is covered with dust. Corinne took it pretty well.


Meanwhile, Tanner was outside on a ladder grinding down the stucco scratch coat which stuck out past the original stucco. He was using an angle grinder with a $25 diamond grinding cup from Harbor Freight Tools. Well worth it, as the cup cut really fast and consistently and had Tanner nicely enshrouded in a cloud of dust. Also worth it, cause the bosch version costs $100. He was able to get the first 4 or so windows all taken care of, and unless we get sidetracked tomorrow he should be done and able to move on to patching the stucco.

Tomorrow: either permits and demo or more of the same, getting the stucco patched and ready for paint and the windows cased and the room ready for paint. Corinne doesn't like the white interior of the house, and although I don't love it I'm more excited about removing our house from its current neighborhood blight status.