Moving Along

I haven't posted in a few days because the kind of work that's been getting done isn't the kind that shows up in pictures very well.

We framed in the new wall between the master bedroom and bathroom -- you can see it in the right side of this picture below. Tanner and Ola showed up Sunday just in time to help frame in that wall and to demo the wall that used to have the door! Lucky them...

Tanner and Jesse work on removing the old wall.

Jesse rattled off numbers to me and I would run outside (in the dark) to cut the studs to length.

Jesse puts the top plate into place where the new header will go for the pocket door frame.

"Where did this come from, Jesse?"

"I don't know, I found it in the attic and I've been using it to push insulation around"

"Oh my! It's a _________!"

(Guess what it is in the comments and I'll post the answer on the next blog entry)

Jesse decided the ceiling in the bathroom had to go (more on that in one picture.) Luckily, Pat stopped by Monday to help while I was at work -- I don't know how Jesse would have gotten the new ceiling up, otherwise. (Pat received a nasty bump on the head for his troubles...thanks, Pat!)

Anybody see anything wrong with this toilet?
I was too upset to take a picture when it happened.
The bathroom ceiling did not want to come down without taking something else with it. So it broke the toilet tank.
We were going to re-use that toilet in a new location. Not anymore.
On the plus side, we got to order the fancy toilet that matches our tub and bathroom fixtures.
On the down side, it cost a lot AND it won't be here for two weeks.
What do we do until then, you might ask. Well, see that bucket next to the toilet? It gets filled up with water and when it's time to flush, we pour it on in. Oh yeah.

The bathroom as it is now. The mini-wall that will separate the tub enclosure from the toilet can be seen on the right. The giant header that Jesse managed to install on his own can be seen near the top. That old window should be gone in the next day or two.

Jesse will make a run to the Big Orange Box tomorrow to pick up some special order stuff that came in and return a bunch of stuff we don't need (lumber, the wrong size door, wrong size pocket door frame they gave us, etc.) After that he'll hopefully have time to re-frame and install the new window.

The next two weeks will be full of electrical and plumbing then after the inspection, we should be able to hook up our new toilet!

There's a bunch of other stuff on the horizon, but we'll take it in baby steps.

Oh -- and we just hung the drywall between the master bedroom closet and the living room! Time for bed.



EDIT: Jesse just received his grades for last semester. 4.0! He managed to help plan the wedding, take care of things around the house, take six classes (at THREE different schools) and still earn straight As. He's pretty great, that Jesse.

Two Blogs in One Day?!?!

I'm not a happy camper. Actually, I am, but I'm disappointed in mankind -- or maybe just the previous owner(s) of this house. We just finished demolishing the bathroom (for the most part.) Guess what we found? I'll tell you. A nest of wires, a nest of mouse droppings (several actually), enough black mold to take over, slime mold (SLIME MOLD!), rotten wood, and hollow wood, courtesy of termites. AND an unsupported header above the bathroom window.

Some people say the inspection process is too intense. I say it should be! And whoever did the work in our bathroom before we bought the house SHOULD have been inspected up the wazoo. Because they pretty much got it all wrong. Grr. Grr. Grr.

Okay, I'm off the soap box and onto the captioning of pictures! Yay!

The lovely nest of wires -- most of them are hot.

Starting to really get into the demolition.

Progress.

More progress.

A bathtub full of moldy tile, backerboard, and plaster.

More progress and Jesse gets the tall-person parts.

A bathtub really full of moldy tile, backerboard and plaster. Did we mention the dude(s) used maybe five screws per sheet of backerboard. Maybe. Also, no mortar bed.

Midnight -- Time to start cleaning up the mess.

Clean clean clean.

Jesse thought we would only have six bags of debris. We have 78. Maybe that's an exaggeration, but you catch my drift.

Time for bed!

When it came down to it, we worked our buns off and got a whole lot accomplished tonight. This summer seems to be going a lot easier and smoother than last summer (even though we're only a week and a half into it...) This could be due to any of several reasons. I'll brainstorm some here:

• I've gotten more relaxed.
• We've gotten used to dust.
• We're more solid as a couple.
• We have something to look forward to (wedding and honeymoon!)
• My dad came to help.
• We rented a dumpster.
• We have a fully functioning kitchen with indoor plumbing.
• We planned ahead.
• We could start when we wanted to (no wait on permits.)
• We purchased everything we'd need all at once.
• We have had a LOT of help from friends.
• Any other ideas?

Open Floorplan

A lot has been going on in the last few days. We had to take a mini-break to celebrate my birthday. Work was still happening, just at a slower rate.

Here's a picture of the window in the master bedroom that Jesse and Tanner framed in on Wednesday. There was a larger window there but it would have been in the way of the new bathroom wall...so bye bye old window.

Jesse worked on demo-ing the wall between the bathroom and the master bedroom -- He did half of it then I started working on the second half. Oooh! Open concept floor-plan!!!

I have to say that it felt pretty good to knock that wall down.

Jesse cleaned up after me. Here you can see the whole wall and linen closet have been removed. Pat stopped by around this time to give us a hand.

Here he is doing tall people work. Woo hoo Pat!!!

I worked on the details.

Who needs walls in their bathroom anyway?

Next up (hopefully finishing before tomorrow night):
Finish demolishing the bathroom
Build a temporary wall to support the load
Frame in the new bathroom walls and pocket door
Drywall one side of the walls for privacy

Next two weeks:
Plumbing and electrical

Then our first inspection on the new stuff!

Deja Vu

I worked from home yesterday since it was my dad's last day in town. Thank goodness I did because I was able to see (and capture for posterity) what I missed last summer: Davidson coming through the ceiling. Here it is:

I wasn't able to take any pictures of the process, unfortunately. Here is the finished product of the day's work, though. The header is up, the wall has been removed, the temporary wall has been taken down and the closets are ready to be framed in.

On a sad note, my dad had to go back to New York in the morning. Last night we went and celebrated a great week of hard work at Longboard's in Pacific Beach with fish tacos. The Discovery Channel filmed their follow up to the Deadliest Catch ("After the Catch") there last season, and all the captains had signed a table -- I wanted to show it to my dad. And they have the best fried fish tacos in town. We stuffed ourselves and came home and went to bed.

We saw my dad off at the airport this morning; I was crying like a baby. It was amazing to have him here staying with us and helping us. We were able to get a huge jump start on the summer's work because of him (and Derrick and Tanner.) I just wish he could have stayed longer.

Today we got a late start, mainly because we were so pooped from the late nights and early mornings we've had since my dad got here. After a nap and a trip to Home Depot, Jesse and Tanner started working around 12:30. Tanner worked on getting our old bedroom window out of its frame and creating the new frame for the new window (the new master bedroom/bathroom wall came wayyy to close to the old window -- so we downsized and moved the window to the new center of the room. Meanwhile, Jesse worked in the garage on some fixes that are required for our electrical meter inspection. Believe it or not, someone in the past removed the bottom four feet or so of six studs in our garage. We think they were trying to make more room for a work bench -- but nothing was supporting that side of the garage and our inspector didn't like that so much.

I'll post pictures of the window and the new studs in the garage tomorrow -- none were taken today.

Tomorrow, Tanner and Jesse should be able to start the demolition of the wall between the bathroom and the master bedroom. Things are moving right along!

Buttoning up the roof hole

Let's take a look at where we started:

Now here we are at the beginning of Monday. It was shaping up to be a beautiful, sunny, San Diego day. Jesse and my dad had to finish sheathing the gable and wait for an electrical meter inspection from our friendly city inspector.

Here it is right before I left for work, around 9AM.

My dad and Jesse were hard at work while I was still drinking coffee.

My dad put some finishing touches on the porch ceiling.

Here he is cleaning up for the day before we went out to dinner.

All done! Now we have to finish our interior rough framing, electrical and plumbing before getting the inspection that will allow us to put the roofing materials on.

Lastly, a reminder of what we had envisioned the exterior looking like back before we bought the house: