Putting it back together again

At this point of the tour we are pretty much done with the demolition, though we had an unanticipated afternoon of demo in the bathroom...as if there were anything else left, right? But for now we will continue with the walls.

Master bedroom- we ended up taking down the drywall in the closet to check if there was water damage.

Looking to the kitchen from Elias' room (through the bathroom). 

We pushed the bathroom wall out about 3 feet to give us more space.

A wonderful idea by my handy designer husband. 

Looking to Eli's room from the dining room (again through the bathroom). 

The bathroom completely gutted with exception of the bathtub. 

The living room with the progress of the new opening into the 3rd bedroom/den- note there is no popcorn on these ceilings! 

Getting ready to put insulation up in the bedroom outside walls as well as in the bathroom wall shared by Eli's room. 

Again, with the hard labor of Aaron and my dad, all of the drywall was put up. It was intense labor that had to be done quickly because we were having someone come in the next week to texture all of the walls and ceilings. Those pics will come later. 

Now some pictures of the floors. I thought the hard work was over pulling up all of those staples and tack strips but sanding was another story. The pictures we included here were of the first sander. It took hours to sand the entire house because the machine goes so slowly.  

Proof of all of the dust we endured.

Here the floors are all covered up so the texture guy could do the walls.

What a difference having these walls up, patched, textured. So nice and pretty! 

The picture above and below are the master and 2nd bedroom just before we started painting with the paint sprayer.

After 2 coats of paint, we pulled up all of the resin paper and put down some stains to see what we could picture throughout the entire house.

After all of those hours of sanding we realized that there was still varnish in parts. We rented abother type of sander and were able to really take it down to a clean layer of the red oak- the difference can be seen in the picture below...more hours and labor but we are hoping it will be worth it.

Elias is our grips guy

We had to include this picture. While we were sanding this second time around we found 2 or 3 staples- it was months ago that we pulled up these things and I swear they keep popping up out of no where! 

Such a little helper :)

Here is a great shot showing the walls painted and the floors after our final sanding. Next stop... staining! 

Tired yet? We're are still not move ready at this point. The big "to-dos" are the staining and sealing of the floors and the bathroom. I draw the line if there is not a functioning toilet in the house :)

**If you look carefully at the picture above, you can see where our only toilet currently is. And no, we do not use it!**

Demolition derby

And the journey continues!

As you noted in the previous blog post, there was carpet throughout the house. We pulled that all up (thankfully with help from my father). Carpet is heavy...and grossly dirty, but pulling it up was not the hard part. It was the hundreds, dare I say thousands of staples that we had to pick up. And we did not have one of those nifty tools that carpet guys have. I was on my hands and knees for hours with a hammer and chisel chipping away at those things. Let me just say, those carpet installers did not want their carpet to budge! The floors have been a long and tedious process because we wanted to salvage the existing red oak and make it look like 64 years of wear and tear hadn't taken its toll. Below are some pictures of the process. I'll show you the final results when we finally achieve them :)

Along the border of the wood floor and rows down the middle, you cvan see all the staples with the carpet pad still stuck underneath them.

We tried to set up a play area for Elias one night so we could get an hour or so of work done. Did it work? Nope! He just wanted to roam about the house and find the hammer and drill!

We put in a lot of midweek late nights in

Here is a look at some of Aaron's skill. There were areas in the dining room that had deep, dark stains. He pulled up those boards and replaced them with new red oak boards.

Now we come to the point in our tour where you shold probably put your safety glasses and gloves on...

This is a view looking down the hall again. The back room you can see is Elias' room (drywall torn down from hall and the closet in Eli's room).

We moved the crawl access space to another room

Recognize this? This is the living room area. Aaron spent the evening tearing down all of the drywall on the wall shared with the 3rd bedroom. This was where I just trusted his designer eye :)

Oh and I almost forgot. We sent samples of our ceilings from various rooms in the house to a lab to have them tested for asbestos. Thankfully those tests were negative and we were able to scrape down blithe on our ceilings affectionally known as popcorn.

And we took down the particle board facade that was on the fireplace wall. We plan on creating a toally different look here!

The following show the pictures of the water damage on the south side of the house and the invasive termite damage in the bathroom on the outside wall and around the bathtub.

This is an actual stud, you know the wood member that helps hold the walls of the house up. We were able to grab this and pull it out with our hands. It crumbled. If you look closely, you can actually see light through the wood!

Our little helper :)

I think Bandit is a little concerned at this point!

In the previous post I had mentioned that there was a part of the exterior stucco wall that was compromised. This is a fesh new lathe that is now water proof. No more water getting through the holes left by some old carport.