And the Race is On!

We're turning in permit applications this week, so now the race is on to get everything we need to finished before we hit the inspections.

The front bedroom drywall is now complete! Check it out!!! 

Kevin rocked this out all by himself. Helps that he really knows what he's doing, and has all these fun new tools to help!

We also got the ceiling cut out for the proper head room going up the stairs! Wow, what a difference!! This has also given us some way cool ideas for the future of this room... More on that soon. :) 

Kevin is planning on trying to finish the drywall in the library tomorrow (most likely) which also means we have to get the door frame for the French doors cut out as well... We also have scheduled to have a gal come do all the drywall mud and finishing on Tuesday... Deadlines are good... It encourages you to stay on schedule!  More coming soon on the French doors as well!!

I love progress. It makes me happy. :)

Let's keep the house standing...

So we got our structural engineering plans back finally!!! Super excited!!! He (our engineer) did a fantastic job with them, and we're now filling out the application for the city for the permits we need. 

Now we have to pick up the pace! We need to get the drywall finished in the front bedroom and the library before we get our permits... So!

Drywall is now moving! Yes, the itchy, nasty, fiberglass (awesome-sauce) drywall we got a few weeks back. We figured, if we break it down into manageable bits each day, it should only take like 5 days, and shouldn't be too horrible. Today's goal: the ceiling in the front bedroom. And Kevin's nearly finished! Looking good!!

Upcyle Awesomeness!

Tonight, Kevin and I discussed what we thought we should do with the side of the stairs... After bashing out a couple different ideas, we decided to see if we could use some of the wood from the old stairs we took out to cover the side and finish it up nice. It seems appropriate to return this old VG Fir to the house in some proud manner. 

I think he did an incredible job!!! Tomorrow I'll try staining it with a coffee-vinegar stain... See if we can keep it simple and natural. 

Organ Donor

A few weeks back, I started digging around on Craigslist (as usual) for can lights, because we had talked about doing recessed lighting in the attic space.

I stumbled across one ad in particular, and it said they had upwards of 400 new construction 4" and 6" can lights for like $5 each or the whole batch for super cheap (over $5,000 worth in new construction can lights for a fraction of the price)... So Kevin called the guy, and we made an appointment to meet up and see the can lights and the whole situation.

So on a Saturday, we drove out to Horsehead Bay, near Gig Harbor, and met up with this guy. When we finally drive up to this house, it's a veritable mansion (oh, I mean Castle... probably worth a few million finished, on the waterfront, with a guest house and boat house), and they are taking it down. That's right, demolishing the thing... At least big chunks of it. The plan was to take the entire second floor off, 2 of the 7 garages (yeah, kinda ridiculous) and the center section of the house.

We found out that the couple who'd owned it had both worked for some telecom company, and had spent a fortune (and 10 years) working on this place, adding on, changing and changing again. Every room was networked (and I mean miles and miles of network cable) and the house even had a conference room and all kinds of crazy stuff... Well, turns out they apparently went bankrupt and lost the house... And then it sat for 2 years, vacant and unfinished (the exterior was finished, stone facade and 3-tab roof, but the interior was still just studs, with the electrical and plumbing put in... just no drywall).

This is where all the network cable came together in the basement...

And had to do this pano to see the whole entry way.. Two curving staircases went up to the left and right... (The bridge was not curved, it's just the nature of the panorama). Check out the bank of can lights!!!

Left curving staircase.

Bridge and the ridiculous number of lights above the living room. (There were a ridiculous number of can lights in the house... Probably another like 200 can lights that were destroyed or too high to remove nicely).

The next-door neighbors finally bought the property (mostly for the boathouse), and decided to demo the monstrosity... At least big chunks of it. We walked through the house with the son-in-law who was in charge of selling anything he could from the house if possible... Anything that didn't sell would go to salvage or the dump.

We walked through the place just dumbfounded that they had come so far and would be taking so much out (and that someone would want to build such a ridiculous monstrosity), but most of all, thinking to ourselves how much we could use! He mentioned that pretty much anything we wanted or could get out of there we could take.

We let him know that we wanted all the can lights we could get our hands on, as well as some pex tubing (for plumbing), some gas pipe, electrical outlets, and other bits and pieces. We also let him know that we were interested in the I-joists and some of the beams that were going to be coming out as well... And he said basically "you get them out, you can have them." (That means another probably $6-8,000 worth in I-joists and beams that we could have for no extra change... as long as we can get them out ourselves).

So a week later, we picked up a Uhaul and went out with Kevin's brother and niece and nephew, and got the can lights, electrical outlets, and pex tubing. The I-joists and beams were not yet ready to come out, so we'd have to wait to go back and get those.

Here's the Uhaul full of our pickings... A mountain of can lights (with light bulbs) pex tubing, tile, etc.

A week or so after that first round of "picking the carcass," they let us know that stuff was on hold while the owners worked out plans and questions with the contractor and the architect. So we held off...

Then another week later we got a phone call that plans had changed again, and they'd decided to demolish the entire house, and the demo crew had just shown up and were hacking into the house! So Kevin made a mad dash over to make sure they didn't rip out or destroy the joists and beams we needed! They'd already made quick work of a big section, but thankfully there were still plenty of joists for us to salvage.

Here's what's left of the house.

So Saturday, we went back out and started cutting out the joists and beams we needed, as well as collecting 2x4's and anything else worth snagging.

(Yep, that's Kevin, a chainsaw, and a Utilikilt). LOL!

Sunday, we went back out with a Uhaul to finish cutting out more and bring those back with us.

Kevin had a friend come out in the morning and help, then I joined him with one of Kevin's brothers, then later, another brother and niece and nephew also joined us for the demo.

While I was cutting out more pex tubing from the basement, I kept feeling like I was severing veins; the hot water uses red tubing, cold water blue... Don't they look like veins and arteries? (And the white ones are like tendons) lol!!!

We came home with 30 I-joists, one beam, two bath tubs (for Kevin's friend) tons of pex tubing, and other stuff...

and I was kind of obsessed with some of the architectural bits that were around the site...


Kevin just rolled his eyes as we snuck some into the trailer.

(LOL... Imagining a hobbit hole door)




Yeah... Having too much fun!!!

I'm trying to get a good "before picture" of the house... And when I do, I'll post it so you can see. :)

Magic Plan

When we started dreaming up what we wanted to do with the house, of course you've got to put together some kind of floor plan. Well, I stumbled across the coolest app ever.

Meet Magic Plan...

With this groovy little app, I was able to develop house plans for the whole house, top to bottom. It even has this awesome little feature where you can calibrate heights and distances with your phones camera, and just point the camera at all the corners of the room, and it builds your plan for you! can't tell you how much fun I had with this!!

Here's what I put together for the house (yeah, that's right, I did these on my iPhone!)

Main floor:

Attic space (what we want it to be):

Basement:

Super freaking cool app!! I had a blast putting these together. :)

Up All Night

Summertime in Seattle is fantastic... I even love the rain. So why did the thunderstorm keep me up last night?

Oh, gee, maybe because I've got $1,500 worth in cabinet and trim wood out in the yard!! We made sure they were well covered, but I was still practically hyperventilating about it, and Kevin finally agreed to help me haul in all the cabinet plywood at nearly 10pm... We adjusted the plastic above the trim, cause it was simply far too much to try and move in the now pouring rain... And I tossed and turned worrying what damage I'd find in the morning.

Well, this morning I rushed to check my beloved trim (my poor babies, out in the rain), and they really did do fairly well... They did get a little wet, but no pieces were completely destroyed. As the morning dried out, and it officially stopped raining just before lunch, we then brought in all the pieces that had gotten wet and started towel drying, and set up some fans.

I'm still wishing we had room for it all inside (just so worried about it getting ruined!) but we created a much better "tent" for the rest of the trim, and will see how it goes...

Here's a couple shots of some of the pieces that got wet... 3 baseboard pieces, some window "skirting", and some side trim...






And the new trim housing.



Never really had much of a problem with the rain in Seattle... But if it could hold off for a few more weeks... that would really help!! :)

Drywall

Because of the state of the front bedroom and library, we need to put up drywall on the walls in both rooms, and on the ceiling in the front bedroom. This in addition to all that we're going to need to finish the attic space... It's going to be a lot of drywall.

So again, I turned to my friend Craig. And once again, after a little digging, I found a gold mine.

Apparently, someone was renting out a commercial storage space, and had defaulted on the payment, so the storage place was selling off the goods in storage. And my luck! It's drywall. Brand. New. Drywall. And even better? There's a ton of it too!

So... Kevin made a few phone calls, coordinated with his brother, and they picked up a U-haul and drove down to pick up the drywall in Chehalis (near Centralia, about a 1:30 drive from our place). Once they got there, Kevin found out that beyond the regular drywall, they also had DuraGlass, commercial grade, paperless, water and mold resistant, impact resistant, fire resistant, fiberglass drywall... For $3 per 4x8 sheet!! Yowsa!

So they turn up with a U-hail full (and I mean so full they nearly burned up the motor on the way home) of 200 sheets (6 tons) of this fiberglass drywall.



They got the glorious opportunity to load it by hand... And unload it by hand. Oh, did I mention, it's fiberglass?!?! Itchy, nasty, horrible stuff, but when it runs between $15-20 per sheet at regular price, he just couldn't resist. (Finishing the house with commercial grade stuff... At a fraction of the price of regular drywall... Yeah, that's how we roll).

Where do you put 6 tons of drywall? On the driveway... Where else could you put it!


So there it sits (good thing it's water-proof... It can literally sit outdoors uncovered for up to a year and still be guaranteed by the manufacturer).

So... Next step (as we await the finalized plans from the structural engineer to take to the city to start on the attic) is to get the drywall finished in the front bedroom and library. Once the drywall is in, and mud and taped, then we can do the trim in those two rooms, prime, paint, then refinish the floors... So much to do... And the end of summer is fast approaching.

Anybody want to come help do drywall? (I mean, itch to death with us?) :-)

A House Filled with History

Of course a house that is nearly 100 years old is going to have its stories to tell... And I just love stumbling across bits and pieces of that story.

A few days ago, I was in the attic taking pictures for the structural engineer when I found these. :)



I particularly love this little matchbook cover... $1000 life insurance policy for only 25 cents!

7a is my favorite!!

Then, these 'school boards' are next to the stairs headed down to the basement. I don't think we'll be covering these up. :)



I love this one for 'Spelling' :-)


Found this pretty little fan at the bottom of the basement stairs in some rubble... Might have fallen from the attic.



And as promised, some cool bits of newspaper. :) I didn't have time to photograph all of it.

Sports page...

Poetry!

Dang, I could live in a hotel two months for less than I pay for a tank of gas...

Popeye!

Newspaper dated Tuesday, February 27, 1940.

Blondie!

Whiskey!

Ski Snoqualmie!

More newspapers and wallpaper later. :)

Weeds...

Simple post tonight... Cause a funny thought popped into my head while I was weeding the flower beds yesterday...

I pulled out this one particularly gnarly weed... And it had 3 roots, that were braided!!! I couldn't believe it!!



For some reason, looking down at this weed, I suddenly thought about some of my best friends (you know who you are!!) and how we've kinda become like this weed in each other's lives... We're close... Tight knit into each other's lives, and it doesn't matter if different events uproot us or separate us, we will be there, ever present, and ever growing. We're those kinds of friends that it doesn't matter if we haven't spoken in months or seen each other in years, we get together and can pick things up again like we were mid conversation. You know those kinds of friendships?

"I weed-love you man!" ... Well, doesn't quite have the right ring to it... But you know what I mean. :)