Have I mentioned the need for flexibility while rehabbing? If I haven’t, I’ll mention it now; if I have, let me re-iterate, you must be flexible!
The demo work is continuing. We had nearly a week of not being able to move past the front door for photos because of all the debris. Nearly every wall had a layer of shiplap (Joanna Gaines would have cried if she saw the destruction of so much shiplap), plus drywall and wallpaper.
The drop ceiling in the living room had a separate frame for the lowered drywall that had to be removed. But that also led to the discovery that the supporting beam for the bedroom addition is in the living room. So the living room will end up having a tiered ceiling in order to accommodate a ceiling fan on the higher portion later. We aren’t installing air conditioning, so I want to at least have some ceiling fans for hotter summer days.
Our contractor also got my hopes up for the bathroom, and then dashed them. See, flexibility. The bathroom is rather narrow and while removing the drywall and paneling layers inside, he hoped we’d gain enough inches to have an actual bath tub! Oh, the luxury! I was excited, looking for a nice but modest soaking tub, dreaming of candlelight and a glass of wine. But today, the determination is we are still a little over an inch shy of fitting a tub. We considered other options: expanding the full bathroom into the half bath behind it, pushing out a different wall, building a half bath into the laundry room. But all of them had a downside and we decided to stick the original plan of a walk-in shower. And while I hate to admit it, it’s probably a smarter decision for a gal with arthritis to have an easily accessible shower over a bathtub. And we can always install a hot tub in the backyard later, where we can enjoy the space together (and with friends!) beverages of choice, and a beautiful view of the sky.
The demolition portion has revealed a few other surprises, but thankfully nothing major! Two of the supporting walls, which funny enough are the walls I wanted to remove to make an open living space but didn’t because they’re support walls, have to be reframed because they were in such terrible shape!
And when they took the ceiling down in the dining room, you could hardly believe what literally fell out. The contractor says it’s some mix of granular glass/sand insulation. I really have no idea, but it looked like someone dumped a truckload of fine gravel inside! I just patted him on the shoulder and told him how glad I am that we hired him instead of thinking we could do all this work ourselves.
We also found that the cedar shake roof from the original portion of the house was left in place and the additions just worked around it. We thought this was amazing to find!
Then there is the chimney that we are removing/replacing. It’s the only place we found leaking in the roof, and we are moving it out of the kitchen and into the living room for a wood stove. But look at this! These heavy cinder blocks go from roof to fist floor, and then are supported by a couple wood braces. Maybe it’s enough, structurally speaking, but for some reason I thought it didn’t quite seem like enough. Glad the budget included it’s removal and replacement!
I’m hoping to get a better camera lens in the near future because words just cannot describe the beauty here, especially the night sky. When you look up and see so many stars and the haze of the galaxy, it almost makes you dizzy. I feel such peace and contentment here.
Gravel insulation?!! I guess that could be quite fire-retardant.. What a mess! I’m sure every day you are more convinced that it was good to hire a contractor!
Thanks for this wonderful article. Also a thing is that the majority of digital cameras are available equipped with any zoom lens that permits more or less of a scene to get included by ‘zooming’ in and out. All these changes in concentration length tend to be reflected in the viewfinder and on huge display screen on the back of the camera.