Father's Day

I hope everyone reading our blog had a wonderful Father's Day.  I've had a Father's Week.   Last weekend Cole, Deb and Tea (Cole's girlfriend) got me a set of metal shelving/workbench frames and a corner yard tool organizer.  Sam stopped by Sunday and brought me a beautifully wrapped (rolled up in a plastic bag) Yeti Tumbler.  All of it will be put to use for a long time to come.

Last weekend, Deb and I finished removing the fireplace and dad came over and helped removing the slab of concrete the fireplace sat on.  I really wanted to keep the fireplace in the bedroom, but it just wasn't going to work out.

 

We used 2X4's to support the beams just incase something went wrong.  Turns out we probably didn't need them.  This house is built like a fortress.

 

 

Fortunately, the gas pipes in the fireplace weren't hooked up, so we didn't have to mess with capping the pipes off before removing the slab.

 

I didn't get any shots of Deb running the air chisel, but she had fun busting the bricks loose.

 

 

Testing the waters trying to figure out how to get one large chunk of concrete out of the house.

 

We found a stress fracture and used a hammer drill to drill holes along the crack.

 

No pictures of it but after drilling about a dozen holes in the slab, dad tried lifting the slab with the tractor while I hammered away at it with a sledge hammer until it broke free.  Once it was in two pieces we were able to lift the pieces out and haul them away.

 

We ran low on time, so we put up a temp wall so we could turn the air conditioning back on.

 

 

This weekend was supposed to be my Saturday off work, but I had to work the In Woods Forestry Expo outside of Hot Springs Saturday so that day was a bust as far as the house is concerned.  After standing out in the sun and heat, I came home and spent what was left of the afternoon relaxing in the pool.  Sunday, however, Deb and I busted our tails getting the floor and wall prepared to put the exterior door in our future bedroom. 

 

You might remember the chimney had settled and was leaning away from the house.  When the chimney pulled away, the slab had pushed the wall out from the house.  I had a 6X6 laying around that we used to push the wall back in.  We set it on top of some bricks where it would line up with the wall and used Daddy's tractor bucket to push the wall back into place.  Surprisingly enough, it actually worked.  I nailed the base plate to the header joist and backed the tractor up and it stayed!  I was pretty excited because if that hadn't worked I had no clue what to try next.

 

Once that was done, we had to tie the original joist headers together.  I used two 2X8's to tie the original joist headers together.  One extends from the original joists on each end.  The other one meets the original joist headers.  After that we cased in the rest of the hole with 2X8's and install joists to support the new subfloor.  We used joist hangers to help keep the new and old pulled together.

 

 

Once the subfloor was measured and put into place, the wall was pretty easy to frame.

 

 

Here is the outside. We still have to fill in the roofline, take out some more of the brick from the chimney, put new siding up, and install the door. 

 

Deb and I have tossed around, for quite a while now, refinishing the hardwood floors ourselves.  After getting a quote from Joe's floors, we decided we could probably do them for roughly half of what Joe quoted me.  THEN, Deb got in one of the bedroom closets with her hand sander and did some experimenting.  After some quick calculations, we came to the realization Joe's floors was the way to go.

 

They got started this morning  And we can already tell we made the right decision.

 

Here is a shot of work in progress.  ( I guess they are all work in progress. But, this one shows two or three steps in the sanding process.)

 

 

This is a nice comparison shot of the sanded red oak floors against the original finish.

 

This is Deb's sewing room.  Having a crew that can work multiple rooms at once really speeds up the progress.  One worker was doing the edges of the sewing room.

 

While another worker was running the big drum sander in Cole's room.

 

Another comparison shot in Cole's room.

 

There were a couple of boards that had to be replaced in the living room.  They will blend in nicely and no one else will notice them, but they just don't make wood floors the way they used to.  The grain in the old boards is much more beautiful than the new ones.

 

Here is a shot of the darkest corner of the living room.  It's amazing to us how much brighter the house is getting.

 

Finished closet, Razing a Chimney and other general updates.

As I got ready to upload pics for this blog update, I realized how far behind I have fallen.  So get ready for a picture heavy post today.

 

Here are some pictures of the finished closet system we built.  I am pretty proud of it.  It isn't perfect, but it did save us a ton of money.  I still have to put trim around the top of the walls and I am planning to put quarter round around the base of the shelves after we have the hardwood floors refinished.

 

Deb says I can have the two rods in the left corner of the closet and one set of shelves, but the rest is all hers.  And trust me folks, she'll use every inch.  Our trailer settles under our closet before it settles anywhere else due to the sheer weight of fabric hanging in our closet.  (Sorry baby, had to tell it. I love you.)

 

 

While Cole and I worked outside on the chimney last Saturday morning, Deb finished staining and painting the kitchen cabinet doors.  I need to add, once she had these painted, she joined Cole  picking up the bricks I was tossing down and hauling them to a pile a little ways from the house.

 

 

 

The weather really hasn't been conducive to doing much work on the outside of the house and when it was the yard needed tending so that took time away from the house.  The rain finally dried up somewhat a couple of weeks ago and last weekend we finally had the weather to start taking down the chimney on the back of the house.  Over time it had started leaning away and was leaking into the exterior wall of what is soon to be our master suite.  We had a contractor look at it and he didn't think we could ever get it to seal off properly even if we jacked it back up flush to the house.  So we decided to remove the whole thing and put an outside door in it's place.  Eventually, we plan to build a deck to connect our bedroom door back around to the kitchen door.  Naturally, the pool will have to be set up next to the deck.

 

Work started fairly early Saturday morning.  And it got hot quickly.  I just had to wait for the first 90+ degree weekend to work on top of the roof.  Most of it came down fairly easily, it was just a ton or two or three of bricks used to build it.  I chose to use an air hammer to take it down brick by brick.  Most of the bricks are solid and we wanted to salvage those to reuse later on for a brick patio.

 

 

Saturday I made it down to this point.

 

 

Sunday morning was bad hot and even more humid.  Luckily, we remembered the new 9 foot umbrella we had bought to put up poolside.  A little bit of shade goes a long way.  When I stopped chipping away at the brick around noon, my phone showed a heat index of 118 degrees.  We decided to head home for a couple of hours to rest through the heat of the day.

 

By the time we were worn out Sunday evening, we had the chimney down to this point.

 

 

It's kind of weird to look into the fireplace and see trees in the back ground.

 

 

Since the rain broke off, my logging customers have headed back to the woods and are tearing up everything.  I come home drained everyday and didn't get much done during the week.  Thursday, however, I sucked it up and finished the outside of the chimney.  Now to figure out exactly what to do about the concrete slab it was built on...

 

 

  It was a good thing we chose to remove the fireplace because we found more problems behind it than we anticipated.  The header that was sitting on top of the mantle was completely rotted away as well as part of the studs that were attached to it.  We have some framing to replace when we finish removing the mantle and hearth so we will have to open the wall up a couple more feet than originally anticipated.  Hopefully that will happen this weekend if the weather permits.  After we get this wall fixed it should be ready for another 55 years of Manning family life.

 

Here are a couple of random pictures Deb took of some brick we removed.  The pile is now about 4 times larger than this.  When we get time, we will go through and separate the solid bricks from the ones with holes and get the mortar chipped off of them for future use.

 

 

Our summer camping trip is coming up.  We've decided to hire out the hardwood floor refinishing.  It will be done while we are camping.  It looks like we have a lot more work before move in than there really is.  Once the floors are done, we can start moving some things up the hill.  The bathroom still has to be built.  Carpet has to be laid in the new bedroom.  And the kitchen has to be finished.  I really hate to start a large project like the chimney if I can't finish it right away.  Aside from the tile in the kitchen, most of the remaining projects I think I will be able to find good stopping points and pick right back up on them the next day.