The things under the stairs

I haven't posted anything about my house in a long, long time. Well, I guess I should throw something up here about that. The below picture will show you that I have cleared out the area below my stairs and now have an open view to my basement. My eventual goal here is to have access to the basement through a hatch type thing once I change to a floating staircase and lay hardwoods (or some form of fake hardwood). I think I may have found the stairs I want, and they really aren't that expensive ... but I want to finish some of the other work before I decide to tear out my current stairs.



While clearing out the wall under the stairs, I found a treasure trove and random crap from half a century ago. Everything was just scattered around (with a lot of nasty dirt and dust) in the area under the first couple steps. Well, not everything ... some of it was actually IN the walls.



Here are some of the highlight of what I found:



There were a few more of those playing cards, I think maybe 5 in total. There were a ton of prayer cards from different funerals, but I thought the most interesting one was for a priest that spent a large portion of his time in Japan. The prayer cards were mostly in very good shape. The card with planes on them are part of a set of 144 or something, but they are pretty beat up. The metal thing in the middle is a dog license from the 1950's and will go great with the other stuff I've found in walls from the 50's when I frame them in a shadow box. Probably the most interesting thing though is a Buck Rodgers card from 1936. Like the plane cards, it's in pretty bad shape ... but it's from 1936! Who cares what kind of shape it's in, it's older than my parents.



I guess I'll leave you with a picture of my living room with most of the sub floor put down (ignore all the crap, I took the picture on a whim and didn't feel like cleaning up).

The List that isn't finished

Let's see … what order am I going to do the rest of the work on my house?

Here is my master list (in progress) … some of the stuff may seem out of order and may get re-arranged down the road, but this is how I envision it going right now:

1. Run electric to living room of house (4 outlets and 1 light switch)
2. Seal/fill the gaps and cracks in the chimney
3. Frame out the area around the chimney
4. Finish all the demolition in the open areas (not kitchen)
- a. Expose the remaining brick in the stairwell
- b. Expose the brick on the wall joining the kitchen and living room
- c. Expose the brick under the stairwell
- d. Remove the wall under the stairwell to the basement stairwell
- e. Tear up flooring
5. Have HVAC duct work installed
6. Frame out remainder of the alley wall
7. Level the ceiling in between the living room and dining room
8. Hang the living room ceiling
9. Drywall the living room around the chimney
10. Run electric to the dining room (# outlets TBD, 1 ceiling fan/light)

That’s really all I have right now. I guess I can't really call it a master list since I don't have everything planned and I am pretty much doing what I can until more money starts growing on the trees I planted out back.

My big thing is that I want to have all the demolition listed above finished by mid April so I can have it cleaned up and removed before Vanessa comes to visit at the end of the month. I also want to have the living room in a relatively finished state even if it's not being done in the typical order so I have something to look at and motivate me to do the rest.

This whole experience is a, learn as you go, do what you can, when you can type thing and I really wouldn't have it any other way … it just wouldn't be my style. Of course, if someone wanted to buy me a complete house, I wouldn't turn it down.

More house work (but not much)

Wednesday's volleyball match went well and we defeated the other team fairly easily. Unfortunately, the game was early and I didn't have any time to work on the house because the team goes out after for some food and drinks. Last night I made plans to go to Pho Dat Thahn in Columbia and have my first pho experience; it was really good and I am looking forward to trying different places now. The plans weren't until 8 so I decided to get some simple work done.

I figured it would be easy to cut the iron pipes in the living room that were running to the radiator in the bedroom. Well, I guess I am just a dumb ass because it took about 30 minutes to get through one pipe (I was using a hacksaw because I didn't feel like spending money on something better). Halfway through the second pipe I gave up and decided to do something else until I got a better saw. The failed pipe cutting results:



I grabbed the crowbar and decided to see how well the plaster was adhered to the front wall. To my surprise, most of the upper portion came off very easily. I didn't want to get too dirty since I was going out to dinner, so I just pulled off the pieces that were loose and decided to move to the kitchen. Front wall:



I only had about 20 minutes before I had to leave to get to Pho Dat and decided to detach the radiator in my kitchen. That was easy, but moving it proved to be a lot more difficult for just me. The feet of the radiator were set into holes in the floor, which made me have to lift it out so that I could slide it over. It got done, and I amazingly didn't get dirty in the process. Now I am looking forward to the time when I have to clean that wall (as you can see below).





I picked up a reciprocating saw and a metal blade so I hope to accomplish a lot this weekend.

Radiator #2 ain't got nothing

Day two of the radiator removal project happened to take a lot less time than I planned but involved a lot of effort. The radiator in my room is shorter than the one in the living room, but it is a little longer and felt about twice as heavy, probably because I had to get it down a flight of stairs. Other than the few dents in my stairs, it wasn't really that bad ... Newman and I just tipped it down and rocked it back and forth until we reached the bottom. I am not sure what I am going to do with the extra space in my room, but now my bed frame will fit without having to worry about it getting scratched by the radiator.


Pre-removal


Post-removal


That's a lot of iron

My next step is to remove the radiator from the kitchen and then start cutting the pipes and taking those out. I'm not going to be able to do that tonight since I am going to the Terps - Wake Forest game. The next chance I'll get to work on it is Thursday because of volleyball tomorrow, but maybe if I don't go out after the match (or don't go out for too long), I'll be able to do part of it.

I am going to leave the radiator in the basement for a while because there is no way I am carrying that up the stairs. I'll take it out the back and bring it through the alley whenever I decide to take the radiators to the scrap yard.

Weekend House Progress

I got a lot of work (for me) done on my house Sunday. I have all 4 recessed lighting housings up in my living room and just need to wire them; which I am planning on doing tonight. I am not going to completely hook them up yet until I frame out the front wall and I am not going to be able to do that until I expose the brick and remove the radiator piping to the second floor.


Now all I need is power going to these

As far as removing the radiators, I was able to drain them fairly easily. The water that came out was pretty nasty and had an awful odor. It took about an hour to drain all 4 and I was able to make use of the tub in the basement as a drain. After draining them I disconnected the one in the living room (since it wouldn't matter if a bunch of nasty water leaked there) as a test to see if they were actually empty. There was a little water left inside but I was able to drain that by tipping the radiater into a bucket. Not sure how heavy the radiators are, but I am going to go with 300+ pounds. I'm pretty sure the one in the basement is going to need to be taken out back and through the alley.


The faucet connection was not that great


Anyone thirsty?


There used to be a 300 pound hunk of iron here


Now I can start exposing that wall so I can frame it out

Also, I found something I can do when I am bored or only have a few minutes to work on something. I grabbed my golf club cleaning brush to clear off a chunk of plaster on the brick and decided it would be a good way to prep the brick on the wall I am going to leave exposed. It's not fast, but I can be more detailed and take extra care on the spots that have loose mortar. I bought a couple brass wire brushes so they wouldn't be too abrasive and the results turned out great.


Brick with the left-over plaster on it


More brick & plaster


Brick after cleaning it up

Getting back to Work

So I got back to work on my house a little bit and now I feel like I'm motivated to work at it on a consistent basis.

I bought six of these and an going to put four of them up tonight in the front part of the living room and two of them in the back narrow half (where the stairs take up some of the room width). I need to determine how I want them to be controlled so I can run the electric and buy switches and boxes. I think I am going to put the front four on a dimmer and the back two separate since the front is going to be the TV room and I'll have my desk or small dining table in the back. I spent about two hours in bed reading up on wiring standards and I am going to draw out a plan before I do anything since I also need to incorporate the stairwell light.



I also got bored and decided to take down one of the kitchen cabinets (just for fun) since I am going to replace the entire kitchen after doing the living room. This is what I found:





I just downloaded Google's Sketch program and am trying to draw floor plans and will give you an idea of my end goal once I have it out of my head.

House Post #5 - Main Floor Demo (pt. 1)

If you look at the original main floor house post, you will see that the right wall is covered with 70's era wood paneling (I really don't know if it is 70's era, but that is the time period I picture it being put up during). My first construction/demolition projects on my house were taking down the drop ceiling, removing these wood panels, and getting a feel for the time and effort required to expose all the brick on the first floor (minus the kitchen at this point). The drop ceiling and wood panels were easy and took little effort (but created a lot of waste). When I got to the plaster on the wall, removing it became a bit more difficult and exponetially more messy. I got through a section of the wall and decided I would wait until I get one of those portable dumpsters that my neighbors will hate because it will take up three spaces in front of my house. Here is what it looks like so far:

As you can see the fireplace was closed up and the chimney is currently used as the exhaust for the gas water heater and boiler (which is not currently running). Yes, that black spot above the fireplace is a hole where a deteriorated brick fell out. Great ... now I have exhaust fumes flowing into my living room everytime I use some hot water. I bought some mortar last night and will make an attempt at patching it (temporary solution) for the time being. I'll let you know how that turns out.