“The major difference between a thing that might go wrong and a thing that cannot possibly go wrong is that when a thing that cannot possibly go wrong goes wrong it usually turns out to be impossible to get at, or repair” Douglas Adams
At this point I am fairly certain that the person who came up with 'When it rains, it pours', lived in Our Little 1900's house. We started the demolition downstairs this weekend and boy oh boy were we in for one surprise after another.
My constant chant throughout this entire process has been 'This needs to be done.' And while smashing through all of that teal tile felt really good- I must say I was a little surprised to see exactly how much work this demo was going to be.
We managed to hit a top layer of teal tile, mortar, mesh wire, a second layer of white tile, mortar, clay sheet rock, 2nd layer of mesh, paper insulation, lathe slats and finally... a wall stud! Thats right people... Nine layers before we even shed light on a single stud.
Galvinized piping under the sink proved easy to remove, since these two pipes didn't have a proper connection, they were just barely touching.
Its a good thing we rarely used this bathroom. The drain pipe literally crumbled in our hands as we were disconnecting it.
Tearing through the layers.
Lots of water damage to the pipes around the sink, not to mention spotty plumbing work.
I was thrilled to see what was under this corner since it had always been tiled in... we will make good use of that space in my new bathroom!
Pittsburgh Steeltex paper insulation.
The brown clay sheetrock makes a huge dusty mess throughout the entire house.
The first load off to the dump weighing in around 1100 pounds worth of tile!
Back to work again on Sunday..
We tore out the mold damage on the ceiling to find that the above bathroom had a pipe in the floor that was leaking down into the ceiling of this one. Its a slow drip but still I was so happy we caught it in time.
A closer look at the leaky ceiling pipe...
End of Day Two for work, still tons to do.
Meanwhile at some point during the demolition the plaster in the theater room decided to fall off.
Today I decided to get crackin' again on the upstairs guest room... A few days ago I repainted the room a soft gray color. I had a little fun too while I was at it. :)
The original color...
The after color! Its much softer and looks lovely with natural lighting (this picture has a flash to it so it looks a bit washed out!)
After Mr.Major sanded the floor.
After I stained the floor.
Tomorrow I will apply three top layers of polyurethane and 24 hours later its as if those icky white floors never existed! Well. In this room at least. The master bedrooms is another story all together.
"Our house... had a heart and a soul... it was one of us, and we were in its confidence and lived in its grace and in the peace of its benedictions." Mark Twain
I hope that all is well in your world.
Victoria,
ReplyDeleteYou and Jon are the among the bold, the few that dare to venture into another world - that of old home restorations/renovations which always leads to MORE old home restorations/renovations. WOW! What a job that demo turned into. I'm glad you had more muscle power to help. If you managed to save 4 pieces of teal tile you could make a sign for the door and spell out BATH. Like the gray in the guest room and the floors look great!
Your Friend,
Deborah
Hi Victoria- thanks for leaving me a linky but it seems to point me directly to your main page rather than the vintage sign you were trying to direct me to. Can you repost?
ReplyDeletePS: good luck with your bathroom - im sure it will be worth the work when its all done.
Victoria,
ReplyDeleteMake sure you keep little pieces of what was there before. I've got some old tile from our bathroom, a tube from the knob & tube in our wall and other various bits of "stuff". I keep it in a box and it's fun to look at once in a while to see what was here before. Before we put the last piece of drywall in the kitchen we each put something in there that represented our life. Matt put a computer magazine, Marty (who was 4) put a drawing and I put a picture of all of us. We painted on the wall in front of the cabinets our name and the date we renovated. I would have loved to find this information from the previous owners when we did the demo!
I love the floor in your bedroom, that is something we really need to do downstairs.
Have a great weekend, tomorrow is our local monthly flea market. Can you guess where I'll be!
Kathy