Friday, July 21, 2006
The Next Project
Of course, once the roof was done it was time to move on to the next project. I had actually already started on this one though, since we skipped one weekend in between doing the two sides of the roof.
Once we got the carpet installed in the living room, and moved the furniture, I cleaned out the small bedroom we had been using as a living room, and started moving the stuff from the den into that room. By the time we had the roof done, I had the den ready to be gutted.
So, with the roof done, and the 4th of July Holiday coming in a few days, I started on the den.
The first part was removing the wall and closets. Then removed the carpet – at some point there was foam backed carpet glued to the floor. The carpet had been removed, but the foam was still there. Then new carpet had been laid down using the old foam for a pad. We’ll be scraping the old foam off at some point in the future.
This time I closed off the den from the rest of the house. I knew it would be very messy, and I didn’t want that crap (literally) all over the house.
Removing the sheetrock from the walls was pretty easy. Only a small part of the wall (adjoining the two story section) had cellulose insulation to deal with.
Then came the nasty part. What did you do for the 4th of July? I cleaned insulation and raccoon scat out of my attic – ICK!!!!
I tried pulling down a small section and climbing up to scoop out the insulation like I had done in other areas.
But the attic space was too shallow to make that work, so I gave up and started just pulling it down and cleaning it up afterwards.
Once we got all the sheetrock down, we realized we had a problem with the rafters.
Not a whole lot of support there – we decided to replace all the ceiling joists and tie them in to the rafters to give them more support (and to secure those that had already cracked). No wonder the roof was bouncy!
Now that the ceiling was removed, we finally had access to install the venting for the kitchen fan. It’s part of the microwave.
By early July, we were working on the new ceiling joists.
We were having temps upper 90’s to low 100’s, so we weren’t working all that fast.
Since my hubby likes to sleep late in the morning, and I don’t, I started removing the siding on the front of the house. This needed to be done because there were some wires running on the outside of the house that we needed to move to the inside, and we needed to do that while we had the den gutted.
I sure don’t like going up that high on the ladder!
We did discover that the wires had been severed between the two heaters. We had figured that happened, as the second heater didn’t work, and the hole for the TV cables had been drilled in about the same spot we figured the wires were – and we were right.
Yup – 220 for the heaters, drilled right through. Bad thing is that no one ever disconnected the wire, so it had been hot and bare for years. Siding was all black on the back side – surprised no one electrocuted themselves with this trick (and yes, we have talked to the person who actually did this- he said he “thought” he might have hit the wire when he drilled the hole . . .)
Well, anyway, for that weekend we got the new joists installed
And the front of the house wrapped. I have to do the soffits before I can do any siding. Eventually we will move/replace windows, but I was sick of looking at the old siding.
Once we got the carpet installed in the living room, and moved the furniture, I cleaned out the small bedroom we had been using as a living room, and started moving the stuff from the den into that room. By the time we had the roof done, I had the den ready to be gutted.
So, with the roof done, and the 4th of July Holiday coming in a few days, I started on the den.
The first part was removing the wall and closets. Then removed the carpet – at some point there was foam backed carpet glued to the floor. The carpet had been removed, but the foam was still there. Then new carpet had been laid down using the old foam for a pad. We’ll be scraping the old foam off at some point in the future.
This time I closed off the den from the rest of the house. I knew it would be very messy, and I didn’t want that crap (literally) all over the house.
Removing the sheetrock from the walls was pretty easy. Only a small part of the wall (adjoining the two story section) had cellulose insulation to deal with.
Then came the nasty part. What did you do for the 4th of July? I cleaned insulation and raccoon scat out of my attic – ICK!!!!
I tried pulling down a small section and climbing up to scoop out the insulation like I had done in other areas.
But the attic space was too shallow to make that work, so I gave up and started just pulling it down and cleaning it up afterwards.
Once we got all the sheetrock down, we realized we had a problem with the rafters.
Not a whole lot of support there – we decided to replace all the ceiling joists and tie them in to the rafters to give them more support (and to secure those that had already cracked). No wonder the roof was bouncy!
Now that the ceiling was removed, we finally had access to install the venting for the kitchen fan. It’s part of the microwave.
By early July, we were working on the new ceiling joists.
We were having temps upper 90’s to low 100’s, so we weren’t working all that fast.
Since my hubby likes to sleep late in the morning, and I don’t, I started removing the siding on the front of the house. This needed to be done because there were some wires running on the outside of the house that we needed to move to the inside, and we needed to do that while we had the den gutted.
I sure don’t like going up that high on the ladder!
We did discover that the wires had been severed between the two heaters. We had figured that happened, as the second heater didn’t work, and the hole for the TV cables had been drilled in about the same spot we figured the wires were – and we were right.
Yup – 220 for the heaters, drilled right through. Bad thing is that no one ever disconnected the wire, so it had been hot and bare for years. Siding was all black on the back side – surprised no one electrocuted themselves with this trick (and yes, we have talked to the person who actually did this- he said he “thought” he might have hit the wire when he drilled the hole . . .)
Well, anyway, for that weekend we got the new joists installed
And the front of the house wrapped. I have to do the soffits before I can do any siding. Eventually we will move/replace windows, but I was sick of looking at the old siding.
# posted by Cathy @ 10:09 PM 
