Laundry room update! Demo day is complete, and it's starting to look like a real room again. And - we have a fully functional door where the disgusting window was!
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| Monday |
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| Friday |
They honestly moved a lot faster than I thought they would. By Monday afternoon they had the whole thing demo'd, and that was absolutely disgusting. Thank goodness we sealed that room off from the rest of the house, and the HVAC system.
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| Midway through demo on Monday |
We took the ceiling down because I was SURE we'd find mold and water damage up there. I mean partially because one day three years ago I came home from a CrossFit Games trip to find 2" of rainwater in my laundry baskets sitting on the counter, and no indication where it came from. We've fixed the roof since then, but still, I just had a feeling.
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| And I was REALLY REALLY wrong. If you look closely, the bottom chords of the truss are actual two inch lumber notched into the brick. I knew the floor joists were built like that, but I've never seen the top of a wall built like that. They really don't build em liked they used to! |
It was perfect under there! No signs of mold or water damage, and the decking looked like it'd been put up yesterday, not 130 years ago. So thanks to not having to do anything else up there, they were able to keep rolling.
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| My walls really are solid stone. No studs! |
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| #nailedit on the height of the porch steps we poured two years ago |
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| We only ended up having a plywood door for one night, which is well under the two weeks I expected to have one. Last time we replaced an exterior door, we had to rebuild a lot of masonry around it and that had to cure for a long time. |
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| Dooooooooooooooooooor! From now until this project is done, I have to carry my laundry out the back of the house and through this door. Really a small price to pay. |
That's all that's getting done this week, my GC asked if it was okay for them to go take care of this other customer today and tomorrow, they have this lady who has been living with NO interior doors for months while her order got hung up by coronavirus, and her doors are finally in. I said go take care of her, I am in no hurry to get this project done. This GC and I have an amazing working relationship as a result of doing our $120,000 big renovation together five years ago, and it means SO much to have someone I trust doing all this.
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| August of 2015, that's him in the blue checked shirt talking to the HVAC guys about how the F we were going to run ducts in this house. Our GC is a second generation contractor who knows everyone in this town, and it pays off in how well he knows everyone and how much cheaper he's able to get subs than anyone else, if it's something his crew can't do themselves, that is |
So they moved my w/d back into the room so I can do laundry this weekend and called it a week. My poor washer and dryer are going to be doing a lot of back and forth until the tile floor is done.
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| New ceiling! Insulation is getting blown in up there sometime soon, and we're actually having them do the whole house while they're at it. And by that, I mean ceilings only, when you have solid stone walls it's not like you can insulate them! |
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| Just a hint of the brick threshold showing. Hopefully once it's clean and the tile is laid you'll be able to see the strip of red more clearly |
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| Like the shelves in our master closet, the chair rail was hung off giant pieces of wood stuck into the plaster and brick! Crazy! No nails to speak of |
This weekend I'm finishing up the platform the washer and dryer will rest on, and then next week should be a full week of drywall!
That looks so terrific!
ReplyDeleteWhat do you think ended up causing the water in your laundry baskets? Leaking roofs are one of my biggest fears, and I know I have a slow ice dam related leak in our sleeping porch that I have to deal with this summer...
Right above that spot is where the 1890 kitchen joins the 1938 addition, and there's a big triangular metal piece over that spot. What I think happened is after that rainwater incident, I had that metal piece taken out and replaced, and we discovered it only went a couple of inches up under the siding above the spot where the rainwater got into the laundry baskets, so I *think* maybe some leaves got stuck in the channel and forced rainwater up under the siding which came down into the laundry room. We replaced that metal piece with one that goes much higher up under the siding and I've also tried to be diligent about clearing the leaves out of that spot (which thankfully it's pretty easy to get to). So we were fairly sure we caught the problem, but I wasn't sure that there weren't any lingering issues caused by that situation (and thankfully there weren't).
DeleteSo nice to be prepared for problems only to not find any! Much nicer than the reverse anyway, haha.
ReplyDeleteThat's how we've approached everything in this house, and it's served us SO well. Much better to plan for and budget for the worst and then be pleasantly surprised than to have that "HGTV show moment" where the contractor says "...we have a problem..."
DeleteGreat to not have mold and water damage in the ceiling area. And thanks for answering the insulation question - I was wondering about that! ;-)
ReplyDeleteYeah! It's fascinating. Solid masonry walls don't have the highest R value, but they do have very high thermal mass, so the house heats and cools more slowly than the air around it, so we have to run our HVAC system less to maintain a consistent temperature than a similarly-sized stick built house does. Our combined gas/electric utility bills for this 3,300 sqft house with two HVAC systems range between a low of $125/month and a high of $300/month, and that's before we add attic insulation to get to the recommended amount for this area. It's not bad at all.
DeleteIt's going to be so nice!
ReplyDeleteThank you, I hope so! I'm starting to be able to feel the space better now that we're making actual progress.
DeleteProgress is always so exciting.
ReplyDeleteDefinitely. Each new step getting done is like soothing to my brain.
DeleteSo cool!
ReplyDeleteFor sure, feels so good!
DeleteI'm always amazed at how fast these things happen! The finishing work is always the part that drags along, but the major stuff just seems to go so quickly. Looking great! And I'm really glad you kept the arch on the outside. I love the way it looks!
ReplyDeleteUgh, tell me about it, we're not too far away from being massively delayed due to IKEA being totally shut down.
DeleteWow that's a lot of progress already! So cool!
ReplyDelete