priming, mudding, and home-made scaffolding

So this past week, we did a lot of little odds and ends stuff. We tried our third method of getting the drywall off and the wallpaper in the second room was on there even better.

That little spot took me over an hour. My dad made the executive decision that we weren't taking the wallpaper off. And at that point, I really had to agree with him. It's not ideal, but we were going to end up replacing all of the drywall with the damage we were doing to it.

He sent me to Benjamin Moore and I bought Insl-x Odorless Primer/Sealer that seals surfaces. We spent the larger part of Saturday/Sunday figuring this out and priming the walls.

This is a view of the corner. You can see the original wallpaper (that has been painted black) and then the primer we applied. We took turns trimming and then rolling it on. We painted a layer of that, and my dad is currently taping and mudding, and mudding and taping, every single seam of wallpaper. Then he is going back over it with a skim coat of drywall mud. Hopefully it will be sealed tight after that. We can just pray.

I want to help tape and mud, but I have been assigned to the closets, where there are a few small holes. Sigh. I guess you have to start somewhere. And to be honest, I probably don't want my limited experience with drywall mud showcased on the walls!

They took a break and while I trimmed, my dad and Leo covered up the hole from the whole-house fan with drywall.

And once again, he will have to tape and mud those seams! 

Then he started on the plaster. This is were it gets interesting, let me tell you. Most of the walls upstairs are new drywall. Except for right by the stairs. That is the area where moisture got in from one of the holes in the roof, so it is peeling on the wall and ceiling. He pulled the top layer off and guess what comes next? Even more taping and mudding. But wait, how does one reach the ceiling and wall over the stairs? Where it is 17 feet tall? Well, that's where the "home-made scaffolding" in the title comes in.

So I walk in after school on Monday and this is what I see rigged up on my staircase. 

It's a good thing this isn't a business, because I'm pretty sure that would not be OSHA approved :) But I must say creative, and it was actually quite sturdy. Much better than anything I would have come up with, that's for sure. Here are the walls, after preliminary taping and mudding.

That is about it for now. They did completely finish the roof and gutters late this afternoon. I will have to take pictures of the final result tomorrow! Now, if this weather would just stabilize, we could start on the outside and do some landscaping and cleaning! I feel kind of useless on the taping and mudding front.

Well, tomorrow is FRIDAY! Which not only means it's the weekend, but that the UK vs UofL game is on!! It is going to be intense, and I can't wait to watch it with my family! 

I hope you all have a great Friday!

-Katie

windows and attic fans

On Tuesday, we decided to start working on two things, the windows in the master and the attic fan.

First we tackled the attic fan. These were installed as an alternative to air conditioning, as it is a much cheaper alternative to air-conditioning. Some people still use them today for not only the cheaper costs, but also as a green alternative to air conditioning. It works by sucking the hot air out of the house and into the attic. From the attic, the theory is that the hot air will leave through the soffits and vents. Soooo, why not keep it? Here is a picture of ours.

There are three main reasons I want it gone. 

1) I'm not big on the aesthetics of it. It may be vain, but I don't like the industrial feel of it. 

2) If you can see the dark black spots, that is ALL DUST. Dust, dust, dust. I am not the world's biggest fan (haha) of dusting, and that is for sure a dust collection pit. No thanks.

3) It is LOUD!!! I have only heard it once, when our realtor Tyler opened it during our first viewing. That was enough for me. The thing is loud. It has probably gotten louder with age, but I just cannot imagine having that noise running for the majority of the summer.

So we took it out from up above in the attic. Well, Leo and my Dad did while I took pictures :)

View of the fan from the attic. Even more dust. 

It was attached with pieces of 2 by 4 and screws. They just split the wood until it was no longer attached.

And its out.

This is the cavity and the vent opening that you see from the second floor.

One thing is for sure, this project is definitely testing my limited ability with lighting on my camera.

So the fan itself is out, and the next step will be to take out the vent and drywall/patch in the hole. I will definitely post that when it happens (hopefully soon!).

Next we went to the master bedroom and started taking out the windows. These windows were directly under the hole in the roof of the back of the house. They were damaged by the water that got in when it rained. We are taking them all out, scraping, sanding, and in some instances repairing them.  Some of the pieces have very early stages of wood rot from the moisture. 

We can save them though. I love the original windows. Leo is quickly getting tired of that word and my fascination with it. Original. But the original features are what gives it character! 

So what about energy efficiency? There is an good article about how if you properly restore old windows and add storm windows (which has already been done), the efficiency of old to new windows is almost the same. The author, Sarah Donahue Wolff, states that "Historic windows used in combination with storm windows have been shown to have even better insulating properties than double-pane windows..." Original wins again :)

For now, I am just posting the before pictures and a couple of pictures from the process of taking them out. We have sent some of them to Watson's Screen and Window Repair for broken glass and new glazing, which helps seal in the window. The other ones we will scrape, sand, and repaint ourselves.

This wooden frame was exposed to a lot of moisture from the leaky roof. Now that everything is dry, the paint is drying and peeling off.

Results of my preliminary scrapings before the window was taken out.

You have to take out the trim, which are holding in the windows and gives it a finished edge. We also had to remove the parting stop to get the top windows out. That was the tricky part! We broke all of them except one. They were very brittle from the water damage. These can be replaced.

After you clear the trim (usually you only have to do one side) and the parting stop, you CAREFULLY remove the upper window. If you aren't careful, it could fall out of the frame.

There are a total of five windows on this wall. We took out the three on the left. The only things left in these are the storm windows.

Windows free from the frame. These will have to be scraped, sanded, and painted. The actual glass is still good.

That was a long post again! Hopefully, we will get a lot done this weekend. We are going to try to finish up the attic fan/vent problem, as well as try to figure out this wallpaper dilemma. We are still deciding...to leave or not to leave the wallpaper? I really don't want to leave it. But I also don't want damaged walls like in the side bedroom. But we have to decide this weekend so we can move forward!

-Katie

shingles and wallpaper!

Hey guys! It has been wayyy too long since I have posted anything! I have been working a lot on the Hispanic Health Fair that my class in Bowling Green is organizing....very exciting but a lot of work!

So I looked at the last post (because I honestly couldn't remember the condition it was in when I last posted!) and a lot has happened since then! They completely finished the roof and shingles so we are leak free!

This isn't the best angle but the hole is GONE!!!

These are two close ups of the soffits that have been wrapped (first in the front and then in the back)

They are still working on wrapping the soffits and then have to do the gutters. We are hoping it will be done by Friday!

So over the weekend, my Dad and I went to the house for a bit and he wanted to take the molding off of one of the upstairs bedrooms (the one that is in the worse shape). Here are some "before" shots of the room (when the house was an apartment in the 70s, this room was the kitchen. Hence the floor):

This is the first initial view into the room

A closer view. Those white lines are where someone was attempting to mud the seams...because that is actually wallpaper.

Apparently some graffiti inclined teenager got ahold of the walls.

The heart is a sweet touch, no?

So that is basically the room. My dad wanted to take off the molding that isn't quite at the top of the ceiling. Once he did that, it opened the seam of the wallpaper (because it only went up to the molding). So I decided to try and talk the wallpaper off. I certainly opened a lovely can of worms. 

First, the upstairs is drywall, which is unusual in a house this old. Houses like this normally have plaster walls. However, there was a fire in the upstairs with some water damage, so they replaced the walls with drywall. On the one hand this is great, because most of the walls now contain insulation (another feature rarely found in older homes). On the other hand, not so great for stripping wallpaper. Plaster is hard and can take the scraping and peeling. Drywall cannot. It came off easy at first, just a few minor spots...so my Dad went up to the attic to work on an insulation situation and left me to finish. And this is the result.

I pretty much tore the wall up! Obviously not my intent, but I felt like once I started, I had to finish. 

And I was taking a picture and noticed blood on the wall.

And then I realized I had scraped by fingers but didn't realize it. Obviously didn't hurt much, it was just yucky, I couldn't get it off of the wall...and of course I received a Dad lecture about wearing my work gloves.

That is a view of the other side of the room. Obviously at some point there was a decent size hole that they mudded and patched up. The wallpaper would not come off of that section.

So my Dad was none to happy about the walls either. He is going to have to tape, mud, and skim over the entire mess. However, if all goes according to plan, the condition of most the walls in this room won't be too important, which is why we started here. I was vehemently opposed to leaving the wallpaper on the walls and having my Dad skim (put a light layer of drywall mud) over it. After this process, and seeing the damage that occurred, I've changed my mind. He can skim over the wallpaper  all he wants!!

Leo, my dad, and myself all went over today and did some work on the master windows, but I will save that for tomorrow. This post is already entirely too long! Thanks for reading!

-Katie

roof update

I just wanted to give a short update on the roof--not much has happened. There are shingles on everything except for the small back porch and the side facing the street. They weren't able to work today because of the rain and crazy winds. Hopefully they can get a lot done tomorrow!

Here is a front view of the house.

You can see in this up close shot where they had to replace some of the fascia (the front part with the new wood) and also the soffit (on the porch)

 And here is a picture with the new (the right side) and the old (the left side).

I can't wait to see the entire thing complete, everything wrapped and the gutters on! I'm getting antsy to start on other parts of the house :)

-Katie

the roof!

So they started on the roof this past Friday! I wanted to wait to post until they made more progress to do a post, and they are definitely making progress!

We are having Travis Skimmerhorn of Skimmerhorn Contracting do the roof. They have been great with working around the weather and us needing to get the holes covered up in case of rain! So on Friday/Saturday they pretty much reconstructed the entire back of the roof. They had to take off both layers of shingles (the original wood ones and the asphalt ones), put up plywood, and then re-shingle it all.

I should have gotten on top of the garage to show the wooden slats in more detail, but I didn't think of it! There are shingles everywhere.

Here is an upclose of the old "slats" they used originally. You can also see the plywood they are putting over it.

Here they are working on getting the paper down over the plywood before it starts raining.

 So high up--they were scaring me!

 Andddd the new roof! It looks REALLY gray in the picture but its actually quite black.

Here is the work that they did today! They worked on the front and right side. I really hope they get the other side done before it rains on Wednesday! I'm sure they will!!

That's it for today! It's late and it has been a long day, so I'm ready for bed :)

I hope you all had a great Monday!!

-Katie

Basement Demo

This past weekend we did some work on the basement and pretty much ripped everything out! There was what looked like a dance floor and a kitchen/bar area with a big table in the middle. We kept the table for a work bench, but we ripped everything else out! 

The eventual plan is to make it a finished basement-drywall on the walls and ceilings, and new flooring and lighting. I didn't get there is time to take a picture of the floor before my Dad started ripping it up, but I was able to get one shot of what was left.

What was left of the "dance" floor when I arrived...there were lots of interesting stains, that's for sure :)

 Once all of the floor was up, we moved our attention to the wall. We want an open design, so we tore it down. It didn't take long, but I learned a valuable lesson...

The wall before

My failed attempt in action

So the picture on the left is my attempt in about a minute. The one on the right is my Dad's side in about the same amount of time. Lesson? While hitting a wall over and over again with a sledge hammer may feel good, using your brain gets demo done much faster. He made a couple of simple holes and then started just ripping the drywall off. Much more effective. Then, we were able to easily knock my side down from his exposed side.

Down to the studs

Then, we started on taking down the old cabinets.

And the cabinets are gone :) 

Tomorrow, they are going to start on the roof. Here are a few more pictures of the roof on the back of the house that has the second hole, which I didn't post the other day:

Back of the house

Detail of the damage

Shingles falling in

Different angle

Gutters falling off

Soffit

You can click on the pictures to make them even bigger!

I can't wait to see the new roof going up! It's going to make such a difference! I will post pictures of the progress and post them this weekend.

Thanks for reading! I hope you are all are having a great week!