All interior walls are built and the front wall is destroyed

Sorry for the delay between posts, between my gov. job, the family and the remodeling I have been keeping really busy. Since the last post quite a bit of work has been done on the house. The contractor has finished building the stairs and framing all the interior walls. Before each of those two items began we made sure to draw the walls on the floor and I spoke to the workers in Spanish to ensure our instructions were understood. Grandpa then supervised the work throughout the week and was able to catch a few mistakes the guys made. Another big difference was he was able to have them shorten the bathroom width by six inches and let the master bedroom expand a little more.

While the Contractor was doing his thing my Dad has completed several jobs that are aimed at saving big $$$. First he began by repointing the rear brick wall. Repointing means that he dug out all the old mortar between the old bricks and pushed in new mortar to re-stengthen the wall. The wall was so bad that in some places the bricks were actually loose and easily removed by hand. My Dad was basically the first person in 100 years to do substantial work to that wall. It was a five day job that cost us around $125 in materials and saved about $6000 in potential contractor charges.

The second big job my father completed was patching the hole in the roof left by the removal of the second chimney. While the contract stated the contractor had to removethe second chimney, it did not state he had to patch the hole. Yet again another reason YOU MUST ensure your contract covers every possible aspect of work. So my Dad framed the hole, patched with some old wood, bought the roofing material and completed the waterproof patch. This week he plans on applying a tar like coating to the roof to re-seal everything and close up any missed leaks.

Yesterday we spent our Sunday by going to Lowes and buying all the materials needed to complete our vinyl fence/garage door and fireplace projects. After buying around $2000 in materials we rented a truck, loaded everything and delivered it to the house. The plan is for my Dad to finish the fence, garage and framing the fireplace this week. Following those three things we can hopefully install the wire this weekend. As always thanks for checking out our blog, take care.

Floors and walls!

Well in the last 10 or so days a lot has happened in the house.  Where to start?  Well the weekend before last my father and I completed our four day project of bricking up a 10'x3.5' section of the back wall that had been previously filled with cement blocks.  We had to rent a truck from Home Depot and ended up buying 300 bricks and aound 800 lbs of mortar.  I'll be the first to admit we are amateur brick layers, but overall we saved $2000.

The majority of last week, the contractors were focused on replacing all the second level floor joists.  After several failed attempts at leveling the 100 year old bowing originals, I forked over $1500 more and the contractor installed all new double joists.  With the new joists in place, they layed the plywood down on the second level.  At the same time as the plywood the frame for the saircase was cut and placed on the wall.

Over the weekend tropical storm Hana passed through the DC area and dumped a ton of rain.  Expecting the worst, my Dad and I headed to the house early Saturday morning and ended up placing buckets under five leaks in the roof.  Three of the leaks we actually created earlier from removing pipes and a chimney, but the other two must have been that way for some time.  We also tried plugging a hole in the broken gutter and tried to minimize the water that was running down the back wall.  So sometime in the next few weeks, we will have to get on the roof and patch of the holes and leaks, before the oak hardwood floors are installed.  The gutter will be replaced sometime in the next few months by the contractor.

With the framing almost complete (two closets left), hopefully the contractor can move onto finishing the staircase this week. We are still trying to iron out all the details will DEMOLISHING the front wall of the house. Overall it is going to cost about $14000 and should take two to three weeks. Of course I'll write more soon when we have a plan.