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.