A Crack House Rehab Project

Week 10 December 5th - 11th, 2006

Tuesday December 5th

With the bin sitting out front and only available to us for a couple of weeks, we feel the need to fill it so we went over Tuesday.

Andreas and I stayed in the kitchen, removing the last of the lath on the south wall, the rest of the kitchen cabinets (needles), the bathroom vanity (oh yes, more needles), the plaster/drywall on the east wall of the bathroom and all the plaster on the ceiling in the kitchen.    We uncovered the window in the kitchen too, it was drywalled over. We knew it was there, because you could see it from the back!

Just when you think you have had enough (for the day that is) I get curious to see what's under the floor. Now, the kitchen floor has got to be about 2 inches higher than the hallway that runs into it. Also when the bead board was removed, and a strip of wood along the floor that it was secured to, there remained a trench along the south wall. I had been down on my hands and knees digging out plaster from this moat so my interest was piqued as to just what was laid down on the floor.

You could see right off that the "tile" of the top layer was just peel and stick onto sheets of plywood.   Once the cabinets were all removed some carpet showed through. Hmm, fabulous...carpet.

Anyway, it must have been close to 9pm but A and I just wanted to pull one piece of the tile/plywood up so we could see what was underneath.   It was a bit of an effort, but up came the 4' x 8' sheet and... yes, it was ripe under there.

Well, once that was up I wanted to see what was under the carpet. That was a bit of a job too, since it was nailed down in random places.

Have I mentioned before the use of nails and screws in this house over the years? I suspect it is mostly in the newer, sketchy renovations that were done, but in one instance you will have 4 1-inch nails holding on drywall that practically falls off the wall in full size sheets...then you get quarter round nailed on with massive 3 inch nails.

It's bizarre and can be a crap shoot when you think 'oh, this won't take but a minute to pull down...' But I digress.

The carpet was nailed, some places right through to the vent below so with 2" of flooring and then some, you can imagine the nails were not little.

Once the carpet was peeled back, there were orange and cream tiles underneath (I've seen these before - I think under the tub in the upstairs bath). These tiles were loose from previous water damage so being the uncoverer that I am, I pull a few off, then there a layer of thin wood, so I snap some of that off, then there is a layer of white linoleum. Hmm, I think, and dig under that: I went through several more layers until I hit upon some perfectly preserved newspaper. At that point I would have stayed until midnight to investigate but we still had a run to the dump to make and so called it a night.

Wednesday December 6th

Back again, armed with the camera and tripod and a plan to excavate the kitchen floor layers. This took a couple of hours, minus 20 minutes or so when Erin and her dad Pem came to load up his truck with drywall and take it to the dump for us.

In all there was tile, plywood, carpet, tile, thin wood, 4 layers of linoleum and then newspaper. December 1932.

Meanwhile, Andreas pulled down drywall and plaster on two of the three remaining walls in the dining room.

We quit early to go eat dinner with Erin, Pem, Sarah and Al.

Friday December 7th, 2006

Jordan had a day off work so he offered to work on the house...not ones to say no to such a generous offer Andreas and he spent quite a few hours filling the remainder of the bin. Essentially they got all the 'white' down from ceiling and walls - meaning all plaster & drywall is gone from the main floor as well now!!

Also, they took some pictures of the layers of floor, with numbers on them to indicate all the different flooring types.

Now the dumpster is full and it will be taken away next week. I suspect there will not be much done over the next while because of the holidays.