A few rooms

Despite record temperatures on Friday, our weekend was mild and a little overcast--in other words, an ideal weekend to spend in the basement! We are still busy with the stud installation and now we have nearly 3 of the 4 perimeter walls up and our new bathroom has taken shape with the plumbing rough-in and some new walls. We were at this stage three years ago on a different floor in a different season.

Handyman, Justin, ready to fasten in a 2x4.

 Lazyman Pongo, chillakin' with the studs.

Our new 1/2 bath, roughed and framed in. We still need to remove the window and replace it with something smaller.

Standing on the west side, in Justin's future workroom looking through the bathroom and laundry room.

Our new crawlspace access door. This will be the only access to the secret room under the front porch.

So Far So Good

Things are progressing along very well at the bungalow. We spent the weekend enjoying the new furnace at the house while doing a few smaller projects that are not on the critical path but have to be done. Knowing that we have to move soon we thought that some shelves would be a good addition to the basement so we spent Saturday putting two sets together using salvaged lumber from the old basement walls. My dad stopped by to take some measurements for the medicine cabinet he is building for us, as well as to drop off his newly rebuilt paint sprayer. Things are on track to start painting this upcoming weekend and this will make things go a lot faster. We also started the patching of the base moulding where the old electrical outlets were located.

On Sunday we felt bad about leaving our other kitten Tinkerbell at home alone so she went on a field trip to the bungalow for the day. Based on her reaction to the mess I don't think she was too impressed. Once there are counters to jump on and couches to sleep upon I'm sure it will meet her high standards. While Tink explored the house Laura and I finished the trim repair and did a big cleanup of the basement, outside and the secret room under the porch. Unfortunately there were no really cool items to come out from under the porch, just a few cool old glass jugs and jars. The rest was moldy, rotten or just gross so it went in the dumpster. Ryan, Michelle and Jill stopped by to check out our progress as well which was a nice distraction.

The drywallers are on track to be wrapped up by Friday so we can start to mask the windows and trim for the big weekend painting show. My hope is to have all of the ceilings painted and the walls of all but the smaller rooms finished as well. The cabinets are coming a week from today and I want to get the majority of the mess wrapped up before we start moving them into the house.

Hopefully the remainder of the week has a bit less drama than last week. I don't think I can take another like that!

Snow Day!

Ever wonder what your pets do when you're not home? We came home to this evidence on Monday night after spending our evening at the new house and not with the kittens. When the cats are away, the mice will play...

Demolition is still the number 1 chore and tonight we moved into the basement. This whole event was a bit tricky since it snowed about 8 inches in Seattle and the streets were in bad shape. Justin put chains on his car and we made our way, albeit slowly, over to Beacon Hill for our chance to fill up the dumpster (again!). Tomorrow is a big day for our project: bid day. Weather permitting, we'll have about a dozen contractors from various trades coming to walk through our house and give us an estimate of what it will take to do our projects. Justin is taking the day off of work to lead them through. We xeroxed a bunch of copies of our drawings and marked up the drawings to annotate our electrical outlet desires for the contractors to use in preparing their estimates. Justin has been diligently developing scopes of work for the bidders so we should be in good shape to get comprehensive quotes.

So the progress for tonight: we tore off the drywall (yeah! it's not plaster in the basement) in the front room and found a few surprises. First off, the person that "finished" the room used masking tape to finish the seams on the drywall. Second, we found a secret room. This is our first big find in the house if you don't count the dirty boy's underwear that was stashed in the attic.

Here's the front room with no drywall:

Here are some shots of the secret room, under the porch. Yes, that's more underwear you see. There are at least 2 women's slips down there, a bunch of scrap wood, some old, old boxes, a large basket, and a bunch of other things that I'll term as garbage.

A shot from the other direction:



And here's a less exciting photo of demolition in the back room. Amazingly, we found some insulation. This is it for the whole house and whomever installed it didn't do a first rate job. We found a 24" stud cavity with a 20" batt.

And, in other good news, we got our STFI Construction Permit on Wednesday. So, after we finish our demo, we're free to start construction!