December 18, 2015 

it is raining and the drywall is on its way to the house

 So like I said in my previous post lots of things have been completed. The insulation is in, and along with that the drywall is up

 

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in the window it goes

guiding the drywall in

Insulation is in

December 16, 2015


 Insulation has begun and is finished. Matter of fact it has been finished since October 21st. We hired Chey Insulation and they did a very nice job. Here are a couple pictures of the insulation process before and during. I could not stay in the building while the insulation was being sprayed it smelled awful and until it dries POSSIBLY toxic.

Building the back wall for the kitchen

Looks like the wall is melting

Spraying in the insulation

 

This is why I think it could possibly be toxic

November 1 , 2015
Wiring has kept us busy, The insulation gets sprayed very soon and we have to have all the wiring done that is on the outside walls and the ceiling of the second floor. plus get all the wires down to the junction box in the basement. It is amazing what a tangled mess it looks like but actually we know what goes where. Labeling is very important.

 

This is one piece of wiring among many others I am very glad to see go away

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Sept 13th 2015

Been a good weekend. Got quite a bit done on the shop. Spent a couple hours each night hanging the recessed light cans. We got many of them up, not all of them but the important ones to have the insulation installed. Gary finished putting up all the window headers. He is sure glad to be done with that. Now he has to reframe the door because we bought a new one and it is at the very least twelve inches bigger then the one that is there now. We got the wall framing started to close off the kitchen area we plan to tear down.

 

Here is Wayne hard at work.  He came to the shop and worked on the electricity while Gary and I played hookie for a couple of hours and watched the Bills play football. Like I said this has been a very good weekend.  The Buffalo Bills even won the game beating The Colts 14-27.  Way to go Buffalo.

Sept 5th

Yesterday we worked really hard. I was way to tired to write anything about what we did and am not so sure I have the energy tonight either. I believe I have done more knee bends in the last few days than I have any other time in my life. I put in all the switch boxes this past week, Today in order to run the wire I had to drill holes through the studs.  I am sure glad I am done with that. It was not a hard job but it is certainly rough on your knees. That is one of the reasons I did so many knee bends. Believe me it was not for exercise, I had to,to put in the switch boxes and to drill the holes. As I was drilling the holes Wayne and Gary followed behind me with the wire and pulled it through the holes to the switch boxes. We worked on all the rooms upstairs first, We did not seem to have much trouble with the outside walls. We have to get them done first to we can get the insulation put in. Then we went downstairs to do drilling and pull the wire through. We ran into one of our first issue that needed to be fixed before we could continue.

 The bay window had some very badly rotten wood that Gary had to repair. He quit pulling wire an went right to work repairing the window. As you may see he got quite messy. His face was covered in dirt from the old rotten wood. Plus if I didn't mention before We have removed all the old insulation, (sawdust). Consequently it has been very hot working in the house. Especially since we have had a very warm summer. Mostly in the 80's and 90's this year. The good news the window is fixed and he gets to move onto the next downstairs issue. The back of the kitchen is going to be torn down and he needs to replace the drooping header and put up new beams.
Wayne and I continued working on running the wire. I drilled the holes and he pulled wire through. when I finished drilling all the holes I then stapled the wire into place as needed.

 

It was not all work we did take a lunch break, Gary and I  had beefsteak sandwiches and Wayne had a corned beef sandwich at Papa Z's. Corned beef is one of my favorites I cannot for the life of me figure out why I did not order that instead and have been thinking about having one ever since. Anyway I digress this is not about what we had for lunch. 

We worked hard all day and it was time for Wayne to leave and he told he would be back on Sunday what time would we be at the shop. Gary told him we would be there by 11:00 am. He left and we left shortly after. We were both pretty darn tired and grubby and still need to get more switch boxes and wood.  We cleaned up had some dinner and headed off to Home depot in Tilton. We had to go to Tilton,  which is about an hour and 10 minutes away because we bought out the West Lebanon home depot twice already of their supply of switch boxes. Lucky for us we got what we needed and made the hour drive back home. It was after 11 by the time we got to bed. My entire body was hurting. especially my left knee. I was sure glad Gary told Wayne we would not be at the shop until 11:00 (although I thought he said 10:00 and I thought we were late getting there but I was wrong). 

Sunday Sept 6th

 I put in some of the remaining switch boxes,  that needed to go in and did some stapling, Wayne pulled more wire and Gary continued to fix the window. We were all fairly busy, but I seemed to be moving quite a bit slower,  When Wayne left he told me what I needed to do to finish up I got most of it done but then I forgot what I was supposed to do with the wire. I think I was supposed to staple it across the  beam but could not remember. I was to worn out to think. Not good. I have decided that tearing down plaster and slats is to say the least time consuming and dirty but a whole lot easier because you really do not have to think about it. But wiring the house you have to concentrate and when you are tired that can be a bit of a challenge.  So I left the wire hanging I will wait till next Sunday to do with it what I am supposed to. When Wayne is back and he can tell me exactly what I am to do. Better to do it once correctly then guess and have to fix my mistake. I did however drill the holes he wanted me to drill. I did not forget where he want them he marked the spots with a red X.  

Gary and I went home had dinner then Grant came down to the house to help us bring Gary's parents Barb and Paul down to the shop so they could see our progress. Grant took his parents home and Gary and I stayed behind to do some more work. Gary measured and cut the wood for the header in the kitchen. While he was doing this I scraped some of the outside paint stopping every once in a while to help him with a measurement or two. Finally he was ready to put up the header and I needed to help him. He held the header up and I hammered the side beams in to hold the header in place. It was not as difficult as I thought it would be. Earlier when he was cutting the old beam off he had a small but painful incident. He cut the old beam with the sawzall and the beam did not even budge stayed in place like it had not intention whatsoever of leaving with out a fight. Gary even walked away talked with me for a bit. He went back to the beam, just barely touched it and down it went with a crash hitting his toes on the way. OUCH. Luckily he did not break anything toes included. But the toes were bruised. Never fun to have these kind of issues but at least no one was seriously hurt. And the new beam is up. 

Monday Sept 7th  We went to the shop not so much to work on the shop, but to organize and clean up the messes we made in the past couple of days. As I mentioned earlier we were tired and pretty sore. Both of us have been looking forward to the rebuild process but now that it is here I can honestly saw taking apart has been easier so far. I am however learning some things I never imagined I would learn, Or would have cared to learn for that matter. I is rewarding to see the electrical get into place. We thought we would clean up and go home and have a relaxing day. Cleanup took us longer then we thought. It is done and we are ready for the next electrical adventure. 

Tuesday Sept 8th

I spent most of the day on the phone with a company trying to order lighting fixtures I needed 15 insulated and 39 non insulated. No luck finally I found that I could get 53 insulated if I ordered them from home depot. The problem was they may take to long to get here. Anyway to shorten this whole deal I decided to drive to home depot in West Lebanon to see what they had. 0 non insulated but they ended up having 53 R5ICAT insulated in stock so I purchased them all, Now all I need is 1 more and I will have all that I need. We are ready for more hard work on Sunday. Of course that does not mean there is nothing left to do this week to get ready for Sunday because we have plenty of prep work.  

August 29th - I could not figure out what to do. Gary was busy putting headers on the windows. I had finished pulling up the tile and breaking it small pieces so it was not to heavy to carry out to the truck. Once I was finished with that I cut the tree that fell down into small manageable pieces that we can use at home in our wood stove.

August 30th - We went to Home depot and bought them out of switch boxes. Then after shopping we headed to the shop. I used Wayne's diagram and went around the shop and marked all the areas that need switch boxes. Then I did the first deconstruction of the back room. The bench/cupboard that was about to fall over has been removed., I now wish I had taken a picture of bench it looked really bad before I finished it off. By the time we were ready to leave Gary had put 6 headers up. We loaded the truck because we knew we would have a busy time on Monday and would probably only have an hour to get to Hammond's and back.

August 31st -Today we got to the house and took all the backbreaking floor tiles I pulled up, the window frames Gary removed, the shelving from the basement that stored all the canning jars we had to empty earlier on in the remodeling and the shelf from the back room to Hammond's Grinding and Recycling. When we returned from that adventure Gary put headers on the windows and covered the hole in the floor to the attic where we removed the fire place. Meanwhile I put switch boxes on the studs so we can be ready to do the wiring this weekend.

This past week I have taken up the tile flooring in the one room that did not have a hardwood floor. In about a week we will start the rewiring process. We are now at the stage where there is not much tearing down but rebuilding

More clean up today. Most of the rooms are now stripped, all the wallpaper, plaster and wooden slats have been removed in every room but the kitchen. We will be ready to have the new electric put in soon. I cannot wait until the clean up is done.

Truck loaded and ready to go to Hammond's Grinding and Recycling

Front rooms on first floor are now wide open

some of the buckets of plaster we have removed from the house

some of the wall paper we removed and the hole left in the floor after removing the chimney

i have been removing plaster and slats. Under all the plaster and slats was the insulation. Sawdust insulation. Among the insulation I found this nifty bottle. Lola Kola bottled 1934. Pretty cool find considering our only Granddaughters name is Lola. She says "you found what?"

Gary and I spent the day emptying out the basement. There were a lot of canning jars stored down there. Some have been there for a very long time and were quite ripe. I will honestly say that I am glad that particular job is done and over with. Thankfully Gary had the stomach to finish. I cannot say that I did.

A little Roman Ruins found on the property. Hehe actually these are the bricks from the chimney that started on a blue shelf in one of the rooms and ended in the attic. So they have been repurposed since they did not serve any purpose in the house. Grant built the fire pit.

Barn Quilt is looking good. Hopefully the house will looks as nice someday soon.

Now that we have closed the boys are hard a work putting up the barn quilt that Bob Moloney made me for Christmas.

Gramma says it is warm now you should go get to work and Achilles and I will take a nap/