Jan 28, 2012

Dirt and Drywall Dust

One of the joys of moving into an old home is uneven floors. Our floors are crazy tilted- I don't think a single one is even remotely straight!

One of the reasons for a certain sag in the house is from previous boneheads owners running plumbing/drilling through a support beam too many times and it cracked. And BTW, this is one big heavy house = SAG!!!

So, the wall I'm speaking of is in the middle of the house, and part of my bedroom. The one that I spent so much time on, painting trim, walls, doors, the panelling... see where I'm going with this???

So, Chris jacks up the house, faster than he knows he's supposed to, and voila!! buckled plaster and cracks. In the wall in the bedroom, and in the kitchen/dining room downstairs. Perfect. I took pictures up in our bedroom and the adjacent ot it. I didn't take any in the kitchen. oh well.


In the midst of all of this, he decides he wants to rip up the laundry room floor. HOLD. ON. ONE. SECOND!! I tell him. You need to fix the walls before we do anything else. He looked at me like I was speaking in tongues.
This is the craziness of our crappy laundry room floor. The wood in the bottom right corner is the original flooring (probably on top of a subfloor). The nest layer visible is a subfloor that is nailed down. On top of that, another thin subfloor, that is stapled down. Missing from this picture is the lovely commercial tile, which was lifted up by some water that leaked the day they turned on the water when we moved in- TWO years ago...

So the moral of th story is- be careful what you wish for!! hehehe. The walls have come down. We opened up the wall between the kitchen and "dining room" and decided to leave it open. The drywall is hung and mud is on and sanded. All in less than two weeks. Hubby is a machine when he puts his mind to it!
The kitchen is to the left of this picture. They share the same back wall.

Looking from the dining room into the kitchen.



And if you're wondering where the stove and counters are, well, this is the eat-in-area adjacent to the actual kitchen. The eat-in area is about 14x14 and has the woodstove, and the ceiling has beams and plaster. The actual kitchen is about 9x17, and is right next to it. We hung a huge piece of plastic between the two in an attempt to keep the dust out. Attempt, I say. It filters through anyway, and is even in the cabinets... It makes me crazy that the house is so dirty, but there is NO use in really cleaning until it is all done. So, I just keep vacuuming and lightly dusting.
The newly opened wall is on the other side of the plastic, on the back wall.

Now, we need to figure out how to marry the floors together. I wish we had the money to rip out the floors and put new ones in throughout the laundry room, kitchen, and dining room. SIGH.


We'll get there, someday. In the meantime, we're remaking the movie Money Pit...

xo, Lee

2 comments:

Gigi said...

Oh gosh! You do have a lot going on!

Cassie said...

Oh I hope all is going well with the drywall! We know all too well over here what happens when the jacks go up too quickly:) Hang in there it's going to look great when it's finished.