Light Duty

Not much progress today. The next step in the reno is removal of stud wall #2, which will get accomplished first thing tomorrow.

Stud wall #2

Today, the wall was prepped to come down by removing all of the electrical wires and boxes in the wall, and by removing the shelving on the back of the wall. It actually took some time to remove the electrical since I plan on re-using as much of the existing wiring and hardware as possible. That meant that each box had to be de-wired and carefully removed from the studs instead of just clipping the wires and prying the box off with a crowbar.

The dumpster was also finally removed today, 2 days late. I almost didn't have to speak with an actual person for this little transaction, but I wound up having to call them yesterday to remind them to come and get their dumpster. The lady was real nice about it though, so all-in-all a good dumpster experience.

We've got our driveway back!

Now we rest and watch game 4 of the Stanley Cup Finals, beer in hand, and get ready for tomorrow whilst I blog. Renovating takes a lot out of you, especially if you're a cat.

Neuman takes 5 while I blog

Day 8

Started taking down the stud walls today. This part is a little bit slower going since I'm trying to save the 2x4's, and so I have to be careful not to destroy everything in sight as I go. For those of you that know me, you can appreciate my difficulty. I did manage to get the first wall down in just a couple of hours nonetheless.

The first wall

Careful...careful...

We're actually going to change the configuration of this wall when the new framing goes up. Originally, it created a little nook to accommodate the exhaust pipe from the original furnace. When we moved in, this house still had an oil burning furnace that had been installed in 1968. Nineteen sixty-eight! Not exactly your high-efficiency model. It vented through the chimney, and its exhaust pipe had been built-around when this basement was first finished. Of course, one of our first orders of business when we bought the place was to replace that old clunker with a high-efficiency gas furnace, which vents through the wall due to condensation issues. So now there's just a gaping hole where the the exhaust pipe used to be.

Gaping hole

Since there's no longer an exhaust vent, the new wall will simply go straight across, which should create enough room at the bottom of the stairs to get large furniture (i.e., couches, etc.) in and out of the basement without first having to break them into tiny pieces. The really good news is that we may no longer have to work around a couch as we go, if we can now get it out as I suspect we can (this will be attempted later on).

  

The first wall comes down

Another bit of good news: the lost hammer has been found. It had simply been misplaced during the chaos of demolition. I found it when I started to move stuff out of the makeshift storage cabinet that had been built from scraps in the nook underneath where the old exhaust pipe had been.

Crappy cabinet

What once was lost is found

We're still on schedule to meet our goal of getting the subfloor laid by the end of the weekend. 2 more stud walls and a bit of parging to go.

Pulling nails

Today's task was to get the nails pulled out of the concrete, and fill in the divots.

Today's challenge

The Divot

Basically, nails pounded into concrete are a lot stronger than the wood they`re holding, so when you pull off the wood, the nails get left behind. Also, they`re quite rusty from sitting in concrete that's below grade, so they just really don`t want to come out. The result is that the concrete that the nail's sitting in gets pulled out with the nail. For contrast, check out an exterior wall after the nails were removed versus an interior concrete wall:

Exterior wall

Interior wall

Of course, there were a bunch of nails that simply had the head pop off, so I couldn't do much with them except pound them in. I'm not crazy about having rusty metal sitting inside concrete, but what can you do? At least the sparks from the odd hammer strike were cool. 

Lesley followed behind me as I pulled nails and cleaned the walls of  mould and efflorescence, and generally made them squeaky clean. Did you know that efflorescence turns blue when mixed with bleach? She also filled in the divots with parging mix.

Always replace your divots

Remember that outlet encased in concrete? I also tackled that little problem today. After an hour, a lot of pounding and concrete dust, and a litany of curses, the outlet finally came out.

WHY?!?

Victory!

The wires were actually green with oxidization. And don't forget - this outlet was live. I had a lamp plugged into it. *shudder*

Today was the last day for the dumpster as it gets picked up tomorrow. Feeling good about getting all that crap out of there, and will be happy to get our driveway back, and not have squeeze by an 18" gap on my rollerblades to get to and from work. We didn't quite fill the dumpster, but we came pretty close.

Bye bye dumpster

There's still a bit of parging left to do and the stud walls to take down before the weekend arrives. Feeling confident that we'll be able to get that done in the coming days.

Cleaning up for the day

Beer time.