Rats, Foundation Walls, & No More Stairs

With it being about a month since I last wrote, a lot has happened on our little house!  After two wicked weeks of school at the beginning of May, I am finally done with the semester.  And not only done, but also sporting my first 4.0!  Yay!!!  I must like interior design.  Meanwhile, only a little of work got done on the house during those two weeks for various reasons--whether it be Gabe helping out a friend with his concrete pouring project, hosting Gabe's dad, or attending my honor's society induction, we were super busy.  We stopped at the house on the Saturday Dad Cropsey was here so they could do a few things, one being to gather up the copper piping on the second floor so we could get it out of the way, which we ended up getting $200 for--not bad!  We also met with the president of a local organization that is working to fund different restoration efforts, who gave me some information for the project I was doing for my Historic Preservation class case study on the historic district of our little town.

Here's a little better shot of the work Gabe and Dad did on the east side of the house building up the foundation:

The weekend of the 18th was the next weekend we were able to really get out there to work.  Gabe's sister Eva was in town for a visit too, so she came to help on Friday.  I was ready to get back to work since I had been gone so long--so I started with the task of moving the bricks from the porch, including removing most of the mortar off of them, to a concrete pad out of the way where the barn used to be.  It was a dusty, hot and unglamorous task, to say the least.  Eva worked with Gabe for a while on supporting the kitchen roof. Then we worked at cleaning out the space under the stairs in which Eva found a nasty surprise:

We have no idea how it was preserved from rotting.  Gabe was busy removing some of the old sheathing in-between the porch and the bathroom additions so that the next day he could work on getting floor joists hung above the cement pad in the porch area.

Oh, and we got the new electrical box hooked up this past week!  No more ghetto fabulous electrical wires hanging out on the front porch anymore.  Yowza.

The next day Gabe and I went out to the house and Dad met us there later.  We sprayed poison ivy killer since the grass is getting really high which makes it really hard to see where it is, and believe me, it is everywhere.  I moved all the tools down from the second story because we planned to remove the stairs today.  The hardwood flooring is still up there, but that is ok, since there really isn't a better place to put it.  Gabe and Dad worked on building up the wall from where they left it last time to the pier under the bathroom addition.  Here is a video showing some of the work on the foundation wall:

Views of new foundation wall from opposite ends

View from farther away (from east)

Then they worked on hanging floor joists in the old porch area (in the photo above to the right).  I did random gopher tasks and acted as the photographer until I left for a bachelorette party for most of the afternoon.  It was really hard to get good images because they were working in an area with really dark and light areas--indoor and outdoor areas at the same time.  Here's a good shot of the new wall from crawl space height under the existing walls:

As you can see in the next image it is hard to even get more than one person in the space at a time.  Gabe is careful to wait to take down walls (the one right in the way) until entirely sure the weight is being supported (and for security--out of sight, out of mind).

We plan to outsource the majority of the construction and framing, but the job of leveling out the floors and building the foundation are tasks for my fastidious husband.  It is a cumbersome task and we just don't want to pay for that.  It has been fun to listen to my dad and husband interact on this project.  Dad says Gabe is "the boss" and really wants him to have ownership of it, so he lets him make a lot of the construction decisions.  My father has been very involved in construction and design and is a great motivator.

Here is a "before" and "after" of that day's work outside constructing the foundation walls and joists:

Before

After

This next shot looks into the kitchen/dining room area.  The wall with the opening will be removed, we are just keeping it up as long as possible for security sake at the end of the day.

The lighting on Gabe's face is washed out but it shows the space beyond nicely

Detail of the joists hung

Here are some angles from the north:

The last project of the day was to remove the stairs.  I had just gotten back from the party and Dad was winding down.  Here is a video of Gabe removing the stairs:

It gives a good perspective of the inside of the house.  It looks very strange without the stairs!  We are moving the stairs about 7 feet to the east so we have more space in the main living room.

The progression:

Here is a shorter, silly video of Gabe getting down from the second story:

And done!

I'm outta here!

That's all for last weekend!