Demo Work Is Fun

So many things have happened this last week that I'm going to have to break up my blog posts again. First of all, I did find out that GOAT stands for "Greatest Of All Time". Funny thing is, Nikki knew that. I'm not sure how she knew that but she did. 

Anyway, Thursday evening Curtis tackled the removal of the laundry room floor. Surprisingly, it came off a lot easier than the bedroom and hallway floors, thank goodness! We still haven't finished the other floors but we're hoping that the flooring guys will be willing to just lay the new flooring on top of the old flooring, especially in the family room. 

He started in the corner by the back door and used soapy water to spray onto the flooring pieces to hopefully help it come up easier. I'm honestly not sure if it did help or not.

Got it all removed except for under the water heater. We'll wait to do that right before the new floor gets installed.

There is a drain in the middle of the room that Curtis needed to raise up so it would be level, since the floor was sloping toward the drain. The flooring people need it level to be able to do that room. Curtis broke up the old cement, raised the drain and then laid new cement.

While he was doing the flooring, I decided I could try to help prep the family room for doing texture. I taped up some paper around the whole room.

The file cabinets were in the way, so I had to sit on one while working, ha ha. I also had to have Garrett take a picture for me. That's the only way I get pictures, is if I tell someone to take a picture of me. Again, it felt good to be doing something again after being so tired.

We ended the night with watching the last of the Twilight movies. It was fun watching the boy's reactions to the fight scene and us knowing what would happen. They did enjoy watching that movie, even Jack.

Saturday morning Curtis and I had to run some errands that took a couple of hours, so we let the kids stay home and play their video games. After we returned, it was time to work again. Curtis spent his time that day in the bathroom downstairs moving electrical switches and cutting a spot in the ceiling and out the house to add a vent. While he did that, I started removing the old flooring by the front landing that was covered in old tile stuff. Garrett assisted Curtis and Jack assisted me. We had to use a crowbar to peel the board up and then take out the nails underneath that ripped through.

Peeling the boards up.

That particular crowbar was good for getting the nails out as well. It has two ends to it.

After we finished with that, Curtis asked if I wanted to start taking down the chimney "rocks". They aren't real rocks, just made to look like it. We're going to redo the outer layer of chimney but not sure how just yet. To get the flooring done we needed to at least clear out the bottom area. And trust me, the rocks aren't as pretty looking when you see them in person. I thought I wanted to keep them when Curtis and Stillman were saying to get rid of them. My thoughts immediately changed after we moved in. There was one rock at the bottom that had chipped and there's green colored material underneath.

I started with just a small chisel and hammer because I wasn't sure how he wanted me to do it, but then he brought me this nice power tool. It was so much faster! I can see why he likes his power tools.

I have to admit, I enjoyed doing this! It's very satisfactory when a big chunk falls down.

 

I got quite a bit done. I wanted to keep going but I decided I better quit so I don't over do it again. Also, I was blocking the front door with all of the "rock" mess. It took awhile to clean up. We had to throw away the "rocks" into the garbage and vacuum up the small stuff and dust.

My project created a lot of dust, so I had the girls help dust things off. I had to vacuum floors and couches upstairs too because it was everywhere. It was still so dusty after vacuuming, that I had one of the boys mop the floors.

Curtis working in the bathroom. 

After I was done cleaning up my mess, I decided I was going to do my shaving and showering before any of the kids took showers or baths. I wanted to make sure I had plenty of hot water. I'm so glad I did! After my shower, Curtis needed to turn the water off to reroute one little section of plumbing pipe to have room for the vent.  I told him the girls were about to take a bath, so he let me fill it up for them before he turned it off. 

Awhile later, Curtis turned the water back on and heard a weird noise and wasn't sure what to make of it. He turned the water back off again and as he was walking through the front yard, it felt squishy and wet. Uh oh, we have a water line break/leak! We couldn't turn the water back on so I told the girls not to drain their tub water because we'll need it for flushing toilets that night. We had to grab a bucket to bring to the bathroom and decided we were only going to use one bathroom until it got fixed. Wow, that totally threw a wrench in our plans! I'm so glad I showered when I did! Poor Jack really wanted to shower that night but wasn't able to since the water was off. The plan was to just wake up early the next morning, get us and the boys to dig a hole where it was really wet on the grass, find the broken pipe and hope Curtis could fix the leak quickly. Boy, were we in for a BIG surprise.....(to be continued in my next post)