Steve and his bro were quite the weekend warriors. Steve & I worked from 7-10:30 Thursday night, Steve and his bro put in a full work day Friday and a 12+ hour day Saturday. In between all the demo & construction madness, my sister-in-law and I were attempting to get Ben out of the house while I fervishly cleaned house...my hands are raw after all the wiping, vacuuming and mopping that took place this weekend. Steve and I spent ALL day Sunday just cleaning up and getting together/dropping off wood at Waste management wood debris drop off of 42nd and Columbia. A ton of work; we're exhausted and spent and giddy all at the same time.
Here's how it all went down:
Thursday night: Weren't the stairs attached in a very interesting way? Not nailed and supported from below, just side nailed. But really sturdy. I really wanted to salvage the fir stringers because the wood is gorgeous but it just couldn't happen as the wood was really brittle and splinted with literally hundreds of nails. :(
Friday: after Friday, we surely had an open and kid-friendly floor plan [enter sarcasm].
Amazingly, we only lost one piece of wood (far right) in the whole built-in move process.-phew
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| last glance at the built-ins resting spot for the last 99 years (reminds me of 99 bottles of beer on the wall, maybe because we needed lots of micro brews to get us thru the weekend) |
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| door to nowhere just prior to demo; used to be door to basement stairs |
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old basement door stairs cat tool door has good use after all |
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| cutting out to move the built-in, slow and steady does it... |
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| found more of (like our bathroom) the faux tile plaster...just absolutely kills me to rip this out. Looks like it went up to chair rail height-why was this ever covered up with cheap paneling when it is in perfect condition? |
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| and she's out-the built-in |
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| drew lines where the wood needed to be cut for the new stair that will cut into the dining room |
Saturday:
Steve and Greg were super bummed to discover (at 10pm on Fri night none-the-less) that the wall between the kitchen and stairs was too unstable to help support new stair stringers.....so, Saturday morning Steve tapped off the area and had to demo that wall (and the gorgeous faux plaster tile). They spent most of the morning cleaning the area after demo and going on another lumber run. Luckily, this project (both sets of stairs & reframing 2 walls (one basement & 1 kitchen)) has only set us back a few hundred so far. Of course, we have yet to purchase the pricey finish materials and pay for install. Still, we are saving a ton doing this ourselves.
They spent the remaining part of the day-until 10pm-ish-reframing the wall they removed and cutting the new stair stringers. They were so motivated and it was awesome!
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| new wall and upstair stringers |
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| new basement stairs |
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| obviously there is some knob and tube that needs to be removed-just love the hanging wires and my guess is it's hot |
Now onto attaching the upper stairs and then the risers & treads & drywall. :)
