Ready. Set. Go.

So the party has officially started! We closed on the house last Friday and put our first hole in the wall on Saturday morning. It's now Tuesday evening and I've been great about being at the house working every chance I get. I'm trying to set a routine so that I stop working (at home desk job) at 5pm and heading straight over to the house to start working (back breaking manual labor job). This entails starting working before 8am and eating lunches at my desk so that I can fit everything in. So far I've been doing great with this new schedule but it's only my second weekday so we'll see. 

So here's a quick recap of what we've done so far...

Saturday:

While we're confident of which walls are load-bearing, we still needed to meet with an architect to make sure we're putting in the correct sized beams and columns to support the structure where it needs to be supported. We met with the architect early on Saturday morning so that he could look at the plans, see what we want to do and take some measurements. Everything is good to go and we now know what size beam needs to be installed... I use the term "we" lightly here, because by "we" I mean my father-in-law; since I don't know anything about this.

(Saturday, June 22)

This is the wall between the kitchen and living room, and while it's not load bearing, we still need to support the ceiling with a smaller beam before removing the wall entirely. But the sheetrock, built-ins and fireplace can still go.

First hole of millions.

Which quickly turned into THIS:

Have you ever noticed on HGTV when the homeowners do demolition and they're having the time of their lives and think, "Is knocking holes in walls really that much fun?" YES IT IS. But what's more than fun is the fact that you're really seeing progress on your project. It's exciting because you actually get a glimpse of what it's going to look like when it's done and your ideas start to become real. 

Here's a picture of the other side of the wall, the kitchen, after we removed most of the cabinets....

Not all of the pictures are in the order that they

actually happened, but they're close.

Here's me opening up the pantry.

During demo you find things, especially in older

houses. We found this, a glass coke bottle, a dead
bird and a dead mouse.... so far.

Here's the kitchen a little later.

And the fireplace side of the wall. 

Sunday:

We were able to get our hands on an air chisel and a compressor, thanks to my brother-in-law. He also kindly let us use his shop-vac and HUGE trailer to move materials. I think he's jealous he can't be here to do some work so he's letting us use his stuff because technically that makes him here.. right?

Anyway, the chisel is coming in very handy for taking up the ceramic tile all over the house. It does leave the glue marks on the floor which we'll have to remove later with another machine we'll rent from Home Depot. It's slow progress but it's keeping us under budget in the long run. The cost to have someone come in and remove the tile was $2/sq. ft. At almost 1,000 square feet in tile it makes a ton of sense to this ourselves. Even renting a chisel is more cost effective (and time consuming) than hiring someone. If you do rent one, get one that allows you to stand and chisel. Not only are they more powerful and faster, but the one that we have (about the size and shape of a handgun) sends sharp fragments of ceramic tile flying at your face.

We also bought a first aid kit.

By the end of Sunday night we made some progress.

Half the floor in the living room is done.

 

It looks clean because it is. We didn't have a dumpster delivered until Tuesday morning so all of our debris was going out onto the carport. The carport filled up quickly. 

Monday consisted of removing the fir down from above where the kitchen cabinets used to be and removing the rest of the tile from the living room (which I don't have a picture of).

Fir downs are usually filled with a ton of
insulation. I found it was easiest to remove
some sheetrock little by little, vacuuming
as I go.

Gone.

Dumpster Tuesday:

We finally got our dumpster delivered... It was supposed to be delivered on Monday morning but it was a day late. A minor setback I was happy because the carport was starting to get pretty full. Tuesday was spent loading the dumpster up. We ordered a 30 cubic-yard dumpster that cost us about $430. 

El's brother and I also got ambitious and removed the tile from the kitchen as well (which I didn't get a picture of).

So far it's been a learning lesson. While I feel like we've made a lot of progress, I was quickly brought back to reality when my brother in law told me that 5 men could have easily done in a single day what we've taken 4 days to do. Thanks, dude.