"A journey of a thousand miles, begins with a single step."
~ Lao Tzu
~ Lao Tzu
After months of thinking and researching, the rubber has finally met the road! Today was the first day of construction at our farm house as new homeowners. (Though, technically, we have already done work on the house. The bank requested that a list of items be completed prior to closing but that is for another post.)
Following my predetermined order of operations, the first phase is demolition. We will be gutting the: 1) entire kitchen 2) entire first floor half bath 3) entire first floor ceilings (to make way for the second story radiant floor heating) 4) second floor bathroom 5) master suite divider walls (for open concept en suite) 6) entire den 7) entire attic 8) basement and foundation. We chose demolition as our first step in order to utilize the 30 yard dumpster which it being delivered this week.
The largest of the six demos is by far the kitchen, so naturally we chose that! Luckily, we have many close friends who are generous with their time and eager to help. Last week, we sent out a few texts and... three buddies to the rescue! Armed with sledge hammers, picks, axes, shovels and coke zero, the sheet rock and wood began flying around 10:30am.
DURING
THE AFTER
Total work time: 4 hours. Not bad for only four guys. It pays to have beastly friends. We all wore dust masks in a feeble attempt to not breath in the dust. By the end, we were all sneezing and blowing unsightly snot rockets but that is all in a days work. We sat down around 1pm to eat lunch in the living room and found shards of brick on the couch which is 15 feet from the kitchen. Go hard or go home I guess.
OUR CREW (minus 1)
As you can see, some of those beams are
huge! The ceiling beams in the kitchen are true 4" x 10"s and
the posts are true 8" x 10"s! Some light sanding and maybe some
stain and the exposed beams will really add to the wow factor.
All that is left in the kitchen is removing
all electric, plumbing and nails. Last, we will remove the floor to gain
access to the crawl space (I'm sure there will be more surprises). Once the
floor is up, we will install a vapor barrier, new plumbing, new electric and
insulate before re-installing the floor.
Until then...
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