The existing screened porch was demolished and the roof over that section was removed.  This section was added some time after the original house was built and for some unknown reason, the made the new roof a foot shorter than the existing one. This project raises the roof so there will be a single roof line when complete, and the new bedroom in the back will have enough clearance to legally be a bedroom. Additionally, a new foundation has been set to assure that this is all stable. The new foundation also helps for the future as we’ll likely build in the porch to complete a third bedroom and add a new porch down the line. This will be years away, but best to do the foundation work when all of this is exposed.

The new porch is fully Tyvek wrapped for a little safety from the winter weather. I’ll cut out the windows and add screens in the spring/summer.

But the bigger problem is the rot caused by exposed wood (and structural wood, at that) being in contact with the ground and allowing water to both run over the wood and get soaked into it as well. So we had to dig out a nice trench under the front and side elevations in order to build a new foundation, add a new sill plate, assure all the wood is either above grade or at least pressure treated, and add new drainage. The upshot is that, once complete, this is truly a one-time effort. With the new foundation in place, the house will be very stable, the wood structure will be protected, and the crawl space will remain clear and dry. There are a lot of benefits to this work, so as much as this was not part of the plan, getting it done is very worthwhile.

Below is a gallery of various stages of this effort. Basically, the trench was dug out, the house was jacked up, new cinder block piers were installed along with a new sill plate and the house was lowered back onto the new structure. Then a cinder block wall was filled into to complete the crawl space and a french drain was filled into the exterior to keep water away from the foundation.

As soon as I started removing the ceiling I could tell by the stench that this was not going to be good. I was wearing long sleeves, a hat, safety goggles, and a breathing mask. Even still, I had to leave the house periodically to get some fresh air as the smell was truly stifling.  But as bad as this experience was, it was completely worth it and this is precisely why I’m doing a gut renovation – to be sure I’ve removed any “crap” from the home before rebuilding.

Further, opening up every cavity in the house assures that I’m getting a complete picture of what I’m dealing with as I rebuild. For example, I’ve already noted that there are basically no bearing walls and no headers, so I’ll be adding proper headers over every window and door. And in today’s demolition I uncovered two additional items. First, this ceiling joist that has been gnawed away by the critters that were living in the ceiling cavity. Thankfully, these joists aren’t supporting anything other than the ceiling I just removed, so I’m cutting them out anyway.

On the other hand, these roof rafters are absolutely structural – and not installed properly. This section of the house was an addition, probably added in the 1970s. And while the photo is terrible, it shows a notable problem that needs to be corrected.

You can see a raw wood colored rafter in the top third of the photo and, if you look closely, you can see a “rafter tail” painted white just behind it where the white wall on the right is seen. That wall was the original exterior of the house, still sporting the white shingles. The white rafter tail is where the original roof ended. When adding the new roof rafters, these should have gone “into” the previous exterior wall so they were resting on the exterior wall for support. Instead, they “die into” the wall (meaning they don’t penetrate the wall) and are, instead, nailed to the rafter tails. This means that there’s effectively no support at that junction and it is a potential failure point for the roof.

To wit, this has withstood years of Catskills winters and there is no apparent sagging or notable issues. But that doesn’t mean I won’t be putting in new rafters that are properly supported by that wall as I rebuild. So far, most of the things I’ve uncovered during demolition haven’t had significant impact on my plans. And what I’ll need to do here isn’t too bad, but it will be a few days of additional work to replace the rafters and do it right. Then again, that’s why I’m doing this!

Next, we put the extension over the existing well casing to see if the pitless adapter height lined up with the existing water pipe. BOOM! Nearly spot on! This means that the final installation won’t require additional digging or more pipe adapters, each of which is a weak point in the system. We simply need a longer steel pipe (easy enough) and this can all get installed. Bill already welded on the casing collar (bottom) and will tack weld this onto the existing casing in the coming days. This whole rig allows me to properly bury the water lines and main well while giving access from above the ground. The pitless adapter allows me to screw in a “T” that’s about 3′ tall, and pull the entire system up though the casing as needed in the future. There wasn’t enough time to complete this today, but we’ll be able to finish it up in about one more day, now.

Back to the demolition, I had purchased a Sawzall per Brad’s suggestion and now the demo of the exterior siding (that was inside the house) was moving along much more quickly. In just a few hours, the back bedroom wall (where you see the trash can) and most of the bathroom walls (left of that room) were gone. I also removed the studs between the kitchen (near, left) and living room and put up a temporary support. The wall isn’t technically a bearing wall, but since the house has odd construction, can’t be too sure, so caution is wise and adding a few 2×4’s until I beef up the proper supports is worth the peace of mind.

The bathtub inadvertently became a catch for all the demolition material, but I cleaned this out easily and managed to fill the dumpster at this point. I left the bathtub intact and just enough of the wall to keep the shower in place. Once I have running water again, I can use these to at least wash up on construction days before going to my neighbor’s house. And, of course, having a working toilet on site again will be really helpful.

All in all it was a solid week at the house. I got most of the demolition completed, all of the well replacement set up and ready to go, some preliminary construction work, and a review of possible floor plans complete. I’ll post more about the floor plans as I move forward. For now, I’m just happy to have made notable progress since I won’t be back for several weeks. Then, come late June, I want to get up to the house  three out of four weekends a month to make more progress.

The actual exterior wall on the back of the house was no better. First, there was a similar effort to simply add layers over time. Second, they sandwiched  a whole bunch of fiberglass insulation in between an exterior plywood layer and an interior drywall layer. Clearly, they didn’t understand how insulation works – in requires airspace and padding to keep a layer of warmer air as a barrier between temperatures. Flattening the bulky insulation makes it entirely ineffective. And, better still, there was an entire four inch wall cavity where the insulation SHOULD have been left empty. Complete incompetence.

As the morning progressed, the sky cleared and the day warmed nicely. Despite the morning rain, and the previous three days of cold and damp, Thursday turned out to be a beautiful, sunny, and warm day. (Too bad Friday and Saturday don’t appear to follow suit.) Around 5:30, Bill came up the road pushing this set of tanks on a dolly. The tanks are acetylene and oxygen – an acetylene torch. With the bolts in the well cap rusted and stripped, torching them off was the best option. I’m, again, so thankful to have a neighbor like this, because I’d have already called in a contractor to do this work at a cost of around $5,000. Instead, he’ll help me get this done for less than half of that.

Bill got into the ditch and, before firing up the torch, jokingly asked if I had insurance on the house. Jokes aside, he fired up the torch and began cutting the bolts. As he cut, sparks flew like a July 4th sparkler from the rust. Then, as the rust was removed, the bolts would turn to slag – white hot metal. Bill would then pound them with a hammer, and, POP – off came the bolt tops. In about five minutes we were done torching and the cap as removed.

Now it was time to pull the pump. Bill borrowed this homemade contraption from a friend – it has a collar that fits right over the well casing, and a slanted arm holding an old car wheel. As we pulled up the pipe, wiring, and pump, Bill fed this over the wheel and I walked west up a small hill to a service road pulling the pipe up and out of the well. It wasn’t easy to pull, and I had the full weight on me, but with this contraption it was much easier. Without it, one guy would lift the pipe vertically about 4-6 feet while the other walked it out. One section at a time. Instead, I was able to keep walking, slowly, but steadily, until we pulled the pump out of the well.

Here’s the pump once we got it out. The pump itself is about 4′ tall with mesh sections to create suction and push the water up the pipe. It’s only a 1/2 horsepower pump, but submerged in water and inside a small well casing, physics does the work and it easily pushes water up the 100-ish feet from the well to the house. The brown much you see shouldn’t be there, and the bottom of the pump had rotted out completely. This was likely the result of non-use, although the pump also seemed old enough (30-years?) that a failure was inevitable.

The last step before shopping for new materials was to take measurements. Bill used a 200′ tape measure and attached a heavy wrench to it with twist ties. The wrench assured a solid weight to dangle into the well and so we’d hear it when it was hitting the metal casing above the water level and when it hit the water. From the top of the casing, we measured 39′ to the top of the water level and then 115′ to the bottom of the well. That’s a pretty healthy water table, and Bill reminded me that we’d had a lot of rain. But even +/-20′ and we’d be in decent shape. So, we don’t need a new well, just a new pump. And the well depth is very opportunistic (probably by design) since a roll of pipe comes in 100′ lengths. Ideally the bottom of the pump is about 5′ feet from the bottom of the well to prevent stirring up much and creating turbid water. In my case, it’ll be about 11′ up, but with plenty of water above and no need to get additional piping.

Tomorrow we shop for all the replacement materials and MAYBE get this installed on Saturday if the weather holds!

The only area in this part of the house with any airspace is the roof; and, sadly, they didn’t seal this area properly to the outside. So with open soffits, critters of all kinds have called the roof cavity here their home – probably for a number of years. Each section I opened was packed to the gills with shredded insulation, leaves, twigs, acorns, and evergreen shrubbery. And this photo is just a small example. I filled six contractor bags full of debris just from inside the roof.

The bathroom is located in this addition as well, before this was added, there was likely only an outhouse. For some reason, they didn’t bother to close in the flooring around the bathtub, so this area, as well, was full of critter housing. It’s a good thing I was wearing a mask because the stench when removing this stuff was heinous.

And, for good measure, here’s one more photo of critter housing in the ceiling. It’s truly amazing that the framing of this house is not completely rotted through. Considering that much of the stench was from critter urine and excrement, it’s also amazing that the house really didn’t smell that bad – until I opened all of this up.

When I reached a frustration (and exhaustion) point on the demolition, I moved on to some electrical work. If you’ve never seen it, this is the inside of a circuit breaker panel. In this case, there are only three breakers installed (3 standard, 1 double) at this time. The main service comes in from the bottom, runs along the right gutter to the top of the box, and then comes back down where it is attached to three large lugs. Each of the large black service lines is 120-volts resulting in 240-volt service. The bundle of silver lines without sheathing is the neutral that attaches to the circuit breaker bus. Basically, the black lines bring in the power and the neutral completes the circuit out to the power lines.

Below the lugs there is a large 200-amp breaker – that’s the main shutoff. When the box has the cover on as it usually will, none of the service lines can be seen or touched and only that main breaker (and all the other smaller breakers) can be accessed. This is because the service lines are always hot (live) even when that main is off. And while each of the service lines can be handled separately and safely while live, there’s always a chance of shorting the connection and taking a full 120-volts (or 240-volts) of electrocution through your body. So, even though you can turn off the main and install new breakers, I use an abundance of caution and disconnect the meter outside resulting in a completely safe circuit box.

Today I simply rewired the water pump (that we’re working to replace) to assure that the wiring is modern and up to code. I also added two new circuits to power outdoor lighting – one existing and one to be installed later. Lastly, I began working out the wiring plan for the rest of the house.

I probably won’t do much, if any, more electrical work this week. The house needs a good wiring diagram drawn up and I’d rather do that from home and use the time locally to do physical work instead.

Regardless, today was a huge success as it’s the first time I installed an entire circuit from scratch, including the new breakers! Having done this successfully (tested and all) I feel confident in my ability to do the rest of the wiring as planned. This is a huge cost savings for us, even if it will likely take me many days to execute the full plan. I think I’ve earned myself some Bourbon (and Buddha!)

First, a quick side note…

As previously noted, I’ve been staying with my friends next door when I’m working on the house. They aren’t here this week, but graciously let me use their house once again. Before driving up this morning, they noted that, “there isn’t much booze in the house.” This really isn’t a problem since I’m working all week and will likely be exhausted by the time dinner rolls around. In any case, I arrive to find this on the table with a note reading, “Jared, Finish Me Please!” So much for lack of booze.

After one matter of “day job” work, I got to my efforts on the house.

Today I did get work done, just doesn’t feel like it. I partially loaded a dumpster with demolition debris from the previous efforts and will load that up the rest of the way this week, hopefully completing all notable demolition. Most notably, though, I did “yard work.” Doesn’t seem like this would be a priority, but something you learn as a homeowner – outdoor work needs to be done when it presents itself.

In a previous installment, I highlighted the thorn trees on the property. Today, with most trees (and ground) bare, I was able to identify the remaining trees that I didn’t get to remove last time, so this is now complete. I also removed “regular” thorn bushes and raked leaves from areas where spring flowers are coming up.

The other reason I worry about perceived progress this week is my lack of running water. The well pump needs to be replaced and my other neighbor, Bill, is going to help me with this. After a review this evening, it seems I’ll be doing a lot of digging tomorrow to prep this project. No, I’m not actually digging a well (mine is estimated at 130′ and we’ll get an accurate measure during the effort) but I need to clear out a ditch around the well cap and a trench to follow the water and electrical pipes. More on this as the project takes hold.

OK – Off to bed, then a morning bike ride tomorrow, then Digging In The Dirt.

Then, when I removed the ceiling above this section, I found more evidence. I couldn’t take any photos easily, but most of the open cavity above the drywall was filled with various pieces of insulation, fabrics and tree material – again, most likely the former home of a small critter. In just a 6’x6′ space in this room, I filled more than half a contractor trash bag with “critter bedding” before even getting to remove the drywall and the remaining insulation that was still in place. It was truly a mess, but I’m glad I’m opening all the cavities and cleaning this stuff up before actually doing any renovations!

Lastly., behind one of the walls I found two windows into the past. Or, more literally, two windows from the past. I’m going to need to evaluate this room to see if it makes sense to restore either or both of these windows.

Things are getting interesting!

1. Demolition
2. Gas/Hot Water
3. Electrical Upgrade

I’ll follow up on the second and third, but first it’s time for the demolition update. I got a dumpster on site and my goal for this particular weekend was to get as far as possible on the demolition and fill the dumpster. When you pay for the dumpster, or “container” in shop-speak, you are paying primarily for the size (15 yards, in this case.) This includes a maximum weight and time limit of one week. If you go over the weight or time, you pay more – and the time penalties are huge, hence my goal to fill it and get it removed quickly.

There’s a “door” on the container so you can walk items into it (rather than climbing up six feet to toss them in) and there’s a need to pack the container wisely to assure everything fits. I tired to put lightweight things on the bottom so that additional weight on top would compact the bottom and make a little more space. This seemed to work well with, for example, all the fiberglass insulation I was discarding. In the end, I either ordered just the right size or there’s that mental game of “using what you’ve got” and filling it perfectly based on the available space.

You may recall from a previous post that my initial demotion efforts were rewarded with the discovery of an active wasp nest. I was cautiously aware this time that many things may be hidden in the walls of an old house. I discovered TONS of evidence of mouse activity and ultimately unearthed two live mice. Both eventually found their way out of the house without incident. I also found a large ant colony and spent some time assuring that was destroyed before proceeding with further demolition. Gladly, I didn’t see any obvious evidence of damage to the wood structure from the ants or any other pests.

After the better part of three days, all the interior walls were stripped down to the studs, and the ceiling in the living room was removed. We’re strongly considering keeping the open ceiling in the living room – adds some character and a bit more space to the room. The 2×4 grid seen here at ceiling height will be removed – it served no purpose other than to hold the ceiling in place – all the structure is in the roofline. We might even add a skylight!

As an added bonus during the demolition, Tracy found a project to tackle and removed the linoleum flooring from the kitchen. We were rewarded with the discovery of intact hardwood flooring that matches the living room. This is nice because we want to remove the wall between those rooms and if the floor carries through both, it will have a nice, integrated look. The wood floor most definitely needs to be sanded and refinished, but that seems doable at this point.

Good progress for slightly more than a weekend effort!

I took this effort seriously. So I donned boots, jeans, long sleeves, a mask and goggles. (The headlamp isn’t for safety, but it’s one of the best “assists” you can hope for when you need to light your workspace.) And then there’s a little fun swinging the hammer. But more of the effort is twisting, pulling, prying and trying manipulate things like drywall away from wall studs. Only to be followed by the oh, so exciting effort of removing each and every drywall screw.

“Fun!” Right?

Fun or not, I was able to take down all the walls in one bedroom and two walls in the kitchen. This will allow my electrician to come back to do the service upgrade while I continue with the demolition.

But, alas, all was not roses. Near the end of the kitchen section, I hit to wall with the hammer and heard a distinct buzzing sound. There was a wasp nest inside the wall and I hit it squarely – making for some pretty pissed off wasps. Luckily it wasn’t a huge nest and I only suffered two stings (they had no trouble flying up my sleeves) so I’m no worse for wear. And I’ll live to demolish another day.