Demolition

This was probably the saddest and hardest part of the project so far. We gutted the entire house.

We had to remove a majority of the flooring in the living room and kitchen. We had to even dig a crawl space to repair and brace some of the floor joyces (spelling?) Years and years of existing had accumulated lots of dirt under the house. And... there are bottles everywhere under the house! Some soda bottles from the 70's, milk bottles, mason jars, and lots of strange unidentified bottles. It was like opening a time capsule! We really still don't know why. I tried googleing it. I seriously doubt it was to ward off witches. Any comments with input would be appreciated. Curiosity is killing me!! WHY??

Here is the space in the kitchen. As you can see from this picture... there was a ton of brick just hanging out in the attic! Scary! It was overwhelming... and one huge mess. All of the sheetrock, from walls to ceilings was torn out. Surprisingly... there was no insulation anywhere in the house! That had to make for some cold winters and hot summers. We did find a newspaper from the Nixon era covering a hole in the living room. I had a pic, but can't find it at this time.

Even in the mess can you just see all of the light from these kitchen windows! I really like bright rooms. I hate feeling like I am in a cave. Natural lighting makes me happy. :)

 

 Here is a look into the living room. You can see some of the electrical boxes going in. We had the house re-wired. There was some interesting "period" wiring going on in there. Half was the old wire and post kind. (with exposed wires in the attic) and the other half was different. A lot of older houses had the electrical wiring in the door frames! Interesting!

Here is the new flooring going in!

And this house had more nails than I have ever seen in one place at one time! I had to take them all out so we could put in new sheetrock! There seriously was one or in some instances two or three nails every inch or so!! But hey, I already have great plans for my kids and neice and nephew. When we were little, my grandpa and grandma brown, had a big magnet that was tied to a string. We used to drag it around the yard hoping to find nails or screws. We got a penny for each nail and a nickel for each screw or washer. It was a huge treat! Then Grandpa would take us to Turks country store or Inskeeps store and we could buy single reeses cups that were $.05 each. They would get put into a very small paper bag. Occasionally we would change it up and get some of the peppermint patties... but reeses were definetly my favorite! Turks still sells them this way in the same place by the cash register. I can't wait to do this with the kids! Memories... fill em with warm and fuzzy... that is my job as mommy. The mere sight of these small paper packages or the selection jars by the register take me back.

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 Here is the part of the house that has me twitterpated... The old doors... with all of the character in the world. Every knob is different. The detail is amazing. We salvaged all of the doors and trim above the door frames and windows. I have spent a lot of time around paint... let me tell ya!

Four prongs?!? Our electrician asked to keep one of them!! He said that he had never actually seen one in person! Still one of my favorite parts!!