Destruction Continues

Since today is a day off, Steve and I decided to spend it in our new home. We had quite the mess to clean up from Saturday. Our first task was to get all the junk out of the living room and bedrooms and into the dump box that was delivered this morning. We managed to fill it easily by mid-afternoon.  Once that was done, we headed for the attic and started to rip out the carpet. Steve is a beast! He lifted that carpet like it was a sheet.
Tomorrow we hope to take out the insulation that is in the ceiling from the top and then hit out the board and plaster from the top. We will see how that works. I am sure we could fill another dump box, but that might wait until Wednesday.

It's Coming Down

Here are a few pictures of our progress at the moment. We managed to get some of the interior walls gutted and then a little bit of the ceiling. Hopefully things will speed up!

The pile that should be out on Monday!

The original ceiling

Reality Sets In

As we set out to continue taking apart the house today, our attitudes were positive and our hopes high. By the time we left a few hours later, we had slightly different opinions of the project. There are two potential problems/frustrations that we discovered. The first one is that we may have board and plaster walls in almost all rooms. This is more annoying than problematic. It's going to be a pain to take apart and then clean up. Shortly after finding this, Steve discovered our second problem: the attic floor and the exterior walls were made with 2x4 boards. I just learned that the floor should have 2x8 boards and the walls 2x6. This might dash our hopes of being able to raise the roof to allow more room in the attic. It seems the house is poorly constructed. We are starting to think about just tearing down instead of gutting. I guess we will have to start making some serious decisions soon.

2 Hours of Work

It doesn't take long to make a mess. After two hours of working at the house tonight we managed to remove most of the cupboards in the kitchen, tear down some of a wall and ceiling as well as get rid of the cow stones on the one wall. Steve found out that the ceiling in the living room was lowered, but for no apparent reason. It looks like there is a beam of some sort, but we are still not really sure.
Here are a few more pictures.

Deona taking the tile off the kitchen wall.

This is what we discovered when we tore some of the ceiling off.

...and We're In!

This week all the paper work went through and we were given the keys to our 'new' house on Monday. It was very exciting to stand in the living room of our house and dream about what it could be. Our first purchase so for has be a carbon monoxide detector and a fire extinguisher. The extinguisher is required by our insurance company and well, it's probably a good idea.  The weather has been great the last couple of weeks, but I am pretty sure we will be running to Canadian Tire in the next little while and investing in a snow shovel.
Steve took the first opportunity he had last night to take apart the mantle, rip up some laminate flooring and take down the mirrors, all 9 of them. After ripping up the flooring he discover more flooring, this time linoleum. I think this is only a small sign of what is to come. It will be like peeling an onion, one layer at a time.
If Steve didn't have to write 2 papers today or plan for his practicum, we would definitely be back in there. The next major destruction day probably won't be until the Long weekend. I am looking forward to discovering what this 100 year house is hiding behind it's walls. Do you want help, too? Let us know. We'd love the company.