Demolition

Thursday July 5, 2018

Yesterday was such an awesome day! We finally made some progress on the house and I can see it! I love that I have one room that is almost sheet rocked. This morning I woke up excited and wanting to do more. Before we can frame in the 2nd bedroom another brick wall must go! 

This brick wall to be exact. This wall was on the inside of the laundry room (see the indoor window cut out). Then the doorway was the entrance to the boys room. On the other side of that brick wall is the hallway, part of the kitchen and then the kids bath. 

This is what it looks like on the other side of the wall from the kitchen. Since my pantry was removed Kory brought home 2 "mess up" cabinets and we've been using them. When I got home from Girls Camp about 2 weeks ago he had brought 2 more into the house. Hunter had emptied 3 of my kitchen cabinets and put their contents on the new shelves. One day soon those cabinets needed to go. The cabinet over the fridge was barely hanging on! 

And so with excitement of seeing progress I decided to take down that brick wall while Kory and Hunter were at work and Madelyn was off babysitting.  

This is me!

We had to work a bit carefully as our water heater, washer and dryer were pretty close to the wall. I didn't want to damage anything. 

The kids love helping take down the brick walls. It's something they know how to do and can do it by themselves. I had lots of eager little hands to help.

To give us privacy from the outside world this winter since we went without exterior walls for days at a time several times. Kory had hung left over mdf boards over some of the door openings around the house. After we raised the roof we had a 12" gap running around the top exterior of the house. Trying to help keep the warm air in and the cold air out we hung boards along it too. So While I was pulling the boards down, Brayden was hitting bricks and Emily and Kylie were taking the nails out of the mdf boards. 

Once the mdf boards were free from nails the sheets went into the dump bed trailer. 

My cute helpers from the day! 

About lunch time we were done!

That entire brick hallway was gone. The house looks and feels so different. No more maze to get inside the house. We can actually walk in from the front door now.   

Being the day was only half over I decided to keep going.Why not take the brick walls out around the kids bathroom too? This way not only can we frame the 2nd bedroom but we can also frame the master bedroom too when we're ready. And seriously, the brick is such a mess, dust everywhere I just wanted to finish with the brick! So Emily and I continued to take down walls. 

My Dad stopped by to borrow a tool and saw what we were doing. He helped me take out the bathtub and throw it into the trailer. Then Madelyn came home and and jumped right in helping. 

We had 2 walls down with more one short wall to go when Kory and Hunter got home. We can't take out the brick wall behind the toilet yet because that is the back of the master bathroom. We've got to keep at least one working bathroom in the house! 

In the kids bathroom there were no electrical outlets. So dumb! Then there was only one light switch, behind the door (again so dumb) but it wasn't a normal switch it was a motion sensor switch. So the light turned on every time we opened the door. When the kids would shower the light would shut off and they'd have to open the curtain, wave their arms or throw a piece of clothing towards the sensor to get it to go back on. It was so, so annoying! 

When Emily and I were taking down the bathroom wall this little guy fell out! For reals???? It was a real light switch! This is the 2nd light switch we have now "found" inside our brick walls. 

Kory was messing with the electrical making sure the wires that Emily and I were messing with were disconnected while the kids and I continued to take down brick. Tomorrow the city is coming to disconnect the old panel and connect the  new panel. So Kory was also fiddling with that when he came across a "live" orange strand. At first he thought maybe the wire had been in a fire because the plastic was such a rust color. But there were no burn marks so then he thought maybe it had been left out in the sun to long and the coloring changed. But nope that wasn't it either. The wire was actually an aluminum wire.  Aluminum wire can be dangerous. It expands when it gets warm and can cause house fires. For many years now it has been against code to use aluminum wiring in your house. 

This is the outlet that our refrigerator is plugged into. Can we say water damage and corrosion?

The girls started pulling up the wood floors for me. 

So gross!

The dirt I understand but all that pet hair! 

Nasty!

Once we got the little wall down I started on dinner being it was now after 6pm and kiddo's were hungry. Hunter and Kory started working on removing the toilet and sink. They had one heck of a time. The toilet bolts had been cut to the ground so Kory couldn't get his tool around it to undo it. So he just pushed it and it slid over. He was surprised it came off so easily! The sink was a different story. They glued that pedestal sink down with something that didn't allow it to budge at all! So Kory hit the base once with the sledge hammer so we could remove it. I was picking up the small broken pieces while Hunter took the broken sink out to the trailer in the wheel barrel. 

I heard the front door open again because it squeaks pretty good. Then I heard Hunter say, " Mom......Mom..... I need you really bad". I turned around to see Hunter just standing there with blood all over his arm and blood dripping into a little pool of blood on the floor. What the heck????

We had him go to the kitchen sink. Kory helped him wash his arm to see how bad it was while I ran to get the first aid kit. We quickly determined that the first aid kit wasn't going to be enough. So he and I ran to the Insta Care. 

Although there was a 1 hour and 15 min wait we jumped the line!  

 Thankfully no artery, vein or tendon was nicked. There was a little nick on a nerve but apparently that will self heal. Thank you Heavenly Father!

12 stitches later we were on our way home

We still aren't sure quite what happened. We know Hunter picked the sink up and then carefully laid it over into the trailer. He was trying to keep it from breaking anymore. We are assuming that when he pulled his arms back he must have rubbed up against a sharp edge and cut himself. Hunter did not feel it. In fact he didn't even realize he had been hurt until after he had gotten inside the house and felt wetness on his hand. He looked down and that's when he saw all the blood. There is no blood on the broken sink anywhere! A little earlier when  Kory broke the sink he actually cut his thumb. Something sharp sliced through his rubber gloves and into his thumb. But a band aid was sufficient for him.  

I'm feeling pretty blessed tonight. We started working a little here and there on the house about a year ago. But we really started the remodel about 7 months ago, Dec 25th. There have been so many times that someone could have gotten hurt but we didn't. We really have been blessed!

Our family has lots to be thankful for!