Franklin St Update - Day 19-37 "Demo Day's"
Updated: Apr 20, 2020
Ladies and Gents,
Who says buying a house literally 2 days before a PANDEMIC has to be stressful? Why not add a full renovation on top? That will really crank up the stress levels. lul
A couple of updates since the last. We have had a minor setback, while removing the old appliances out of the kitchen, I noticed the dreaded 9x9 tile. If you have a house that existed in between 1950-1980 and it has a 9"x9" tile inside, there is a high likelihood that it contains asbestos. In our existing kitchen there were 4 different tiles laid. 2 different 9x9's, a vinyl sheet, and vinyl peel and stick. These were tested and came back positive for low concentration asbestos. We met with an abatement company Friday 3/27/2020 and Today 3/30/2020 for quotes on removal, and were told these are not that bad of a case, and meet their "minimum" for abatement. What ever that means? Why not just quote the price to remove? Makes me feel like I should be getting a lower price but you charge more because you have a Minimum. Hmmm
Anyways, more on that to come. We received a text from the GC that they were going to Demo the existing kitchen cabinets today. I was to meet the asbestos guy at the house and a couple of people interested in the shed today. So I cruised on down and found Rene at the house removing the cabinets. So we hung out today while waiting for the shed folks to not make an appearance. BUT that is ok because I was not aware that Rene was going to be doing A LOT of demo today. It was very exciting to see behind the walls today, we were able to figure out how some things were built a long time ago. We saw the original riser and tread stair lines, in the old plaster. So now we know how those were installed. We found an old Pepsi bottle top, that is the oldest thing we found so far.
We thought that the original fireplace that is offset into the dining room 8" or so, would have to remain in place and the new stairs built around them, but today we found out that it seems that the brick face of the fireplace is offset from the original brick firebox. This SHOULD allow us to demo the entire brick face and recover another few inches of space. The super thick rear walls had some artwork drawn on them. How old that is is unknown, I am going to guess 1986 when they last reno was done. There was some shit ass electrical work done. FIRE HAZARD.
We received our first draft layout and design of the kitchen cabinetry. Not bad but I think it needs another pass, there is a weird cabinet turned sideways. More on this to come.
I think this is it for this update.... Photos below.
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Living Room Demo - 360 Pano Take a spin!
Dining Room -
Kitchen -
Well that stud is NOT doing anything
You can see the old riser/Stairs here...
A little concerned about the exterior foundation here. Luckily this will be demo'd too
Look at our Asbestos. Mother F*&^%^&*
More Crumbly walls
FIRE HAZARD!!
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Day 20 Photos
Demo continued today 3/31/2020
On the back of yesterday's find with the fireplace firebox they started demo'ing the fireplace. They started demo on second floor half wall, the old master closet that will be the bathroom vanity. Started some work in the existing bathroom. The funny that was found today was the "shims" that were used to fill the void for the drywall...you know every good contractor uses...newspapers!! WTF. I was hoping it would have been older but they were from 1988. Also a used toilet showed up today. That is weird.
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2nd Floor Landing -
More 2nd Floor
Dining room Fireplace demo, and unknown living room toilet
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Day 21 / Day 3 Demo
NO Demo today, cue "The Price Is Right" loser sound effect. All though we are sure the neighbors appreciate the break. We have been going over a lot of finish options, cabinet options, plumbing finishes, newels, railings, wood stains for the floors, paints, trim, ugh. But we will get through. I have updated our 3D renderings with pretty much as close as I can get to colors, trim and size specs of everything we have made decisions on so far. We are noticing really quickly that our champagne taste and water budget are not mixing very well. We are blowing budget on our selections and forcing us to re-select. Maybe tomorrow more demo will take place and more photos to follow suit after that. Without further ado, here are the latest 3D Renderings.
Until Tomorrow
D&E
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Day 22, 4th Day of Demo
Today they took down another wall worth of drywall from around the fire place. This is good because I wanted to run cable to the living room/Master and Guest rooms. They also started prepping the opening for the stairs. I think today was a lot of cleaning though. There was a lot of trash left from the other day, it was all cleaned up today. Well kind of, there is a huge pile of demolition in the backyard. They also cut openings in the floor for the footers for stair supports. The original listing stated there might have been a cellar below that was closed up, but upon further review there was no such cellar. Just old soft dirt and joists that were surprisingly in good shape, for being 6" off grade and 180-200 years old.
NO movement on the shed yet, I have had a lot of interested people but no one had came through on getting it. The spiral stairs, I contacted a few architectural salvage companies but they said they are hard to sell because they do not meet code. So you need someone who already has a working set of stairs and wants to put in a "fun" extra set of stairs. Unfortunately these might just make it to the junk pile too.
D&E
Photos below...
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Day 28 April 8th 2020
Today we had the asbestos removed from the old kitchen area. The demo has continued, the original dividing wall has been completely demolished. The furnace has been removed in preparation for its relocation to the loft space. The opening for the utility room, is the next big step.
Until Next Update.
D&E
Asbestos Removed!
Dividing Wall
Dividing Wall
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Day 33 - Demo Continues
Not a lot to update here today. Some more walls came down where the old master closet was which is where the bathroom vanity will sit. We talked with the foreman Leo, and he advised us that we almost certainly will be removing the wall for the master bedroom. As the landing at the top of the stairs does not meet code. I hopefully have someone interested in the spiral staircase. We will see how that goes. We laid out some 2x4s where the new framing will go for the staircase and closet, and loosely where the cabinets will go. This gave us a better feel for the space and how its going to look. We made an adjustment to the coat closet, to move that in 15.5" this will give us a little more space back in the living room.
We think we have the bulk of the fixtures, plumbing, cabinets, counter tops selected. So that is progress. We are also thinking about having another open-house once all of the work is completed. We may need the services of Ms Kim Peele for that though. More to come there.
Tonight we walked around old town again, and it was beautiful outside. We walked all around the waterfront before stopping and getting a carryout pizza from MIA's. It was the best pizza we have had since moving back home. It really just struck us that we had made the right decision on where we wanted to be. It will be really nice to walk around the city after dinner or be able to walk down the street and grab a pizza if we wanted.
Below are the photos from our walk around and the new updated 360 photos showing the updated demo.
Here is a photo sample of the counter top stone we have chosen. Silestone - Bianco Calacatta
Photos from walking around the city tonight- I was enjoying telling Elizabeth all about the historical points I have been reading about the last few week. We walked by the oldest originally standing building in Old Town. We walked by Katie Couric's old house. And its weird times with all of the Wuhan/'Rona/Covid going around. But we are still getting around a bit, while staying safe and maintaining our 6' social distancing.
360s -
2nd Floor changes, Camera is in the area where the toilet will be. You can see the walls around the master closet has been removed.
Some demo of the bathroom, you can see the walls are starting to come down for the removal of the water heater.
This will be the kitchen area, we laid out the 2x4s to get a feel for the space.
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Day 34 - Not Much Report today.
If you have looked around the photos, you may have noticed the deep window cases and thick ugly window trim. These have been stained very poorly and a color that will not work with the theme we are working towards. In the budget was not redoing the windows so we have a plan to re-trim the windows and paint them. I am itching to get the house moving along so I went to the house today to remove the trim and sand the cases to get a better idea how we can make the windows livable. I sanded the 4" thick old stain off the wall with I think 300000 grit sand paper, because it took so long to get through the stain. I really was using 150 Grit, but I think I will have to use something with a bit more teeth.
I was able to get the one window completely done in the master bedroom. When I started working on the other window in the master, I pulled the trim off the window and about 100 carpenter ants were running around inside. F&%*&*^ Mother F$&*^* Son-of-a-B$&%^*$
Luckily we live one block away from a 7-11. I walked down there and grabbed a can of Ant spray and sprayed them down.
Until next time
D&E
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Day 37 - Hard Labor
Today we stopped by to check on the house. The old spiral stairs have been prepped for removal. I attempted to lift it up to see how in the hell someone is going to get them out the front door. It weighs 2 tones. I do not know who took them down, but that poor bastard is probably not happy. Another seemingly difficult project, they dug the footers for the stairs out from under the crawl space by hand, out of two 1'x1' holes. I hope it was two different people doing that work today, because they might not make it back to work on Monday.
Another wall came down near the stairs, I am not 100% sure what that is all about, but we should see a lot of movement next week. The new stairs are scheduled to be delivered and the large opening should take place. We are excited.
Until Next Week,
D&E