...And the kitchen gut. I'm REALLY glad that's over.

...Now for some cabinets.
...Someday....

That look on Kelly's face is priceless. "WTF do we do now?"

Tore out the ceiling and added a skylight. The space used to be a cave, it was so dark, but now it's the brightest spot in the house. Can't wait til it's done...

Here's the chimney being rebuilt form the roofline up...

I'm kind of glad all of the big jobs are being taken care of relatively early on.

July 2005 -- Roofing job. What a mess...

A view out of the office window. Like the moss growing on the old roof? Can't wait to be able to tackle some landscaping in the back, but that's still a little ways off...

A few more pics...

Plaster repair action -- The area above the window was bare right down to the lath. Joe worked some magic for us.

That's me battling the dining room wall, and holding part of the old stack...

Nasty, nasty kitchen...

SO, here are some photos of our plumbing ordeal...

The cast iron waste stack was also shot from the crappy (pun intended) PVC repair (can't have PVC between sections of cast iron) all the way into the basement. Our friends Andy and Joe, and my brother Kyle helped with the stack.
Andy's a licensed Journeyman plumber, and I am too now, but wasn't during this saga...

Nice dirt piles in the front yard, eh?

The photo was taken in August 2004 not long after we moved in... As you can see, the house needs some serious lovin'.

So far...

We replaced the water main coming into the house because previous owners replaced the original lead line with state-of-the-art galvanized pipe sometime in the 40's or 50's (or 60's or 70's os 80's even...). That, in and of itself, isn't necessarily a bad thing, but when they patched up the basement floor around the pipe they used asphalt, which corrodes iron pipe. There was a little mini fountain spurting out of the water main. I'll get around to posting some pics sometime...

Also replaced the furnace, refinished the quartersawn white oak floors that previous owners let their 200 lb Mastiff relieve itself all over. Had to attempt to stain to match pee stains. Came out alright considering what we were up against. They'd been refinished twice before, so we had to be careful with the drum sander...

Gutted the kitchen COMPLETELY to rid it of it's ungodly aroma. Ripped up the floors, tore out the cabinets -- they were beyond cleaning -- they had actual grease stalagmites hanging off of them. That's no exaggeration either. We imagined there being, like, 12 Fry-O-Lators in the kitchen and nothing else...

Extensive plaster repairs on walls and ceilings...

In 2005 we had a new roof put on. Complete tear-off. 2 layers of cedar shakes and 3 of asphalt shingles. The roofing job then unleashed a new set of horrors on us which I will get into in later posts... It's not good...

Had the chimney lined and rebuilt from the roofline up. The mortar had the consistincy of sandy dirt. Completely shot. I watched in horror as the masons gently tapped the first course of bricks out, and then proceeded to just fling them off into their truck/dumpster below. Nothing was even holding the bricks together anymore...

Still lots to do. We're about to have the exterior buttoned up so we can proceed with the kitchen remodel. Stucco repair, trim repair, some new windows, and a new paint job.

WHEEEEEE!!!!!