Sandy

I will preface the following with this: we are lucky.  Beyond lucky- blessed, privileged, and in no way entitled to pity or assistance or anything like that.  People all around us have been literally devastated by this storm, and by bitching about our experience I in no way mean to trivialize what those folks have been through and are digging out from.

So basically our storm experience was that many of the old trees around our property came down, domino style, with one big old tree belonging to our neighbors falling and starting a sort of chain reaction that led to 6 trees in our backyard, and a 75ish footer actually on our roof.  We didn't flood since we are, thank God, far above the flood table, and we never really lost power.  The roof ended up with about 6 puncture holes from the tree that hit it, and of course we have tons and tons of lumber to clean up.  The Nor'Easter that blew in the following week did manage to get some snow in the roof holes, but the water damage wasn't too bad.

If I seem stilted in the writing of this it's that I can't put much of a spin on it- this thing sucked, you guys.  My Mom's house had 6 feet of water in the main living space.  My brother's rental house is likely condemned.  Two of my cousins are gutting entire floors of their homes. Many businesses in our town were destroyed and many people are still without power and heat since they have to be re-wired due to the water in basements where their junction boxes and heating equipment were.

Our own small inconveniences (the subways were closed and Gavin walked into Manhattan over the bridge to get to work, we weren't able to get gas for our car until three weeks post storm, etc.)  pale in comparison to those who lost homes, lost livelihoods, lost family.  But all of it combined to create the surreal atmosphere of actually walking around a literal disaster area, and the feeling of vulnerability to your basic sense of security that comes with that.

The lighter notes- we got most of our damage dealt with already.  The roof has been patched and looks as good as new.  We had to go the cheap route for the clean-up, since insurance doesn't cover removing debris (!), but the trees have been chopped up and stacked in the backyard for later disposal (some for our fire pit, some to help heat my mom's house, some to ultimately be chipped for mulch when we tackle the yard).

We've begun regaining some of the pre-storm momentum, and lots of work has been done this week in the (probably naive, but tis the Season, yes?) hope that we can still be moved in by Christmas.

Our main issue now is that the gas company is so inundated with issues from the storm that getting them to deal with us has been a challenge.  I'm ready to send them pictures of our kids looking into the camera with sad eyes at this point (maybe with a c-note in envelope) to get our gas turned on.  Heat! Hot Water! MAKE IT SO!!

So we'll see.  Cautiously optimistic.  I'll post a far more shiny happy blog next week...Spoiler Alert: Our FLOORS ARE GETTING DONE!!

Anywho, here's a Sandy photo- montage:

That big tree on top of the house? Yeah, it's literally on TOP of the house.

View from the master bedroom

This is usually our driveway...

Fitz and Fitz Fine Lumber Inc.

The Push

In early September my awesome sauce mother-in-law came out from California to watch the
baybehs so that Gavin and I could make a big push forward on the house.  Specifically the time had come (FINALLY!) to put up the walls.  A giant boom truck came to the house and delivered over 200 boards of drywall -half of which was flown in through an upstairs window via a giant crane (!) so as to save the epic shlep of the boys carrying it all upstairs.  I was mercifully kiddo-wrangling the day it arrived but I am told a great deal of man-power was spent carrying the downstairs boards in- they are heavy and awkward and yeah, I'm glad I was a good 30 miles away...

But once they were there the time had come to get them hung.  And I had like, a bizillion little (big) projects that had been nagging at me since we closed on this monster that I wanted to dig into, and having a sitter for a whole week was like a gift from God.

We got So. Much. Done.  The biggest impact was by far having those walls going up again- all that lovely white light filling up the place made us realize how dismal the gutted, brown-and-taupe of the exposed beams and insulation truly was.  It's so much easier to be optimistic when things look clean and new! My uncles worked tirelessly as always and as always I don't have words for how grateful I am for them. (BTW, I recommend clicking on photos should you wish to biggify them...)

Gavin and his new favorite toy: The Impact Gun

After walls!

Everyone pitching in- my friend Zac even took the train in from
Brooklyn to help- What a guy!

Overcoming my fear of power-tools....

And I finally tackled (and tamed) the hopeless kitchen floor. If you remember, we'd peeled up about three layers of old linoleum only to find glue and paper stuck to the hardwood.  The first day I tried a citrus-stripper and paint scraper to get it off but it was an endless, pointless nightmare. Seriously, that glue was so tenacious I wonder why they didn't just make the whole house out of the stuff... I slept on it and did some googling and finally found a method that worked- using my clothes iron and a wet rag I steamed section by section and scraped off all that nasty paper and adhesive bit by bit.  There is some discoloration and warping just under the sink but we will repair that and then stain the whole thing nice and dark so you won't see the flaws.

Ironing the Floor= Good Times!

OH! And the week before the big push my Uncle A put a major hurting on the bathroom.  He tiled the floor in my beloved penny round chosen and purchased months ago. Then he installed the toilet (THANK GOD!), the vanity and sink combo, and the wainscoting.  The difference between the bathroom now and the dingy nightmare-hole that was there previously gives me heart palpitations and every so often I look at a picture of it to give me strength.  My name is Nicole and I am addicted to my new bathroom (Hello, Nicole!).

On the very last day of the week off (on) Gavin and I decided to stay late and begin tiling the shower.  We had bought the subway tile a couple of weeks prior, and although we were intimidated, my Uncle A gave me a quick tutorial and off we were to the races.  I won't say it wasn't hard (or that I didn't have to pull down the first two rows and re-do them after noticing they were leaning a bit hard to starboard so to speak...) but we got a good start on it and I really felt so damn proud.

Harder than it looks...

Getting really late at night.  Much swearing at the tile cutter...

Not bad for first timers! Still have a ways to go though...

We ended the week sore and tired but so, so much better off than before it began, and with a true sense that things are moving toward completion.  The past couple of weeks have been spent "taping", which is the process of filing in all the seams between the drywall pieces with tape and spackle and making the whole thing smooth and lovely.  Gav's been dropping in every day off but most of this has fallen to The Taper (who is called that for a reason) and he's been there damn near every day working his magic.

On the bad news side, doesn't look like it's possible to keep the old kitchen cabinets. We had to tear them out to repair the kitchen wall which was one of the last bastions of plaster (now gone!) and needed to be bumped out a bit to accommodate the plumbing waste pipe.  Turns out the cabinets were kind of chintzy to begin with and many of them didn't fare so well during the tear out.  So...Boo! More money we don't have! And...Yay! New cabinets!  I have some truly lovely plans for that kitchen, y'all.  But that's for another blog....Mwa ha ha ha!!!

Still crossing our fingers for a move-in date before Thanksgiving- what a thing to be thankful for!  Updates a' plenty coming- things are moving fast-and-furious now!! But:

Remember all that potential? Coming back into focus....ONWARD!

Wide Open Spaces

And....two months later.  How is that even possible? Well, I'll tell you how:  In addition to having our regular lives to lead (kids, jobs, building this house) it also happens that Father's Day, our wedding anniversary, my birthday, both kid's birthdays, and the Fourth of July happen in the same 1 month span.  So summer is kind of crazy.  Wonderful, but also crazy.

But all sorts of doings! So first, the chimney did indeed come down.  Video to prove it, starring Uncle A, my brother Joey, and Gavin shooting film between knocking down brick:

Gavin and I spent an insane 2 days cleaning from attic to basement (there is always, ALWAYS a mess, not matter how much you clean) and stacking all the old remaining brick so we could save it for use outside in landscaping later (much later- currently our backyard looks like the jungles of Vietnam).  This was done in early July, since Gav's mom was out for our baby boy's first birthday party! See how we cram work and fun into one insane package?  Every mosquito in Long Island turned out to help us stack bricks.  Thank you, mosquitos.

Building the Great Wall of Fitz

Uncle A, the Taper, Gavin and Little Ol' Yours Truly (I got to use the pneumatic hammer! SQUEE!) built some temporary walls to hold up the second floor while they installed the new header beam; we did this on my birthday, and I couldn't have asked for a better gift!  Once the beam was in and the temps down it was nothing but a big, light-filled space and so clear we made the right choice in opening everything up.

Notice that poor Gavin is sweating like a goat at the beach...

The Taper

The only way to tell how huge this room now seems is wee Gavin way at the other side...

Some guys came and for literally less than the materials alone would have cost at Home Depot installed insulation from the second floor ceiling on down (since the attic is not heated we'll save that for later) in one day!  I feel a tiny thrill when I see all that brown paper insulation, since it's literally a barrier that prevents dollars from flying out through our walls.

And wonder of wonder, miracle of miracles, the Taper done sheet rocked the bathroom!! WE HAVE A ROOM WITH WALLS! And even better, he took such pride in his work that I have the most flawless bathroom walls in the universe.

Gwendy came with me to check out our new walls!!

I walked in and nearly cried- it was so good to see stuff finally get put back rather than torn down! Uncle A plans on working on the bathroom during his vacation (cause that's fun) and it should be up and running before the end of the month! Imagine, peeing in my own house? A dream is a wish your heart makes...

And this week I call and order sheetrock for the whole rest o' the house.  We hope to have it delivered next week and (pleaseGodplease) have walls going up the last week of August!! FINGERS SOOOO CROSSED!

We Meet Again

Ugh...cannot believe that it's been more than a month since I last updated this bad boy.  My intentions were so good going in, but blah blah blah kids/work/life madness.  Where do I begin?

We are done with the electrical roughing in.  What a blessing in disguise needing to do that has turned out to be- seriously folks!  Not only is everything now safe and to code, but I got to dictate where to put outlets, light fixtures, and security lights.  I have never lived in a house designed in this century before and am the queen of sketchy multi extension cord wiring jobs to make old electric work for modern living. No more! I have outlets coming out the whazoo, people- places to plug in blow dryers and coffee pots and nary a concern about blowing fuses when I dare turn on 2 or more things at once.

ALSO! We made a MAJOR (at least to us) design decision.  It turns out that we will be able to do the conversion to gas heat after all, and that means our aforementioned janky chimney is no longer strictly necessary for venting purposes.  If you remember, we were looking at 2500 minimum to rebuild said chimney, and to spend that on something largely useless (we won't be burning coal in that fireplace any time soon) felt all kinds of wrong what with our shoe-string thread budget.  So how about knocking the whole damn thing down and making the kitchen/dining room an open concept sort of thing? DUH DUH DAHHHH!!! "But wait!", you say "What about your beautiful fireplace and all the charm contained therein??" Well, I tells ya what.  We could save the firebox and mantle and move the whole kit and caboodle to another wall, effectively making a new fireplace and still getting open concept ju ju! A lovely vista of being able to cook a meal without wondering if the kids were murdering each other or the dogs dances before my eyes! HUZZAH!

Enter the menfolk and a day of dirty, crazy hard work (is there any other kind in the Elephant?) chipping the chimney down from the roof through the attic, 2nd floor, and 1st floor, and carting the old brick out to be used in our landscaping future.  I was home kiddo wrangling, and lordy, my heart ached not being there to help them.  But Gavin took video and I was totally impressed with what they accomplished in no time at all.  Seriously, you can't tell at all from the roof that there was ever a hole, and the room downstairs is already so airy and full of light.

Next we have to put up some support beams to make up for soon-to-be-gone wall framing,  and figure out what to do with the awkward place in the hardwood that will missing.  Of course the dang floor was laid perpendicular to the wall making patching it a royal be-otch.  I'm thinking of just owning the imperfection and using Morroccan tile or parquet inlay or something cool rather than trying to disguise it...we'll see.  Also, we will be trying to reclaim some giant funky piece of furniture or other to make an island to separate the rooms.

We also (did I not tell you this??) decided that the teeny tiny bedroom upstairs would be better suited to being a walk-in closet/office for the master bedroom since the OG closet in there wouldn't fit more than a pair of pants.  Seriously, it was the smallest closet I've ever seen.  Allow me to revel in pure feminine glee for a moment at all that closet space.....GAH!!! Plus gutting the place let's me put in super useful features like a hatch in the closet wall so dirty clothes can just drop right into the laundry room below. Now if only we can find a spot for a secret passageway...

In other news (and in other rooms) blessed Uncle A continues to fight the good fight in the upstairs bathroom.  It took a couple of tries to make the new plumbing synch up with the old drainage, but we now have complete rough-ins, a new waste pipe and GLORY BE! A BATHTUB! Things are starting to look like things again.  Tile should be going down shortly and then....a dream come true: a toilet the handle of which I shall not need to jiggle.  It will be the flush heard round the world.   Got a great quote on insulation for the whole dang house, so once the ducts are re-attached that will be the next step and then....WALLS! WAAAAALLLSSS!!!  I am well and truly sick of seeing every room all at once.

This whole process has crawled on since we are all working around our various making-ends-meet-living-life schedule rather than just throwing money at some pricey builder types (Har de har har! Like that's an option!), but there is so much love being put into this place by so many amazing, generous souls that the house just feels happy, dust, and all, every time I walk in there.  Every bit of progress is a gift in every sense of the word, and the delays only make those baby steps sweeter.


Not much in the way of pictures but I'll see if I can't get some chimney-killing video up here soon:

And lo! It t'were a bath tub!

What's up, waste pipe?

I got the POWER!

Progress! Thank GOD! Pause to picture Gav doing a jaunty victory strut, maybe dressed like Uncle Sam? I don't know why, just do it.  Ok, done? Good. Anyway.

We started the week out on a rotten note- we were on our 4th dumpster, still battling an endless miasma of dust, and to top it all off we got a notice from our home owner's insurance that they were dropping us because our house was under renovation and not yet being lived in.  Wait, what? So people don't renovate their houses? Whatever. Jerks.

Turns out it was a blessing in disguise though.  We used the motivator of needing to have another insurance walk-through with whatever new company we go with to get serious and call in some reinforcements.  We were all set to blow whatever we had to on a Yellowpages electrician when a small miracle happened.  The Taper got an electrician who happens to be a good family friend to agree to make room in his uber-busy schedule and get cracking on getting us wired and back in business.  And better yet, the day after we called him it was supposed to rain so his job that day had been cancelled.  In less than 24 hours we had a licensed master electrician rigging up all sorts of fabulous new sparky magics to our house.  And in a couple more visits (scheduled this weekend!) we should be ready to move forward with insulation, plumbing, and-dare I say it?- closing up the walls! BOO YAH!

In other news, we pried all the stick-on tile up from the kitchen, mudroom, and bedrooms.  Let's take a moment, shall we, to focus on the fact that at some point in recent history people thought it was a cute idea to glue mustard-colored tile over their hardwood floors.  When you wrap your mind around that concept, you kind of understand how there is war and strife in our world.  Anywho, turns out whatever money was not spent on maintaining and repairing this house (I'm talking plumbing fixed with duct tape, y'all) was apparently spent on floor adhesive procured from NASA for use on space shuttles.  Like, that tile was on FOR KEEPS.  Now that it's gone there's this horrid gluey scum on the floors that shows no sign of coming up easily. It's like a giant Scratch-n-sniff sticker of evil, the scent being "Musty Old House".  Bring on the gloves and caustic chemicals, yo.  I will get that glue off if it's the last thing I do, if only to show them they haven't broken me.  And by them I mean the those guys at This Old House, the smug bastards.

I spent a long day with the the Taper getting that fourth dumpster packed to the gills, and literally just as we were talking about when to go to the scrap yard with our pile o' metal and junk appliances, some guys came by with a panel van and offered to buy it off us.  So I made $120 off a pile of garbage, recycled like a good green girl, AND I didn't have to lug it anywhere.  <For the win.

So yeah, this weekend should be way productive.  And that's the best thing ever, because I don't mind hard work- I just hate sitting on my hands.  Once the wiring is done, everyone else can go about doing what they do best.  And when everyone involved with this project does their best...well....it's pretty badass.

ahem.

Fourth dumpster.  FOURTH F@#*%N DUMPSTER.

The Weight

Blog title reflects both content of said blog and a sad farewell to Mr. Levon Helm of The Band who passed away this week. Rest in peace, talented man. And now your local news:

A somewhat uneventful week.  Gavin went back to work so there can no longer be great long stretches of house work- we've got to get as much possible done on our days off.  In a way it's a relief- as much as I want/need/am obsessed with working on the Elephant, families with babies thrive on routine our routine has gone to hell in a hand-basket of late.  It's nice to have naps and meals and even the odd toddler meltdown back on a loose schedule rather than coming out of left field- that kind of existence makes you feel like you are losing your damn mind one day at a time.

The (third!) dumpster went on Thursday, bringing our grand total for the approximate weight of all the crap we removed to 12 tons.  I kid you not, 22,000+ lbs. of plaster, lathe, junk and mishegas out of the house and out of our lives.  I can only imagine our houses frame just sighing after all that weight was lifted.  I spent a rip-roaring day with my sister and Uncle A just carting plaster and nail-studded wood out for like a hundred million hours.  I managed to cut my arms like I'd gone to prom with Edward Scissorhands in the process, but it felt really good to get my hands dirty for the day instead of speculating from afar what was going on without my help (or without my micromanaging :).

Uncle A got some lights working in the basement so I don't need to fear I will stumble upon a sleeping vagrant or hibernating bear when I fumble around down there with nought but the light of my cell phone to guide me.  And Gav's friend Dan spent a thankless day doing miscellany and removing hundreds of nails from our wall-less walls so we can one day aspire to put sheet rock up (live the dream!).

Next step- the wiring and duct work, on which we hope to get cracking on this week.  Other than that, I ordered a mailbox so our mail won't just be tossed in a rubber-banded roll on the porch any more (as much as I cherish the idea of identity theft and/or missed bills).  I do so love making small purchases for our home- some sappy domestic-reveling nest-making part of my being does a small jig of glee when my debit card goes swipeddy-swipe for things that don't fall in the boring (drywall/nails/safety-goggles) category.  Anywho, here's our super-cute letter box:

I think I'm going to add a bit of  "patina" to dull down the gold, but aint it adorbs?

Oh! And our tree out front and azalea bush have both bloomed be-yoo-tifully! I must say, I LOVE finding out about all the flora and fauna we've got in our yard, like little bonuses every week.  On Saturday my sister and I saw two baby squirrels poke their wee heads out of their nest in a knot in the black walnut tree and I've seen heaps of cardinals in the trees out back.  I found a rose bush and a couple of hydrangea (I live for hydrangea!) and big rangy bursts of forsythia just about everywhere. I don't think I'll get to do more in the yard this year besides make it presentable, but OH the fun I'm gonna have next spring....

Azalea realness

Crab apple? 

More Guts, More Glory?

Ugh...where to begin? It's been a helluva two weeks, friends.  First, we had a wonderful and all-too-brief visit with Gav's folks, who were able to see what we see in the Elephant and so were, as always, supportive and optimistic and all-in-all perfect.  Gav got to log some manly-man hours with his Dad knocking around the house and doing all sorts of fun jobs and the kids got to love on "Gammy and Pawpaw" for Easter so it was a perfect visit.  And then mid-week, the fun REALLY began.

I'll cut to the chase- turns out the knob-and-tube wiring we were told was inactive in fact powers about 1/2 of our house.  Glory be.  When it's in decent shape it's not necessary hazardous (though pretty inadequate to power our modern appliances, etc as it was largely used prior to the 1930s) but when it's janky and sort of all over the place mixed in with modern(ish) wiring, like ours is, it has the potential to cause fires and blow fuses and all sorts of fun and games.  So it needs to go.  Thankfully we have some great family connections to electricians and after they poked around a bit it was determined that to do the work we needed to....wait for it....gut the rest of the house.  We called Israel to see what he'd charge to do the remaining walls (the upstairs hallway, the horrid blue room, the kitchen ceiling, and....gulp...my beloved foyer) but because he'd gone so over weight on the past dumpster he needed more this time around- money we just don't have to spare.  Enter Gavin (with help from myself and a rotating cast of good and benevolent friends and family) doing the demo his damnself.

Today I got to join him for a lovely demo date (Mom was able to take off work and wrangle the kiddos for the day). In some ways, it was satisfying- swinging a giant pry bar at the walls that have caused me so much anxiety and consternation- but mostly it was dirty, tedious, and immensely strenous labor. We set up a make-shift shoot out the window and into our new (third) dumpster using a ladder wrapped in tarp and dropped bucket after bucket of crunchy plastery goodness down and out of our lives.  Gavin's been at it for a few days and honestly, after putting in just one good day myself, I don't know how he's held up so well-  I feel like I've gone over the Niagra Falls in a friggin barrel. Suffice it to say I am crazy-proud of my hubs.

I have had some reservations about this final gut- it becomes increasingly difficult to save those traits of the house that add that infamous "character" since working around old moulding and plaster medallions can be really hard when you are trying to smash through walls.  There have been a few casualties along the way -one example- the aforementioned plaster medallion crashed to the floor without warning today and broke into a million peices so it will have to be replaced with a salvaged one or a reproduction- but I think we have managed to keep enough original details to add back in once the walls are up that the house will still be itself, but better.  Like the Six Million Dollar Man. Or something.  Plus the more we open the more we discover potential problems (I'm looking at you, furry grey/black mold monster under the kitchen ceiling) before they have a chance to really become catastrophic.  We will truly know what's what with this house, and that does feel good.

Anywho, once all this is done the electric can be roughed in and we can FINALLY get moving on insulating and PUTTING UP SOME WALLS.  I really, really cannot wait.  But for now, enjoy our new "open concept" Victorian...

It is I, Demo Goddess

His and Hers Matching Aspirators! How cute!

Gav's Dad sanding all our cabinet doors

The crazy "Baker's Rack" set up so we could get to the plaster on the stair wall

Uncle A planning our upstairs bathroom.  

Goodtimes

The infamous Joe Da' Taper

Beauty in Destruction

The view from upstairs into my poor, poor foyer

No Guts, No Glory

Oh what a week it's been! On Saturday we had the Taper walk through the house with us to talk about what in the world we could do with our beyond-cracked ceilings and walls.  We were pretty certain that the upstairs was beyond help (the ceiling in our bedroom resembled the state lines in a map of of the USA) but we were uncertain about what to do with the now acoustic-tileless ceilings downstairs. Plus where the old roof had ostensibly been leaking its freaking face off there was more of that adorable mold on the plaster on the north side of the house under each window.  Oh! And the giant holes in the two smaller bedrooms.  And the crumbly plaster over the fireplace...So yeah, we had a few questions.  As predicted, the Taper's advice was simple: gut it.

I happen to quite like plaster- I think it has character that drywall can't imitate,  plus it's great for sound insulation.  When we bought the house my strong inclination was to try to save as much plaster as feasibly possible to keep the integrity of the house's aesthetic.  But a funny thing happens when you sign on the dotted line and take ownership of a place- you start thinking about the stuff you can't see. You think about it A LOT. You think about termites and rusty pipes and asbestos and creeping crawling lurking issues that are just waiting until you and your babies are all snuggly moved into the place and you've spent your last 2k on a fancy fridge to rear their ugly heads.  Long story short, after the overwhelming impression we've reached that this house has been neglected for at least 30 years, we needed to know what was going on in there.  And since they don't make an MRI machine big enough, that meant getting the old walls off so's we could see what we could see.  Plus once the walls were open we could re-wire the seriously scary outlets and insulate and all that good stuff.

So we made a compromise- instead of gutting the whole thing stem to stern as the Taper suggested, we kept the foyer intact -the plaster in there is in the best shape and I truly feel like it's the part of the house with the most innate character. Oh, and then there's the fact that it's one less place for us to spend money. Yeah- that might have something to do with it too.  We also left the upstairs hallway, and, if you can believe it, the back room of hideous blue and brown flowers and stripes.  Wait- I haven't showed you the famous blue room? How could I have left it off??! Here you go:

To quote my brother, "Dang.  That is so ugly it's almost back in style."

That room has, if you can believe it, the most current reno on it- it's got modern wiring and the walls are very much intact.  Also, it's current life will be as my work-from-home office, so it frankly doesn't warrant the money to love it up.

But everything else is out, baby.  The next step was figuring out just how to make said gut-job happen. Gavin was more than willing to do most of the filthy job himself, but he only has 2 weeks off coming from work, and he is only one man.  I have next to no time what with the kids and work, and even if the two of us worked 12 hours a day I don't think we could even begin to make a dent in two measly weeks.  So we decided to call for some quotes to see if we couldn't get a crew of guys in to knock the whole job out and cart away the resulting garbage while they were at it.  

We called a few guys and got demoralizingly expensive estimates- literally all of our budget's worth of money just to destroy the house we were trying to fix.  We were just resolving ourselves to doing the work as best we could with whatever friends and family we could bamboozle into helping us when the sky parted, a perfect shaft of sunlight broke through the clouds, and standing in that light was a wee man named Israel.

He was recommended to us from friends of my Mom who swore by him; we had little faith at this point that we could afford anyone but figured it couldn't hurt to have one more guy take a look. He's a small, soft-spoken man of very few words.  He listened patiently while I told him how I wanted to save as much of the molding as I could, and unlike the men who came before him, he didn't tell me it wasn't worth saving and I should just "buy some new molding at Home Depot". He agreed that the foyer was fine to save and just needed a little polish coat to fix some minor cracks. He walked around the place with me for about 15 minutes, took notes in a little spiral notebook, and then proceeded to quote us a quarter of the price of all the other contractors. He told me he knew we were on a budget, and he could also see we had plenty of projects for him in the future, so essentially, he was giving us a break(!).  I almost couldn't shake his hand fast enough, and by THE NEXT DAY,  he had a crew of guys and a dumpster in our driveway, and the great gut began (forgot my camera so excuse crappy cell-phone pics):

Our scary-full dumpster.  Almost 6 TONS of plaster and lathe.

Dining Room- they pulled the mantle off and saved it! :)

Notice the window INSIDE the living room wall from when it was part of the porch.  

Dining Room Some More- that's all molding they saved.
Some will be re-usable, some won't, but we'll find a purpose for all of it...

Pocket Door.  Still in Pocket. :)

Wesley's (?) Room

The Bathroom.  It actually looks better this way...

Really, if you have never experienced demo-ing plaster and lathe, it is one of the most backbreaking, dirty jobs imaginable- dust, heavy lifting (plaster weighs 85lbs a cubic foot, btw), lead paint- you name it.  Israel's crew worked like freaking machines and in just a couple of days accomplished more than we could have in a month.  Amazing.  Suffice it to say, if you need a good reccommendation for work on your house, drop me a line- I have a guy.

In other news (cause, like, taking the guts out of the entire house isn't enough for one week) the guys came back to do the aforementioned tar-job on the chimney.  They climbed up there and then called to Gavin who was standing on the ground below.  One guy took his pinky finger and with it pushed over one whole corner of bricks on our chimney.  Basically, the whole bloody thing is shot.  New chimney must be built.  For a fireplace that, as it turns out, was coal-burning and so will not be able to be used for wood any damn way(maybe gas one day?). There goes another 2.5k out the window.  Awesomesauce.

But! On a happier note! We actually completed something! You may recall that our prior cellar door was an experiment in rust and debris covered over by a tarp and bug larvae? Yes? Well, with the help of my wonderful Uncle Andrew, Gavin replaced it with a strong, clean new door.  One thing can be officially checked off the master list.  We'll take small satisfactions where we can get them:

Old Crap Doors!

New Wonder-Doors!

Uncle Emerging Like Handy Bear From Cave!

Yeah, so it's been a pricey, exhausting week.  But we have a certain sense of peace now, knowing everything there is to know about what our house's inside's look like.  Some of it aint pretty (is that asbestos I see wrapped around our ductwork???) but now we know what we are dealing with.  We are not naive enough to think this means there will be no more surprises (I'm looking at you, plumbing) but at least we can make our list of priorities based on reality and not assumptions.  Or something.  Anywho, next week- Gavin is off! His folks come to see our crazy house! We may put up a wall or two! Huzzah!