Remodeling Journal: Demo Part 2

It just so happened there was an auction for home remodeling the Saturday after we bought our house. How convenient. It also happened to be one of the coldest days of the year thus far, other than when we had snow back in November.

The girls went with us. Poor them! We finally sent them out to the truck with the keys and my phone (Tbug had hers) for entertainment. It wasn’t going fast and boy was it cold. I think Cold is an understatement at this point. Holy cow!

They had cabinets, flooring, wood, paneling, sinks, fans, you name it… We walked away with the tile for the backsplash of my kitchen, which apparently at this point I can’t find a picture of. I didn’t have my phone (read above paragraph) and hubby never sent me the pictures I took :).

We called it quits long before the auction was over. It started at either 9 or 10. We left at 1. It was cold and boring, and the things we wanted still hadn’t sold. I talked to a couple who went to these often and they said that one of the previous auctions lasted until after 7pm the last time.

After we left the auction, we met up with Jared for lunch. Hubby and Jared left for our house and the girls and I went around town shopping. I forgot to mention in yesterday’s post that on day 2, November 30th to be exact, I had a bit of a breakdown. That’s why they let me kick the wall in. I’m here to tell you, that makes you feel better!

The fireplace

So the stove that was in the house was old, nasty, and really didn’t work. My parent’s rental house is next door and no one lives there anymore. In fact, my dad’s wanting it torn down. So dad said we could have the stove out of the house.

The day before, Hubby and Jared went over to get the stove. A skunk lives in the old rental house now and sprayed. I guess they couldn’t get out of the house fast enough.

So while the girls and I were running around town, the guys went back with Grady and got the stove. They said the house still reeked. That skunk didn’t want anyone in its house apparently. But they did come out with the stove.

When we got there, they had just fired it up and the house was actually starting to get warm. Prior to us adding the HVAC system this is how the house was heated in the winter.

More Demo

Now, there were also those old baseboard heaters? I don’t really know much about them. Plus there was a heater in the wall. Again, I have no idea if they are connected or not. Now if you look at the floor in the above picture, you might have remembered that there were shelves. We got the shelves removed which is one thing I asked for.

When we removed those shelves (we is a relative term…) it opened up that doorway. We decided since I couldn’t take out the wall I wanted, let’s take this one out a little further back. We had to take that heating unit out anyway and we could either sheetrock where it was or make the opening bigger.

So this is where I share that hubby had a bit of a breakdown when we started tearing out that wall and the heater. I started making corny jokes to keep from crying and those were upsetting hubby even worse.

This was a load bearing wall also and it wasn’t properly supported. You can’t see it in this picture, but because of lack of support, the roof was sagging. This is why the corny jokes and the meltdowns. So they let hubby kick the wall heater out of the wall. He felt better about that.

See, I’m telling you, if you’re upset, save your money on therapy and kick out a wall.

Tbug’s Room

One last thing we accomplished that day, I let Tbug work on taking up her trim boards. I figure, it’s her room, she should have a little elbow grease in it too, am I right?

So if you’re keeping track, there have been 2 meltdowns in the house thus far. One on my part and one on hubby’s. Don’t worry, I’m sure there are way more ;).