Demolition
Rain Rain Go Away
Dec/15/07 11:37 PM
To update everyone on the roof situation. I
temporarily patched the roof where that chimney was,
in case it rained. Well 6 straight days of rain later
it has finally stopped, instead it is snowing! Bah!
This hole in the roof has turned into a pain in my...
A funny story, I had propped up a trash can underneath the horribly patched hole to catch water, I of course secured the trash can with the flimsiest piece of trim I could find. Fast forward 20 gallons later... My foundation guys were in the crawl-space working when they heard a FWOOMP and saw 20 gallons of water pouring into the basement through the ceiling. Randy yelled at his guys, “STOP! Someone busted a water line.” and they scrambled around to shut off the water to the house. Needless to say it wasn’t a busted waterline, nope... All that toolin’ around under the house had disturbed my ever so delicately balance trash can full of water. So now I have since secured the trash can with the flimsiest piece of wire that I could find instead.
Kristin, however, came up with an ingenious setup that uses paper towels to “wick” incoming water into a small bucket See the picture on the left. It actually
worked! (Ahem, not that I ever doubted it.) Anyway, when I came in this morning, there wasn’t a drop in my trash can and her bucket setup was half full!
Today we had a propane heater going full blast to dry it out since it stopped raining. Now if i could only get an hour when the roof isn’t wet or icy, then it will be fixed! You can believe that I will definitely have a blog post about that triumphant day...
A funny story, I had propped up a trash can underneath the horribly patched hole to catch water, I of course secured the trash can with the flimsiest piece of trim I could find. Fast forward 20 gallons later... My foundation guys were in the crawl-space working when they heard a FWOOMP and saw 20 gallons of water pouring into the basement through the ceiling. Randy yelled at his guys, “STOP! Someone busted a water line.” and they scrambled around to shut off the water to the house. Needless to say it wasn’t a busted waterline, nope... All that toolin’ around under the house had disturbed my ever so delicately balance trash can full of water. So now I have since secured the trash can with the flimsiest piece of wire that I could find instead.
Kristin, however, came up with an ingenious setup that uses paper towels to “wick” incoming water into a small bucket See the picture on the left. It actually
worked! (Ahem, not that I ever doubted it.) Anyway, when I came in this morning, there wasn’t a drop in my trash can and her bucket setup was half full!
Today we had a propane heater going full blast to dry it out since it stopped raining. Now if i could only get an hour when the roof isn’t wet or icy, then it will be fixed! You can believe that I will definitely have a blog post about that triumphant day...
|
Living With A Broken Hearth
Dec/13/07 11:34 PM
After the removal of the chimney, the massive eye-sore in the living room was next on the list. In case you don’t
remember looked like this picture on the left.
This job has actually been a little more physically demanding than the chimney removal. While the pneumatic chisel has been a crucial tool in this job, I think I actually got more milage out of the sledge and crowbar. I used the pneumatic chisel to open up a slot for the crowbar, then I would give the rocks a few taps with the sledge hammer to loosen the mortar. At this point, I would use the crowbar to pry off large pieces of the hearth. Which has proven to be our messiest endeavor to date, every inch of the house is covered in a 1/8” thick blanket of dust. You should have seen the funk coming out of my nose (Kristin wouldn’t let me post the photos), and I was even wearing a respirator! Speaking of Kristin, I have to give her mad props. She came home from a long day at work, to find that I had made her a nice dinner and uncorked a nice bottle of wine, then afterwards I had to break it to her that we had to go move several hundred pounds of rock and mortar in the rain.
Ok, by now you may be asking, “How the *