The Reno Continues...

So who else, besides me, can't believe that it's the end of April?  If you're like me, wrapping your head around the passage of time has become slightly difficult.  Just thinking of what's coming these next months makes me hope and pray we get everything done with this house!

The bathroom renovation, though slow, has been interesting.  Jared has been continually working on the demo of the room, which probably would be done by now, but for the water damage that has plagued this house.

The damage as seen here was mostly to be expected, albeit not pleasant to find.  As Jared continued his demo of the bathroom, he found that the damage seemed tamer than it was.

However, the rest of the walls are perfectly fine, if done slightly strange.  Structurally, the interior walls are fine, and other than some plumbing, are pretty much good to go.

Something I forgot to mention: with the help of one of his work buddies, Jared managed to get the massive, heavy tub out without damaging anything!  This monster was made out of cast iron, so it took a lot of work to get it out.

This is as far as they got the tub, and it will probably stay there until we can find a new home for it.

After the removal of the tub, Jared wasted no time getting rid of the old flooring.  Under two layers of stick-on laminate tiles, the old hardwood floor looked pretty sad.  The future holds a lovely tiled floor for this space.

Even though we exposed the window, Jared determined that the whole wall needed help, so he took out the window in anticipation of refitting it at a later date.  It was a better plan than keeping it in and risking it falling out.  On the plus side, the sweet gum tree in the backyard looks great!

Unfortunately, the more Jared poked around at the rotted wood, the worse it seemed to be.  Also, though he was fairly confident in his ability to do the main repairs he assumed would be necessary for this bathroom, Jared knew he wasn't really sure about repairing this kind of damage.

And though the sub floor seemed to be only significantly rotted at the base of the window, what was found underneath the floor was worse than we had anticipated...

Jared opened up the space and found the support beam on top of the cinderblock foundation rotting away too.  This was a problem we discovered on the front of the house, and luckily, that was one thing that Pete managed to fix correctly.  Though Jared may be skilled enough in carpentry to do the main things, this was something we hoped we wouldn't encounter, as he's not qualified to deal with something of this magnitude.  When it comes to the structural integrity of the house, this project is not something we can half-fix.

He's been working on this wall a few times, but the siding has posed a problem.  Being asbestos siding, Jared hasn't really wanted to mess with it very much.  However, in his efforts to work on the exterior wall, he's had to remove a few pieces of the siding to avoid breaking them, and even then, some of them have been cracked.

Luckily, Jared managed to find a tarp to put up, as the spring weather has a tendency to be wet.  Hopefully we can start making some progress on rebuilding, so we don't have to have an opening much longer.  This week's forecast is looking rather stormy!  For now, Jared's biggest hang up has been figuring out what to do.  Feeling lost, it's been difficult to know how to proceed with the damage seeming a little overwhelming for a one-man job.  But Jared being the resourceful guy that he is talked to the guys at the local hardware store and got some numbers for some people who could help give advice, if nothing else.  The other evening, one of the suggested guys came over and discussed things with Jared, so he seems to be a bit more confident at tackling this big project.

Remember this beauty?  We have made some progress in this department.  Jared made an appointment at a sandblasting company to have the exterior done.  We'll have to paint it ourselves, but that's a simple matter of buying the correct spray paint (which we did today).  We also found a nifty little kit at Lowe's that refinishes minor imperfections and stains on the interior.  With some elbow grease, this thing will be good as new!





The next few months will be crazy, to say the least.  Jared has plenty to do in the bathroom (renovation related...you know what I mean), we're going to work on getting the claw-foot looking nice, and then we've got our summer trip home coming up in June.  After we return from visiting home, Jared suspects he'll have a lot of free time because his workplace has scheduled block leave.  Since we won't be taking block leave, and because need for staff members at the Academy will be low, he's hoping to have plenty of time to work on the house.  After this summer, it's full steam ahead on getting this house finished before we move!  Hopefully no unforeseen hiccups throw off any of our already stretched plans.