This was our 4th weekend working at Glenn Street, and I thought we were a LONG way away from this. However, on Saturday morning, we hit a monumental moment. . . We closed the dumpster door. This may sound small to you, but that is a 30 YARD dumpster, one of the big boys, the heavy hitters that carries away literally TONS of debris, and we closed the door. This means we have filled it to the point of needing the space behind the door for more crap. It holds 2 layers of ceramic tile, 3 rooms worth of drywall, cabinets, carpet, subfloor, insulation, and more mold/mildew that you would ever believe, and we still have more to go. There is still more subfloor, two bathrooms, and a roof to go into the dumpster, but it will have to be dumped first. I never dreamed we would fill it up, especially after only a month, its REALLY big dumpster. This is the kind of dumpster filling you see on DIY and HGTV renovation shows, not with us in the middle of Jackson, Al.
This weekend was the weekend of nasty! We took out the ceiling and a couple walls in the living room More Cock Roaches, thankfully no snakes.
There was quite a bit of mold in the drywall. The header above the French doors is rotten and so is the corner connecting the living room addition to the kitchen. That was expected, water has been leaking there for many years.
Now for the nasty of nasties, the floor. Most of the sub floor and walls separating the kitchen and dining are GONE! This is super exciting because it means we are getting VERY close to starting to put it back together again. The plywood was like tissue paper, it just turned to saw dust while we were pulling on it to get it out. Above the plywood we found a layer of pressboard, our best guess is that it was used as the backer for the original floor. We also discovered ANOTHER layer of wood floor. That means the floor count in those two rooms alone is: 2 layers of ceramic tile, 2 layers of hardwood, 1 layer of sheet vinyl, 1 layer of split brick, cement board and the pressboard backer, not all stacked on top of each other but all in those two rooms. Now, that being said two layers of ceramic tile and 1 layer of sheet vinyl were stacked on top of each other. There’s no wonder the house is a structural disaster after you add all of the weight of just the house, plus all the flooring, the lack of roof support, and the rotten beams/floor joists from the water problem, but she’s our disaster.
The area around the kitchen sink has been leaking for several years. It completely rotted the bottom of the kitchen cabinet, the floor under the cabinet, the floor joist, and the main support beam running under the kitchen sink. The pressboard floor around the sink was still dripping wet when we removed it yesterday. The plywood literally left a water trail out the front door while I carried it to the dumpster. Always fix issues the correct way, don’t try to put a band aid on it. This house is a prime example of a lot of band aids trying to fix something, but actually just making the issue worse.
Now we are left with a “clean” slate. We can see all the way through to the crawl space (which is the cleanest part of the house, go figure).
Now to practice my balancing skills before next weekend. Any bets on how long before one of us falls through the joists?
Renovating Wright 