Preston Was Here

On the main rafter of the roof there is a bracing plate that has the name Preston carved into it.

Kevin ran the wires into the walls and back to the panel. They aren't plugged in yet, but this means we can proceed with the floor.

Beautiful new sill plate in place with the notches in place for the wires to make it through safely. Now that the plate is down we can get on with the plywood. Interestingly, the kitchen side is about 4 inches narrower than the dining room side which means that our 8 foot boards don't land nicely on a joist and cutting or notching is going to be needed.

Attic Surprises

Kevin found a bunch more things when he finished tearing down the ceiling.

The pair to this old leather shoe fell as well and we haven't found it yet, but it is really awesome!

Play time! We also found some more kid related things:

1) Mallo Cup  prize redemption card

2) a die, two hockey players, some checker pieces

3) a shell collection and I really don't know what the red thing or vile is. The large green piece was some sort of pot that was broken before the shards rained down all the way to the basement.

Old electrical showing there was once knob and tube wiring

Interesting grouping of things, some old leather, a tarnished spoon, and half of a pair of scissors.

WARNING: a bit graphic

We had found evidence of the squirrel in the form of droppings and corncobs, but we didn't expect to find the remains of it....

Solo Work

I haven't been able to do much with the house. When I get off of work, it's already dark and we don't exactly have lights to be able to do anything. (Plus the house is currently really creepy after dark) In the mean time, Kevin has been putting in some solo time and gotten a lot done. The kitchen side ceiling is now down. There's lots of clean up that needs to happen. He has sorted out the electrical panel and we are now up to two (!) outlets and a basement light hooked up along with the furnace, of course. With very little exception the gutting is done, you can see some of remaining yellow and green drywall, so next step is confirming our kitchen layout so he can set forth on the adventure of wiring and we can proceed.

Chock Full of Nuts

We've seen old corncobs and droppings, but I think the nuts confirm that squirrels had made their home in the walls. It also appears there was an old window that was boarded up and hidden by insulation and drywall.

An old shoe found in the wall
(We also found a sock but I didn't get a picture)

A lot of demo was done in the last few days. Kevin went to town ripping down the walls and ceilings.

On the other sided of that insulation is the main bedroom

Under the drywall, plywood, and slats is a nice high ceiling. The studs were barely attached.

Shiny

 We were on a slight hold waiting for our special order electrical panel. It came in this morning and we did a pre-breakfast run to pick it up. Kevin built a new wall in the basement for it. He also rewired the main power cable, the furnace, and the one outlet to the side. That would equal the total power in the house. The new panel is definitely larger than the old and will be open for expansion sometime in the future. By moving it to the basement we also will be better prepped to rewire.

New Panel

Old Panel

While Kevin was working on the wall and electrical, I was upstairs taking down ceiling tiles and the kitchen drywall.

After the furnace was back up and running we went back to the subfloor and now have half a floor to walk on!

 With the new floor I'll be able to pull down more ceiling tiles! We are down to only one shelf along the back wall. I got rid of the top one and the box shelf set which opened the corner up for demo.

View from the front door

Finder's Keepers

While we haven't found bags of money in the rafters- yet- we have found a number of interesting 'treasures'. We already posted our 1910 newspapers; although, we found out something interesting by looking closer at them. The May 12 edition featured the story of the death of King Edward VII of England and the coronation of the next king.So here are the other things we have found:

This sign was hidden in the basement behind some doors and a drywall sheet. It is a back lit plastic sign. The bottom reads Mel's Diner. It doesn't have the back or the lighting and there is a crack in it. The sign is as big as a sheet of plywood that hid it.

 Evidently the former owners were thirsty. We've found Red Bull in the mailbox, Captain Morgan on top of the duct work in the basement, and Bud Light under the bathtub...

This note is scrawled on a stud next to the bathroom plumbing

 Since the kitchen has yielded a lot of interesting things.

A to-do list was behind a cabinet along with a sympathy card from 1985 that had a King of Clubs in it.

No idea what this piece of printed plastic is for but it is pretty!

The nut and marble were between the floor and sub-floor. There is another marble, a blue and white one, that was found in the wall, but I didn't get a picture of it. 

Under the sink cabinet were a scraper, two spoons, butter knife, macrame butterfly and 3 pennies.

 Part of the reason for the list of goodies is because not a ton was done at the house today. I sorted through our laminate flooring to make sure it was good.

Of the 18 boxes and all but 2 were good

This may be box overkill. This is our trim for the floor. A lot of empty space in it. This also came with a sample of the floor cleaner that was also put in a big box for its size.

Divide and Conquer

We got the sistering done on the header and sides for the kitchen side today. After that was done Kevin went to work on putting up the joists for that side. He got half of them done ^_^

While he was working on that I was working on demo-ing the bathroom. 

That's the back part of our new tub surround. It was resting in the bathroom and needed to find a new home before I could start luckily we've made some room in the living room for it.

 To the right is the wall by the vanity. Realizing I was going to run into electrical and the vanity I had to stop and decided to start on the bathtub.

 When I tried loosen the netting that was securing the surround, the wall moved. It appears we will be rebuilding that wall when the new tub goes in since it isn't secured to the floor.

After fighting with the fiberglass surround for most the afternoon it is finally gone!