First Street - End of Second Week

 

The second week of work at First Street was a lot less dramatic than the first week - at least physically.  When I got to work on Monday, Ray had already started doing some serious damage to the sub floor in the upstairs bedroom to the left of the stairs.  Who ever installed the sub floor in the upstairs rooms, wanted to make sure that the sub floor would never come up and they did a good job of it. Nails were every six inches in either direction.  Ray slammed away at the floor with full force while I picked up the pieces and put them into trash cans.

 

 

Monday afternoon, we loaded both our trucks with the trash cans of sub floor, along with other stinking garbage that had built up on the job site and hauled them to dumpsters at the Lincoln Building and Edgewood. I couldn't help but imagine how a cartoon of this action would have stink smell floating along with the trucks as we drove down the streets. Amazingly, the entire house smelled less stinky when we came to work on Tuesday.

 

(At least 80 percent of the stink left the

 house when the sub floor was hauled off.)

 

Ray was hard at work when I got to First Street on Tuesday. He was upstairs with the Shop Vac, cleaning up stray poop under baseboards and in the window sills. When he finished that, he announced that we were ready to do the power washing.

 

My son, Ben, had suggested that a quick run through with a power washer in this house, might solve a lot of problems. Ben works in construction for a big firm in Los Angeles. This idea really appealed to Ray, as he loves to power wash. Ben added that if a person followed behind the power washer with a Shop Vac, sucking up the excess water, that it would probably do little harm and a lot of good.

 

Let's pause here for a little aside:

I mentioned to Philip that we intended to power wash the entire inside of the house. I think he may have missed the 'and suck the excess water up with a vacumn' because he immediately nixed that idea, suggesting that we just get buckets of water and mop the place out. The problem is that a lot of 'stuff' was stuck to floors and baseboards.  Stuff that, even with power washing, didn't let loose.

 

And so we power washed the inside of the First Street house.

 

 

We started upstairs. Ray used the sprayer and I worked the Shop Vac. It was loud and wet and fierce. I had to scramble to keep up with the power sprayer. Speed was of utmost importance. Ray moved the sprayer quickly so as not to damage the interior. I was constantly wrestling the cords and hoses to get into position. Within two hours we were finished. The floors were wet but we left no puddles anywhere in the house.

 As soon as we were finished, and Ray was packing up the equipment to take back to the Lincoln Building, Jim showed up at the job site. Jim does the electric work for Philip and he'd come by to either ponder the next move, electrically, at the house or to actually start working on the electric system. (Currently, all electricity has been turned off at the house - we had to borrow electricity from the neighbor to do the power washing.) Ray left as he was soaking wet, and Jim and I talked light fixtures. As I was getting ready to leave, I asked Jim to help me load the old bed springs that were sitting on the porch. A metal scrapper had already inquired about scrap metal at the house, so I figured he was eyeing the two springs sets on the porch.

 

 

Anyway, later that night, Philip came home and was furious with me for power washing that house! He'd talked to Jim at some point in the afternoon and heard from Jim that our action with the power sprayer had cupped the wood in the floors! Well, there are some sections of the floors that have cupped wood but it's in the area where urine soaked carpet set for years. That will mess up wood every time - not two hours of getting wet then drying out.  Well, I was busted big time. Ultimately, I reminded Philip that he has approved of every house of his that I have brought back to livable condition. 

 

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The Nichol House:

 

Before -

 

 

After

 

(I framed in the window but Mark Michaels -  who helped 

with the finishing touches, closed up the fireplace.)

 

**********************************

 

Later that night, as I was trying to fall asleep, I for some reason remembered an incident from my childhood. We had a fantastic back porch on my parents house, which stretched the entire length of the house. It was about 30 inches off the ground and was a perfect stage for a lot of childhood performances. Well, my Dad, who was a carpenter, would bring home junk and tools from his work and set them on the porch - right in our way. So I would gather his stuff up and take it all to the barn. Later - sometimes days and sometimes weeks - Dad would be looking for his tools. His face would be furious red as he looked for the culprit who moved his tools. Ultimately someone would tell him "Sarah put them in the barn." He'd be mad as heck at me for moving his stuff but he ultimately still loved me anyway. Laying there, remembering this, I laughed out loud.

 

***************************************

Wednesday everything at First Street changed. Philip told me to bring everything at the house to a 'buttoned up' halt. He needs Ray, Jim and I at another location in Indianapolis for the next couple of months. So Ray started working on a repair to better support the mudroom roof.

 

First, Ray braced the roof.

 

 

The white looking board is the new supporting joist

 

 

The white, wide board is a new support beam as the entire,

mudroom roof was pulling away from the house.

 

Before:

 

 

 After:

 

 

The difference may be hard to see but the new repair will

allow a heavy person to walk across the roof without it collapsing.

 

 

 

I started actually scrubbing the floor with a broom

and bleach water - hoping to cut more of the

smell from the floor before we closed

the house up for the winter.

*********

In the afternoon, Ray helped me load a pile of brush from the yard

 onto the bed of my truck. I'm hauling the remains of a tree

that Ray cut in the back yard, to my house for burning.

******************

 

Thursday I couldn't be in Anderson so Ray worked by himself. One of the things he addressed was the back step, just before the sliding glass doors. It was a mushy mess of plywood covered with linoleum.

 

 

Ray pulled this out and found that there was

a concrete slab just beneath the rotted out mess.

 

 

********************

I couldn't be in Anderson on Friday, so Ray worked by himself again, Today he was tidying up the debris laying about the house. He loaded his saw horses, tools, supplies and any remaining trash to haul to the Lincoln Building. At my request, Ray removed the huge, long boards from the front porch. In this endeavor, we suffered our first job site injury. The huge board slipped and hit Ray in the face.

 

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I'll get back to updating about the house when we get back to work on it in the spring. I am glad we got all the old furniture, carpet, trash and poop out of the house.

 

First Street - end of first week

 

It was a great week to start this wreck of a demolition project. The weather was perfect. It was in the 60's, with a small breeze to take away the smell. Ray and I both have been dreading this job, so it was good to finally get started. We started by setting up the tools we'd need. We had trash bags, trash cans, shovels, pry bars, hammers, knives, saws-alls, rags, paper towels, rubber gloves, respirators, coveralls, head coverings, jugs of water, folding chairs and a roll away dumpster. Ray wore goggles - I just wore my regular glasses.

 

 

 

We set up some cleaning stations for hand washing and face washing before breaks. The house doesn't have running water. So we had to bring clean water.

 

 

 

As much as I hate to do it,

I'm posting pictures of the filthy mess that we encountered.

 

The living room:

 

 

 

 

The kitchen:

 

 

 

 

 

 

The down stairs bedroom:

 

 

 

The downstairs bathroom:

 

 

 

 

The laundry room:

 

 

 

 

 

The mudroom:

 

 

 

 

 

This is the other section of the ceiling in the mudroom, which was dangling over our heads. (Ray pulled that down on our second day of work on the house.)

 

The upstairs bedroom - left side of stairs:

 

  

 

The upstairs bedroom - right side of stairs.

 

 

 

The upstairs bathroom:

 

 

So now you see what a mountain we had to remove.  And on Monday morning, October 16, 2017, Ray Chacon and I began to move this mountain. Ray began by removing the ceiling section that had collapsed in the mudroom. Another section of that same ceiling was taken down after we got all the rest of the stuff out of the house. I was waiting on the dumpster guy to show up before I suited up to go into the house. Ray started dragging items out onto the porch, to wait for their ride out of town.

 

 

 

When Ray pulled these old blinds off

the huge window in the dining room,

brilliant light filled the house.

It was a joyful moment for me!

 

 

 

Ray also started cutting up the furniture for better, tighter packing into the dumpster. No wasted space in the dumpster - it was packed like a Martha Stewart picnic basket! He cut the back and arms off the 6 foot couch, the backs and arms off 4 recliners and the back and arms off an easy chair. He flattened the bar and I cut up the bar chairs. The dumpster was delivered by Toby Buck. He was so great to do business with. He apologized for being late. Since we had not wasted any time waiting on him - we were ready to start loading.

 

 

After removing the furniture, Ray rolled the living room carpet up and was going to drag it to the dumpster but it was too heavy for me to help move it, so he cut it in half like a fruit rollup. Then he threw both sections onto the dumpster.

 

We called Toby to come get the dumpster

and please bring us another one

 because we had not even touched the upstairs.

 

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Day Two

 

I met Toby on the second day of clean out and since he didn't have a smaller dumpster available, he brought us another mid sized one and just charged us for the small sized one. It turned out to be a good thing because I had underestimated what all was upstairs. We packed this one full too.

 

 

 

 

Ray pulled all the carpet off the stairs,

which seemed to be in great shape.

 

 There was a mountain of stuff - mostly small junk - upstairs. The closet in the right side bedroom was full of kid's games. Small bits and pieces would fall out of ripped boxes onto the carpet and mix with the carpet of animal feces at our feet.  I was amazed at how Ray pulled the carpet off the carpet strips in the left side bedroom, folded it in to the center from each side, rolled it up in a tight bundle, we duct taped it in place and he carried that entire bundle down the stairs and tossed it onto the dumpster! Poop was everywhere in this house. The animals living there must have been as miserable as the home owner who let things go this far. Ray said he even found a soup pot in the laundry room that had poop in it. What a nightmare!

 

At the end of day two, everything in the house was headed out of town. The last dumpster looked like a scene from 'Princess and the Pea" with six mattresses / box springs on top of all the debris from the laundry room and upstairs. Whew, what a relief to be done with the clean out!

 

Day Three:

 

 On day three, Ray vacuumed out the entire house with his Shop Vac and I washed off the items that we saved from the house.

 

 

Day Four:

 

On day four, Ray and I started removing the subfloor in the upstairs bedrooms and bathroom. The right side bedroom, the bathroom and the hallway at the top of the stairs has all the stinky, stained subfloor removed now.

 

 

   Now it's time to see the before (before repairs)  pictures.

 

Living room:

 

 

 Kitchen:

 

 

 The downstairs bedroom:

 

 

The laundry room:

 

 

The mudroom:

 

 

 

 

 The drawers were set back into the house until

we can wash them and set them into the garage.

And the dangling ceiling was all removed.

 

The upstairs bedroom - left of the stairs:

 

 

 

The upstairs bedroom - right of the stairs:

 

 

       (This room has already had the subfloor removed.) 

 

 

The bathroom:

 

 

Someone suggested we check the floor boards - and we did!

 

 

(A secret stairway into the basement.)