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.)
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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