Demo Day

The plumbers came out to the house on Saturday to finish up the prelim piping work. I am not posting pictures of that because the only difference to see between now and the previous post is that we have red and blue hoses attached to the white PVC pipes (made in USA YAY!!!!!!!!!!!!) An interesting tidbit I learned is that the plumbers told us they have to be extra careful and precise when doing the plumbing (pre pouring of the slab) on homes that are having stained concrete rather than a more traditional floor covering (carpet, tile, hardwood). The reason for this is that if they were to discover a mistake, such as an improperly placed pipe, after the slab was poured, they could always take a jack hammer to the slab, fix it, and no one would be the wiser because the floor covering would disguise it. But they can't do that with a stained concrete floor.

We spent yesterday doing a lot of demo work. The first picture is one of the two downstairs rooms after the flooring, and subflooring was removed. The top layer was vinyl tile that was placed on sheets of plywood. The plywood was either nailed or screwed to a mixture of 1 X 4s, 1 x 2s, and random scraps of lumber including pieces of exterior siding. These various pieces of wood were laying on a rough concrete slab. I think the reason for the varying scrap lumber was because the slab isn't level. I think a professionally engineered slab would sit at least six inches off the ground level to discourage water penetration. This thing is about level with the ground. My suspicions that we were growing things under the plywood were confirmed. But since this isn't the Discovery Channel I decided not to post an image of what we have narrowed down to a roly poly/spider hybrid colony or a never before seen (by us) version of mold.

Here I am getting ready to attack Sheetrock with a hammer. This was definitely the best part of the day. I didn't make it to my kickboxing class at the gym, but still got to practice some side and roundhouse kicks on the wall.
Now you can see the two rooms. The plywood on the green room still needs to be ripped up. Now that George is retired, we may come home one day to all the work being done. Oh, by the way, we are salvaging what wood we can for future projects. Other things that are still useful will be donated to those that can use them. We are hoping to do our part to keep a lot out of landfills.
I know Rich has told some of you he's mechanically inclined, but I wonder how many times he's hit himself on the head with a hammer?