Alarming work

The crew has spent the last 2 days installing 11, count 'em, 11 smoke and CO2 detectors.  Seems they've punched a hole in every wall and ceiling they can find.  Someone is under the mistaken assumption that we are now a commercial establishment, when in fact we are a residence with a conditional use permit to have paying guests.  Not the same thing.  What a waste of time and money.  Wish someone had consulted us about this before doing all this work.

Bathroom fixtures

Here they are, ingloriously stored in what will be the sitting room.  They look great except for the medicine cabinet (not shown), which is a piece of dukey.

Moving in the sheetrock

The plumbing inspection was done and passed last week, so now the sheet rock can go up.  First step, get the sheet rock to the second floor!

New project!

We await the advice of a dry wall expert to determine what we're going to do on the second floor landing.  In the meantime, for whatever reason, we decided that it was the right time to dismantle the enormously tall bookcase that was built in the back staircase.

I suppose Professor Ganzell is rolling in his grave, but honestly, books put in this case must have been ones that no one ever wanted to read - they were completely inaccessible after the 5th or 6th shelf.

View from the top of the stairs

We knocked down all the shelves and supports - happily, the bookcase had been built on top of the stairs so this actually opened up some new space in the staircase which is pretty narrow.  The walls were in bad shape with so many nails so most of yesterday was spent patching them.  It's impossible to work on them during the week since this is the crew's only access to the second floor, so it's going to stay roughly patched for a few days.

One step forward, three steps back

I began a new project on the second floor landing and, after pulling down the wallpaper and sanding the walls, ran into  problem.  What a surprise.  It seems that the ceiling was plastered around the crown molding, i.e., rather than taking down the crown molding, plastering, then putting it back on, they skipped step 1.  We pulled a small piece off, leaving a big hole.  So now what?  Do we redo the whole thing, once more?  Do we do a quick and dirty fix and leave the real fix for another time?  How many projects can we launch at one time?

This is a little discouraging, at times.

Office progress

Dom has made great progress in his little office and yesterday took the major step of hanging the dry wall.  It doesn't seem like much unless you've witnessed all the prep work that had to be done beforehand.  The wood paneling, unfortunately, will be re-painted, as it's been painted and stained so many times it would be near-impossible to restore it.  The brick wall, on the other hand, will remain exposed and has been urethaned to keep it looking nice and prevent it from absorbing water.

Now that  most of the dusty work in there is done, we can complete the library.  Yesterday we shelved most of the rest of our books, although there are a couple of boxes left and some rearranging will be necessary.  We have plenty of room for the bar things, DVDs, and art work.  There's still plenty to do but we're slowly getting back the room we enjoyed so much.

Electrical work in progress

Upper sheet rock hung

Demolition derby

From Feb. 20 to 29 the focus was on tearing down.  Dom and I moved upstairs to the third floor apartment where there is a full bath, if the shower leaves something to be desired, in addition to bed space and lots of closet space.  We moved Sunny up there, too, to get her away from the dust as much as possible.

The pictures speak for themselves: