Anniversary

Roughly one year ago, we began renovations to Zeb's room. It was a disgusting, grody mess: filthy walls made of textured plaster in an odd vertical stripe pattern that was impossible to clean; 80 year old hardwoods with holes, warps, slivers, glue and staples sticking out; and a tendency for harboring wasps in the windows. I remember my husband saying this to me last October, "Worst case scenario: it'll be done around Christmas." Famous last words.

My angst regarding the long-drawn out mess of this renovation has subsided. First, because I'm less sleep-deprived then when we began a year ago with a 6-month old baby. Second, because all my frustrations were not actually getting me closer to a finished room; and third, because it was damaging our marriage. So sometime early this year, I resigned myself to whatever fate renovation had in store. Don't get me wrong, I still fan the flickering DIY flame in my husband. He is a plodder and his momentum often gets sucked out by life (or a broken nail gun). Naturally, I try to urge it back on occasion.

In honor of this wretched anniversary and the roller-coaster of emotion this renovation has caused, I give you a recap of all we've accomplished. And when I say "we", I really mean Matt with the occasional help of friends. He's bore the weight of the actual doing while I bore the wait of a house in continual chaos.

First, he tore up the old hardwood floors. He found hundreds of acorns, a petrified rat, an old sock, really old wiring and other assorted grossness. After a good vacuuming, he surveyed the floor joists and the wiring which ran from the wall socket to the ceiling fan for the living room below. Obstacle one - the fan needed rewiring. None of the connections were done properly. This involved cutting out a part of the wall in the living room below. Then, he had to do some bracing of the floor joists to keep the new floor from squeaking as bad as the old one did.

Along with this, he discovered that the walls needed fire-blocking. Our house was built with the same beams running from 1st floor all the way through the 2nd floor to the roof. Which gives you one big wall cavity and that's super bad for a fire. So he had to put wood in the wall cavity to close off the space between the first floor wall space and the second floor wall space. This way, if there's a fire in the walls, it has to burn through the wood before it can get into the wall on the second floor - severely slowing its spread.

So, months later: floor demo done, fire-blocking done. Re-wiring done. Bracing the floor joists done. insulating floor space (for sound proofing) done. Sub-floor done. Some of the wiring problems extended into the wall, so they had to remove drywall for one wall and the corresponding wooden planks (similar to shiplap), and re-wire. There was no insulation (it was an exterior wall), so insulation had to be cut and installed. Then the wood planks reinstalled and new sheet-rock. The second wall, they pulled down the sheet-rock, discarded the old insulation. Obstacle two: Matt discovered a leak in the window which had rotten out the window frame. (By now it's around Christmas time). Matt had to remove the widow and re-build the frame around it. Then, of course, cut new insulation and sheet-rock for the wall.

The third wall held another obstacle, one that I had my suspicions about but Matt was unconvinced until there was evidence he could no longer deny. A huge wasp nest. This wall was half in the attic and half exterior and a hug hole in the corner of where the wall met the roof was letting wasps in behind the wall (and they were finding their way into the room through the window frames). He removed the nest, plugged the massive hole, reattached some of the flashing he had to take off where the lower part of the outside wall met the roof of the back-half of our house. Then of course, there was wood planking he had to take off in the process and put back on, then insulation, then drywall. The drywall hasn't been fully plastered at this point.

The last couple months, he's been working on installing the new hard floor. Besides the laborious process of measuring and cutting wood pieces to fit, he's had a series of set-backs with nail guns. (Well, that was after a set-back when his compressor (or the one he was borrowing?) died). He's now the happy owner of a new air compressor. He actual has a nail gun also but its the wrong size for the edges of the room, so for the past couple weeks, he's had roughly a 6 inch perimeter around the room where he hasn't been able to finish laying the floor.

So that's where we are. The rest of the floor needs to be laid. Then the drywall finished patching & sanding, then comes painting. Then baseboards, a new ceiling fan, and that should be it. Technically, the new hardwood floor should be sanded because some of the edges aren't flat, but we might just throw an area rug over it for now. All this, of course, during the one or two days a month that Matt has to work on it. At two years old, Zeb will finally have a nursery, ahem, toddler room.

I'm hoping it will be done by this Christmas :D

My before pictures are not very good.