Rehabber’s Rehab

Our friends Kim and Terry brought up concerns about having friends run wild throwing hammers into walls hitting electrical lines, water pipes, etc.  Kim and Terry know our friends and their concerns are warranted.  However, the bashing will not be so haphazard and the most reckless of offenders (Drew) are well known and will be monitored closely.  Below is my tentative schedule for the wrecking party and inaugural weekend.  Besides being safe, we want to provide enough “activities” that are safe, enjoyable and allow people to either just hangout or dive-in completely.  Everyone should dress appropriately regardless of your participation level.

PRE-PARTY PLANS:

1.  Documentation- This is important to any project for several reasons.  It is great to see the impact of a project when you can view before and after images of the home.  The changes are dramatic and allows friends and family to share in your project.  Also documentation allows you to compare the difference that various improvements make and how much valuable those improvements when compared with the cost of the project.  We missed out on documenting thoroughly the Rice street project, so we are going to make sure and get lots of pictures from the beginning to end and get a couple of walk through videos.

2.  Living Room Carpet- We are pulling the carpet up right away because our floor refinisher is coming on Friday to check the place out before he starts on Monday.

3.  Sunroom ceiling- Its going to get dirty so I would rather get this out of the way before a lot of people arrive.  I think it’s fun getting dirty, but I don’t think my friends share this love so I’m going to try and get this out of the way for the party.

4.  Water and electric shutoff- Very important for the safety of everyone who is there.  We’re going to be taking out the kitchen sink so we don’t want water all over the place so we’ll be shutting it off at the wall of the sink.  Our first venture into the old electrical of the house requires us to identify which recepts and lights go to their respective circuit.  SAFETY FIRST!  The house is still on fuses, which will be replaced very soon as a part of the upgrade in service.

5.  Pantry Wall Check- The most dramatic demo of the party will be taking down the pantry wall which will increase the kitchen square footage by 25%.  It should be pretty easy to sawsaw from the top OF each of the studs and then take the wall down in pieces.  However, first we have to make sure there is no electrical or other pipes running through the top of the wall where we will be cutting.  So, I’m going to bang out the wood lathe and plaster near the top (again, maximum dirt which is unsavory to some party-goers).  There probably won’t be any, because this is a one story house and the electrical light is proably fed along the ceiling joyce that the light sits in, but it’s best to make sure.  I also have to pull out the known electrical recept from the old fridge spot which may be the most tricky thing.

BLOWOUT BASH-ING PARTY

With all that done, we can get down to the fun stuff.

• remove carpet tacks
• remove sunroom carpeting
• take down wood sunroom wood paneling
• pull up linoleum flooring in Kitchen bathroom and bedroom
• pull down trim to strip
• take down pantry walls and door
• take out kitchen cabinets
• kitchen walls- if we are really ambitious and want to get dirty