Electrical fun

So this weekend was electrical weekend at our house.  Frank spent 1 1/2 days in our attic cleaning up a crazy mess of electrical wires.  At one point on Saturday he comes downstairs to tell us there was a previous fire in the bathroom and he wants to show us.  He shows us an outlet that he has removed.  Shows us the first sign of electrical fires is a yellowing mark, then he showed us the blackened wires...lovely!  Then he starts spouting out electrical terms while I pretended to understand.  "These people had two 110's feeding into a 220, what idiot would do that?  You're just asking for trouble there."  While trying to make sense out of all the wires, he drew a map of what it should look like on our subfloor, then he just ripped everything out and put in everything new.  He also laughed about the wiring in the upstairs hall.  So there's a switch on each end of the hall that turns both hall lights on.  Usually you only need 3 wires to connect to the switch plates.  This house had 15 wires just to turn on two hall lights.

While Frank was busy in the attic, Peter and my mom started painting primer on the living room walls, a portion around the window and sliding glass door in our bedroom and a linen/game closet.  Peter also put primer on the upstairs hall.  We might just get some color on the walls next weekend.

Frank also finished installing the subfloor in the bathroom, added two can lights and the exhaust fan.  He turned it on to help get rid of the paint fumes he was breathing in.  He was surprised at how quiet it was.  He said we got a really good one.  Our house also has a whole house fan upstairs.  The motor was burnt out, so he replaced it and got it in tip top working order.  He said come summer we will be glad to have that working since the house doesn't have AC. 

Bathroom update

So Connor's latest favorite thing to do is to take plastic bags and put one toy in each and strew them on the floor.  He's also big into photography and took this picture himself.

This weekend Frank and his son came over to work on the bathroom again.  They were going to work on the stucco on the house, but their plans changed as Frank was determined to figure a way to reroute that silver water heater exhaust pipe.  Well since Frank is Frank, he figured it out and the pipe is now gone.  No more small wall there.  He also fixed a major hole in the garage ceiling where the pipe originally went through.

They also fixed the floor joist that was badly damaged and replaced the floor in the bathroom and part in the bedroom.  I think more flooring will be replaced as there are at least 3-4 more big planks of plywood in our garage.

While they were working somehow the light on the front of our house turned on for the first time.  We thought there was no power to that light, and it all of a sudden was on Saturday afternoon.  Well as luck would have it, no one knows how it turned on and by Sunday evening/afternoon it was off.

Next weekend Frank plans on spending a lot of time on the electrical mess in the house.  The bathroom had wires going everywhere.  In our house inspection the inspectors noted that there were wires in the attic that weren't properly contained. So Frank is going to be fixing all the electrical stuff.

Bye Bye Bathroom

So this weekend's adventures involved finishing up the downstairs texture on the walls.  All downstairs walls are now ready for primer and then paint.  So we decided the next order of business was to tackle the upstairs bathroom and see how much damage was really there.  From what I understand the toilet had a major leak and rotted all of the sub floor in the bathroom and some of it in the adjoining bedroom and the hallway.  One of the floor joists is also badly damaged and needs to be replaced.  The shop talk at one point was about using supports in the garage to hold up the wall which would hold up the roof...lovely don't you think?  The other main order of business was did we or did we not want to install a second bathroom upstairs.  Our current situation is we have a 5 bedroom, 2 bath house.  The master bedroom is located downstairs, but while I have small children I want to sleep on the same level as them.  So there's a large bonus room upstairs with a walk in closet that could easily be the master bedroom.  Then there's the bathroom that everyone would share and then down the hall are three more bedrooms.  So option #1 we leave everything as it is.  Option #2 we leave everything roughly the same except add a door from the master upstairs to the bathroom so we don't have to walk in the hall to get in.  Though we still share the bathroom with the kids.  And when the kids are teenagers we can move back downstairs and they can have the upstairs bathroom to themselves and the downstairs one will be shared with guests.  Option #3 we take out roughly half of a bedroom to add another small bathroom that will back up to current bathroom.  Current bathroom will then become the master suite.  Smaller room would then only be good for a very small office.  After discussing the topic and then asking the neighbors across the street who have the same floor plan and have three older children what they did we came to the conclusion to go with option #2.

Here's various stages of bathroom gutting.  Above: the shower portion and walls have been removed.
Lower: two sink vanities are missing.

This is the adjoining room.  The dark area at the top is the damaged sub floor, actually most of the floor in that room is damaged, it's not showing up well in the picture.

All the fixtures are missing and a bit of drywall too.

We were asked if we wanted to save the tub....Hahaha do you really think I wanted to save that?!  YUCK!  Besides falling apart it was just downright disgusting. 

So that's where we are at. 

On a funny side:  While Frank was making us a list of things we need to go buy for next weekend he said to buy a fart fan.  We were like a what?  So he repeated himself..."a fart fan, you know for the bathroom."   Man he had us rolling with laughter.  We've always called them exhaust fans.  Apparently we didn't know the proper lingo.

Hallelujah!

After weeks of extremely cold temperatures and frost warning for a few nights, and a bit of complaining, this beauty was ordered and installed today!

AAAAHHHH our freezing cold house is WARM!  Have we mentioned how much we love Frank?  He got the number of a heating guy from work, called them up and ordered us a furnace this morning.  He said we wouldn't be able to find a cheaper price.  It was delivered around noon and installed by 4:30.  Oh I love the sound of heat.  I got so excited when I heard it fire up.  Here's a picture of the thermostat.  It was 65 degrees in the house.  Now I know that's really nothing to complain about-today is supposed to be the warmest day of the week after all.  But here I am sitting on the couch, with a sweatshirt on and I'm comfortable.  On any given day without the furnace, I would be in a sweatshirt and jacket with three big blankets on and still freezing.  Then going to bed I would have big ski-like pants on, fuzzy socks, sweatshirt with hood on underneath big heavy duty comforter that contains the summer comforter and the winter comforter combined so an eskimo would be comfortable...and there I'd stay until morning where I would make a mad dash to a warm shower and then dread getting out.

Yes I love today! We are finally warm at night.

As for other house news.  Frank came over yesterday and I called my dad up and they prepped the living room and upstairs hallway for texture all day long.   Then this morning at 8am Frank showed up with another guy, my dad and Peter were here and they finished taping and putting up plastic and then they sprayed texture all over the living room and the upstairs hallway.  In a couple of days we will be ready to paint! 

Thursday prepping the windows, even Connor helped.

 

Connor really wanted to use the tape too.  Here's a video of Frank teaching Connor to tape the ladder.  He was told he may only tape the ladder so that he wouldn't pull paint off of the walls or mess anything else up.  He was a good listener and taped the ladder well.  (The radio was on in the same room.)

 Friday's Fun

 

 While the guys were busy inside the house.  Connor and I kept busy in the back yard.