It was an eventful week for our little project, as you can see in the accompanying set of photos. There were long-awaited developments, some minor disappointments, and a couple things that caught us completely off guard.
The change we were most excited about was the addition of actual, working stairs. True, there’s no handrail or any other safeguards to prevent you from falling straight down from the upstairs hallway to the living room floor, but that doesn’t make it any less exciting that you can simply walk from the first floor to the second without having to clamber up an extension ladder—the climb was giving Joe nightmares. To celebrate, we’ve posted a stairs highlighting the moment William climbed the stairs for the very first time.
We were expecting some work in the living room this week, as well. Enzo had let us know that the wood floors had suffered too much water damage to be saved, and would have to be removed. Additionally, construction was due to begin on the new fireplace (along with the removal of the old one, including the chimney). Both of these came to pass. The old hardwood has been removed throughout the first floor, except in Joe’s old room. And sure enough, the crew has begun framing the new fireplace, removing the old mantel and hearth in the process.
Chunks of the old chimney and mantel were scattered around the yard when we arrived on Saturday. In fact, the workers had laid out pieces of the old hearth as stepping stones to allow them to get in and out of the house without stepping in the soupy mud produced by the torrential rains we experienced last week. The basic frame of the new fireplace appears to be complete, and that’s where one of the week’s first surprises arose. The frame projects out from the wall a fair distance, and it extends from floor to ceiling, which we definitely didn’t expect: we had hoped that the wall above the fireplace and mantel would remain as it was, with only the structure around the fireplace itself projecting out into the room. It’s not at all clear at this point whether that’s how things will come together—Enzo sent some sample photos that looked different from what we so on-site—but we hope to know more this week.
The biggest surprise, however, was what happened to the walls in the living room and in Joe’s old bedroom. The first thing we noticed when we arrived was a pile of broken chunks of orange- and blue-painted plaster in the driveway that had clearly come from Joe’s room, if only because no other rooms in the house were painted in such bold colors. Some of the pieces of wall and ceiling still bore the glow-in-the-dark star stickers we’d put up for Joe when we decorated the room in the outer space theme he’d requested way back in 2013.
Sure enough, when we entered the house, we found that the walls and ceilings in Joe’s room and in the living room had been stripped down the the studs. This was, to be completely honest, a bit of a shock, because we weren’t aware of any particular need for the walls to be removed. Sure, big pieces of them had been torn out to allow for foundation work and the construction of other structural reinforcements, but we had assumed that the team would simply patch the holes and re-paint the rooms, and that would be that. Instead, it appears that we’ll have to install new drywall—which, to be fair, has a number of advantages relative to the old plaster—and most of the electrical wiring will need to be replaced, as well. Considering it was largely original knob-and-tube wiring from 1951, this isn’t entirely a bad thing, though it’s unclear whether this will result in additional costs.
One additional benefit of this work is that it may allow us to re-do the insulation in those portions of the house with the high-efficiency spray foam insulation we’re using in the newly constructed areas, hopefully saving us money in the long term.
Things should continue to move quickly for the next little while. We’ve selected a shingle color, so Enzo and his team can finish putting on the roof; and the windows we ordered have been delivered. According to Julie, the crew was actively working on installing them when she drove my Monday afternoon. We’re meeting with Enzo on Tuesday to walk through the site and discuss next steps, so we’ll have a better sense of what decisions we’ll need to make next at that time.
Occasional Dispatches from San Jose 