Wall You Need is Love

Do you see that?! Right there, look…I think it’s …yup, I think it just might look like a dining room!  WE’VE GOT WALLS!

 We were starting to wonder if we had bought a construction zone or a money pit instead of a human dwelling.  I’ll recap what’s been happening the past few days at the house so you can understand what I mean.  When I last wrote, it was the night before the contractor was going to start.

Monday:

The contractor came Monday around 10am and we were ready and waiting for him (we were able to be there because school was cancelled due to the insta-freeze temperature levels).  He walked around the house for a few minutes, surveying the work that Joe and I had done in preparation of his arrival.  He settled in front of the now-exposed header beam between our living room and dining room. 

He stared…and sighed…and scratched his head…and then lowered the BOOM.  “That header isn’t big enough and really needs to be replaced.”

Uhhhh….come again?!

This was so frustrating because the previous owners had just put that new header in literally 2 months ago!!  The old adage of “If you can’t do it right, don’t do it all” comes to mind here….

Once my tunnel vision subsided and Joe picked his jaw up, the contractor dropped another bomb.  “See that junction box in the insulation right there?  That’s against code and a major fire hazard.  You’re going to need to bring in an electrician and have that rewired.” 

You have got to be kidding me!!  This was just recently done as well!

The picture below is the box I’m talking about.  See how it’s buried in the insulation and the wires are 2 different colors?   When the electrician hack-jobber wired this, they didn’t have a long enough wire to reach from the upstairs bathroom down to the basement, so instead of getting the correct length, they were lazy and ‘connected’ them in the box, buried it in the wall, continued down to the basement, and then covered it up with pine so no one was the wiser.  Nothin like slappin some make-up on a pig and calling it a princess.

I don’t think it all really sank in that in a matter of 5 minutes we had added some significant jobs to the list because I left right away to start the manhunt for an electrician that could come ASAP.  I did find one that could come the next day.

Joe stayed back at the house and got to play Bob the Builder with the contractor that day.  He helped build the temporary walls to hold up the house while they took the old header out and put the new one in. 

(Sidenote:  they used this little jack to hold up the house when the header came out.  That piece right there can jack up 12 TONS!  That is amazing to me.  I am 8 times the size of it and I have trouble carrying the groceries up the steps)

Although this doesn’t look like much, that big ol’ hunk of wood is now securely holding up our house.  In fact the other header was so bad, that when this new one was put in, it jacked up the whole house over an inch!  I’m pretty excited knowing that our house won’t collapse on our guests now…pretty normal feeling I would think.  That would really put a damper on a dinner party wouldn’t it?

 Tuesday:

Remember when I explained what furring was in the previous post?  Here is what it looks like in reference to our walls.  Thin strips of wood were fixed to the original studs and now the drywall will affix to those and we will have flat even walls; good characteristics of a wall.

 The soffit was also built out to a 90 degree angle instead of the wonky slant that was goin on before.  The electrician also came this day and did his small part in fire-proofing our house

Wednesday:

Just in case you forgot what it looked like

 

I now feel like we’ve left the cabin back in the woods where it belongs.

That’s it! Tomorrow everything will get taped and mudded and then it’s on to flooring! WOOT WOOT!

Clear out your schedule in a few days, there’s painting to be done people.