Weekend Journal

OK. I'm back. I'm disgusted and disgruntled, but I'm back.

The guys gutted our kitchen down to the studs on Wednesday. They found all sorts of lovely surprises behind the walls. Pipes in weird places. Old termite damage. Knob and tube wiring. Some old gas lines for gas lights. The pipes in the weird place was a big problem, but the biggest problem was hiding under our three ceilings in the kitchen.

In these old houses, they used to fill the space under bathrooms with a foot of cement. I'm not really sure why. Maybe they thought that they needed that much support for the bath tubs.

Over the years, when these old bathrooms were renovated, that garbage was usually removed and a new mud floor was installed. Not in this house. Some asshole, probably the homeowner himself, left that concrete and original lead pipes and just added a new floor on top of that mess. Water damage over the years had degraded the concrete, so it's now a heavy pile of rubble under the floor. So, now we need a new bathroom, too.

I can't deal with a new bathroom now. We would have to move to a hotel, and I just can't get my work done and deal with the kids' lives from a hotel for a month. So, we're bracing up that bathroom nonsense and will deal with it all sometime later this year.

The demo guys really fucked up the pipes in the basement. A small waterfall damaged the dryer.

I'm feeding the kids out of a "campsite" in the dining room. The kids are loving all this.

I'm back now. I will not be defeated by the kitchen. I have a lot of stuff to write about the campaign. More tomorrow.

Some pix:

Comments

[Amy P]

As I mentioned before, my parents moved us (me about 9, sister about 5.5 and newborn baby brother) into a new house with basically the roof on and dry-wall up, and then spent the next five or so years on the internal finishing work as finances and time allowed. (I'm not sure the house really ever got finished.) Anyway, we kids LOVED it. My sister and I were always dragging off hammers, nails, and scraps of lumber for various projects, including a stage for dramatic productions at Blackberry Theater and a rather nice tree house.

[WendyW]

{{hugs}} It'll get better.

[Timothy Burke]

This is one reason I'm scared when we contemplate doing some renovation and expansion work. The previous owner of our house was clearly a big fan of badly executed, cheap-materials DIY. Every time we've poked and prodded even little things, we've discovered nasty surprises.