Back to 4 working toilets!

This is the stairwell from the top to the bottom of the little apartment. On the other side of the plastic is the kitchen. The floor joists for the kitchen will be just above this new drain pipe. I might be getting a little ahead of myself putting in the drain already but I wanted Kerry to have her new potty.

This will all be unfinished when I get done. This is the bottom to the little apartment. The ceilings in here were only 7 feet tall and I doubt we will ever need this part of the house. I am going to use it for storage of all the boat stuff until we get a garage. The picture is so you can see the drain pipe running the 22 feet across the room.

Tada!! This is Kerry's corner potty! It is actually in the corner now. The room is unfinished with junk and lumber all over... but she has her own master potty now!

Oops!

Today I ran the 3 inch PVC pipe upstairs for Kerry's bathroom. You can see the pex tubing for the water supply running beside the PVC but I haven't secured it yet or anything.

This is the corner toilet that we are going to use in Kerry's master bathroom. I decided to set it up so we can use it while I work on her kitchen. Who knows how long that is going to be. You can see where the blue pex comes up in the corner. I will have to pull the toilet when I put in the ceramic tile. Right now it will just be sitting on the cement backer board.

This is the reason for the title. I was being very careful with the PVC primer because it tends to get everywhere. I had a plastic bag under the primer can while I worked on top of Kerry's new freezer that she got for her birthday 5 months ago. I moved a piece of PVC and the bag got caught and pulled the can over. PVC primer is designed to eat into the plastic and etch things... it did a pretty good job. This is now the permanent color of Kerry's freezer. Oops....

More demo

This is a picture of the stairs that go to the lower part of the little apartment. The door is to the outside. I am going to make this into a floor and make the stairs go straight up from the door. It looks like we just got through grocery shopping but it is just the stuff from moving the pantry shelves

I still need to tear out this wall and the sink. I need to move the little stove and refrigerator. I am going to make another door to the outside where you see the window in this picture. It will have stairs outside that will eventually be in the garage I still have to build.

I put the plastic back up where the wall used to be. Now Kerry has her original size kitchen back while I am working.

This is her pantry shelves we moved up from the lower section of the apartment. It won't take Kerry long to fill it back up with all the stuff.

Tomorrow Kerry and I are going to Louisville to attend the National Houseboat Show. I am sure that there is nothing there that we will be able to afford but... it will be fun to look. We are spending the night in Louisville at a Holiday Inn Express that I was able to use my frequent stay points to pay for it with. I hope I get lots of ideas that I can do myself to improve our houseboat.

Hole in the wall

I was successful in making two rooms one. It sure is a dusty mess to do the demolition. My sawsall worked much better when I put a new blade in it. The sawsall was the first electric tool that I bought and I still have it. It works wonders.

From this angle you can see that we will be adding quite a bit more room to the kitchen. It used to be the top floor of a 500 square foot apartment. There was a full bath, full kitchen and a closet in this 240 square feet.

Tomorrow I will be taking down the rest of the walls in there so I can begin with a clean slate. We still haven't decided exactly how we are going to arrange things. The stairs take up a lot of space and I just started thinking tonight that I might just not make stairs and make the bottom half only accessable from the outside. It will sure make a lot more room.

Beam me up...

After much ado I finally got the wall down where the beam is going to go. The wood is very old and hard and the nails are stuck in the wood really good. I was glad that my temporary wall held and the house didn't fall down when I took out the studs holding up the wall.

Kerry and I struggled getting the beam up there. It is up about 8 foot 3 inches. I stood in the middle and heaved it up and Kerry guided it from the end. I sure am glad that she likes to help.



I now have the beam in place and the cripple studs in. I took down the temp wall. It sure did come down easy since I only had it duct taped together. I now can pull down the rest of the wall and move the plastic sheet so Kerry can have the whole kitchen back. The plastic has worked okay so far... there is only a light coat of dust on the floor throughout the first floor.

Temporary wall

I built a temporary wall in the kitchen so I can knock out the wall. I am going to put a beam in to span the 10 foot opening.

I had to get 10 foot 2x4's because the ceiling is so high. I don't have them nailed so I hope it all works out and the wall doesn't fall apart. There is a temporary wall just like this one in the room above on the second floor. If the house wasn't so old it would have been built with platform framing and I could have just built the wall here in the kitchen and it would have been enough. With the kind of framing that was used (balloon framing) the second floor floor joists do not support the wall above it. Houses since around the mid 50's have been built with platform framing and it would have been much easier.


This is the beam I plan on using. I used liquid nails and glued together two 2x12's with 1/2 inch plywood in the middle. I nailed it all together with 20 penny nails. It is 10 feet long and I think it will be plenty strong enough.

Kitchen project

I finally decided to start tackling the kitchen expansion project. The hole you see in the wall is where a window used to be in the original house. We have had it covered with a curtain so it didn't look bad. I am going to knock this wall out and put a beam in so the space can be opened up and Kerry can have a big kitchen.

I figured I better put up some plastic to save the rest of the house from all the dust that is created when you tear down plaster. As you can see I have all my safety gear on. Dustmask, glasses and gloves.

Once again I have a mess to clean up. I am positive that a man has to do more cleaning than a woman does. I really don't get the myth that women do more....