Entryway Closet New Floor and Wall - Day 1

Yeah, so once we found the termite damage and the workers stopped for the day, we called the number provided to us from the flooring company of a "handyman" that they frequently use.  He should, they told us, be able to figure out what to do next.

 So, this is the telltale starting point.  The damaged wood with the termite trails.

This is the floor beneath that wood.  It appears water damaged, as well, though it doesn't extend far, and the wood itself is fairly solid towards the door, but less so as you press on it moving into the closet. 

Really less so.  It's basically gone.  The handyman, a hilarious, stocky guy who crumbled a bit of the wood in his hand, told us it was basically "returned to dust."  Poetic, true, but not what I ever wanted to hear about my subfloor!

He decided to call his grandfather, an A and B class contractor (apparently that means he can build a doghouse all the way up through a skyscraper.)  So after some brief discussion, Chris, the handyman, asked if he could cut open the wall to see what was happening.  We, of course, agreed, and he took out a good chunk of floor and wall.

 At which point it became painstakingly clear that framing was compromised.  On the outer wall. 

This is him pushing his hand through the wall and shredding the "wood" there to splinters. 

The good news?  The termite damage is from a long departed/deceased colony, so we don't have to get anything treated or tented.  We just need to repair the framing on the outer wall.

"Sure.  No big deal," I think, seriously losing blood to my apendages.

"Nope."  He says. 

"Nope?  Nope it's not a big deal, or nope, it can't be fixed and we're screwed?"

"Nope, it's not a big deal."  He assures SPF and I he will be back in the morning with the appropriate tools and materials and he'll be able to fix it in half a day.  The blood started to return to my limbs, I think, but I'll know more in a week or two when the project is done.

This does, of course, push the flooring back at least one more day. 

New Floors - Day 5

So, okay, I shouldn't leave you hanging, right?

There is just so much . . .

First off, you have to respect a little bit how we are living right now.

We have no real seating.  And although SPF hooked up our entertainment center again, we can only spend so much time on the ground before our bones begin to groan.  Yes, it's a first world problem, I give you that, but it doesn't make it any easier.  Okay, maybe a little easier.  I'm not made of stone.

What surfaces we have available are covered to capacity.  This is not only a visual clutter that I am not fond of (though live with more often than I'd like to admit) but it makes things difficult to find.  And things that are breakable are, well, breaking.  But we have adopted a relatively ruthless approach.  It's broken?  It's trash.  Even the kids pitch in.  When we ask them to take something to the trash, they do.

We also have no dining space right now.  Or really a functional kitchen.  So even though this isn't a kitchen remodel, we are having to eat out.  Now we have been trying to be good about this - eating picnic lunches from the grocery store comprised of a deli sandwich, a bag of chips, a fruit bowl, and something sweet to eat) but that actually still costs more than buying individual ingredients for those things and then making them yourself.

And this is the only toy in the house.  Short-sighted, perhaps, but we needed the floor space for the demo.  The only reason this thing is in the house is because it was stuck somehow in the couch.  (Most toys fall through and we find them under the couch.)  When the demo guy moved the couch, this little guy popped out.

It is now the favorite toy of the children.  They fight over "the car" constantly.  They do have about a thousand of these in the garage, but we can't easily get to them.  There are materials and tools and saws and blades in the way now.  Not a great environment to go hotwheels hunting.

Keep in mind that the project was supposed to be done in one week.  We are pushing day 9 of the project when this even starts.  So, nerves are probably thin.  But I don't think we are overreacting to what I am about to tell and show you.  We are just, reacting.  Calmly and rationally.  Like adults.  I have not pounded my fists, pouted, pulled my hair out, screamed, cursed, or flat out punched anyone in this story.  Just FYI.

The demo guys were, as the head guy called them, "rhinos."  Okay.  No worries.  They're demo guys.  I don't expect the Moscow ballet.  They asked me if I would mind if they played some music while they worked.  The other workmen had done the same thing, so I thought it wouldn't be an issue.  Of course I said, go ahead.  They warned me that they like hard core gangster rap, and I said that nothing really offended me, so whatever they wanted.

I guess I should have added the qualified that I would like it to not be so loud that I couldn't think straight while trying to work in my home office.  Or that I would feel more comfortable if they didn't sing along at the top of their lungs to each of the more vulgar stanzas.  Or that it would maybe endear them to me more if they avoided the songs where "we be killing them b@#%$es."  Um, okay.  It was weird to me how oppressed I started to feel.  How very unwelcome and even unwanted I was in my own home.  In my own work space.  And, truth be told, the songs I think are stupid, but they don't really offend me.  It's the clear idolization and karaoke of them that became more . . . threatening.

To be fair, in their direct dealings with me, all four of the workers were very respectful.  It's just that they seemed unaware that their actions would affect someone out of their visual range.

At any rate, I felt so oppressed, I only got a few images of the progress.  For the first time in this project, I didn't ask them if I could photograph them working (albeit anonymously represented) and just grabbed images when I didn't think they were nearby.

I grabbed this from my office.  The carpet came up pretty quickly, as expected, and this is the very worn and tired carpet pad.

I didn't get any other images of the bare floor as I stayed mostly to myself and then actually left the condo to go and get lunch anywhere but in my home.  This is some of the cork that was laid down for sound control.  I haven't the slightest idea why they would cut out the cork around the old newel.  If we wanted the floor to go around it, wouldn't we have left it in?  We caught this on one of the rare occasions when we poked our heads out and SPF told them that wasn't necessary.  They didn't fix this one, but they also didn't cut out the other, so I guess that's a half win?

They didn't really finish things that would take a tiny bit more work.  (This, by the way, after they arrived almost an hour late (and their original start time was already an hour after what everyone else started at . . .) and decided that they didn't want to do any more work for the day.  It was 1:41 pm.  I looked.)  This section was where some of that old brown tile was, so it needs to be built up to be level with the other areas of the floor.

The bulk of the floor actually looks okay and the cork is down, but they pretty much said, well, we've done what we can do for today and vacuumed very little and then put a few of our things back in the house (like the couch) but didn't really put things in a way that would make them livable.  And while doing this, one of them started screaming out our balcony window at a woman across the street.  Apparently she had left either her house door or car door slightly ajar and he believed he was trying to help.  When the head guy (I really don't know if he was the boss or not) asked him what the hell he was doing in a loud, hoarse, panicked whisper, he replied "I'm helping b@#$#es."  And then he laughed a sort of pinched, nasal, weasel laugh.  I could feel my cheeks growing red from the fury that was raising my blood pressure.  Honestly, I don't know what kept me from marching out to him and just telling him to get out of my house and not return.  But they left shortly after.  I didn't really sleep that night.

This floor is prepped for the next stage, I believe, because it is concrete and doesn't need the cork.  (It's the ground floor.)  It's just hard to celebrate progress with such an ugly day.

And once they left, we found all the debris all over the house.

These are perhaps the two worst examples, but I am more concerned with the nails, sharp pieces of broken mortar and tile, and old carpet pad that a two year old would step on/eat/pick up/jam in his ear.  It was just a shoddy job.  And our expectations had been set so high by Mike and Travis, who left the house cleaner than when they found it, despite the demo.

Oh, and that top piece has another story, as well.  That top image is their main excuse for not finishing any more work.  It shows the trails and eating habits of the termites.

The termites.

You do realize we are planning on installing hardwood, right?

It is also going to be our next installment - Entryway Closet New Floor and Wall - Day 1.

The Demolition Stage

The demolition stage is often the most fun of any project. We actually did break out the sledge hammer and the sawzall and went to town. The first to go? The broken prefab fiberglass shower stall from 1975 that the previous owners broke and covered with a brand new sucky-footed bath mat. Shame on us for not looking, I admit, and shame on them for being underhanded and sneaky, but don't you think the house inspector should have noticed? That being said, the reason we started this project was because we had only one working tub, and it was in the second suite. We purchased this house in October of 2003 and used this shower for one week before we found the problem. Nice.

So, the sawzall-removed damaged portion of the tub, and more feet.


Once the tub was out, it became clear that the disgusting, aged linoleum also had to go. It was actually relatively easy to pull up. The nice thing that we learned was that the bath and toilet were seated directly on concrete, so no concrete board. The distressing thing that we learned was that the bath and toilet were seated directly on concrete, so no moving anything around. The piping would have to stay where the piping lay.


Things we undoubtedly shouldn't have been messing with, but we wanted a new fan and light fixture! So, out came the old box, in went the new. (Eventually, we are talking months apart at this point.)

Another somewhat distressing moment. Turns out that the electrical box for the lower portion of the house butts up against the shower. Clever. So, being pragmatic, intelligent, and paranoid, we decided to add extra water and leakage protection to this wall in the form of an additional sheet of backer board and some plastic. Here's hoping...


The crazy ugly linoleum stopped at the doorway to the bath which ran into carpet. The carpet ended at the vanity/sink area where this white tile started. Ugly white tile. I never did like it, and some of them were not seated correctly EVER, so they would wobble when you walked on them. This part of the demo was particularly satisfying for me. I very much enjoyed ripping these up. We were told by our next door neighbor, who has the same style unit as ours with the plan flipped, that the entire bathroom, shower stall, toilet, vanity and closet area all used to be carpet. They knew this, unfortunately, because their unit hadn't been updated since '75 when it was built. I felt a little better, but for some reason desperately wanted to finish the remodel even more. All of a sudden felt like we were living in ancient lands...

I can't explain the icepack, by the way. Must have damaged myself in the process. Don't mock the use of the foot to pry up the tile. I was EAGER to make progress. Injury be damned. Besides, you all should know that I have ambidextrous hands AND feet. I am so amazing.


This is actually a preview of later work, but it also demonstrates two important elements of the project. 1. We decided that having the linen closet open onto the hall was stupid, so we decided to flip it so that it opens into the bathroom. 2. We took part of the wall out, just for fun. No more wall/medicine cabinet/electrical outlet here! We moved, or removed, it all. Fun times were had.

Also unfortunately poorly documented. Where you can see the wood top right now, that was the wall. Went all the way to the ceiling. You can kind of see the overcrowded counter top and the mirror in the background. We didn't really get any good shots of it because we hated it. Sigh. I know now to better document the whole process. At any rate, when you walked into this bathroom, you got a face full of you. Everywhere. Mirrors, mirrors, and more mirrors. It was like an altar to every individual personage. That might be your bag, baby, but it wasn't ours.


And so a great portion of the demolition was done at once. We were eager to get started, and demo happens fairly quickly, but after that, things got somewhat delayed...