Elbow Grease

And what else should it be about on Labor Day Weekend then Labor? Thats how dirty my hands were under the gloves I was wearing while I was working on cleaning up the property. Lets just say the entire house is a mess.


I mentioned before that a contractors job is to create (or destroy depending on vantage point) and to not clean up after themselves. As you can see from the state of the first floor, there have been quite a few contractors doing their best work. The house needed a good superficial cleanup. There basically hasnt been any major cleaning since we started the demolition. Bottom line: the house was a MESS. Because we are going to have to pay a service to do a thorough cleaning once we are done with the rough construction and mechanical, I decided to take it upon myself to do the superficial clean up. I am just bad enough at cleaning for my effort to be considered superficial, so I was the perfect man for the job.


My plan was to tackle one floor of the house each day of the long weekend. The biggest issue in the house was the plaster that was stuck to the bottom of the wall spaces. With the way that plaster was put up 100 years ago, some percentage of it is bound to get pressed between the slats when its wet. That leaves piles of solidified plaster sitting at the bottom of each wall space. This was the case for most of the second floor. I decided that I was going to get all of that out of the wall space so I knew it was done correctly.

I haven't really taken a ton of pictures of the cleaned up space, but I finished the first floor yesterday and the 2nd floor on Saturday. In each case it took me roughly 4hrs to complete, and I was a complete mess when I was done. The worst part of the whole thing is the dust and dirt that filters down to the floor below. This is because there are wall spaces and holes in the floors as well as slats in the floor boards. So, you only clean up a certain amount of it and know the rest is being pushed below. I only have the basement left to do today, but its officially the culmination of the previous days work.



The rough HVAC work is done in the entire house. All of the ducts and vents and registered are in. The 2nd floor furnace is in. We know the location of each of the supplies in the house, and its good to see they all look well placed. All that is left to do is to install the downstairs furnace and the two AC condensers. I know it seems obvious, but you cannot underestimate just how sharp clipped tin is. Yikes, I have had a few small pieces stick through the gloves over the last few days. Flat out dangerous stuff.


The mason laid out all of the forms for the sidewalks on Saturday. The original thought was to put the cement down on Saturday afternoon so they could cure all weekend, but once they started it was clear they were going to need all day to get the forms laid out correctly. The toughest part was making sure the landing area for the stairs would be in the right place. In order to do this we had to measure the height and then project the location by choosing how wide the treads were going to be. So since we want 11" deep treads, the front of the last stair would be 88" from the location of the porch. We are leaving a 3' landing pad at the bottom of the stairs. I for one will be happy to move to a house that we have controlled the layout of the flat work around the outside of the house. I think our current house is poorly laid out, and would love to rip it all out and start over.

The electrician should start on Tuesday and the plumber will be finishing up the balance of his rough work. The carpenter will be back to frame out the HVAC system and start putting in the decks (finally). There is a decent chance we will have siding there by Wed, and hope to start on that by the end of the week.