Day 4: Saturday September 13

Tasks: Clean basement, rip out family room drywall
Hours: 4
Who: Dan and Ilana
After a yummy lunch at Goldberg's (1.5 miles away, in the same plaza as Five Guys), we headed to the house. It was exciting for me, as today was the first time I saw our house in sunlight. Every time I visited before purchase was a cloudy day. In most houses, you look forward to sunny days as it brightens your house. However, with a fixer-upper, you take advantage of the natural light to see what else needs fixing up. There is certainly a lot in this house.

Dan spent the hours we were there power-washing the basement. The house had poor draining, and moisture had seeped into the basement prior to our purchase. We are therefore going to clean out all the mud and make sure that the gutters drain properly so that this does not happen again. I'd go into more detail on this, but the basement was very gross, so I didn't really go down to see how Dan was doing. =D

I worked in the bright yellow family room instead. There was wainscotting throughout this room, which needed to be torn out before we could rip down the drywall. This was quite the task: the winscotting consisted of a piece of plywood covered by a decorative square made up of four pieces of wood, held in place by a bankboard trim up top, and a double baseboard below. The baseboard was especially complex, as it sat lower than the hardwood floor, on top of the natural flooring. This made leveraging the pry bar difficult and progress slow. I didn't have a camera today, but will bring it tomorrow to take some pictures.

After I got all the wood after, I had to tear out the drywall itself. This is done by making a hole in the drywall using a hammer or the pry bar, then ripping it out by hand. I tried to get it to come off in big, solid pieces (like when you try to peel an orange all in one big piece...) It was quite difficult.

There was some nastiness behind the drywall. A few dead bugs, some dead bug poo, some rodent poo, and a little bit of mold. The people who had the house before us really let it go to pot, but we are working to make sure that absolutely everything is done right and done well.

My arms are hurting from tearing out drywall, so I am going to take a break to watch some more college football.