Strange
Day

We’ve been working in the basement.

When we got the place, the basement was divided into four rooms: 3 functional rooms and a small ‘lobby’ area at the base of the stairs. The lobby was mostly useless… too small todo anything in; no light; too central to obstruct with storage. So Heidi suggested we take down the wall dividing the ‘lobby’ from what had been a media room, making a much larger area, with direct access from the stairs.

We also decided to take down the finished ceiling. We’d already removed part of it to get access to some pipes, a couple months ago. But there was a good chance there were more rat stuff up there. So we’ve spent the last couple weekends in demolition mode. Took out the wall. Took out the ceiling.

The wall was fairly simple. The drywall was ripped down. I pried apart what I could of the framing. And the rest gave way to a sledgehammer and sawz-all.

The ceiling… the ceiling was more interesting. I tore down the drywall by hand, with the occasional influence of the sledgehammer. Very quickly we found it was covered in rat shit. Every piece pulled down rained pellets on the floor. (Thank gawd for tyvek coveralls). Heidi was following along behind me, removing the remains of the insulation. (The rats had obviously been using it for runs and nests.) At one point, I heard a squeal, and saw Heidi run from the room. Our second rat corpse had been found, when it fell on her head.

The ceiling has been cleared. The wall is gone. For good measure, we also pulled up the carpet. (Which resulted in an immediate improvement in the smell of the basement.) This weekend has been all about the floor. We spent all of today putting in new flooring. A rough start, but it’s going in well now.

Replaced a window in the basement this weekend. Dug through the windows at Community Forklift until we found something about the right size. Brought it home, and removed all the old materials. Had to remove a bit of framing, (Gawd Bless Sawzalls), but it then fit nicely, and looks better than I expected.

We knew when we bought the house that the attic was in less than ideal condition. But we hadn’t been up there since closing on the house. Since then, there’s been a hurricane, and earthquake, and numerous rambunctious cats; all shaking up the house. So about a week ago, when we went back up the ladder, things were in rough shape. Maybe a third to a quarter of the attic floor was uninsulated. The rafters had once all been insulated and covered in cardboard, but had long since begun to fall apart. There were drooping and fallen panels, and lots of patches of missing insulation. And some of the insulation on the floor had been disrupted during renovations, and never replaced properly.

So overall, it was a half-assed mess.

We first cleaned up what we could. Removing fallen, moldy cardboard and insulation. Pulling down some now-empty panels. And removing rafter insulation over areas we would soon be insulating, so as not to have to do it later when there was fresh insulation in place. We put down some insulation that was still in rolls sitting in the attic. When that was all done, we figured out the remainder we would need, purchased supplies, and finished up insulating the rest of the floor yesterday.

Eventually, we’ll probably remove the rest of the rafter insulation that’s in such rough shape. The current plan involves having the rafters re-insulated using the expanding foam.