DEMO WEEKEND WITH DAD

My dad and brother-in-law came down for a visit for Friday/Saturday, 08/09 June.  My dad is in the middle of recovering from fracturing his heel on a window project at the end of April- he was taking some shutters of the front of a house when his ladder kicked out and he landed heel first on concrete.  He had surgery in the middle of May and should be back on his feet by the middle of July.  In addition, my brother-in-law is about 5 months out from a knee surgery so while he can do almost every task, he has to stay away from kneeling or any prolonged work at floor level.  We joked at the end of the weekend that we had the lamest work crew in the history of construction!

Despite our limitations, we actually completed a lot of the demo/dirty work I was dreading.  My dad spent his time unraveling some rigged wiring in the kitchen and replacing switches/boxes/etc. while we addressed the back of the laundry room.  While the house was built in the 1950’s, someone had added on the utility room to the back of the house and we realized after the first visit that there were several water issues hiding behind the exterior wall and ceiling;

We started the day by framing a temporary wall to support the roof while we dealt we reframed the existing wall. The damage from the poorly caulked window and a leak in the roof valley resulted in us reframing the entire wall and temporarily resetting the old window & door. After this was done we scabbed in new joists to replace the rotted sections and support the floor & roof;

We finished the day by sheathing the outside of the laundry room and Tyvek’ing the area so it is somewhat protected from the elements until we put on the new siding and roof in 3 weeks;

  Our next step in the laundry room will be to widen the doorway to the kitchen and finish the walls/hang the doors to the new closet- this will hopefully happen mid-week when my friend is in town to help with the lifting.