Chimney is history

You may have read in an earlier post that we removed the wood-burning fireplace from the living room.  Well, we also needed to remove the chimney on the side of the house.  We will be putting up new siding soon and needed the chimney to be gone.  So Mark climbed up on the roof and unhooked the flashing in preparation for my brother coming over to help take it down.  It was a two story heavy thing.  Seemed like it would be at least a 2 person job.  Well after he got it separated from the roof, he gave it a little push with the his foot to test how much effort it might take to remove it.  "Hmmmmm it seems pretty loose" thought Mark. He gave it another push with a pry bar.  It was hanging, creaking and swunging a little in the breeze.  Then WOOOSH it crashed into a tree and fell to the ground.  Wow that was easy.  I wish I had captured it on video.

All that was left was a nasty mess on the ground, a hole in the wall and a missing section in the roof.

Matt had a great time smashing this apart with a sledge hammer and the sawzall. 

Didn't I do a good job cleaning up the mess?  It's all in the dumpster now.

We didn't have time at the end of the day to repair the side of the house.

Our new security system.  We were sure that the ladder would prevent anyone from getting in.

Ready for siding on the outside

And sheetrock on the inside

Patching the hole on the roof

Just needs shingles which have been added but I don't have a new picture

Have windows, need sunshine

For those of you who know Mark well you know he has a touch of Seasonal Affective Disorder (or whatever they call it when people blame their grouchiness on not having enough sunshine - just kidding, Mark).  To treat this disorder Mark lives in houses that get lots of sunshine.  One of the reasons we saw so much potential in the Comet Circle house is because of the very open South side of the house.  Lots of windows to let the sunshine in.  So we need to let the sunshine get to the house and there were some trees in the way.  Don't get us wrong.  We love trees.  Just not 50 in our side yard.  Ok, maybe there weren't 50 but at least 15 in a pretty small space.  Rather than let them all get too big and then not thrive because they were too close together or worse, fall on the "newly remodeled" house, we opted to "thin the heard" by cutting 6 of the trees down.  While Tim camped with his sons and Matt hung out at Tim Shannon's grandparent's cabin on Lake Huron, Emily, Mark, Adam Huss and I cut down and cleaned up the trees.

These trees were very tall so the process my engineering husband devised included:
tying a rope high up in the tree
having Emily and Adam hold the other end of the rope and position themselves down the hill toward Bennet Family park
Mark cutting a notch in the downhill side of the tree
Emily and Adam pulling on the rope tied to the tree
Mark cutting the opposite side of the tree till it started falling
Everyone getting the heck out of the way as it started to fall

Mark untangling the rope so he could climb the tree and tie it around the trunk.  Emily and Adam held the ladder for him. 

Mark was the only one willing to climb all the way up there.

Cutting the notch

Notch is cut

Emily and Adam in position to pull the tree 

Success!  Mark going to look to make sure Emily and Adam are still alive

It all seems so simple when viewed in pictures.  This YouTube video let's you be a part of the action.
Tree Cutting Video

Trees are down, stumps will be dug later - someday when we have nothing else to do.  I suspect it might be in 2017....

Lots of wood for our eventual outdoor fire pit

It was a very productive day with almost no injuries.  As Mark was cutting up a felled tree he felt something at his ankle.  I was in the house and heard a big commotion out in the yard.  I ran out to see him swatting a bunch of bees off of him.  He got stung all over his ankles and on his left hand.  If it was me I would have been done for the day - I'd have my excuse to lay on the couch.  But not Mark.  He didn't even stop just kept cutting more trees.  It wasn't till late in the afternoon that he really looked at the result of his dance on a beehive.  

Bee stings puffing up Mark's ankle and hand.  No, we didn't have to cut his wedding ring off!

As Mark would say "No stinking bees are gonna stop me".  He's fine now.

Master Bathroom Demolition

We are planning to expand the master bathroom out into the rafter space in the garage and in order to confirm that we can do that we had to get the existing master bathroom (what little there was of it) out of the way.  Our chief demolisher was my brother, Tim.  He just loves tearing things apart, especially when they are not his!  This was a really quick job, well except for the cast iron tun that they smashed with a sledge hammer, because there really wasn't anything to remove except a tub and the toilet.

Can you see the potential in this basement?

The basement of our house suffered the most water damage so we had to do more work here.  The fun started with removing nasty insulation from the top of the foundation.

I did the nasty work on the ladder

While my mom cleaned it all up from the floor. 

After we got the insulation removed we sprayed all the wood framing with bleach water, scrubbed it clean, dried it with fans and then worked on painting the walls and framing with special mold-preventing paint.

This is what it looked like when we started

And when we were all done.... so much brighter and cleaner.  The scent in the air is much improved as well!

We also replaced the header over the French Doors to help improve with the sagging floor up above.

New 2 x 12 or something like that - big ass board if you as me 

I am finding out just how much I can lift when Mark says "here hold this up" and then gives me one end while he climbs the ladder to put it into place.   You can still see outside from inside but hey let's not rush things.

It's been awhile......

Sorry its been over a month since I posted.  I hope you all don't think that we gave up with the Hightower setback.  Quite the opposite is true.  We went on a wonderful vacation to upstate New York, Emily turned 21 and we came back to the Comet Circle house with renewed energy.  Since the middle of August we have:

1. Moved back into Hightower - at least enough to get by! The kids really don't mind their mattresses on the floor and it's ok that we only have a handful of glasses.  There are only four of us anyway.  If we ever have another party here it will be BYOG and BYOC (c is for chair!)

2. Continued to work on Comet by cleaning up more mold in the basement.

3. Demoed the Master bathroom

4. Finished the replacement of the Living room subfloor.

5. Removed several big trees.

6. Took out the Chimney and the wood walkway in front.

7.  Removed the "falling out" windows in the Living Room.

8. Continued to prepare the outside for new siding and windows.

We have made great progress.  The tearing out is probably 95% complete.  I think from here on out the only things that will get torn apart are things that we think we are keeping but some unknown discovery will force us to change our minds.  Very shortly we will be starting to put things back together.  Keep reading other posts if you are interested in the details of the above items (especially tree removal and Living room window removal - those were eventful days).

I will try to be more timely with my posts now that we are getting settled into a rhythm but I have to admit after working all day (especially in the heat this week) it is hard to write these at the end of the day.