Still Working.... On the Wall

So were back at it again this weekend. Mom and Dad came up to help. Thanks :)

We continued rebuilding the wall in the kitchen area. You can see the before in the first picture. We tore out the existing door and the last remaining window. Rebuilt the wall and installed a new door. One that was square... The other one had been trimmed for the last 50 years and was wasn't even close to square.

We finished the OSB outside and put up Tyvek on the walls (thats the white stuff). Tyvek is a vapor barrier that keeps water out but lets the house breath.

BTW... Kari and Mom did all the cleanup while Dad and I continued to make a mess.

Bringing the Outdoors In

So this weekend we developed a new meaning to the term bringing the outdoors in.

On Friday I was going to investigate to see what was behind the siding in the courtyard so I could get a game plan together for how I was going to replace all of the windows in the courtyard.

What I found..... wasn't good. The construction on the house was a little sub-par to say the least. From research I've done Milton Ryan used "standard length" wood to build his homes to cut done on the cost of lumber. So what I found out was all of the 2 x 4's used in the house were a maximum of 8' in length. On a 10' wall they didn't reach all the way to the top so they spliced them in the middle. Once I pulled the T-111 siding off the outside the wall got a little flimsy. We also found a lot of rotten boards that appeared to have suffered from years of neglect and water infiltration.

Once I found this out I couldn't wait I started tearing off all of the sideing and ripping out the windows. This made for a long weekend but in the end we prevailed and we finished most of the living room wall and started on the kitchen wall.

More to come next weekend.....