Skylights for the Dogs

The dogs grew weary of the constant barrage of rain that would pour down the coal chutes into their room in the cellar, so we've finally decided to do something about it (sorry front porch, masonry work, and servants' wash house/garage, you will all have to wait until next year).

Dylan (otherwise known as the "man with the handrail master plan") said new coal hatches were something he could tackle, so we gladly worked him until he herniated every disc in his spine (okay, not every disc, and I don't think we were to fault, at least that's what I tell myself so I can sleep at nights).  We decided to use the front stained glass window as a reference point to try to create something that would fit with the exterior of the house.

After Dylan put together some sketches, we liked them enough to pay the man for his work, and we filed our completely unnecessary "Certificate of Appropriateness" with the New Albany Historic Preservation Commission (unnecessary due to the fact they are ground level in the backyard, and not visible from a public right of way, but I decided to play it safe, though, I did make the check out wrong, so everything balanced in the end).

Just yesterday, the man himself dropped them off, awaiting a not yet scheduled installation date hopefully in the near foreseeable future, which means once I get around to calling my Uncle Chris and seeing how much he would charge us for the concrete work (Hi Angie, I'm tagging you in this, so maybe you can mention it to Chris and I can avoid having to make a phone call :)

Personally, the old ones with the completely rusted through hinges, 20 odd applications of caulk, and fancy blue paint are starting to grow on me, so I may just toss them straight from the garage into the alley, but since there are two of them, and I can only dispose of 1 large item per week, that takes a bit more planning, so I think we'll hang on to them, even though we lost the "eye" design along the way :)

Deconstruction, Rehabilitation, Demolition and Rebuilding

We've been home now for almost 2 months, and yet, we still aren't done replacing furniture and decor, but we are well on our way.  Right now, it's just a matter of playing the insurance game, buying what we can afford, turning in receipts, waiting for reimbursement, buying what we can afford, turning in receipts, waiting for reimbursements, wash, rinse, repeat, until the 2 year anniversary of the fire when we are out of time to claim reimbursements.  That seems like a lot of time, though, we couldn't buy much for 9 months as we had nowhere to put it, and now we are already 2 months away from being the 1 year anniversary of the fire.

What was the point of this post anyways?  Oh yea, pictures :)  Throughout the years, we failed horribly at taking pictures of our progress when we were working on the inside of the house.  Every once and a while, we'll come across one or two, but that's about it.  It seems we were too busy ripping the house apart and putting it back together to bother to stop and take a picture.  Sure, there are a few exceptions, like when we gutted the bathroom, but moments like when we had scaffolding in the house that we rolled from room to room to scrape that hard to reach wallpaper, I can't find a single picture of.  Though, the other day, I did find a picture of the bedroom 2 days before our wedding where I had just finished building four 10' columns for the reception (no wallpaper, bare plaster not yet patched, upside-down storage containers being used as sawhorses for staining crown molding, 6' ladder to reach the top of the columns, tons of wood stain outlines in the shape of the column bases on the old carpet, oh, it's lovely, trust me).

I did manage to uncover a picture of the dining room from when we were originally looking at buying this place (Virginia was very nice and accommodating and let me take pictures of the place), as well as a photo from when the ceiling fell in there after we bought the place and started removing wallpaper, and then a photo 3 years later when the room was finished.  I also managed to track down quite a few photos of the same room, close to the same shot, during the whole fire ordeal.

So, we can't do a series of photos of every room with before and after of our renovations and then before and after fire renovations as we just don't have the photos, so in those instances, we'll just have to remember what the Tabitha's office upstairs looked like before the fire.

Now, on with the photos.  As mentioned, these are all of the dining room, one angle to keep it simple.

This is a shot of the dining room as we saw it when we were looking at the house (11/12/2003).  The decor wasn't exactly our style, and the kitchen was quite large (due to cannabalizing a bedroom), so we made an executive decision.  Tabitha got complete creative control over the front living room, and I was allowed to wreck my havoc on this room, and we would meet in the middle for the other rooms.  One of the best decisions of our marriage :D

Now, we skip ahead to (2/14/2004).  We got the keys to the place the first weekend of January, and the house never knew what hit it.  We were in a mad dash to get the house as complete as possible before (5/29/2004), which was our wedding date.  This is where we scraped every inch of wallpaper that we could reach, and then we brought in the scaffolding.  Here's some advice to those following along, when wallpaper on your ceiling is the only thing holding your ceiling up, it's not a good idea to spend all weekend finishing up scraping it off and then sit under it on a Monday to type up notes for work.  Tabitha found that out the hard way.

This is actually a shot from the foyer looking into the dining room.  Pictures like that aren't fun to look at, beyond the fact there's a big gaping hole in the ceiling.  Knowing how much time we spent pulling up carpet, scraping off all of the wallpaper, patching all of the plaster, and then the subsequent sanding, on top of putting up new drywall ceilings over the ceilings that fell in or looked like they were dangerously close to falling in, only to have it all tossed in dumpster after dumpster after the fire, we definitely could have found better things to do with our time those 4 years.

Fast forward 3 years from that last photo, and you'll get to the next one (3/12/2007).  Mental note, antiquated digital camera, large room at night, and staring down a 150 watt bulb won't result in the best photo.  With that said, here's how the dining room ended up (needless to say, not as a dining room).

It would be nice to have some better pictures of the room to compare with how it looks today, especially in some better lighting at least.  You can see Jack and Yoda there hanging out.  Also, now that I'm looking at that photo, I'm realizing that the hardware for the window above the side door got mounted on the wrong side when it got put back up.  Let me add that to the list real quick :)

Now we are up to fire photos already.  Once I pretty much finished that room, things just moved ever so slightly.  Posters on the opposite wall would get changed out from time to time with the array of double sided posters I had stashed upstairs, Jack would get posed to welcome visitors, dogs would knock speakers off speaker stands, the clock would never have the right time, things like that.  Even after the fire, things didn't change to much, as I'm a creature of habit.

So, here's what I came home to on (8/19/2008).  Not quite what I had left.  Though, my mom was checking in on the place, so I'm not quite sure what was caused by the fire and what was her fault.  This room didn't take as much fire damage (the fire was concentrated on the opposite side of the house), though, it took a great deal of heat and water damage.  The blinds got all wavy from the heat, and components of the projector melted, and the massive influx of water loosened up the plaster from the wood slats behind it.  Though, the new ceiling my dad and I put up sure did stay in place.  You'll notice that Yoda is missing.  That's because when the firefighters turned the corner the first time, they thought he was someone still in the house, so they hauled him outside to avoid any confusion.  Jack came out mostly unharmed, and he got to live the high life down at Destinations Booksellers, while Yoda was shacked up with Mark's kids.  The big red fire tarps came from the fire department.  That's where they did what they could to toss tarps over stuff to try and save it.  So, because of those tarps, we still have all of the seating from the room.

So, after the fire, we got the news that the house was going to have to be completely gutted down to the studs since all of the plaster was coming away from the walls and ceilings (if it wasn't already brought down by the fire).  Prior to doing so, we wanted to save all of the oak trim, which was in pretty good shape.  Everything got pulled off the wall, labeled, and then stacked in the garage until it was needed (9/10/2008).

Now that the trim was safely tucked away, it was time for massive damage.  All of the walls and ceilings started getting ripped out (9/13/2008).  Needless to say, a couple layers of plastic got put down over the floors.

It took about a little over a week to rip out everything, and more dumpsters than I can remember (Mark remembers for sure, as he paid for them :)  It was a little bit eerie being able to walk around the house and see all of the exterior walls (9/20/2008).  We also had the addition of plywood over the doors and other openings to keep out the would be miscreants (after others had made it in).

The next stage didn't lend itself to photos for this room, so we had a pretty big gap in photo taking for it.  That's when all of the upstairs got re-framed in, as well as the exterior wall and ceilings along the first floor.  The ceiling in this room actually got jacked up because the ceiling joists were sagging due to all of the weight from the debris.  That process resulted in the floor in the room sinking due to the lack of structural support in the cellar.  All of that got corrected along the way, though, each was an adventure unto itself.  Also, all of the circa 2005/2006 electrical wiring from our house-wide re-wiring project got pulled and replaced after all of that got sorted out.  So, for this room, we move ahead to insulation (1/1/2009).  Apparently, building code today requires it, and since we had to meet all of the latest codes, we got it.

As for the drywall (1/18/2009), once those guys started, they moved quick (quicker than the dumpster showed up, that's for sure, I'm still picking bits of drywall out of the front yard every time I mow it :)

Once the drywall was done, the plastic came up off of the floors.  The plastic itself was starting to look pretty rough, and debris was getting under it, so in the end, it started causing more problems than it was preventing.  So, from late February until April, it was fingers crossed that the floors would come out okay.  Since the walls were now up, they could be painted with our new colors (we changed every color in the house except for the bathroom, which we had just finished in January of 2008).  I like to say that we toned down the crazy, as each room was pretty intense, lots of bold colors.  Since with the new staircase we put in opened up the house a lot, we actually tried to pick colors this time that went well together (2/22/2008).  This is also when they started putting the puzzle pieces back together.  All of the trim was pulled out of the garage and put back where it was originally placed.  There was one huge problem in that, in a lot of places, it didn't fit quite right.  That comes with the territory when the trim molds to the shape of the house through years of settling, and then you put up straight walls.  We had to shim more than a few pieces, replace a few, but all in all, the plan to save all of the trim was a success.

One thing that didn't get saved was all of the crown molding.  It wasn't original, as we added that to each room between 2004 and 2007, so we weren't too concerned about it.  Plus, a lot of it was damaged by the fire in other rooms, so it all got replaced in one fell swoop (3/15/2008).  Also, all of the switches and outlets also got installed at this point, as well as the doorbell and fire alarm.

The next big step in the process was the floors.  They took a pretty serious beating in spots, especially upstairs, as well as the foyer and front living room.  It was always the big unknown as to what they would eventually end up looking like.  They floors looked great when we originally uncovered them back in 2004.  After they were cleaned at this stage, they just looked blah.  Since we had photos of the floors originally to show the condition prior to the fire, refinishing the floors got added to the bill.  Some parts had to be replaced due to fire and water damage, and some spots didn't come through unscathed, but some larger rugs than we had before help cover the damage.  All in all, though, they ended up looking fantastic (3/27/2008).

That's how the room ended up looking at the end of March.  We started moving back in during the end of April, and since then, as mentioned from the start, it's been a flurry of activity putting up blinds, wall decor, replacing furniture, tables, rugs, lights, frames, etc.  We are closing in on finishing a lot of rooms, though, I'm once again ready to put a bow on the dining room for the second time (6/16/2009).

As you can see, Carson is very appreciative of the fire fighters for saving his couch.  Jack's also happy to be back, and Yoda came back as a bit more of a revolutionary than he already was (I blame Mark :)  Oh, and that's not an illusion, the doorbell is in a different spot than the last photo.  Mark didn't take into account my decor when mounting it the first time, so I had it moved (I think he's glad to have some time away from me these days :)  Though, I lost a clock spot in the process, but it always ran slow due to drained batteries and I never changed it based on daylight savings, so trust me, everyone is better off.  The posters are a bit wavy, but I figured Steven went through the hard work to go into the house when instructed otherwise after the fire to pull a few things out, including those off of the wall, it seemed wrong not to use them.  Plus, they survived my mom's basement with Annabel on the attack, so they deserve a place on the wall after all of that.  We are also happy with how our $5 door turned out.  The foyer was always missing a door there.  The hinges were there, just not a door.  It was removed long before we got here.  Historic Landmarks in Jeffersonville has an entire basement full of of salvaged elements from homes, and doors come at the nice price of $5 (I'm sure some of the door knobs on them are worth more than that).  Since we had to sand down and refinish the heat damaged finish on all of the other doors in the house, we tossed it in the pile with the rest of them.  So, now we finally have a 6 panel door (albeit in a slightly different arrangement) to match all of the other 6 panel doors in the house.

We are now getting closer than ever to having furniture in the rest of the house, so invites may start rolling out in July.  Until then, you can try to stop by, but remember, we have a new foyer door to hide behind to pretend we aren't here :D

We Are Home

There's definitely more work to do (the kitchen has no plumbing, the replacement rugs have yet to show up, the house has no guttering, and most importantly, of course, my theater equipment is still all boxed away :),  but, since this past Saturday was the 8 month anniversary of the fire, and the fact that we've grown weary living like nomads for 9 months, we determined things were close enough to be able to move back in.

We are still a good couple of weeks out from tying up loose ends, so don't be expecting an invite over in your in/mail box just yet :)

Temp Home Sweet Temp Home...

We realized the other day that we've been living with the Delgado's now for 7 months (and as of the revised estimates we received on Friday, if they hold true, it's going to be another 2, for a total of 9 for those too lazy to do the math) and we've never uploaded any photos of the place.  Oddly enough, we catch ourselves calling it home (which is pretty easy, as our home is wherever our small family unit is, which is the two of us and the dogs).

So, prepare yourself to see what only ourselves and the 6 visitor's we've had up here (2 of which helped us move in, and strangely, none of our visitors have ever made repeat visits) have seen.

Behold the "Bunkhouse" (which is what the Delgado's call it):

That's half the place (it's one large 27' x 27' room, so you can get the whole thing in 2 photos :)  We've got our storage on the front left corner which is everything we were able to salvage from the house (of which, about 60% are clothes, towels, and blankets), our living room front and center, and in the front right corner (hidden behind the treadmill) is what un-salvageable items that we still have that we haven't thrown away yet for some reason or another (quite a few childen books that we both grew up with that have our names and other random notes that we wrote in them when we were little).  On the right, that's our bedroom, where the tiny bed close to the door is my quaranteened bed which I relegated myself to for the past 3 weeks when I was fighting a bout of the infamous "Jim Virus."

Then, there is the back half of the place. The left door goes to Annabel's room, otherwise known as the bathroom (our dogs got spoiled from the cold hardwood floors at our house, Annabel more so than Carson due to her thicker fur, so she pretty much lives in there, as the rest of the place is carpet).  Back center is our kitchen, where we've mostly given up on cooking, as we've had to throw away our groceries more times than we've liked (once after the fire, once after the hurricane, once after the ice storm, and once again after the wind storm), so we buy them sparingly.  The back right corner is the dining room, which I've taken over as my home office.

That's it.  That's the tour.  A huge thanks goes out to the Delgado's for letting us stay here.  It was a huge relief after the fire to have a place to stay with the dogs (we had other options, but unfortunately, the dogs wouldn't have been feasable at most, as they tend to overstay their welcome fairly quickly for most people (except for my mom, who has become the default "doggy-sitter" when we actually want to, dare I say, go somewhere without the dogs, though, I think she's just about reached her limit :), and even more so that the "Bunkhouse" came completely furnished (which meant, we didn't have to go buy towels, blankets, utensils, toothbrushes (kidding :), etc).

Now, it's time to try and reclaim the beds from the dogs.

Cornucopia of Color

The house has now been completely painted on the inside.  If you had seen the house after we renovated it the first time, you'll know that we enjoyed having a color for each room.  We went back with the same idea, though, now that the house is a bit more open due to the revised staircase, we decided to try and tone down the crazy (I'll admit, I went a bit dark in a few rooms originally :)  We actually only kept one color the same, and that's the downstairs bathroom, since we had just finished gutting and rebuilding it last January.

Unfortunately, there are no photos, but here's the next best thing, a color swatch mash up.

Mark only had to completely repaint two rooms when we realized the color we chose didn't look quite right when it was plastered it across an entire room, which, out of 10 rooms, I don't think is too bad :)  Fortunately, one of the two wasn't the upstairs office space, which took 8 gallons of paint :D

We still have to pick a color for the cellar, as we've decided to do away with the original "Blair Witch" cellar look the house came with.  It's a good thing Scott got his token pic of himself standing in the corner when he came to visit a couple of years ago (which may one day surface).

An Exercise in Patience

The goal was to re-create the original wallpaper in our foyer that came down with the walls.  What I have left is to finish the artwork inside each emblem, which is proving to be a huge pain.  Here's a quick comparison:

I've also got it down to the core repeatable image, which leaves me with two buildings to finish drawing (Independence Hall and the Boston State House) and the eagle, which will hopefully be done before the house (which has currently been re-scheduled for late March).

 Then the real fun begins, attempting to get the wallpaper printed for a reasonable price.

Whoops!

This is what happens when the dumpster guys don't show up and the drywall guys do and need to make space to keep working.

Needless to say, we are doing everything we can to line up a dumpster as quickly as possible (I'm sure our neighbors are ready for this whole rebuilding process to be finished almost as much as we are :)

Though, if anyone needs some scrap drywall to patch some holes, please take what's in the front yard and leave what's in the house alone.  We'd like to move back in sometime this year.

Open Window Policy

After having made some good progress last week with the all of the new electrical wiring and plumbing and framing passing inspection, and insulation in the house having been completed, and all the drywall having been delivered (and currently residing inside the house where the heat is on at a toasty 65 degrees (15 degrees warmer than it would be if we were living there)), and all of the woodwork and doors in the cellar in the process of being restored, as if we didn't enjoy it enough the first time, someone broke into the house Tuesday night.

They kicked in one of the small ground level windows that go into the cellar, and then proceed to ransack the cellar (tossing all of the trim/doors/pocket doors we saved from the house off of the sawhorses), and then making their way to the first floor to clean out all of the tools being used rebuilding the house, and doing the same on the second floor.

Apparently, that wasn't enough, so they ripped all of the copper pipes out of the walls from the plumbing to take with them.

They then needed a way out of the house that was large enough to carry out their haul.  After the first break in, we padlocked all doors and gates and boarded up all windows.  So, they couldn't easily just open the back door from the inside and carry everything out the back gate.  Lucky for them, though, we had started restoring the windows and had to remove the plywood and patch all of the screw holes.  So, they had easy access to their choice of one of the large windows in my office, which they unlocked from the inside and then opened and left with everything.

Where does that leave them?

Some extra cash if they can get a pawn shop to take tools with the name "Robinson" plastered all over them and a recycling center to take brand new looking copper freshly pieced together with the stickers still on them.

Where does that leave us?

We have to re-buy the stolen building materials (insurance already paid for the materials), re-do all of the work that they had destroyed (insurance already paid for the labor), repair all of the woodwork they damaged, re-buy all of the tools to do the work again, and delay our move back home once again while we wait for all of that to be completed in addition to re-inspections and try and re-schedule the drywall work that was to start this week that we had to cancel.

Calls have been made to an alarm company to try and get some sort of temporary service hooked up (there are no walls or ceilings to mount anything to, no phone lines, and only a few outlets to power tools off of), and now we hope that until then, no one else in town feels like kicking in windows.

Though, honestly, at this point, nothing surprises me, and I've almost stopped caring.

Almost.

Good News and (potentially) Bad News

Good News

We passed the framing, plumbing, and electrical inspections.

(potentially) Bad News

Dr. Hess is putting his property up for sale next door.

That brings the total properties for sale on our small block up to 2, which will be 3 here shortly when another one on our side of the street goes up for sale.  Add to that the 2 abandon properties on the block, and that puts 5 out of the 11 buildings on our block in a state of limbo.

Sadly, the 300 block of East 9th that we'll be moving back in to in (hopefully) February won't be the same one we left (reluctantly) back in August.

Holiday Card Recycling

We definitely phoned this one in.  Take last year's holiday postcard, swap out the dogs (and even leave in the replacement Santa face), and instant 2008 holiday postcards.

Annabel has grown quite a bit over the past year.  Here's last year's card for a quick comparison.  At least she's finally grown into the ears she got for Christmas last year.  Carson was also much happier this year for not having to wear a bandanna.

Six Layers Under

Work on the house has been progressing.  Fortunately, the house is now weathered in, so no more worries about having to dry out the floors every time it rains.  Now, we just have to finish the inside of the house to make it livable once again.

We've been out of the house going on almost 4 months now, with an estimate of a total of 6 months by the time that everything is said and done.  Needless to say, February can't come soon enough.

Here's some photo comparisons to get an idea of some of the progress.

August 18th, 2008

September 20th, 2008

September 25th, 2008

October 10th, 2008

October 19th, 2008

November 1st, 2008

November 22nd, 2008

Also, this week we've been able to confirm our long held suspicions about the floors in the kitchen.  As I've mentioned numerous times, we've always known the kitchen wasn't a kitchen, and that it was actually 3 rooms made into one.  Well, now we can see how it was all pieced together.  Little did we know all of the layers.

This photo shows the part of the room that was a bedroom on the left, in the upper right is the part of the room that used to be the small back porch area, and in the lower right is the part of the room that used to be a pantry of some sorts.  The floor on the left had already had 2 layers removed (a 1/4" plywood floor and on top of that, the linoleum we've been living with for about 5 years).

Here's the floor with the last 4 layers removed.  There were 2 more layers of a linoleum, a real thin wood flooring layer, and then one more layer of some old linoleum (that had an almost canvas backing to it).  Underneath it all, the wood floors we always knew were there, with some odd stylistic paint job in the middle.  They are in great condition, all things considering. 

Now, what you see peeking out in the upper left hand corner of that photo is a part of our new stairs.  If you recall our old stairs, they were added into the house at an unknown date, blocking a door.  They were incredibly steep, and at the 90 degree turn halfway up, they became rediculously narrow (to the point where any furniture up there had to be carried up there in pieces and built).

We stole some ideas from our neighbors, who have a great original staircase in their home.  Using those ideas, we took them and ran with them.  Here you can see where we took out the wall between the kitchen and the movie room.  Whereas the people that built the original stairs blocked a doorway (as can be seen in the photo above), we took it completely out :)

We repositioned the stairs to come down from a different starting point, and made it as straight of a shot as possible.  Since to make them reach the floor would have made the steps completely out of code, we used the ideas we gathered from the stairs next door, and created a landing (which we had before in our old stairs).  From the landing, a shorter set of stairs leads into the movie room, and an identical set on the other side leads into the kitchen.  Here's what the steps are looking like today.

They are still a bit rough, but they are coming together nicely.  Now, we'll finally be able to get things upstairs.  As for the flooring for the landing, we are going to be re-using what we found under the kitchen floor.

Again, that's where the old back porch area used to be.  So, that flooring will be moved to become the flooring on the landing for the stairs.  That's just one of the many examples where we are shuffling around elements existing in the house pre-fire (some known and some unknown) to configure them in a more logical manner post-fire.

As for the steps, one last photo, and that's from upstairs down, for those that are curious.

You can see on the left where we have to patch a hole in the floor (as that's where the old steps started at), which will be a minor challenge, which we think the end results will be more than worth it.

Next stop, awaiting the artist's renderings for the rest of the staircase elements.  Oh, and some walls would be nice :)

Let's All Thank David Ward

For letting the world now think New Albany is a city of racists:

From the Chicago Tribune:

"For others, like David Ward, who runs an antique shop with his wife in New Albany, the issue is race. Ward, a registered Democrat, said he will vote for McCain "mainly because he's not black.""

Loaning My Credit to California

When I read about Schwarzenegger requesting a loan to keep the state of California running, I had no idea they were going to take it from me personally.

Apparently, our Discover card is being used somewhere in California.  Discover called me today to notify me of the charges, and after confirming they weren't from me, they shut down our card.  Oddly enough, I had just used it about 15 minutes earlier to buy some more books from Destinations Booksellers.

Here's hoping Randy at least gets his money before they canned our account.

Their fraud investigation unit is supposed to be calling me in 5 days with their findings.  As of right now, I've no clue what could have happened, as we aren't missing any cards and shop safely online, unless there was something with our account numbers that got pulled from the house/dumpster after the fire and sold to California, but that's probably just a coincidence.

Inquiring minds want to know...

Adaptive Reuse: How Not to Do It

It's a very enlightening experience when you tear out all of the walls and ceilings from a home that you know for a fact has had some major construction done inside over the course of close to 115 years.

Enlightening as in, now we can clearly see why all of the problems we've had with the home since we purchased it almost 5 years ago are actually happening and also the ones we've seen visible signs of when we bought the house, what the underlying causes of are.

We've always known the kitchen was added on, and a wall or two was taken out to make it.  What we didn't know was that the second floor of the home was never intended as living space.  We've found where the original framed out doorway to the back bedroom that became the kitchen was blocked off in order to put in a set of stairs to the attic space when the owners of our home at the time decided to make attic space living space (to still get access to the new kitchen area, they carved out a doorway into the side of the existing closet so you could walk through and gave it an arch to match the arch going into the hallway (though, nowhere near as good craftsmanship), and then they took the closet door off its hinges to open into the new found mini hallway).

The end result?  We've got ceiling joists on the first floor that then suddenly became floor joists for the brand new second floor.  The problem?  The ceiling joists were never intended to support the load.

What does that mean to us?  Well, there's an inch gap between joists and floor above in spots where the joists have sagged.  We have 2"x6" ceiling joists that run 19'.  According to current building codes, they are overextended about 5' too far for ceiling joists.  What about the fact that they reclaimed the attic space as living space and now the ceiling joists now pull double duty as floor joists?  According to current building codes, they are currently overextended about 9' too far.

Suddenly, things are starting to make sense.  That's probably why that's the ceiling that fell in while Tabitha was at home in the room doing homework back in 2004.  Plaster isn't known for it's flexibility.

So, the framers have stopped work on the second floor and roof, and work has switched to try and fix the structural integrity of the house.  We'll lose more than a few inches of ceiling height in the process, but we don't have a choice if we want the house to pass inspection.  We are also happy to oblige, given that it will prevent us from one day crashing into the first floor from the second floor when we actually started using the upstairs (it was currently used mostly for storage) and putting some real furniture up there.

This little insight instigated a full investigation of the entire house, and there are apparently problems ad nauseum in the cellar such as floor joists hidden behind crawl space that aren't adequate to support the load of the house, and with the previous back few rooms of the house being consolidated into one large room for a kitchen, nothing down there is up to code for how that room is now being used (to support heavy appliances).  Oh, and apparently, the entire roof is mostly resting on a series 1"x6" boards that run the entire outside span of the house, rather than being supported by the walls.  All of the people working have been commenting that they are surprised we've not had major problems with the roof prior, since there are plenty of spots where the 1"x6" boards are sagging from the weight of the roof, and some that have even started cracking.

Needless to say, all of these problems are going to be fixed.  Though, right now, on our dime, since none of it was included in the insurance estimate to repair the damage due to the fire.  The current financial market crisis isn't affecting us at the moment as much as it would have, as we cashed out weeks ago (for these new items and all the insurance work as well, since we are still waiting on the insurance check, and we refused to let the house sit as it was right after the fire and started work immediately, flipping the bills ourselves).

Oddly enough, all of these problems we would have mostly been oblivious to until something serious happened.  I guess we should be thankful for the fire, in a way, as it's allowing us the opportunity to basically re-engineer the internal framework of the entire house to ensure that it will be around for much longer than it may have.  We've been rolling the dice every day without ever realizing we were playing.

I guess they actually have building codes for a reason.  Too bad none were used when our home was originally built.

!@#$%^&*

This morning someone broke into the house and stole most, if not all, of the contractors' tools that are being stored in our house during the rebuilding.

Apparently, they had gotten in through the cellar door, which has never had the best lock in the world on it.  From there, they were able to get into the kitchen and unlock the back door.  Since power is still out at the house, and the alarm system has been disconnected for the time being because of it, of course, no alarms went off during this entire process.

They stashed all of the tools by the back gate leading into the alley for easy transport.

The reason we know that is because when one of the contractor's showed up this morning, the guy was still there in the house.

The guy's story was that he was there to work.  For all the contractor's knew, he was there to work.  They called our friend Mark who is the project manager, and he made the trip over.

Mark kicked him out of the house, and told the guy we didn't need anyone else to work, and no need to ever come back.  Initially, they thought he was just a guy showing up for work.  That is, until they started working and noticed none of the tools were where they left them and know one had moved them on anyone else.

That's when they split from the house to look for the guy.

The guy wasn't found, but the stash of all of the tools he was leaving by the back alley gate was.  Apparently, he had gotten greedy/cocky and had made another trip back in to look/grab for more stuff, and that's when the one of the contractor's showed up, and he made up some story to keep them from calling the cops on the spot.  Best we can figure, he was making a nice pile to haul off with a vehicle zipping through the back alley.

Will he come back?  Who knows.  Hopefully, he's the first and last person to break into the house.

We've added padlocks to every single door, but can't do much for the windows except board them up.  When you notice all of the boards going up today on every single window in the house, that's why.

Needless to say, we are no longer leaving Tabitha's car in front of the house during the night.  Apparently it's not a deterrent in any way or form, and we'd rather not have it broken into again (she's still waiting for it to be fixed from the last time :)