Week 2 Recap

Well, we've almost filled up our third dumpster, and the demolition is very close to complete. It turned out that there was blown in cellulose insulation in the walls - Something we had not anticipated. There was A LOT of cellulose! It was a little sad to have to send it all the to the landfill, but there really was no way to recover it unfortunately.


By the way, if you have old knob and tube wiring in your home, it is really not a good idea to add insulation (unless the knob and tube wires have been disconnected and left in place, which was not the case here). This creates a significant fire hazard. I assume that this work was done through the MassSave program, which subsidizes the cost of insulating a home, so it is really very suprising that this was done. In any case, I'm surprised that ANY contractor would have done this work.


Anyway, the house is now open. We haven't yet removed the wall studs to reconfigure the floor plan layout. However, just about everything else is gone (pictures coming soon), and it looks pretty good. There's a lot to work with here. The kitchen, which now has a cathedral ceiling, looks great. We also recovered the attic planks above the kitchen ceiling. These will be replaned and used for flooring. Some of the planks are really wide so it will look pretty neat when finished. We also found some newspapers from 1960 under the toilet...


Today, we have a pick up scheduled with EcoBuilding Bargains (formerly the Restore) to donate materials that were recovered from the demolition. So far, we've given away a medicine cabinet, a small shelf, and several cabinets with a sink top that we pulled out of the kitchen. The remainder - including a number of doors, two in-room gas heaters, several fixtures, etc. - have been left ontop of a tarp for donation. We'll se what they will take. Stay tuned for pictures of this. Whatever remains will be either given away for free using Craigslist, recycled, or put in the dumpster. Overall, I think we did a pretty good job with recovery for the demo.
With the heat wave, some final demo cleanup ahead, and the additional structural work, we're probably looking at a third week of these tasks before completion. We also have a mason fixing the brick foundation and putting new basement windows in, and we're beginning to think about next steps on the insulation, siding and roof replacement.