Reno casualties - they happen 1/29 & 30/22

Jeff and I have had our fair share of injuries between renovating a home, running a business and operating a small farm. Anywhere from burns to smashed fingers and limbs to severe allergic reactions to insects or poison ivy. Jeff had the first casualty at the Gladys house several months ago after he ran over a yellow jacket nest with the tractor. He is very allergic, but we were able to avoid a trip to the ER. This past weekend, I took the second casualty when I fell through the old sub-floor. I had just walked over it and noticed the weakness but for some reason decided to walk over it a second time. Thankfully, my chubby little thigh didn't quite fit through the narrow space that broke in the floor and spared me from cracking my tailbone on a floor joist.

Aside from the small mishap and despite the freezing temps in the 20's, we were able to get a lot done. We were able to pull all the old flooring out of the future master bath area. In the process of pulling the floor up, we had to pull the walls down in that room in order to be able to pull the floors up without damaging them. Sounds crazy, but we had to take the room apart in the reverse order that it was put together. The tongue and groove walls were sitting on top of the floors. So in order to pull the floors out, the walls had to come out, but in a systematic order. One wall sits behind the butt end of another wall, which sits behind the ceiling boards (which aren't being removed). And of course, there's window trim and quarter round trim in every corner from floor to ceiling. I was able to talk Jeff into saving not only the floor wood, but also the wall wood. I have a special future project planned and would like to save all this 120+ year old wood for it.

Once the new subfloor was installed over the old one to match the subfloor that we replaced in the old bathroom, we were able to start framing up the new layout of this space. About half of the room will be closed off to adjoin the master bedroom to the new master bathroom. For me as a home owner, this is a major selling point. I prefer this layout and hope that others do as well. The other half of the space will be divided into a half bath and a laundry space. Unfortunately, there was not enough space to enclose the laundry in a separate room, so I will have to get creative on the design side to make the space accessible, organized and as private as possible. I was too cold and left before they finished so I will take more photos soon to show off the new frame work.

Demo work also began in one of the upstairs bedrooms. This room had beadboard on the walls and ceiling that we will not be saving. We have also discovered that this room does not have a subfloor. The wood flooring was installed right over the floor joists. This will have to be addressed at some point. We have a couple of options, none of which I am thrilled about. Stay tuned to see how we resolve that issue.

And last but not least, here is my pile of wood that we saved that I will never hear the end of from Jeff. He put up a good fight to not have to save it and for good reason, but he will thank me one day that I did save it. The guys worked really hard to harvest this wood and it probably took 2-3 times longer to get it out than it would have if they just tore it out. Its not efficient to remove it carefully, you have to store it somewhere and it usually gets moved a few dozen times before you actually use it. I will have the girls pull all the square nails out of it and find a place to stack it, just to be moved 20 more times :)