LOL. Yeah, I understood you. I know what your feeling. I've been dragging my a$$ for the past few weeks. I finally got about seven hours of sleep last night. I was averaging about four hours prior to. It must've been that defeat last night. What an emotionally draining night for Patriots' Nation. :(

More demolition happening this week. About half of the flooring is gone from the upstairs. The big digging machinery is supposed to start work tomorrow!

So, when they jacked up the floors to get them level, apparently all of the support posts for the main house beam in the basement pulled right out of the ground. I guess when the house was built they just sank the posts right into the dirt under the house and they had rotted completely away. :eek:

New photos from this afternoon: http://65.102.221.68/demo5/

Nice attic space. I'd love to use mine. But it's only got two of those Amittyville type windows and not a ton of head room. We thought about adding dormers, but that'd be very costly due to the copper/slate roof.

I wish that was attic space. That's the master bedroom! :)

Wow I love the wall painting!

Thanks! My wife and I did that along with another friend in the months before our daughter was born. We used scenic paints--paints super-saturated with pigment that set designers use when creating sets for the theater. They never get water resistant (which isn't too much of a problem for a short-run theater piece), so you have to add a coat of urethane over the top.

Well it looks good still. :)

Some new photos! The destruction continues. Here's the excavation for the porch and new addition:

http://65.102.221.68/img_2607_h.jpg

http://65.102.221.68/img_2611_h.jpg

http://65.102.221.68/img_2614_h.jpg

We're supposed to get a snowstorm tomorrow, but the excavation shouldn't take much more than to the end of the week. The builder is hopeful that we might get some new foundation poured by the end of the month.

Inside the house, the carpenters have almost finished laying new subflooring throughout the old part of the house. (The house needed it for lateral support. We've had a lot of high winds lately.) Also, they've added a new support beam of double 2 x 12s for the sagging master bedroom.

I wasn't able to get new photos of the interior because the crew worked late today.

Thanks for listening!

wow! What year was the house originally built?

Listening? You mean to the elevator type music here at work? :D

Boulder had a courthouse fire in 1910 that destroyed the records to the house. So, we know that it was at least pre-1910. The house next door was built ~1885 and the brick is quite a bit different, so my guess is that it's after that.

The scary part is that all of the rebellion songs of my youth are turning up as elevator music or ... worse ... Taco Bell ads. Sigh. I never knew middle age could be so horrible. :)

That's too bad about the records. Speaking of which, I've been meaning to get down to city hall myself.

cant wait to see this one good luck

looks awesome! tagging along :)

Welcome aboard! And thanks for reminding me that I have more photos. We have framing!

http://65.102.221.68/house_build1/

No digging today. Here's why:

http://65.102.221.68/img_2632.jpg

http://65.102.221.68/img_2653.jpg

Great pictures. The snowflakes are quite beautiful. How did you manage to take them?

very cool snowflakes!

TOOFLY...those pics brought back some seriously bad childhood memories of mine.....those being of Nightmare on Elm Street...that thing look exactly like theone in those movies....every have any strange scratching noises down there??

the house demo and reconstruction is coming along nicely...i cant wait to hopefully start my reno inthe fall of thise year...i am still waiting on prelim drawing though...i will be certainly following your tank build too..

That's not a furnace, Call NASA, they must have lost an Apollo Capsule!

And that other boiler, looks more like a locomotive parked in the basement!

Awesome neat old stuff.

I don't go down there at night if I don't have too. :p Seriously. :eek: My plan is to keep the sump and everything down there too. :rolleyes:

Hey "Umm, fish?",

Not to take any of your mojo away, but I wanted to tell you I sent in my payment for a 225 earlier tonight. I'm psyched.

Thanks,
Paul

I used to tease people about it doubling as a crematory. There's an old-a$$ work bench nearby with a vice on it too. The mob could work wonders down there. Kidding...

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v2...s/whistle1.gif http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v2...tta20here1.gif

lol between the boiler and those rooms it could be freddys old house lol

Hi all! Thanks for the compliments and kind words.

I let them fall on pre-chilled (I left them outside for a little while) glass microscope slides and then slid those up under my camera mounted on a good tripod. Very easy ... snowflakes don't run away. :)

NanoReefWanabe--Good luck on your renovation!

Paul--Hey, congratulations on the new tank! Post a link to your build thread--I want to follow along. :)

I just wanted to make sure that you realize that those are two contradictory statements, right? :)

We finished picking out all of the plumbing fixtures, most of the rest of the tile, and the windows and french doors this week. And, yes, I have been working 'til midnight every night to make up for the lost time during the day. But, I seem to be heading into the usual late-winter lull in work, so I should have a few days to catch up. The lull's late this year--it usually happens in mid-January, not mid-February. I'm not complaining--it sure beats working 'til midnight--but how long 'til I start to worry...? :) Ah, the life of a freelancer....

Will do Andy.

A jackhammer's been running all day at the house. I'm dying to see what they're up to, but I'd just bet that they're pulling the old concrete floor out of the basement. I think I'll give it a day or so before I go to check to let all of the dust settle.

I bet the neighbors just looooovvvve me. :)

Nice.

Wow, I will be following along for sure.

Hi, y'all!

More photos:

http://65.102.221.68/HB02/

They're almost done digging out the new basement. In the meantime, the carpentry crew has framed a good portion of the upstairs. They also built a temporary wall on the first floor to support the second floor and then knocked out all of the brick for a new door on the side of the house. The crew also scored up the concrete floor in the basement for removal tomorrow. (The jackhammer going all day last Friday was solely for the removal of a 2' x ~12' section of crawl space so they can put a new cement foundation wall there. Oi.)

big changes man... congrats on your progress thus far. Must be weird to see them tearing your house apart but I'm sure its going to be sick when its all done.

Wow Andy, you guys are really going to town! :D

Thanks, y'all. Really scary to see the house stripped down. So, ... the jackhammer's going again this morning. Ugh. Hard to think. There goes the basement floor. :)

Looks like the digger's finishing up a few last things today and then the cement guys are supposed to start building the forms. I can't say enough about how great this builder is.

This certainly is an ambitious project. Seems to be going well so far. Looking forward to you tank build.

Sounds sweet

Hi Bax! Hi Nickde123!

So, big updates. Let me talk about the important stuff first: The aquarium. :) There was a big site meeting today with the builder, architect, aquarium builder, and the HVAC people and the dimensions got finalized and chalked down on the subfloor! Lots of talk about how to isolate and vent the space above the display tank as well as some preliminaries about how to isolate and vent the fish room.

The big bad news: The foundation was a little thicker under that section of the house than the engineer expected and so the aquarium is going to have to be shorter than expected. :mad: :uzi: :blown: :eek2: It looks like I have to put up with it being only 11 feet 9 inches. :mad: There go all my plans.

:)

In other, more boring, news: Apparently, the house is falling down. Kidding, sort of. When the house was built, on one corner they just didn't go down as far as the rest of the foundation. So, they're going to put steel pieces in to reinforce everything when they pour the concrete. The _other_ rear corner has started crumbling now that the dirt's been removed from around it. Sigh. That's going to necessitate a great big concrete column that's going to go exactly where I was going to put in a dumb waiter to service the fish room (salt's heavy and my back sucks). We found another place for it, but it still sucks.

The digger's done and the surveyers were out this afternoon. They say that concrete's going to start flowing tomorrow. :eek: That's crazy to me, but I don't underestimate these guys. Very motivated. The builder says that they'll have all the concrete finished by the end of next week.

More photos:

http://65.102.221.68/HB03/

Brave man to tear apart your house in Colorado in the winter! My house was built in 1901 so I can relate. Good luck and will be following along.

Hi Shekki! Our weather's really pretty nice. This was a "cold" winter and I've been running around in short sleeves the past few days. Being right up against the mountains really helps to moderate our weather. It's nothing like being out in Kansas or something.

Also, we aren't actually living in the house right now, as the furnace was the first thing to go. Brr.

dude awesome!

Its definately cold here in Kansas today! Nice project.

Kentanner11--Thank you! I hope it gets better.

kingsland--Thanks! I hope you understand, nothing against Kansas. It's just cold over in your direction.... :)

You are going to host a RMRC event as soon as this is finished right? Lol I am absolutely dying to see it. Not to mention incredibly jealous. Congrats it seems to be moving rather quickly. :)

You and me both! :) I think it's pretty likely that I'll offer to host a meeting one of these days.... :)

Apparently, they _will_ be pouring the concrete footers this afternoon. My camera's ready as the boom is supposed to go over the top of the entire house.

A delay! Apparently, instead of noon they aren't supposed to start until 2pm.

New photos, though:

http://65.102.221.68/Img_3176.jpg

http://65.102.221.68/Img_3177.jpg

awesome, just awesome. Cant wait to see more pics.

:fun5:

http://65.102.221.68/HB04/

wow!

Oh crap I have that some old furnace except mine is coal converted to oil. I really hope mine isn't full of asbestos.

Hey, y'all!

yellowtruck--It's all good as long as you leave it alone. It's only if you ever need to get rid of it that you're screwed.

Coming along well. Seeing this thread makes me miss Colorado. I lived in Denver for several years. Loved it!

I've got an old coal boiler converted to gas. It is covered in asbestos, as well as the pipes that will be coming out when I upgrade to a boiler that can actually be more efficient than 25%. My plan is to do all of the abatement myself....just use lots of plastic to seal up the room, mist water where I am working to keep the dust down, where a good respirator, and use a HEPA filter in the room while demoing. I just can't imagine spending 5-8k to pay someone to do something that I can just as easily and safely do myself :D

Now I'm not sure if that is DIY Gone Wild or not :lol:

mtome--Thanks! Where are you now? We just had melev up to give a presentation at a conference and he had footage of him doing acrylic work outside. He lives in the DFW area where I grew up and I had some serious flashbacks. :) The quality and color of the sunlight between Boulder and Dallas is completely different.

JCTewks--Wow. Good luck on that. Be sure you tape off all of the vents inside your main house, too. I think asbestos abatement is a scam, sure, but I think the deductibles on my insurance for major cancer surgery would wind up costing more than the abatement, so that's why I didn't want to get involved in the cleanup. Be careful!