The Mud Room Has Become a Deck!

Edited to add: For some reason, I cannot get videos to upload in this post. I left them as images so you can at least see part of what happened. I'll try videos again in another post but we are toying with the idea of a YouTube channel. I'll keep you posted.



You may remember an earlier post I wrote called "The Porch Has Become a Deck". That post was all about tearing down the front porch of our house. Now we have moved to the back of the house and we are tearing down the mud room.

We thought the mud room was an addition that was added onto the house some time after it was built. Our original plan was to use our neighbor's heavy duty fork lift and lift the mud room off of its foundation and move it away. We wanted to attach it to the back of the garage to be used as my classroom while we demolish and build.

Well, after waiting for several weeks, we finally realized that the neighbor's forklift is out of commission and isn't going to be able to help. So we decided to take the room apart by hand and see if we can still use the wood and walls in the new room. 

We started with trying to pull the roof off with the truck:

It turns out that the roof is attached securely to the original roof of the house which is underneath the second roof that was added sometime later. So, we realized we needed to do some loosening and cutting to get it to come off. We put the jack and a 4x4 post under the roof and lifted it off. 

The wood was pretty rotted so it lifted off. The back side of the roof was still securely attached so I climbed up there with a circular saw and cut through the roof to separate it from the house. 

We were able to pull the roof off, but I forgot to tape it. Sigh...

We salvaged most of the 2x4s but the roof itself was not reusable so we cut it up and threw it away.

The mud room has become a sun room! We took a good look at the wood in the walls and the floor. The walls are in decent shape and can be reused, but the floor...not so much. So we decided it would be better to have new wood in the floor of my new classroom. 

The new room is 8 x 16 feet, or 128 square feet. Colorado doesn't require a building permit for anything under 200 square feet. 

We built the floor, insulated it with R-20 insulation, and put on an OSB subfloor. While this was happening, I was removing the 3, yes 3, layers of siding from the mud room to get to the skeleton of the wall. I disconnected it from the side walls and the boys pushed it over onto the ground. 

Then, with a some help from our friends, the Paynes, we moved the wall over to the new floor and attached it. 

We did some more bracing and the wall is standing!

Next, we'll disconnect the side walls and move those over. 

More pix and progress to come! 

Finally!

We finally have our foundation plans! You may remember we had our soil test done in July of 2018. We were going to have the same engineer also draw up our foundation plans. They said it was only going to be 3-4 weeks as they were running behind. That turned out to be the understatement of the year.

In March, we still didn't have the soil report or the foundation plans. We went to their office and we called several times and they finally admitted that they could probably get us the soil report soon but the foundation plans hadn't even been started. Sigh...

We had no desire to start the process over again, if we could even find another geotechnical engineer. So we told them to finish the results of the soil report but to cancel the foundation plans. We said 8 months was a ridiculous amount of time for us to be waiting. The receptionist agreed but said they were sad to lose our business. Whatever.

Finally, after another month had gone by, and after I had called them twice a week, every week (squeaky wheel, right?), we received our soil report. 9 months after we started this process. Sheesh, a whole human being can be created in that amount of time! Lol!

At the end of April, I called around to several other engineers and found one whose price was reasonable. I sent over the soil report, floor plans, ICF block information and the physical address of the build site. The next day, I sent a follow-up email making sure everything was received and asking for an estimate for when he thought the plans would be done. No reply. The following week, I sent another email. No reply. Why are engineers so uncommunicative? I decided to just wait because what else are we going to do? Start over AGAIN? So we waited. Finally, at the beginning of the 4th week, I got an email saying our plans were finished and we could pick them up. We were there that day.

Yay! Now we can move forward! It was difficult convincing ourselves to move into the motor home and begin deconstruction of the house when we didn't have all that we needed to move forward. The "what ifs" kept us frozen. But now we don't have to wait anymore.

The motor home has a new kitchen faucet and we ran water through it and there are no more leaks! We ran the bathroom faucet and the shower. No leaks! Hurray!

Sam and Jeff have their tents set up next to the motor home. Apparently, they really want separate tents. REALLY, want separate tents. Fine, in the name of family harmony, they each have their own tent.

We've all been sleeping in the motor home and tents for a few nights now. Glenn says the bed in the motor home is more comfortable than our own bed. He's actually sleeping better out there.

We moved the washer and dryer outside. They are hooked up on the patio. Hank ran an extra 220 plug for the dryer since the one we had is being used by the motor home. He said the only thing we shouldn't do is try to run the dryer and the motor home's AC at the same time. Gotcha!

Our neighbor from across the street came over and saw our make-shift laundry area and said, "How red-neck is that?" Well, if red-neck means making due for something better in the future, then I guess it is pretty red-neck. Lol!

All we have left to move out of the house is our bed (it's going into storage), the living room couches (they are going into the trash), the kitchen (so many small things), and my classroom. Stay tuned!

Winter Eventually Gives Way to Spring!

The long winter months are over. Or so we think. It is Colorado, after all. Officially, according to the calendar, spring is here so we are just going to go with it and start work again on this house project. We'll deal with whatever Mother Nature throws at us as we go along.

What have we been doing during these last few months while we put our project on hold?

Well, Glenn organized his garage better and moved most, if not all, of the supplies we have for the new house into the extra container we bought last summer. That made room in the garage for Glenn to be able to fix his compressor and rebuild a welder.

We replaced the garage door. The old one was in pretty bad shape:

The new one makes the garage look so much better!

Glenn lost his job in August of last year so he decided to retire. He has been the main breadwinner for most of our married life. He worked 2 jobs to put me through college. He worked when the boys were little so I could stay home with them. So we decided it is my turn to support him. In October, I became an independent contractor for VIPKid. I teach English to Chinese children. It is the coolest and most fun job I have ever had. And it frees Glenn up to be able to work on the house.

Glenn took some odds and ends that were laying around and he and the boys built this table:

The table is upside down in these photos so they could paint the legs.

This is the finished table.
He didn't have to buy anything to build it. All of the parts were leftovers from other projects. The legs are pieces of an old shelving system. They were in Glenn's metal recycle pile for a long time but he just couldn't bring himself to get rid of them. So now they have new life as table legs.
This table will be a great work surface this summer.


The first project we used this table for was rebuilding an old bench swing that we've had for years. Glenn picked it up on the side of the road about 10 years ago. It needed new wood and paint and we finally got around to doing it. The only "before" pictures I have are when we were disassembling it but you can see how rusted the metal is and how worn the wood is.

The boys helped with the sanding and painting and the complaining (lol):

 Almost done:

 Finished! We love the bright colors! Brianna said it looks like it belongs at McDonalds but I like it!

We also had this old, wood rocking chair that Danita McDonald gave us, so we decided to paint it to match the bench.

That about sums up the projects we worked on this winter. This was in addition to regular life that happened:

We had to cover the old house windows with plastic so all our heat didn't escape through them.

We had to cover the underside of the house where we had already removed the skirting.

The kitchen faucet died and had to be replaced.

Our hall bathroom toilet had a tragic accident and the tank had to be replaced. (Sam doesn't want me to tell this story online, but you should ask him about it anyway. heehee)

Our deep freezer stopped working so we had to dispose of it, get Brianna and Hank's freezer out of storage and set it up in the mud room. (We got 18 years of use out of it, and it was used when we got it, so we can't be too upset about it dying with no warning.....)

We weathered a few wind storms (see what I did there?) and had to repair the fence and the roof and the red shed's doors.

Now spring is here and we are ready to get started on the house. But first we have to get the motorhome ready, which means fixing or replacing the faucet.

The missionaries came over and helped Glenn remove the motorhome's sink so that we could see where, hopefully, the last water leak is. We pulled out the faucet and, sure enough, there was a 1/4" split in the copper pipe. This is Glenn's current project. Repair or replace....that is the question......

The Porch and Craft Room are Gone!

We were removing the last of the porch floor when our neighbors and friends, Mike and Debbie Payne came over to see what was happening. We were looking at and discussing the railroad ties that the builder of the porch used as a foundation.

 Glenn said he thought he was going to have to wait to get a tractor to pull those out of the ground. Mike said he thought he could just pull them out with his truck. So he got his truck and tow chain and made short work of all 12 of those railroad tie "pier blocks". 

Some of the railroad ties were so rotted, they just snapped off. It's a wonder this porch was standing and as sturdy as it was...or as it felt, anyway.

After all the debris was cleared out of the way, the 4 of us moved the steps over in front of the door so we can still use the front door. 

Over the last two weeks when it's been too hot to work outside, we've been removing things on the inside of the house. After all, we aren't using all the walls anymore so why leave them there? haha

Seriously, though, my craft room is gone.

And the paneling in the hallway is gone.

And the paneling and sheetrock in the mudroom/pantry is gone. 

Yep, it seems we are just tearing down the house right around us!  But there has been progress on the motorhome. The electricity is hooked up! Glenn had to make a 15 foot 220 volt extention cord. During that process, he realized that the breaker box in the garage was installed upside down. Just another one of the many strange things we have found that were done by previous owners!

The next project on the motorhome is chasing a water leak. Once that is fixed, then we can work on getting the sewer hooked up and then we can move into the motorhome. 

The Porch Has Become a Deck

The boys are so excited to start demolition! They can't wait to start swinging sledge hammers and making things fall down. But first, we used small hammers and pry bars to remove paneling.

Then there was the problem of that love seat (in the photo, Jeff is standing next to it). We tried to move it out so the garbage truck could take it away but we couldn't fit it through the doorway. How did we get it in the house anyway? Jeff and his friend, David, begged to be able to dismantle it. What the heck? It gives them something to smash and saves me $30 that the garbage service wants to haul it away.

That love seat filled 5 large garbage bags! We knew we were going to generate a lot of garbage with this project so I started calling around for prices for a rolloff dumpster. Did you know you can only keep those for 15 days? So we decided to get a 3 cubic yard dumpster that is emptied once a week for $60 a month. That's more like what we need, at least until we are ready to knock down the whole house.

Anyway, back to the demolition of the porch. Here's a few pics of my helpers:

My grandson, Henry, using a real drill to remove screws from the skirting.

Peek-a-boo!

Two of my favorite helpers!

But this one is not:

Ewwww! Creepy! It slithered away under the house. I'm NOT looking forward to seeing that again!

The missionaries from our church have been asking when we were starting the demolition project so they can come help. Our ward currently has 5 missionaries (not sure why) so I invited them over.

They took out the windows, walls and removed two layers of shingles from the roof.

Then they removed the sheet rock ceiling and most of the paneling that was the roof. They really did a lot of demo that day! They left us with a shell:

Then the boys got their chance with the sledge hammers!

The porch is gone and all that is left is a deck...sort of. 

It really changes the look of the house. We are hoping to finish taking the rest of it down this week.