Haha, nope this is a clean blog (shocker I know..). Lil’ Jon or Betty White and Sandra Bullock can help you out though. For the record, one of our favourite movies of all time.
So Week One! Chicken little WOULD HAVE HAD a bit of a panic attack this week… WE CERTAINLY DID. The HouSe WENT Through its mid-life crisis.
But you know what? It came out the other side looking pretty darn good!
So Day 1 of Week 1 involved signing the official contract with our general contractor to say we’d commit to spending a fair amount of money for him to rip the house apart. It’s the 2nd scariest thing we’ve ever done, losing out marginally to signing the dotted line for the original mortgage. Dear lord Atlanta is expensive!!
Post signing 30 different sets of initials, everything was a go!
Day 1 consisted of a whole lot of orange spray paint all over the walls. Pretty eh? We eventually figured out a dot denoted what walls stayed for the party, and a large X denoted which ones brought the cheap beer and had to go. Hint: the bathroom was the weird kid in the corner, whole lotta orange went on in that room.
So here we sat thinking ‘Okay, we can come to terms with this, they’ll just take down the crown molding, curtain rails, and door jambs and we’ll come back tomorrow. It won’t look that much different’.
WRONG!! DAY TWO:
And so went the rest of the house:
We had arrived at 7am to the house now residing on the floor instead. Mr Urban Farmhouse was a little hungover already from the start of this crazy party. While I was wearing mere fake Uggs and Stu in casual footwear, we had a few friends who tried to nail us in the foot – luckily they just met our souls soles. But apart from that, we were mainly in dumb shock that so much had occurred already. These guys don’t mess around.
So we gave Mr UF a couple days to sleep it off, and came back on Saturday January 16th, to find that lo and behold he had indeed cleaned up his act:
And he found his sober companion, Senor Bathtub. That guy isn’t gonna leave UF’s side any time soon. He’ll keep him in check for a while. Plus that exposed brick is pretty enough to keep anyone smitten. We’re hoping that can stay a while after the party.
On a less metaphorical note, the shock continued as we actually got to see the sheer awesomeness that is the bare bones of 1900’s house. There are 3 or 4 different construction styles that are plain to see, even to us plebs who don’t know much about construction. You can clearly make out both the 8ft 1950’s ceilings and the 10ft 1900’s ceilings (we’re raising them back to original height). You can see this best in the hallway pic the two different levels – where the low beams cross is the ’50s 8ft ceiling. Raising this ceiling is going to make the world of difference to the narrow hallway!
Our contractor has said this is a ‘house within a house’ and all the workers (and us) are pretty giddy to be seeing such incredible history within one property. Our favourite part so far (granted we have a new one roughly every two days…) has to be the anthropology literally stuffed in walls – apparently as insulation?!
We’ve found out some interesting things already, like the type of construction used back in the day was actual 2x4s (per the original measurement) with mortar/plaster holding them together, then plaster was just added on top, before the days that sheet rock and dry wall came to be standard construction (mainly American finishes). And, the wood used to build the frame and roof of the house is solid oak or another hardwood, and has petrified to a certain degree that even getting a nail in by hand is difficult. Not something that could be said of modern day pine.
You can see best from the following picture of the living room ceiling where the wood slats were mortared to the wood frame. Pretty cool when its all taken down. We’ve kept it where possible like in the dining room corner (top right).
Additionally, that living room ceiling is indeed bowing, as there used to be a wall here to keep it intact. While at some point an owner put up a makeshift pine frame to keep it steady – the construction wasn’t the best. Originally, this was a room we weren’t going to bring to the studs, so we’re might glad we did! And apparently because I have some foresight, we’re actually putting said wall back exactly in that spot (pics to come from week two). Phew!!
So that really covers off most of week one – we think construction will slow down a little bit compared to demo, but that said Week Two has been a doozy so far too! Here’s a few more pics from the cleaned up act of Mr UF to tide you over until the next recap, along with another teaser for the next post of course 🙂
TEASER: What’s white, glows green and produces obnoxious amounts of wind?
No, it’s not Green Lantern.
The DRONE. Dun dun dun.
