This weekend, we resumed our digging under the back porch. Got another Bagster and started a bit on Friday afternoon. But today, we put in some time (despite the overcast skies and a bit more rain than expected).
Liz has started working on the front door, this time doing a lot of the work in-place. Setting this guy up on some horses means that we’d actually be absent a front door for several weeks… and would need some kind of temporary door (for both weather and security protection).
Midway through, we ran into some big roots. Liz thinks these were from the tree that used to be closer to the house (and one that we removed back in 2014).
With the space underneath the back porch in a rough state… Liz and I had a decision to make. Either leave things as-is, or do a bit of work to dig out some room… for some exterior storage.
There’s a lot of gaps in the area under our back porch. And after some deliberation, we decided to dig things out more. And to carve out some more space.
I’d freed up a few of these guys before, but had forgotten the exact setup of how I did it. Decided to record the process here, in case I forget again. Nothing fancy, and this is not a “one amazing trick” post. Just a reminder for my future self, if this ever happens again.
Bob’s been working in the basement, getting a lot of our electrical updated. We’ve had lights installed in the far West corner of the basement for some time, but they’ve just been hanging out, without power.
We were working on all floors, today. I was upstairs in the guest room, removing the remaiing lath from the ceiling. Liz was on the first floor, cleaning up more of all her hardware. And Bob was in the basement, wiring up more of our lights.
Came back to the house, suited up, and got to work up on the second floor. My main goal: demo the ceiling in the guest room, and clear out some of the old electrical that’s still up in the attic.
Went down to the basement, and saw Liz and pulled out all (and I mean all the house hardware she’s hunted down and located, over the years). She was doing an inventory of everything, and figuring out what to keep, what to clean, etc.
Bob was over today, helping us improve the electrical situation in the basement. While we’ve had the basement lights working in a temporary manner, we’re slowly getting them wired up more officially.
Nice.
Bob was over today, with some additional materials. We’ve got plans to repair the back porch (and replace the sections I demo-ed a few days ago).
With the wall clear, there were a few more things we had to do before adding drywall. First up: installing some wood header pieces, inside the joist spaces, so that the drywall had something to grab onto. And we also wanted to add some soundproof insulation to the walls (a future plan for this space down here is to convert it into a bathroom).
It’s really quite amazing to see how bright things look, and how many details really stand out now. Quite the transformation.
Tonight, we walked through the instructions together, and fine-tuned the depth of the nailer. After a few practice nails on some scrap lumber, she was ready to go all-in.