Over the last 3-4 months, Jen and I have been slowly destroying our house. Bit by bit we've been taking out our drywall downstairs. Then, as we sat and let the lack of drywall soak in, we decided we really did like the more open feel. Here you can see me with our cleverly placed mirror used to hide some of the exploratory surgery we did until we were 100% commited.
In the meantime, I learned how to do 3D modeling in a product called Blender and spent about 200 hours building our house to 1 inch of accuracy in different layers (studs, drywall, floor, HVAC, lights, kitchen cabinets, fireplace, and even our TV). I then made a split of the model and showed it off to Jen to let her see what it would be like after walls were down, drop ceilings were raised, and even changing from florescent tube lights in the kitchen to recessed can lights. In the last week before we actually had some contracted help, we decided to even take out our front closets.
I printed 18 pages of before and after images and took them to a building engineer and had him write us up a permit ready plan to hand over to our contractor. Then I took that to the city and waited. We ordered a 20 foot steel I-beam and two 14 foot glued-laminate beams which arrived the same day we had our permit approved.
Friday night, while we were waiting on permits and beams, I started digging out part of the basement where we would need to add a cement pad to put the point load to. Then I dug all Saturday and had some help from my brothers in law for a few as well. Jen helped pull up buckets when Toby was asleep. By the time Sunday came around I had done 12 hours of digging in a 24 hour period.
Monday came and our beams were delivered. Digging continued as well as some final demolition work on more drywall and some studs on non-load bearing walls. The place where we dump our dirt was open and we took three trailers of dirt to the dump. In the evening, we moved the rest of our furniture and everything else we could into the garage or upstairs bedrooms.
Tuesday we had a bright and early 8AM start with our framers. My backyard neighbor, Ian, was our general contractor and walked through what we'd be doing with the two framers for an hour. Then we started putting up temporary walls to hold up the ceiling. Our house got very dirty very quickly. Toby and Jen mostly stayed up in Toby's room as Jen was starting to come down with a pretty bad cold. By the end of the day, we had a lot of the remaining demolition complete and some of the temporary walls up.
Wednesday we finished the remaining temporary walls and started cutting through the floor joists in the ceiling where the new beams were going to go. We also took out the load bearing wall and a lot of the duct work that needed to move. The evening ended with me realizing that I still needed to call and get at least 10 people to help move the I-beam from my driveway into the house. I started to frantically call people to see if I could borrow them to "lift something heavy from my driveway into the house at 8AM." About half of the people I called had work already at 8, but I was able to get 5 people from the ward (including my two brothers in law). One of my neighbors had stopped by and offered himself and his son as well.
Thursday morning I ended up going to home depot and hiring the only two people in the parking lot for an hour of "heavy lifting." I didn't want to have too few people because someone I invited didn't show up. When 8:15AM came, we had 14 people lifting a half ton 20 foot steal beam about 50 feet from my driveway into my living room onto a pair of home made sawhorses. It was a triumphant feeling getting that beam into the house. The rest of the day was lifting the beam the 6 more feet in the air with car jacks in a see-saw fashion. We had some trouble fitting it the last few inches and had to spend several hours sanding away at a joist that was just barely in the way. The afternoon ended with the beam in the ceiling and only two of the four temporary walls still in place. The evening consisted me bending 30 feet of rebar and Jen, Sadie, and I mixing 1600 pounds of high strength cement and hauling most of it into the crawlspace. Jen had gotten over her fever and was able to help in the evening. It took about 3-4 hours, but we finished pouring the cement for the footings that would bear the weight of the part of the house that we had just recreated.
Friday was a partial day for the contractors, but still a full day for us. We finished a lot of additional ceiling work (doubling up joists so they don't 'bounce' when walking around upstairs) as well as taking out the final two temporary walls. At 5PM we had the last temporary wall out and the ceiling in a good enough state to call it quits. I ate dinner with Jen and Toby at Mike and Cindy's house and then went into high speed cleaning with Jen after Toby was put to bed. Jen's sister, Becky, and her husband, Nick, had arrived in town for the weekend around noon and we were scheduled to have them stay in our guest room. We didn't quite make it clean enough in time before Nick had fallen asleep at Mike and Cindy's house. If only we had another hour we would have made it on time.Saturday I put back a lot of the electrical I had cut or removed completely while Jen and Toby went to Seattle with her family. That evening, we moved the couches, TV, and tables back into the house and had a dinner and games night in the new great room. It was a moment to bask in. And that moment passed quickly as the kids started pulling out more fiberglass insulation from the walls. And then it was back to basking as we distracted them with Jim Carrey's Grinch movie.
The next week was back to work for me Monday through Wednesday. Then we had the ductwork crew come out and fix our ducting system the way I designed it. They finished in time for us to have Jen's brother Andy fly in. We put up the Christmas tree Christmas weekend just in time.
We still have to do all of the electrical and drywall/painting. It's getting close, but I'm feeling very much a true Hansen right now. Oh, did I not mention that the contractors broke our thermostat and we ended up using our wood burning stove for the first time to heat our house for 4 days? Oh... well I guess I can't tell you everything.
