“Macky,” our general contractor, arrived at 8 am this morning with 2 other crew members so they could begin working on the bathroom. Hubby was already at the home improvement store to pick up our new toilette and a few other things we realized we needed along the way. Since our paint stripping project on the door two weekends ago didn’t accomplish anything at all, he picked up some new stripper in hopes that the old stuff which we found at the house was just too old to react anymore. He also picked up a solution which will treat the stones in our barn and all around the rest of the farm since they are seeping salt at the moment.
Here’s what the bathroom looked like when we “gave” it to them…
The team has worked really well and pretty quickly today. They took out the old door frame and rebuilt it already, also putting up a new drywall wall in place of the thin wood which was dividing the bathroom from the entry way before. They also removed most of the tile glue which was still on the wall and put down the plaster. Oh, and I shouldn’t forget that they also framed out the ceiling and hung drywall up there as well as mounting 6 halogen lights in there. All in all not bad for 12+ hours of work.
The contractor will absolutely need to come back but wanted to give the plaster on the walls a few days to dry in and breathe since the house is old and one never knows what might happen. So Wednesday I will be back at the house and hopefully everything will be finished up then.
Hubby and I mostly stayed out of the way. Well hubby actually watched many steps of the bathroom process so he could learn how to do some of the things himself. We intend to do some drywall work ourselves in the near future so having a better idea of how to do these things is always useful.
I spent most of the day today cleaning our our future climbing room and the former pig stalls. It turns out that there is not actually a dirt floor in there but brick. There was actually about an inch of dirt or more in most places in the climbing room so I put the wet/dry vac to VERY good use and got rid of all of it. There will still be some cleaning left to do and we’re thinking we will eventually wet everything down and suck up another layer of dirt then but so far, this first step has been a huge one and made a big difference already.
Since we had a container around as well, we made good use of it too, throwing away a lot of junk which was around the climbing room – mostly old board and pieces that we can only guess might have become bird cages or other farm animal furniture at some stage of their lives. But now they will only become pieces of trash at a landfill or where ever it is that this stuff ends up after it goes to the dump. Almost makes me feel bad since we’ve really thrown away a lot of junk since we moved in…but it wouldn’t have been burnable so I’m not really sure what else we would have done with it. I mean, who would want a cut up piece of plywood?
