weekend renovation project(s)

Do you all remember from the previous post about our upstairs before and after pictures? Well our renovations just got a little more extreme.

Unfortunately, the upstairs addition to our house was done without a city permit back in 2007. We think 2007 because the pieces of sheet rock that we took down yesterday had March 2007 dates on them. The stairs and the two upstairs rooms were not done to code. When we bought our house, we got a great deal on it because we did not have an inspection done. We don't regret not having that inspection, but we have found so many things that need fixed because of a shoddy job that was done on it. It looks pretty, but when you start getting in behind the walls and realize that the bad wiring and insulation jobs could set your house on fire at any moment, it gets scary. Thank goodness Scott is handy, because these are not cheap projects!

The upstairs is not temperature regulated with a thermostat although it does have ventilation. Because the roof is directly on the other side of the ceiling, it gets pretty hot in the Texas summer heat. It is insulated, but not with a radiant barrier. Our project this weekend was to take the ceiling down. There was no need to preserve the pieces of sheet rock because they put up 1/2" instead of the fire protective 5/8" ceiling sheet rock that would make it to code.

You would think that this picture is a finished project compared to what you are about to see below, but it is not. These are before pictures.




Once we realized it was 1/2" and not 5/8" we got after the demolition. And it was so hot up there. We were sweating so much. There is at least a 20 degree difference between up and down.
Screws were my job. Although, I did rip an entire piece of sheet rock down all by myself with my incredibly ridiculous strength!!
An hour and a half later, we had the entire ceiling down and what seemed like 5,000 screws.
We are kind of debating on whether to take this door and wall down. It would make the room bigger and roomier. If it isn't structural we are going to do it. What do you think? We want to make this big room an entertainment area and a guest room divided with Soji screens. It is plenty of room and privacy upstairs even without the wall. It just seems kind of awkward to come up the stairs into the claustrophobic, dimly lit hallway where you have to duck to go either right or left into a room. For now, until we can get the sheet of foil radiant barrier and the new sheet rock, this is how the room will stay.
As if that project wasn't enough, he just had to start tearing down the popcorn ceiling in the kitchen today. Thankfully, it came off in easy sheets. The ceilings in our house are all connected. So instead of popcorning the ceiling where he fell through into the hallway a few months ago and replaced that portion, we opted to take off the very dated popcorn all the ceilings. This also is a messy project. A lot of sneezing involved.
But, when it is all said and down (who knows when...probably years) we agree that our house will look pretty awesome and definitely not be a hazard. We will have a lot of equity in it that is for sure.