…not that bad. True, we did come back to our rental to take our last hot shower until Lee fixes the water. Not to mention that we are doing our last minute packing and cleaning of the rental. But I would say that we are most the way moved in. YEAH!

Edgar freaked out about using the stairs. Then he went from freaking out to barreling down the stairs. So I guess the prognosis is that he knows how to use them. We are bringing Jasper up today. I am worried that we are going to be continually losing him somewhere in the house. If I hear meowing from the middle of the floor boards I am going to get concerned.

Today my Mom and I cleaned up the house. Lee and I are supposed to be moving in tomorrow and Thursday and the house was a complete disaster. So we vacuumed, mopped, and moved boards around in the upper two bedrooms. Vacuumed and mopped the stairway and hallway sections. Swept and vacuumed the living area along with organizing the tools somewhat. Then we swept and mopped the kitchen along with tiding up the counters. The house seemed a million times better after all of that. Like, well, maybe that we could actually move into it and live there. I have banned Lee from demoing anything else until after we get moved into the house all the way.

Later today Lee and I went back up there and brought a mattress set with us. That was fun. Lets just say that the staircase was not designed to have a queen sized set go up it. The bed is all made and ready for us when we officially move in.

The real reason we went up to the house tonight with the bed was I had forgotten to take in two boxes that had been shipped to us. So since we had to go up we might as well put the trip to use eh? Today I got my Lodge cookware shipped to me. Lee bought several pieces for me to use once we get our stove. I am very excited.

Our third burn pile of the season. WooHoo! Okay I guess it seems rather pitiful when you look at how much yard debris that we still have to burn. I wonder how many fires we will have before the burn season is over with?

Much of this week has been nice and clear. That led to me not wanting to work inside and doing brush patrol. Our burn pile got so big that we started a second one. Though the second one got put on the fire once it got going.

Lee had a surprise guest show up in the bathroom with him. He was intrigued with how well the moth blended into the cabinet. And to think that all it probably wanted was a little privacy and Lee to hand up a tiny piece of toilet paper.

As I’ve said before, the blessing and the curse of gutting a building is that you find all the flaws.  Ever since I gutted the walls in the back bedroom I’ve felt suspicious about the closet.  The closets upstairs were just tacked on additions with no ulterior motives.  But this closet downstairs .. it was framed out with 4×4s and on a pedestal.  I decided to leave it until after the ceiling was out.

I’m glad I did.  When the dust settled from falling plaster and the last hazel nut rattled to a stop on the floor, this is what we saw:

From my reading on timber frame construction, I know that notching a horizontal member greatly diminishes it’s strength.  How does that translate to stick construction?  Well, the book Code Check 5th Edition says that the middle 1/3rd of floor joists may not be notched at all and the outer thirds may only be notched to 1/6th the depth of the joist and only on the top.  Yeah .. um .. how many of the rules do these notches break?

It appears that their solution to this damage was to create a ‘load bearing closet’.  Then they framed in some cross members with joist hangers to pass some of the floor load above onto this closet.  I believe at least one of those pipes is an active water line, so we’ll have to have a second bathroom functional before trying to straighten out this particular mess.

Just a brief note that the electricians will be coming tomorrow to install our new outside service panel.  We were on site pretty late last night pressure washing and painting a section of wall for them to work on. Some might have tried to make do with the old panel (and from the standpoint of avoiding pointless building permits, that would be best) but I wanted to start fresh and know that all the wiring in the house was done right.

Sunday we had the last yard sale. We got rid of a bit of stuff and have already taken a truck load of left overs to Goodwill. That is our second truck load of stuff in two weeks and I need to take one more. Anyways, I’m sitting in the house feeling sick, freezing my butt off, and getting worried. We don’t have much more time before we are moving in. The house is a disaster and that little space heater was not making my feet warm. My plan for upcoming days I think will be mopping so I have at least one room that feels somewhat clean to put our stuff. That and buying some wool socks and warm underclothes.

Later Lee decided to start burning. I was going to join him to help get warm but yard sale business picked up. By the time I got back there the fire was down (still hot though) and all the burnables were gone. I couldn’t believe it. It proved to be a stubborn fire as we poured a ton of buckets of water on it to get it out. Then we went back later and coals had come back. So more buckets of water. Lee was grumbling because he would have just let it burn itself down. But we don’t want to get in trouble.

I’m certainly no Bob Villa.  I’ll even admit to sitting at a desk in my day job.  But if you do a bit of reading on home construction topics, you realize that there is a central theme to it called “common sense”.  Gravity is trying to pull everything down, heat travels from warm areas to cold areas, electricity will follow the path of least resistance, etc.

Unfortunately, Horace Greeley was right: “Common sense is uncommon.”  Old homes are often great demonstration grounds for this sort of thing. Decades of hacked solutions to immediate problems layer onto neglect and complacency .. perhaps some pictures sum it up best:

Guess what we found in the walls? It’s not a mouse this time. One…oh wait…two…nope, not two…three, yes three bees nests. Sunday morning when Lee was working on taking down board paneling in the living room we found a surprise. Thankfully there was nothing alive and stirring or I would have been running and screaming as fast as I could. Notice in the below picture at the bottom of the wall board is a huge hole. Lee has been complaining about the over zealous service installers because of the holes in the walls of the house are every where. Go ahead and click on the rest of the pictures to get a closer view.