Act One - continued

[This post was written May 21, 2007]


Ugh... I had really hoped to be putting the walls back together by now...

This weekend was insane. Friday I left here and dad had the last of the cabinets & sink pulled out (yay!). Then I helped him tear out the drywall so we could get rid of the last of the mold and get to the plumbing issues within the walls. We worked 'til about 6pm, then a friend from church came by and tore out the rest of the drywall from the kitchen and the bathroom while we went to eat dinner. We came back at 8 to a "clean" house - well, bare anyway. Our friend really worked hard. So we had a clean slate to work from for Saturday.

We got in the walls and started working on plumbing. The sink drain literally fell off the wall it was rusted through so badly (and almost completely jammed full of rotten food and sludge - there was only a trickle of water that could get through. No wonder the sink wouldn't drain.). We had to cut off a couple feet of pipe to remove the clog, and then we had to cut a 3'X6' hole in the flooring to get at the pipes under the floor (and also to remove the rotten and moldy wood flooring where the pipes were leaking). After removing most of the vinyl tiles and subfloor, we went to the hardware to purchase new piping and drywall and subfloor materials. We were there for more than 2 hours and I bought around $800 worth of materials... eek.

Sunday we cut 2 more 3'X6' holes in the flooring to remove more mold & rot and gain better access to the pipes (on the other side of the kitchen, the previous homeowners had never hooked up the water line to the fridge for the icemaker, and just folded the piping over and "secured" it with duct tape to "prevent" it from leaking... this was not entirely successful, so because this line was left on the floor, it slowly leaked over the years and completely ruined the floor under the fridge and dishwasher) and took a hacksaw to the two galvanized iron vent pipes in the walls -

Long story short, the cabinet guys won't be able to put in my new kitchen cabinets today because there are 3 giant holes in the floor and no walls and 2 giant holes in the ceiling where the soffits used to be. Today we hope to make the final plumbing repairs and some time this week we hope to fix the floor and ceiling and put drywall up on the walls. Unfortunately, it's Memorial Day weekend, so the cabinet guys won't be able to come work again until after that, and I *still* need to be out of my apartment on the 31st... so I'm really running out of time...