Demolition proceeded in fits and starts, and decisions
had to be made, but its all finished now.
The lathe and plaster work is gone, first the upper half of the wall
left after the original demo from Sandy.
Then the ceilings. Then the linoleum
tiles removed from the old wood floor. And
just about everything but the interior walls had been removed. Then a few of those came down as well (the
bathroom was but a memory, marked, as bathrooms are, by the vent pipe up
through the roof). Then some of the
middle wall had to go, or be moved, or replaced. And a post here and there. And then it was done.
Well, almost. The
last thing to be demolished is the rest of the house. Ha ha, just kidding. I think.
But really, the house was literally skin and bones. One electric line was left to power the tools
but otherwise nothing was left but bare floors, the studs of the walls, the
beams of the ceiling and the rafters of the roof. The outside (aka the skin) was entirely
shingles. And from this the first major
hurdle is born. The exterior of the
house, the walls, are a quaint shingle all around. Now that the interior has been completed
removed one can see they are not nailed to an under-skin of plywood or the
sort, but they are nailed to lathe nailed to the studs of the exterior
walls. Old construction methods, that. Probably as old as plaster and lathe.
But the other fun thing we discovered upon removing
everything and laying the old house’s innards bare is that the roof is built
the same way – old cedar shake shingles nailed to lathe nailed to the rafters. This is quaint as well, except when there are
five or so layers of new asphalt shingles over the cedar shake, and when you
want to remove all those layers and put up a new layer there is no base layer left to work with. That is the question: do I demolish the roof or not? Because once you remove all those layers you
have no roof – just rafters. Demolishing the roof would entail installing brand new plywood and then put on the shingles of
choice. This makes the job twice as
much, or more, than budgeted. And so the
thinking starts, do I need to replace the roof right now, or can it last a
couple more years? But if I am
insulating between the rafters (I would like to use the small attic space for
storage and the HVAC unit will go in there – more on that later since I decided
to go with HVAC after all) and if there is a leak I will not only have to replace
the roof but all of that insulation as well.
Or do I risk it and spend the money on some of the other little issues
that have popped up and need attention (and money) to resolve?
Well, I have a few days to think about it . . . no
pressure . . .
