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Sep

22

Novemeber 1, 2006: Framing the second floor

September 22, 2007 | 1 Comment

Time to frame out the second floor. These first two photos show, pretty clearly, the part of the 1st floor that has been rebuilt. You can also see the stud walls on both sides of the new portion that will be used to hold up the second floor. This is what is called platform framing. It would have been nice to use the pockes in the two masonry walls (as it would keep the room about 8″ wider), but one of the walls, which is not a party wall, was in such bad condition that it was pretty much impossible to do. Rebuiling the masonry wall was just not in our budget.

6

October 30, 2006: The work continues on the 1st floor.

September 6, 2007 | 3 Comments

So the building continues. I’ll start with a few more photos in the basement. In the first photo you can see the columns that are holding up the floor joists. Before putting the columns in place, simple 2×4’s were used as temporary braces to get all the joists into place. One the framing is down, the steel columns are put in place and they can be adjusted a little bit to raies or lower the floor. The third picture shows you that the beams that run left to right, would normally frame into the packed stone foundation wall (which was painted with a white waterproofing paint). Normally there would be pockets in the masonry wall for the joists to frame into. And while there were a few that could have been used, the vast majority were in such poor condition that patching them and re-pocketing was not an option.

6

October 28, 2006: A few more photos

September 6, 2007 | 2 Comments

Just a few photos here. The first one is the basement. You can see the columns and the framing. Contrary to the comments posted by:

nativephilly | leavephilly@once.com | IP: 69.141.74.55
Sona tubes are used indoors. They are called point or spot footings in a foundation system called Post and Pier. They are used indoors, especially in cases where the original foundations are not strong enough becuase they are deteriorated. This is true of brick, stone and packed stone (as in this house) foundation walls. Since you cant take down the packed stone foundation wall one which the masonry party wall sits. You can build just to the inside of it.

The sona tubes, which are fille Read more

Sep

6

October 19, 2006: New floors going in.

September 6, 2007 | 1 Comment

Just a two simple photos of the new floor going in. You can see the plywood subfloor going down on top of the framing.

Jul

29

October 10, 2006: More Demo and Sona Tubes

July 29, 2007 | 4 Comments

This is just a short entry to post a few images of the rest of the removal of the first floor and the beginnings of new structural work via the addition of sona tubes. Sona tubes are these cardboard tubes you put into the ground to use as point foundations. You put the tube in the ground and fill it with concrete.

The first photo is taken from the living room, looking to the back of the house. You can see that the remainder of the first floor has been removed. You need a ladder to climb down to the basement in order to reach the back part of the house.

1

October 9, 2006: I stopped watching HGTV, put down the crowbar and called a pro.

July 1, 2007 | 3 Comments

Now that a large portion of the demolition was complete (which saved us a few grand) we hired a contractor to complete the remainder of the work. The contractor was supposed to rebuild all the structural in the back of the house as well as provide all new mechanical, electrical and plumbing.

6

June 26, 2006: The end of kitchen gutting.

May 6, 2007 | 2 Comments

Finally, the gutting of the kitchen is coming to a close. You see from the first photograph, that the entire floor in the back of the house has been removed. That first step is a doozy, and you can see the top of the yellow ladder (8 foot ladder).

21

June 18, 2006: Luxury kitchen.

April 21, 2007 | 1 Comment

So after three rounds of kitchen gutting, you can see the kitchen is beginning to take shape. Yeah, right. There were so many layers of stuff in this place that had to come out. You can see that this weekend I started in the morning.

5

May 26, 2006: Kitchen Gutting - Take 3.

April 5, 2007 | 2 Comments

I was hoping to have this posted a week ago, sorry it took me so long to get to it but there were lots of different things that came up that prevented me from posting. In any case, here is the third installment of Kitchen Gutting. As you can see it’s been a week since we started doing some serious recking in the kitchen. Since I work the equivelant of 2 and half full time jobs, I could only find time on the weekends (and some evenings) to work on the house. Part of the diffulty in doing the work yourself is finding time as well as motivation. After clocking an 80 hour work week, who wants to come home and tear down walls? Same goes for the weekend. I dont mind doing the labor, it’s probably the only excercise I get, but at the same time, it prevents me from having any kind of social life but more importantly there was just no down time in my schedule, and you have to have that in life or you’ll burn out.

24

May 20, 2006: Kitchen Gutting - Take 2.

March 24, 2007 | 1 Comment

Before continuing the kitchen guttin, I decided to first build a new loadbearing wall so that I can take down the old one. This would give me a little more room to work in the kitchen and it would also allowing me to eventually tear down ALL the back of the house. You can see that after rebuilding the wall, I put up a tarp to keep the dust somewhat at bay. It’s never compeltely at bay.

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