Almost completed the demolition.

Just a month late, $550 over budget and getting ready for the next step. In the image above, that's actually dumpster #2. It's smaller than the first one. There are more piles of wood and lathe in the back. There was a LOT of rubbish to come out of this house, a lot more than I expected.

The good news is that the walls and the floors are just incredibly level and plumb. The maximum tilt to a wall is on the first floor, and it's off by 1/4". Geeze what ever shall we do? Heh heh.

The carpeting is up on the first floor and we got our first real look at the original wood floors underneath. They look to be in very good shape, minus about 400 nail holes per room. We spent the last day bending over with hammer, crowbar & pliers trying to pull them all out. We know that we plan on sanding the floors down and trying to repair as much as we can (some small holes drilled for conduit, etc.) and that a single nail can ruin a disc sander's sandpaper wheels and at $5 bucks a pop, that's $20 per nail you missed. I think it's worth it to find them and pull them out.

Unfortunately, in the dust, they're almost invisible. I have to swipe my feet from side to side over a patch of flooring, going all the way down the side of a wall, then turn around and sweep back about 2' over, eventually covering the entire floor. When my shoe snags, it's time to bend over and look for the little bugger.

btw: We're not using a drum sander-- it's too hard and too potentially damaging to the floors. We'll be using the 4-rotary sander discs. We saw it on "Ask This Old House."

Here's my fav shot for the day:


In this shot, looking from a hole in the third floor (the dark area is the joist under the third floor), you can see the hole in the second floor at the gas line that goes through to the first floor. Ah, the view..... But again, the floors are in good shape. Just a lot of lead paint to get scraped up. We're still trying to determine the best way to get the lead paint up, chemical paint removal, which keeps the toxic lead dust down to a null amount, -- or sanding, which scatters the cr@p everywhere, requires full tyvex suits and lead rated dust masks (i.e. respirators), but may be easier.

We'll let you know how it goes. I think there's a coin toss in my future.