There’s no excuse for only posting once a month! Here’s a slide show (with 177 photos and one video) to make up for my absence…
A little about the slide show: it’s organized by areas in the house so that you can see progress more immediately than we have. Starting in the kitchen, I worked my way through the first floor. Then to the stairs, the second floor rooms, and the attic. And then there are some random photos thrown in for fun ... a little Guitar Hero anyone?
Would multiple excuses help? The main one being I’m pregnant and due in November? That, getting the house ready to move in, trying to catch up on my dissertation, visitors, and nice weather (before the heat rolled in) are just a few of my excuses. But hopefully from here on out (at least until November) I will be better at updates.
We’re picking out paint colors. That seems like a good sign.
The final room has been hung. The finishing has begun here and throughout the hallways and other rooms. The attic, one bathroom, and three other rooms have been painted already. Kitchen, bedroom, and hallway flooring is piled up collecting drywall dust.
We even made it to the yard ... actually my parents did! They came to visit for six days and transformed (tamed) our side yard and helped plant a garden on the other side. We applied for the side lot through the Redevelopment Authority of Allegheny County. It took about six months to hear back about it, but now we’re in the title transfer stage.
This week I’ve been working on the bathroom tiles with Jodi, Kevin, and Mike.
They turned out surprisingly well for being built from boxes and piles of tile collected over months of Construction Junction hunting.
Somehow I forgot to take a photo of the final completed wall this afternoon ... it was either because I was later than expected and rushing to get back or because I became fascinated with the strange view through the glass brick window and took a ton of pictures of that instead ...
It’s amazing what a difference framed in walls and some light bulbs make!
Nicholas Electric finished the rough in last week, a day ahead of schedule, and we have switches with working overhead lights for the first time in the house! We can see the basement.
Having outlets, switches, and light really makes the place look like it’s coming together. We can see the final steps ... heat, insulation, drywall. When we had the latest materials delivered from Lowe’s the delivery guy took a tour of the house and left us with some reassuring thoughts. He did the same thing to his place, but one room at a time while he lived in it. In the end, he said, it’s worth all of the hard work.
Around the same time that the electric was being isntalled, Dun-Rite came in and repaired and replaced the windows. The new subfloors are mostly done. Maybe some day we will actually have a livable house.
We kept thinking the demo was done. Almost done. But then something would happen. Like taking down a ceiling to put in a dryer vent revealing a giant rat’s nest encompassing the entire utility room.
Kevin was chatting and ripping out the ceiling when he started to see popcorn and wondered why it would be in the ceiling. Then there was the cloth and bits of things that formed what seemed to be many many bird nests pulled apart and combined into one. The abandoned nest covered the floor of the entire room once it was down.
After that, we decided the first floor walls that were being spared now had to go. So off with the walls ...
Now Kevin is coming back a little less dirty every day. Only a day or two left of filling contractor bags with lathe and plaster and soot.
Braddock is an urban 'burb of Pittsburgh that has been drawing in DIY types willing to put their time and energy into making this a better place for everyone here. We heard about it in January 2008 from a friend of a friend whose brother had moved to Braddock in December. We made it here for a visit in February and were back for good in March. It's an almost empty town somehow full of energy.
This site is a story of our journey to and within Braddock ... "what follows is a story; one version only of the many possible narratives that could be told of these events." (Kolko & Reid, 1998)
