We Need The Commercial Break

Pushing forward on the home renovation. On the schedule yesterday was tearing down the living room stairs and patching the hole in the floor. Seems simple enough for an afternoons work. Right?

I got about 5 minutes into the demolition when I found some suspect beams. The deeper I dug the worse it got, and to an amateur homeowner the likes of myself, that is a horrifying site. So I stepped away for a bit, made a few phone calls to the only carpenter I know, cried for an hour or so and then took myself back up the the staircase and started to tear away. Tore away flooring, the second story plate, the main beam of the wall and the first floor header, about 28 inches of it. I could've sworn the house would just fall down, but that just shows how much I have no idea about construction.

Around 8pm I had a nice hole in the wall that I could be proud of. Cutting a few replacements out in the dark and the snow is exactly what I wanted to be doing, rather than walking on my new floor upstairs like I planned. But I am proud of the precision cuts I made and how tightly it all came together. Only about an hour later I had the new wall in place.

It looks rough right now, but we have to replace the sheetrock and everything else will be covered by the new floor. So Yay! 24 hours later and we're right back where we started and spent $150 to get there. The hardest part was tearing out the nails. This thing was built back in a day where they used dinosaur nails. These things were no joke. Don't believe me?

So yeah. Moderate drama, valuable time spent, and a day lost. Laura tried to cheer me up by reminding me of all the home improvement shows on TV where they always come across the unknown. I reminded her that that is always the point in the show where they cut to a commercial break and when they come back the problem is miraculously solved. We need the commercial break.