a good surprise?

The bathroom is probably as gutted as it's going to get without the aid of a plumber and an electrician. A plumber because we can't figure out how to disconnect the pipes from the bathtub, and an electrician because the medicine cabinet has about forty wires running to it with no apparent way to disconnect them that wouldn't leave them exposed. (Exposed wires in an increasingly soggy room just doesn't sound awesome to me.)



The first thing I did this morning was to tear down the cardboard that was behind the cement board that held the tiles that were hidden behind the cultured marble in the shower. (Aside: This house is at least 50% cardboard. If it ever catches fire, it's gonna go up in seconds.) Behind the cardboard? Beadboard. All over the bathroom. It's the horizontal kind, but if you need proof that can look as dope or doper than the vertical kind, check out these pictures of a renovation in Connecticut. I find this sort of hilarious, because the ceiling of the entryway is covered in those cheap faux beadboard panels you can get at Home Depot. If the walls are beadboard, you'd think the ceilings would be as well. I guess if I go and buy a ladder, I can find out. I'm hoping for the absolute best sort of irony: beadboard over plaster over beadboard. But anyway, the bathroom.



The beadboard's been patched in numerous places where doors and windows used to be, and carelessly broken away in places behind the shower to make room for the pipes and to allow a recess for a nasty old shower shelf. Below a wainscotting rail, it had vinyl-veneered cardboard glued to it, but what's above the rail is just covered with drywall. I'm thinking the stuff below the rail is probably not worth trying to save, but the stuff above, given a good paint job, could be nice.

I found the same beadboard behind the gaping hole in the master bedroom and I'm curious now whether the beadboard walls are all throughout the house. If so, I'm really tempted to blow in some insulation between that and the siding and paint them instead of drywalling everything.

where we left off

"Livable" is the word everyone kept using. My realtor, my friends, even me. I'd describe the foundation, the plumbing, the electricity, the roof, and then offer or be assured, "...But it's livable!"

The problem with that is that there are people who live under overpasses. Those people aren't hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt.

Upon seeing the house again after several weeks of stop and start foundation repair, any pretense of livability has evaporated, like the puddled remains of a storm let in through new cracks in the walls and roof. The walls have shattered, the doors no longer close, a window has cracked, and the yard is a mess of mud and spilled concrete. The electrical connections outside the house bend up and out at crazy angles, the gas and water pipes hang exposed over giant holes filling rapidly with water from the past few days' nonstop downpour.

In just over two weeks, I'm supposed to vacate my apartment and move into the house. The hall bathroom - which was filthy, but working - is pretty well demolished, needing only the tub and toilet removed before the walls and floor can be torn out. This should be a piece of cake, since the walls in the bathroom have benefited from the same delicate touch the foundation guys used in leveling the rest of the house and are now begging to be ripped down.

I hoped to be at this point at the beginning of September, but.. I hired the wrong foundation company. They told me they'd be done in a week and a half, and they've been under there now for four. They still have to do skirting, assuming the work they've done will even pass inspection and they don't have to spend more time adding piers. I'm not hopeful about the inspection, since from what I can see the old piles of cinder blocks and spare wood have been replaced with new solid concrete blocks and scraps from the new beams, with a couple sonotubes thrown in at the corners to keep up appearances. What was supposed to cost $15K is now costing seventeen, which is actually a minor triumph, as they were trying to raise the price to twenty-one. I would have fired them, but I kept hoping that if they kept working they'd be done faster than anyone else I could bring in to replace them.

Right now I'm wondering whether to contact my landlady and ask if the lease can be extended another month. I don't want to spend the money, but I don't feel like I have enough time. I need to get the house back to at least the standard of livability I convinced myself it was at when I bought it. To do that in two weeks is gonna take a miracle.