This report is a bit delayed. I tended to work late and was too tired to blog while I was down at the Vineyard working on the house. I will try to recall the sequence of events as best I can.
Ellyn and I came out east on September 17. Ellyn stayed with Joy and Mike until Sunday, the 21st, and I went on to Paul and Lesley's for a trip to Myrtle Beach Fri-Sun. We both ended up in Lexington Sunday night and headed down to Norwell early Monday morning, arriving there at 7:30am. We transferred our tools and clothes to Bob's new truck along with 12 cases of bamboo flooring, Ed Casassa's tools and table saw, and a new microwave which a honeymoon couple bought to replace the one at the Vineyard they thought was broken. (Actually, they just had not realized the necessity of setting the time before trying to use the power.) One of the things that we transferred from the Prius was the new tankless water heater along with its vent system. Needless to say there was no way to see out of the back window of the truck when we started out to catch the 12:00 boat.
We caught the boat without problem, passing the boat Peg was returning to Woods Hole on - we were too far apart to see each other, however. Peg had started transferring food from the pantry and dishes from the dish closet to the dining room. She had pushed the dining room table against the east wall and moved the shelving unit from under the kitchen counter to the west dining room wall. Ellyn and I continued that process, putting a small table on the west wall for the microwaves and toaster, and transferring everything from the kitchen counters and cupboards to the dining room. I removed the screen door and black wood door from between the kitchen and back room. I had to expand the opening a little so we could move the refrigerator out to the back room.
Ellyn removed the bottom shelf in the pantry exposing the little sink in there and making room for the dryer. She also removed all the shelves and doors from the dish closet.
I disconnected the dryer from its plug in the back room and filled in the shingles we had removed to allow the dryer to vent out the back wall. I had to crawl under the house, greeting the spiders as I went along, to retrieve the dryer plug. There was no skunk smell under there, so I guess the parade of skunks going by the front porch in the evening has not tempted them to take up residence. Once I got the plug mounted on the pantry wall - I fed it up through the old toilet hole, I saw that I needed to rebuild the floor before installing the dryer.
This was the first of many places where my carefully timed demolition schedule fell way behind.After a day of careful measuring and shimming, I had a fairly level floor and was able to install the dryer. I cut a hole in the wall behind the set tubs for the vent. I haven't extended the vent to the outside yet, but the warm dryer air was welcome during a few of the chilly days we had there. While I was wrestling with the floor, Ellyn was dismantling the dish closet. I sawsalled the wall off at the base and continued cutting off the wall at the base along behind where the fridge and stove were, thus opening the back wall of the kitchen to the back room. I had to take up the sheet of plywood flooring next to the water heater so I could continue extending the piping from where the new sink is to the new water heater location. It was easier putting back the flooring with the old kitchen wall removed. I only had to solder one connector and one plug as the rest of the fittings were shark tooth or compression type. The cold water line is mostly PVC (up to 3 feet from the water heater, and the hot water line is half inch copper. Both of them change to 3/4 inch copper within a couple of feet of the heater. I installed drain faucets on both hot and cold water lines so they could be drained when the house is shut down in the fall. We need to remind Jason about this.
I also removed the west wall of the old kitchen along with the screening and blue tarp we had used to keep bugs from getting from the back room into the kitchen all summer and hooked up an outlet for the washing machine. I removed the track lighting on the west ceiling and the wiring and switch from the ceiling and walls. I also removed the hanging light from the center of the ceiling and the track lighting near the sink. I disconnected the light in the dish closet and the new light up by the towel racks (which had stopped working between August and September). I remounted most of the lights on the wall to the dining room and the east kitchen wall so we would have light during the demolition. Ellyn and I removed the picture window behind the stove.
Cathy and Bill arrived on Thursday, September 25. It was damp and cool, not the kind of weather that Florida folks enjoy. We had a fire that evening and cranked up the living room heater so it wasn't too bad. Bill and I moved the washer to the southwest corner of the old kitchen where it was to go. Bill drilled holes in the wall to hook up the washer to the set tubs directly behind. It was nice to have the washer and dryer side by side. We decided not to take out the partial wall behind the washer and drier as it held up the piping and shelves over the set tubs.
Cathy and Ellyn removed the linoleum from the floor under the new kitchen after we had moved the stove over beside the washer. The plug for the stove will be in exactly the right place in the new kitchen. Fortunately, the linoleum was not glued down except for a spot where it had torn in the 70's when we moved the refrigerator. Bill and I installed the first stud for the new wall and built a workbench for tools. Cathy and Ellyn transferred all the tools over to the new bench, clearing the wall on the alley side. 
Peg and Bob arrived on Friday afternoon and Joe in the evening for the big demolition weekend. Bob crawled up into the space between the roofs to disconnect the blue tarp which covered the kitchen roof all summer to repel bugs. While he was doing that, he thought he saw a wood shingle still on the wall, but it turned out to be part of the wall. We now have peep holes from the bedrooms down into the kitchen. Fortunately, you would have to be 12 feet tall to peek from the kitchen into the bedrooms.
Bill and Peter had taken down the sail and hull of the sunfish and stored the former near the rose trellis and the latter against the back wall in the neighbor's yard. I think we have finally agreed to try to sell the boat. Joe helped us take down the sheets of plywood from the between roof which we stored there during the cleanup weekend in June.Bill had gone to the hardware store to pick up some hurricane straps and roofing tar. Joe installed the straps from the rafters to the top wall plate. Now a hurricane will have to carry the whole house away to lift the kitchen roof. We experimented with removing a few boards from the kitchen roof.
Saturday was the major demolition day. Peter used a sawsall and circular saw to cut off the roof boards along both the east and west walls without falling through. Joe and I pried off the roof boards and Bill carried them out to the porch. They ended up everywhere - I even found a couple up in the roof eaves over the table by the rose trellis well after the load had left for the dump. Bob hoped to reuse the boards, but they were fairly rotten and were not tongue and groove. We ended up carting them all off to the the dump.
We used the sawsall to cut through the rafters. We were able to rescue the 2x6 part of the rafters to use as floor braces. Just as the last of the rafters came crashing down - just missing my head, I heard a voice say "Hello, Dad." I turned to see Joy and Katherine standing there and behind her was Mike and Caroline. They had made a surprise overnight visit.When Paul, Lesley, Maddie and Ben arrived, I was really getting suspicious. Ellyn had organized a surprise 70th birthday party for Bill and I. I had no inkling of it. We were to go out to dinner at Nancy's.
While we waited for dinner, Mike and Joe used a metal blade on the circular saw to cut away the flashing sticking out of the wall just above the old roof. What a bad burning smell this produced. We were glad to clean up and go off to dinner. There must have been 14 people at a long table overlooking the harbor and the food was very good. After dinner we returned home and sang some songs Ellyn had written to honor Bill and me. Everyone took turns reading testimonials Ellyn had collected not only from folks there but from Abby and Piers as well. We finished it off with some delicious chocolate cake from the bakery. (It had been on display in their display case all day.) It was time for the little ones to go off to bed (and some of the big ones as well).
Peg and Bob had gone to Hinkley's on Saturday and picked up some R-11 and R-21 insulation and also some magic coat hanger-like thingies that eliminated the need to staple the insulation. Joe and Mike installed the R-21 between the roof rafters over the new kitchen lickety split on Sunday morning. We debated putting up the ceiling covering at the same time, but decided to wait until the wiring and lighting was installed first. I can't remember the name of the covering - it had some initials and numbers as I recall. I can't remember exactly what we had decided about lighting either. Dodie, how are you coming with the minutes?Bob, Dan and I installed some flashing buried in roofing tar between the new roof and the house since we had found a few leaks during the rain on the previous day. Getting the flashing to lay flat was like herding cats. But we stopped the leaks. Joy and family left after church, and Paul and family left shortly afterwards along with Joe. Dan left later in the afternoon after the roofing was done. It was very quiet after they had gone.
Ellyn left first think on Monday morning to catch a boat, 2 buses, and a train to get back to South Bend. Bob worked on shingling the outside wall on Norman's side on Monday while Peg worked on the plants and loading the truck for a trip to the dump. After a final warning to everyone to take a shower, I shut off the water and put some temporary shut off valves under the sink. The cold water pipe was steel connected to copper and the steel part stuck out over the floor, but we were able to tear out the kitchen sink and lift it over the pipe. He and Peg took the recycling and a partial load and then came back for another load including the kitchen sink. It was good to get rid of a bunch of trash. I installed the new water heater and wired an outlet box to plug it in. It will be on a different circuit from the rest of the kitchen. Peg and Bob left on Monday afternoon.
Bill and I worked on bracing for the new floor where the dish closet and sink were and it fit as snug as a bug when we lifted it into place. We had to wait on the flooring until we took out the cold water pipe.
Bill also helped me move the fridge from the back room to the kitchen to the right of the bathroom door. When we took out the old kitchen wall, we discovered that the floor in the back room was not level with the kitchen floor. It ranged from being 3/4 inch lower by the water heater to flush by the east wall. We decided we would have to take up the floor in the backroom and do something about the joists. Bill came up with scheme after scheme to do this, most centered around Lesley pushing down on a long 2x6 on the other side of a fulcrum with a chain at the other end of the 2x6 attached to a joist and pry it up so it is level and then hammer a foot brace to keep it at the correct height. I worried about this problem most of Monday evening.
I disconnected the old water heater and drained it Tuesday morning. Bill helped me cart it out to the truck so we could include it on a last load to the dump later in the week. Bill also helped me put in a stud to help brace the partial wall that the new heater was hanging from and also to install the vent pipe. We had to cut a bigger hole in the roof to meet fire safety standards for the vent pipe. Bill and Cathy left in late morning and I finished reshingling over the new roof vent just as it started to rain. There was a drip leak through a nail hole on the down roof side of the vent, but I decided not to do anything about it since it does not drip on anything to worry about, and it is a very small leak. I put up a brace for the support stud and attached the brace for the vent pipe to it.I also measured and glued an intake vent out of 3" PVC and installed it along the wall over the towels to the outside.
As I was alone on Tuesday afternoon and Wednesday morning, I shut off the water and cut and replaced the steel pipe by the old sink with a capped off stub. I also cut the pipe from the old water heater and hooked up the piping to the new water heater. It took me most of Wednesday to finish this. I also removed the final piece of wall behind the old water heater. We have quite a pile of tongue and groove boards by now. We will have to see how much of the new kitchen wall they will cover.
Lesley arrived midday on Wednesday. She immediately tackled the problem of the uneven floor. She unscrewed the plywood flooring over the old back room and we took up all the boards. She didn't think much of the idea of lifting up the joists both because the floor underneath was none too sound for supporting the foot braces and the joists were fairly level front to back so the whole joist would have to be raised, not just one end.
Since the floor sagged when people walked on it, we decided we needed cross braces between the joists every 16 inches. Lesley used her magic laser level to get the braces even with the old kitchen floor, and then we used shims to raise the joists up to the level of the braces. When we put the flooring back on Friday, the floor was quite level and very solid. While Lesley was working on the joists I put up the rest off the studs along the new kitchen west wall, and then installed the last joist over the place where the old water heater was so we could finish laying the flooring. We also cut and laid the flooring in the section where the dish closet and sink used to be. We were ready for the finish floor.
I had been trying to reach the gas company installers for ten days for them to finish installing the hot water heater. I finally reached the installer on Thursday and he came out on Friday to look at the job. They would have to replace the tank and install 3/4 inch black iron pipe instead of the half inch yellow steel pipe we have now. They will have to move the gas tank closer to the street instead of further back towards the tree as I wanted, in order to be far enough away from the vent from Norman's kitchen heater. This means that we will not be able to have a door to the alley near the dining room. It will have to be near the southeast corner of the kitchen. See below for Norman's comment. The installer said he would do the work during the week of October 6-10, so Bob and Ed would have hot water. It will cost us $600 for installation plus gas for the new tank, but we get credit for gas still in the old tank.
Lesley left on Friday afternoon with job well done. She helped me install plywood sheathing on the utility room side of the west kitchen wall studs before she left. She also helped me make a dump run which got rid of a lot more stuff, including the old water heater. I felt bad junking it because it still worked, but couldn't see how to find it a new home. I spent part of the day and evening wiring and hooking up outlets for the new kitchen. We have four across the back wall, three on the west wall plus one facing the workbench, and two so far on the east wall. I will put in at least one more on the east wall in the spring after I get the framing in.
I left on the 1:15 boat out of Oak Bluffs on Saturday, October 4, after nearly two very profitable weeks. Before I left I opened the boxes of bamboo flooring and laid the pieces out in front of the TV building a stack about a yard high. This is supposed to acclimate them to the atmosphere inside the house before Ed and Bob install them. I guess the location was not ideal since I later learned that Ed wanted to watch the Red Sox game the first night they were down to lay the flooring. I guess it motivated him to work fast. I also took a final trip to the dump to drop off the boxes from the flooring and to the lumber yard to bring back a copper pipe, a shut off valve, and the extra pack of R-21 insulation.
Peter
Bob sent this addendum after his long Columbus day weekend with Ed Casassa installing the new bamboo floor:
1. No hot water for our stay (Friday afternoon to Monday afternoon)- Peg remarked on our failure to comport with (to?) minimal standards of hygiene; Ed tried the cold shower- just a slow dribble; I went for a (brief!) splash a couple of occasions, so that the church would not empty as we went to Mass on Sunday;
2. Your new best friend (Ken, the gas company installer) says that he will do the gas work today (10/14) (says "we were bumped"- perhaps in favor of Republicans?);
3. New floor is done, to the studs or walls all around; we have some flooring left over, and Ed is of the opinion that one more box could finish the rectangular area where sink, washer, dryer, fridge, stove are presently located; perhaps you and Peg could talk further about the prospect? Unclear whether we can send pictures of the blessed event, but Peg is checking with the phone service. Floor looks kinda spiffy if I do say so myself.
4. We used about two rolls of R-11 insulation, starting on the left side (above old closet) as you enter from the dining room, and got around to the wall between kitchen and storage area; my sense is to keep putting it in where possible (i.e: above old pantry) even if the primary effect is as a noise muffler. Sure do not want to take the cotton picking rolls back to the lumber yard!
5. Started in on the shingling Monday afternoon - now using the old ones; it appears as though Norman's ladder will make it to the high side where new roof meets the house and I should be able to wrap it up the day(s) we are down there to put the house to bed for the winter. What's wrong with this picture? Norman gets to critique my performance, watch as I fall off his ladder, and then get ready for papers to be served on him for defective product. (Priscilla and Norman were given a guided tour of the buffed up kitchen area by your sister, to soften the blow.) Norman, a stand in for Bob Hope if ever there were one, repeated his leave them in the aisles lines about not using flour and water for paint this time, and said for the umpteenth time that we should not put the door back on the side facing his kitchen. (Perhaps some sybaritic ritual takes place on his side of the alley involving demiclad folk and kinky music that has escaped our attention before?)
