Attic Insulation

The final project the contractors finished last week was the attic insulation. They built platforms so we could have some storage space up there and then blew in 8" of insulation.

Attic Cleaned!

Due to an equipment failure yesterday, the finish of the vermiculite removal job was delayed a couple hours so they actually finished up this morning.
The removal team said the attic was actually filled up with a thick layer of sawdust, followed by a layer of 1940s newspapers, then the vermiculite on top. I'm bummed it wasn't possible to check out the old newspapers—that would have been fun to read the prices and see what was considered news at that time.
The attic is all clean now and ready for electrical rewiring and for running plumbing repairs. Later in the job, we'll also be reinsulating this space with modern—and hopefully safer—materials. We think this will be a good space for paper record storage once the remodel is finished.

Packing is slowly continuing. I got a bit behind in school, so I've had to focus my energy on catching up this week. Though, I'm hoping to have the dining room all packed up by Sunday because we're planning to have company for lunch. It would be nice to get that room sort of cleaned up. =)

Asbestos Removal

A team of four guys showed up right on time this morning. Hopefully they'll finish this project today, but it may take two days. It's sort of exciting to get started, though maybe I should have had them remove the vermiculite next week—we have snow in the forecast later in the week. I actually turned off the furnace earlier, so I get to bundle while I work on my schoolwork.

Asbestos Removal Time

Spring is quickly approaching and I guess it's time to start thinking about having the vermiculite/asbestos removed from our attic. I called three different asbestos abatement firms from the DEQ list and lined up quotes during the coming week. It sounds like it's going to be roughly $5,000 to have the asbestos removed from approx. 1000 sq. ft. of attic space.



I hope this will mostly take care of the problem and we won't have to deal with more later. But we really won't know until we open up some of these walls and floors for the remodel.

Tomorrow we have an appt with Craftsman Design & Renovation for our final quote. I'm trying to prepare myself for the presumably massive number they're going to give us. Then we're going to have to figure out what parts of the job to cut out, which is going to be difficult.

Update on Monday morning:
Woo hoo! I'm pretty excited to get a quote from a firm in Tualatin, Asbestos Control Group, that will remove the vermiculite for $1,700! Yeah—we'll have an extra $3,300 for pretty hardware on the main floor.

Bring on the HazMat Team

I crawled into the attic with my Dad this morning and took a good look around. Long term, there is definitely not much room to do anything but store some boxes up there. We have a pretty crazy roof line and we've got all these perpendicular angles and support beams in the way. Though, when we get there, we'll welcome the mostly dry storage space for our paper records.

Anyway, I took a look around and found unopened bags of the insulation up there. There isn't a lot of "insulation" but there's enough that we have to deal with it in order to rewire the knob and tube electrical and add plumbing for the new bathroom (and replace the old plumbing as needed).

The unopened bag identified the stuff as "Wards Expanded Mineral Fill Insulation." A google search on that led me to a number of class action lawsuits and Vermiculite and a bummer conclusion: More than likely it's going to have to be professionally removed by a HazMat team. (Sigh, there goes the budget.)

It also looks like they started hauling sawdust up there to insulate. Nice.

Multnomah House Pictures

Now that we're sure the Multnomah house purchase is going to go through, I figure it's safe to talk about our plans and show the "before" pictures. According to PortlandMaps, this house was built in 1912. We were told it was the first house built on the block and was actually the residence for a dairy farm back then. I believe the Leonard family bought it in the late 1930s and it passed from the parents onto the children (a son and daughter who jointly own it). It was used as a rental for something like 10 years by one of their children (according to one of the neighbors). So, we'll be the third family to own this house.

When you enter in the front door and look right, you see the fireplace in the parlor. Honestly, if they hadn't painted that brick, we probably would leave the fireplace alone, but I think the shiny, white latex paint looks awful.
And with that brick being so bumpy and irregular, we might just remove the brick altogether rather than try and strip it. The mason we had out to give a bid for the exterior brickwork said the fireplace wasn't really anything distinctive that needed to be saved. And I don't like the brick well enough to spend the 100+ hours taking off that paint. If we remove the brick, we will probably replace it with a new reproduction tile face and wood trimmed fireplace facade, sort of like this one. That project will have to wait, though.

This is the ceiling in the parlor. I think it will look quite nice once that white paint is gone! Also, you can tell when you look closer that there once used to be light fixtures on the junctions of the beams. I hope we'll be able to get rid of the horrid modern light fixture in the middle and put ceiling-mounted fixtures back on the junctions.

This is the front of the parlor with a couple of built-in bookcases. Again, we're hoping to scrape off all that white paint. Luckily, the inside of the window seat and the bookcases haven't been painted! We'll probably also end up replacing the lighting fixtures because I suspect this large living room is very dark at night (hence the white paint!) so we'll plan to add some light fixtures. And I have a thing for matching fixtures. This stained glass also has a big break in it.

This photo is looking back into the entryway from the parlor/living room. I'm hoping to strip all that paint. We'll definitely be uninstalling those French doors and having them dipped.

This is the dining room. We're hoping to scrape off all that white paint and repair the stained glass in the built-in (it has a couple of broken pieces). There's also a drawer front that has a corner broken off and will have to be repaired. We'll probably uninstall all the doors and drawers and have them dipped. The rest we'll have to strip in place with a combination of an infrared heat stripper and chemical strippers. I like the light fixture so we'll leave that as is.


This is the existing kitchen. Looks like they did a cheap-o remodel somewhat recently. They replaced the bottom cabinets and put the old ones down in the basement and left the upper cabinets in place.
The third photo is a bit of cabinetry in the attached breakfast porch. I'm not really sure what it originally looked like, but none of this cabinetry is original to the house. I think this family remodeled when they bought the house in the late 1930s. When we can afford to remodel the house, we're going to entirely remove the kitchen, the breakfast porch cabinetry, and the abandoned brick chimney (covered over in plaster or sheetrock in this photo) and try and make one bigger space. We'll have to pay to have some structural work done, as more than likely the wall we'd like to remove is structural. It's gonna cost us! So, for now, we're going to live with this unfortunate kitchen. I'm already plotting the remodel though!

This is the scary downstairs bath. Ugh. I think this room is going to be our first try at DIYer remodeling. We're going to see if we can peel down the outer layers of tile and see what's underneath. If we're lucky, we'll find something nice at the bottom. If we're not, we'll put some marmoleum down in this room until we can do the downstairs remodel. Ultimately, we're hoping to make this bathroom at least slightly bigger when we remodel the kitchen; it's tiny!

This is the linen built-in at the top of the stairs. One day, I'd like to strip it down to the wood. But, in reality, the upstairs woodwork was normally painted in these old Craftsman homes, so that project will wait until we're done with the downstairs. I'm not sure these doors are original, as they match the old kitchen cabinetry. I wonder whether they replaced these doors when they remodeled in the late-1930s. Once we learn how to do woodworking, I'm hoping we'll make new panel doors for this built-in (from reclaimed wood).

This is the upstairs bathroom. We're planning to leave this room as is for quite a while. Someday we may remodel it and replace that tub with a clawfoot, but it's not a priority.

This is the upstairs master bedroom on the front of the house. It has an attached sleeping porch that is now closed-in with windows. As soon as we can afford to remodel, we're going to convert this sleeping porch into a small attached bath with an accessible shower for me.

The upstairs also has two bedrooms on the back of the house. One of them has a finished porch. We're going to remove that old chimney as it's no longer used and save the brick for some cosmetic work on the brick facade. I'm not really sure what we'll use this porch for; perhaps a plant room.


Here's where we'll need those spare bricks. Someone did a very poor remodel/repair of the brickwork on the porch. We're going to have to have all the brickwork on the front of the house repointed as much of it has bad mortar. We may have this work done right after we move in, as I suspect if we let it get too bad it will cost much more to repair.

This is a variety of pictures of the basement. Since you typically work from the top down when you remodel, it's going to be a long time before we get to the basement.

It's probably mostly going to be used for storage for quite a long time. We will be setting up our television down there. We'll be having the foundation and pest damage repair done right away; before we start to move in. We figure it will only get harder to get to the foundation walls once we're in, so we've decided that project is a priority. We're going to go ahead with the quote we already got for the inspection and just have the work done.

And to complete the tour, here is the attic. This will be getting insulated very soon!