I did a bit more wrecking today. It looks like I can pull down everything I want to pull down, so I started the destruction. Most of the destruction was intentional although a door frame did come apart somewhat earlier than i planned. No matter, nothing damaged, just a few loud noises. Maybe tomorrow I can get the rotary hammer out and break some bricks out of what was once the outside wall. I also took the chance to haul some sacks of trash outside, although that was an interesting process because they wouldn't fit between the gaps between the studs and the stairwell is boarded over with a temporary floor. So I had to ease them under the floor, make sure they were balanced, and then go the long way around the house to retrieve them. I really need to open the wall at the top of the stairs. That will make quite a difference.
I found one wall stud that looks more solid than most of the others around it, which is a nuisance because it's one of the ones that needs to come out. I don't think it's supporting anything but where most other studs in the area wiggled around with no more force than pressing on them, this one doesn't give much at all. And it's aligned perfectly over one of the floor joists below. I haven't yet worked out whether that's a coincidence or not. I don't think it's supporting anything, not least because I'm not aware of anything above it that would require supporting, but need to be careful before pulling out all the nails. The only thing I can think it could possibly be supporting is a beam across the top of the old concrete block wall. If it is supporting that then it's really rather handy, because it means it will let me pull down some blocks without the beam falling in, which in turn will allow me to replace the stud with another stud moved across one joist, then I can take out the existing one. But from what I can tell there's nothing resting on top of it at all, so I'm not sure. I guess I need to get the ladder our and look closely at everything. If anyone sees a big cloud of dust from my direction, I may have experienced a cavein....
I hope that doesn't mean you no longer have a patio? As far as I can tell my mystery wall stud isn't supporting anything. There's a clear space above it, so it's obvious nothing is resting on it. There's a ceiling joist nailed to it with two very heavy duty nails but that joist is also supported by another ceiling joist less than 24" away with at least two heavy duty nails (the two run perpendicular). And the only thing above this particular joist is the attic, so I'm struggling to see what it can possibly be supporting. I tried prying it away from the joist but struggled to get enough leverage given where I could set the ladder. Maybe I need to move some stuff around so I can better position the ladder and try again. The presence of construction grade nails might indicate it is supporting but might also indicate the tendency to overengineer everything - there was a banister beside the stairs to the attic held in place by nails so big I had to bounce my weight on a 3-foot wrecking bar to pry them out. Along the way I found some more cellulose in the ceiling cavity, as well as a horrendous mess of pieces of wood that seem to run in all directions. I shudder to think what was going on in the head of whoever did that particular piece of work.
Ah, the cloud of dust has been averted so far. It took a bit of fishing around and digging, from above and from below, but I found out what the deal is. The joist in question was originally a very short joist that was secured to a perpendicular joist and ran a couple of feet to rest on the exterior wall. Now the exterior wall isn't there any more, as the house was extended, there's another joist that runs from the end of it to the new exterior wall. The existing stump of a joist is secured to a vertical stud for some support. So what I've done so far is drive some construction grade screws through both the short stubby joist and the extension. There are several more such things between the end of the old external wall and the supporting central wall, so it's not like this is a novel thing to be happening. Now it looks like I should be able to remove the wall stud, I just need a honking great bar to pry it away. If anything goes wrpng from here the worst case is that a single joist sags, which isn't supporting anything above it so I can salvage as required. And ultimately if it comes to that I can buy a honking great piece of wood and replace it with a full-length joist that will reach end-to-end without needing any joins in the middle. I will still reserve the general comments about the potential, however small, for a giant cloud of dust if it all goes wrong. I don't think that will be a problem from here though.
It took a 3-foot wrecking bar to pry the stud away from the joist. It turned out the issue wasn't the size of the nails holding it to the joist - they were much smaller than I first thought. The problem was that it was nailed in all four directions to a small piece of wood on the floor, which in turn was nailed to the joist underneath it with construction grade nails. So now the stud is removed. 10 minutes so far and the roof has yet to fall in.
Three hours and no collapsed roof.... I think that means I figured out the details with the mystery stud. Now I can look at taking out the concrete blocks... hopefully I can do that without dropping anything heavy. Update: The first of the concrete blocks is now removed. Still no cave-ins. Tomorrow when I've got better light, and when I don't have to try and sleep having spent time in a dusty room, I can take out some more.
Two columns of concrete blocks removed and so far all is well. The block at the very top that I feared might be supporting a joist came out more easily than most of the others - as soon as I'd chiselled out the mortar around it the whole thing tipped forward, clearly not supported by anything and clearly with no weight holding it in place. I'm not sure I strictly needed to take out the second column but it gave me a little more wiggle room for my new doorway. I now have a horrendous mess to clean up....
It looks weird without the extra bricks. I'm actually considering taking out a few more, to get rid of some more overhang. Where the wall was once the outside wall some of it has been removed, and what's left had quite a bit of overhang. If you imagine an overhang where one row has half a brick more than the row below it, and then carry that from floor to ceiling, you get the idea. I'm thinking I might take bricks out until there are no bricks left without bricks directly underneath them. It will mean another 8-10 bricks coming out I guess, and they are a bit heavy to lift down when half way up a ladder, but it feels like the wall will be cleaner without them. And it will give me a bit of extra space for running pipes and cables if I need it.
It took longer than I expected to clean up my mess. I now have a bucket with lots of small lumps of concrete in it and the bucket that acts as my separator on the shop vac is also getting quite heavy. And I have four concrete blocks waiting to be taken outside. I decided not to take out the extra columns. It seems like it creates work without creating any benefit. The bricks have been there for 80-90 years or more without incident so it's not as if they are suddenly going to fall in now. If it ever stops raining around here I need to take the two buckets of concrete round to my neighbor, who is collecting that kind of thing. I'm not sure what he wants it for but it's cheaper to give it to him than to pay to have it taken away, so he's welcome to it.
I got to take down the entire porch cover system Saturday, put up a new support system that makes sense, and reattach all the panels. Muschtag fire solid, better aesthetics, better draining, and only one tiny leak to tinker with.
Today's efforts were mostly cleaning up and measuring up. I don't have enough studs to do much more work so I scoped out what's there with a view to figuring whether my best option is to put regular 2x4 studs against the old brickwork and replace the 2x2 studs, to get 2x6 studs and rip them in half to replace the 2x2 studs, or leave the 2x2 studs and shim them out half an inch. Tomorrow I can check the prices of 2x4 and 2x6 and figure out what works best. Then I can set to framing the rest of the walls around the room I'm rebuilding, get the door frame positioned etc. I'll need to cut the top ends off a couple of wall studs that stick up from the floor below that old wall studs were fastened to, but that should be easy enough to do. I also moved some more concrete outside ready for my neighbor to take away, and shifted some other general household stuff around to give me access to a section of wall I need to remove to put a doorway in. There used to be a doorway there, and with any luck it won't be long before there's a doorway there again. That will take a bit of getting used to. When it's all finished my expectation is that there will be a door archway but no actual door, so we can get from one side to the other freely. For now I need a door because there are lots of ways the cat could cause problems if he took to exploring too far.
Taking down some drywall is proving tricky. It turned out the doorframe was covered with a drywall panel and at some later date the entire wall (lath and plaster, and drywall) was covered with another sheet of drywall. So far I've got the screws out of the second sheet of drywall and the frame built inside the door frame removed. Now I just need to find a suitable door frame to put into the space, shim out the space as required, and I can break away the drywall sheets. Then I can get in and out of my work space without going sideways through a 14.5" gap between wall studs. It also means I can get heavier tools in and out, and I can get my bags of trash out without having to do contortionism with a covered staircase.
The door project is complete. I have a door frame, with a door in it. I had to rejig the work because I aligned the door frame to the top of the gap in the wall, and ended up with a 3" gap underneath the door. That's enough for the cat to get through, so I undid the screws, dropped the frame two inches, and redid everything. It's not very pretty, but it works and means I can move about more freely. It also means that once the walls are studded I can get the drywall people in.
Lazier day so far today. I tested out my heat gun that has been sitting in an unopened box for more months than I care to even consider. I have some wood I recovered that was painted a spectacularly nasty shade and I'd like to salvage the wood. I used the heat gun and a scraper which made very short work of the paint but it looks like it's got some kind of treatment or undercoat on it, that gunked up the belt on my belt sander. Running a hand scraper over it slowly lifts away some material but it's very slow. I'm thinking I might just dump the wood and buy fresh. I don't want to spend the time and effort stripping the wood and then staining the wood only to find it doesn't take a stain. If it ever stops raining here I want to get out and buy some more wall studs. I just don't want to be walking back and forth between the car and the house carrying two at a time if it's pouring with rain. That seems like a very not-fun experience.
That’s when you could really use a teenager, but the non wood hauling time destroys the cost benefit analysis
It stayed dry for the morning so I got my wood. It's always fun carrying a huge stack of lumber on the roof bars. Today on the way home I passed a state trooper at the roadside, although I guess he didn't think my load was unsafe because he didn't stop me. It was tied down pretty well - before I set off I held the wood and pulled/pushed/lifted etc to make sure it wouldn't slide around, and the entire car rocked while the wood didn't move. During the drive home as far as I could tell it didn't shift even a tiny bit.