Reno Day 18/19/20

We are plugging away, one day at a time. Some days we work together, invariably getting in each other's way, and some days we work alone. This day, we even had the Howarnator helping:

I have no clue what he finds so fascinating, but he must make his mark on every wall in the room. It is also a good thing the Howarnator has a nice, thick fur coat to keep him warm:

Yes, that reads -3 degrees Celsius. That's how cold it was once the walls were open with a good North-Westerly howling outside. We still have the baseboard heater in this room, but let's be honest here, we're simply heating the great outdoors by turning it on. We make do and just add another layer of polar fleece, and believe me, once you get going, you warm up pretty quickly. Look on the bright side: at least we're protected from the elements.

And now for a picture from the "What the Hell Were They Thinking?" Department:

One of these boards actually has dried manure on it. This entire wall is brought to you by weekend warrior renovators who had virtually no clue what they were doing. I can just picture them, peeling a board out from under one of their pigs in the barn...saying "this'll do"...and actually building a wall with it. If Red Green got together with Larry, Darryl and Darryl, I am sure they could come up with something like this. Thankfully, this is an inside division and will be torn down shortly, the only purpose it now serves is to stop the propagation of dust while Eric replaces the beams.

The wood of the knee-wall is far too brittle. Eric tore most of it away today (can anyone say "more kindling"?). This is what greeted me this evening:

Eric has the first beam of 3 in place; the knee-wall is entirely gone, and there is no plumbing to deal with here, so insulation will be a snap. That's the good news. The bad news is we now need to buy more wood. The sawmill is closed for the remainder of the winter, but we put an order in anyhow, and the wood will be delivered shortly. We consider ourselves lucky to have found such a great supplier, our wood-pusher, I have dubbed him (and believe me, he smiles when he sees us coming)! The 4"x4" post that appears to be holding up the 4"x8" beam is being replaced, have no fear.

Also started is the outside wall; we ended up using 2x8's, not 2x6's like initially planned. This is the coldest wall in the house, it stands to reason that we need all the insulation that we can get in here.

I am encouraged by the results. Every day brings its advances, we learn new things, and become more stream-lined in our way of doing what needs to be done. Hopefully, once we get done, we'll never have to tackle this sort of thing again!