The renovation starts...finally

This post is going to be coming and going for probably the remainder of the year.  So, here it starts.

We've decided to finally start the renovations that we had planned when we purchased this house in July 2011.  It's only been 5 years in the making!

In our defence, we didn't do the renovation in 2012 due to Fred the cancerous lump.  Each year since then, it's been a struggle to either catch up to unemployment or something, so 2016 is the year!

We have decided to reno our bedroom and add a closet.  The front bedroom will be turned into my office as I am encouraged to work from home with my new job.

Next we moved  from our bedroom into the spare room.  This is tough,  not only will we not have rental income from the room, we are going to be spending money.  This, I am not good at.  In fact, I'm terrible at this.

Then, we needed to find a way to deal with the debris we were going to accumulate.  So, while cruising online I found an old tent trailer.  We offered him about $100 and put about $26 worth of insurance on it.  We knocked out the "tent" part of it and voila a trailer to carry our debris!

So, I started into the walls.  We were sure it was 'under' insulated, but we really had no idea.  There wasn't a stitch of insulation in any of the office walls.  We cleared the lathe and plaster from the room and then broke into our room.  (Max did this while I was in Saskatoon).

Other than finding that there is not a stitch of insulation, we've had to redo the electrical work.  Due to the way that the floor was laid, we've had to pull up the baseboard trim--past the wood floor.

So far, nothing in this renovation has been easy or simple...that's what makes a renovation right?

We've moved almost everything out of the room, we started with a clean slate. 

I've masked off the room to keep the dust from going anywhere else in the house.  I've also covered the floor with cardboard to protect the wood floor.

Due to a poor set of lungs, Kent made me wear a respirator while I tore apart the walls.  It was an amazingly dusty job!

The only insulation is a birds nest!

It took forever, probably 4 hours to get this wall clean--exposed knob and tube wiring exposed.