A step by step guide to new walls... Schoonover style.

1. Start with torn out lath and plaster walls. Finish framing out weird basement stairwell areas and old chimney location to create a linen closet. (Kitchen stairwell box shown here, top left.)
2. Buy excessive amounts of insulation and suit-up.  Full body coverage recommended. 
3. Cut endless strips of itchy fiberglass to puzzle-piece together for entire kitchen and bathroom.
4. Call in the reinforcements. (Mild supervision required.) 

Further tips:  
Wear neon. 
Don't break the shocks in the Schoonover family station wagon by overloading the vehicle at Lowes.
Be sure to wear the same work gear and utilize the same drilling stance as your twin.

This post is dedicated to our friends who let us shower at their houses.

When the lovely plumber Randy, from Randy Rodgers Plumbing, finally arrived... amazing things began happening very quickly. Old pipes were ripped out, new were pipes put in, and city permits were filed. 

Then we went for a visit to Hippo Hardware.
Whew.  Think 3 stories of old, new and even older hardware piled everywhere you look.  (This nice little notice was discretely posted near the toilets.) A fantastically helpful plumbing guy refurbished our old shower and tub hardware and sold us this beautiful new faucet.  Now we can't wait to use it!

framing

Thanks to the help from these very loveable/stylish schoonovers we now have a new header in the wall-less kitchen.

Kitchen update

Cooking in the garage in the rain vs. new toaster oven

Saw Safety

Ryan is back in the saddle.

The Electricians came!

Hallelujah!

Now, all we need are a few walls, a whole lot of finishing work, and some plaster ceiling patches. (yes, that is a giant ceiling hole around the new bathroom fan/light fixture...?!!) 

Sam's House

Sometimes you just gotta take a break to build this 2 yr. old an awesome cardboard fort for his, "very little [birthday] party." 

Once upon a time there was a chimney...

Now you see it.  Now you don't!

With help from some incredible friends our chimney has recently gone from intact to in-the-backyard.

 Tapp'n em in and scooping em out! From the roof to the basement, thanks to Mikael, Adam and Samantha.

Jason Skipton came in to save the day and finished the entire job! Thanks yo. (We found this can in an old kitchen exhaust hole stuck mid way through the chimney.)

The project isn't complete without a great view from the top.

Or a view from the kitchen prior to the roof patch, looking up... and looking down.

DEMOLITION DAY #2

With some truly amazing help from some incredible friends the demolition day list is now complete!!!!! We filled a dumpster with old piles from the driveway, bathroom plaster walls, kitchen tiles, kitchen plaster walls and much much more.

Samantha is a maniac when it comes to old wood and shop vacs.
Adam: "um, Becca, if you don't wear that face mask I will".  
Aubry, AKA bathroom plaster attack man.  
Mikael, you rock the crowbar!
Rae, thanks so much for picking up the ice-cream sandwiches and Junie thank you for testing them.
and Becca thanks for checking out that magic free pile down the block with me!

Best goodwill buy ever.

Like new programable coffee pot... $7.99   
No longer boiling water in the back yard on the camp stove at 6 am in the cold darkness... priceless.

Homage to the old kitchen wallpaper

This is a pictorial ode to everything both amazing and time consuming about our old kitchen wallpaper. Over 3 layers of incredible vintage patterns and lead based paint have resulted in hours of scraping and cleaning.  Maybe one of these days it will be done.  But for now, we're still scraping.