Thumb and Hammer Blog

I make absolutely no apologies for not doing any work whatsoever on the house over the last week. It took a while to adjust to a regular schedule again, after having so much time away from my job. And, as I said in my previous entry, it is going to take a while for my [...]

With the recreation room in the basement now 98% gutted, yet another structural issue has been revealed. Once again, the previous owner messed around with main structural supporst without having a clear understanding of what he was doing. In his defence, he did attempt to do something the right way, but as usual, he came [...]

Demolition continued in the basement over this past weekend, though I only worked for about 4 hours each day. As I removed the drywall and strapping to uncover the block walls, I also uncovered further mysteries and potential problems. It is difficult for me to see anything but dollar signs at this point, and those [...]

The last couple of days have not been good. I have been feeling overwhelmed again, and my thoughts have been stuck in “what if” mode. If only it was possible to go back in time. I would certainly go back three and a half years to the time before we bought this house. But time [...]

A road trip and a day at an amusement park was an ideal family vacation. It’s hard to be two places at the same time, so all demolition and renovation was on hold from Wednesday to Friday. Most of Monday was spent running errands and getting groceries and on Tuesday, I cut the lawn for [...]

As I planned, I started the demolition of the basement today. Mind you, I still have some cleaning up to do in the ensuite, and I still have to rip the floor up, but I needed a change of pace, and, with my friend available to help out, I figured that today was a good [...]

Rather than push my luck with my shoulder, which has been really sore this week, I decided to take a bit of a break. I spent about 8 hours today cleaning up the desk in our computer room. It has been a cluttered mess ever since the room was finished back in the fall of [...]

The last of the gypsum board in the bathroom is gone. The exterior walls and the ceiling joists all appear to be in good shape. I am definitely feeling more positive today than I was yesterday. All that remains in the bathroom now is the floor tile and the hardwood flooring. The tile is coming [...]

Well, at least it looks like I got something accomplished today. There is still a little bit of drywall left to come down off the walls, but I got a really good start on the ceiling. In fact, if it wasn’t for a hidden problem coming to the light of day, I could have had [...]

I only worked on the bathroom demolition for a couple of hours today. I had spent a couple of hours helping a friend dig some post holes for a deck and by the time I got home, I only had a three hour window before my wife came home from work. However, in the two [...]