Some of this may look a bit of a jumble, so I’ll try and explain it well, but the chaos will help you get an idea of what it is to live through something like this if you haven’t already. What you have to imagine is the whole house in various states of destruction or construction at the same time for months as we moved forward in each area at different times.
The first job was to make the new opening in the living room wall into the bedroom. Here is the wallboard coming off to reveal the studs below. No prizes for guessing whose job it was to take the old wallboard out to the trailer in the driveway.
People with less experience of remodeling, or more fears, or with more money hire a contractor to do the work for them. For our project, Mr. Remodel was the owner/contractor. Mr. R’s dad did contracting work when he was growing up, plus he has his own experience of doing it as an adult, and he believes he can do anything he sets his mind to (and can learn how to do from other people). But, he doesn’t know everything about building or building codes, which has produced some interesting experiences and rethinks along the way.
One surprise was discovering the diagonal plank behind the wallboard. Ah yes, we had moved back to earthquake country which means that certain walls had to be shear walls to prevent the house doing a hula dance in an earthquake. Because we were removing part of this diagonal plank to make an opening into the bedroom, we would have to add a shear wall at the back of the master closet to replace it.
“Look Caruthers, we’ve made it old man, we’ve broken through, and we’re going to be alright”.
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