The room wall was next. It wasn't too difficult to knock these blocks
loose and remove them one or two at a time.
Eventually we were left with just the shower pan. I'm not sure
whether it was poured on top of the basement slab or is part of it. I
hope it is separate as I'd like to remove it without needing
explosives.
Now all the brick debris is in the garage waiting for disposal and
there is another pile of wood in the basement to clean up.
Here is some more classic electrical work in the garage, all live of
course, and probably the way it has been for years.
And finally, a look at a little drainage problem we have in the back
yard.
We removed the ugly built-in microwave oven over the range today. I
don't have a good before shot, so you'll just have to believe me when
I say that it looks unbelievably better than before. Also, since it
was really too large for the available space, now we might actually be
able to cook on the stove.
And we found that to get wire to it, someone had fished wire around a
stud by bringing it out of the wall. Here is a shot taken after the
wire had been removed that shows the hack job they did on the cabinet.
We also cleaned up the cabinet hardware and removed the plates from
behind the pulls. It turns out they are really silver and black not
gold and black. This was a really small change that cost nothing but
it's amazing how much more I like the cabinets now.
Five wires in a three inch ceiling box.
I don't think I had any idea what I was getting into when I started
pulling down the plywood soffit thing in the garage.
Here you can see how the framing and even the plywood paneling for the
small closet in the garage was buried in the new concrete garage floor.
Here is some more classic wiring.
Here it is mostly cleaned up after taking down the plywood and
framing. The insulation on the duct is mostly worthless so it is not
surprising that we were getting a blast of cold air in the room above
the garage every time the heat came on in the winter.
This picture also shows the classic garage door openers and the single
bare bulb light fixture for the whole garage, along with the only
switch to control it and the flood lights for the
driveway.
A little more water damage. We knew about a spot in the front of the
garage, but this one in the back was a new surprise.
Today I finished framing a new ceiling for the stairs to the basement
and added some can lights. This is a tight spot, so we used the
smallest cans we could find. With the adjustable lights they almost
point straight down.
I also started doing the real garage demo. The original plan was to
just open up enough of the ceiling to do some wiring, but then once I
had made a mess, I didn't see much reason to stop until the whole
ceiling (or at least most of it) was down.
