Symphony of Destruction...
Well, here's how I spent my weekend, which was in the high nineties both days...

here's the damage to the sub flooring caused by the leak...

nice, huh? I had no idea what I was going to find once I started pulling things apart. Here's some shots of the room with everything (except the 'puter) removed, old carpeting taken up, the coal stove removed from the hearth...




this is where I ended up Sunday night... luckily, there was no damage to the framing. However, since it was opened up, I threw a few extra nails into all the joints, just for good measure.


I'm taking tonight off, it's too damned hot to do anything. Tomorrow night, I'll replace the plastic lining over the dirt floor of the crawlspace, then fit insulating board between the joists, then top is off with some R-19 insulation. Wednesday, I'll start replacing the sub flooring, probably finish that up Thursday night, then move the computer to the other side of the room and take up the top layer of Luan plywood and run some decking screws through the old sub flooring into the joists, just to keep things nice and tight. Before I put the new Luan down, though, I'm going to rip the Sheetrock and insulation of of the front wall and see what's going on in there. I hope my luck holds out. It is my intention to have the room ready to paint in a week, depending on what surprises pop up. I still have to spackle a zillion nail holes and I think I'm going to re tape and spackle the corners. I'm also going to put in some additional crawlspace ventilation, more on that later, as I'm sure that' going to be an adventure. I ripped out the old mantle (which I hated anyway, my woodworking skills were really lacking when I made that one, it's no where a nice as the dining room one...) and build a new one, but I'm going to cheat a bit - Van Dyke's Restorers Hardware has some nifty, hand carved lion's head corbels that I'm going to use on it and I almost have Mr.s SOG convinced to let me add hand carved lion's feet to the bottom... we'll see how that plays out.
I'm also adding a recessed bookcase over the mantle, as we're not going to be using the coal stove any more, I'm going with electric heat in the room. It's cheaper than replacing the chimney and, actually, last winter we used an oil filled space heater and it was just fine. I am going to be buying one of these to replace the stove and portable heater...

I think it will do just fine, especially since I'm rerunning some of the forced air heating ducts and adding an in-line fan to the living room duct work. If not, than I'll put the coal stove back in. I'm still keeping the dining room stove, that sucker heats the whole house except for the living room and the bathroom.
Well, I'm going to go have a Jameson's and soda and sit outside and have a pipe full, I need a night of rest.
Fare thee well, my fellow wanderers...
Peace.

wander with me...