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The "Unscheduled Kitchen/Bath Remodel" <--dead cat, mold, & shoddy work (MANY PICS)
So I own a 1950's home here in Southern California that was remodeled back in the 1970's by what I can only imagine was a collection of drug addicts! Still, I like the layout, the neighborhood, and the fact that I can pretty much do all the work myself...
We had started with a simple change to the hallway that encroached into the kitchen and generally wasted space...
So, we made the hallway wider by knocking out the linen closet and pocket where the old furnace was placed and was planning to convert the remaining kitchen wall into an island...
Our basic plan is to build a completely new house out of the old --all while still living in it. We will pull no loans and run no purchases on credit. It will take years but will cost much less in the long run --and we'll get the house we truly want....
So, anyways, we have put a hold on most of the interior remodeling now as we're working towards the new slab for a room addition and a new roof frame that will go over top of the existing one --we have had NO plans to continue the major inside work for at least a year or two!! Then we started smelling something coming from the kitchen area --and it wasn't smelling like rotten food; this smelled more like death!! So we were forced to tear into our kitchen and we found a dead cat in the wet wall between the front bathroom and the kitchen!!
There was a small amount of exposed plumbing in the back bathroom that this cat managed to find and crawled all the way to the inside of the house (inside the bath tub spaces) before dying. Mind you, there was plenty of room to turn around inside there. We just figure he got sick and wanted to find a hole to go in and die. The smell was horrible!! But I'm glad we were forced to deal with it because we found a massive amount of mold inside the wet wall...
So, this means getting the bunny suits on...
Sealing out the area...
...and going to town!!
Here's all the areas we eventually had to tear out:
[continued...]
So I own a 1950's home here in Southern California that was remodeled back in the 1970's by what I can only imagine was a collection of drug addicts! Still, I like the layout, the neighborhood, and the fact that I can pretty much do all the work myself...
We had started with a simple change to the hallway that encroached into the kitchen and generally wasted space...

So, we made the hallway wider by knocking out the linen closet and pocket where the old furnace was placed and was planning to convert the remaining kitchen wall into an island...

Our basic plan is to build a completely new house out of the old --all while still living in it. We will pull no loans and run no purchases on credit. It will take years but will cost much less in the long run --and we'll get the house we truly want....
So, anyways, we have put a hold on most of the interior remodeling now as we're working towards the new slab for a room addition and a new roof frame that will go over top of the existing one --we have had NO plans to continue the major inside work for at least a year or two!! Then we started smelling something coming from the kitchen area --and it wasn't smelling like rotten food; this smelled more like death!! So we were forced to tear into our kitchen and we found a dead cat in the wet wall between the front bathroom and the kitchen!!

There was a small amount of exposed plumbing in the back bathroom that this cat managed to find and crawled all the way to the inside of the house (inside the bath tub spaces) before dying. Mind you, there was plenty of room to turn around inside there. We just figure he got sick and wanted to find a hole to go in and die. The smell was horrible!! But I'm glad we were forced to deal with it because we found a massive amount of mold inside the wet wall...

So, this means getting the bunny suits on...

Sealing out the area...

...and going to town!!


Here's all the areas we eventually had to tear out:

[continued...]