A Four Day Weekend And We Worked One Day!

No More Rats Nests--No More Rats Nests!!!
We know we've probably said this before but this time its for real!!! We got the last rats nest in the house today!!!!! Hurray!!!!! Yippee!!!! Huzzah!!!

Here's me preparing to do battle with the last nasty stinky, skanky, funky rats nest.
You see when we were researching the bump-out idea we looked more closely at our existing bump-out. When we peered up into the joist bays this is what we found!!

Yes its that lovely, lovely thing we here at Chez Neumansky call....a dirty, disgusting, nasty, stanky rats nest!! If you look closely you can just make out the form of a mummified rat.
All the joist bays in the bump-out were full of this kind of luvin. Don't know how we missed it before. This area in the family room was the last remaining bit of stank in the house and we couldn't figure out where it was coming from...now we know.

Here's me sucking the luvin out of the joist bays.. the sound the vast amounts of rock hard rat poops made while being sucked up by the shop vac was not unlike a rainstik....ahhhh how relaxing...

Here's a nice clean shiny joist bay sans the nasty rat funk. This is before we doused the area with the oxidizing solution. We laid the solution on pretty thick and kinda stunk up the family room...sorry kitties!

Check this out. This is a big trash can mostly full with rats nest!! Yum, Yum Yum We're so glad that this part of the rehab is over.....yea right.





We also finally finished up the demo of the top floor!
Here's Irene going at the nails behind the bead-board in the old bathroom on the top floor.
We bought some 12" metal cutting demo blades for the the sawzall and boy did they come in handy here. We also bought some new batteries for the cordless tools and wow we think they lasted a lot longer than our old ones. We were trying a different technique of gently loosening the wood just enough to get the blade in behind it and cutting the nails from behind. We think that this way ended up being a lot faster than trying to do it all with cats-paws and we think it left the wood in better shape.

Here's Irene again attacking that bead-board. Let me tell you, whoever put that stuff up should be keel-hauled. They used framing nails to put it up!!!!
The bead-board used to cover all the walls and ceiling of the original bath-kitchen area. Actually some time in the past they plastered over the bead-board to make it look smooth!!! Then someone put up dry wall over that!! Yikes what a mess!!

Here's a shot of what used to be the bead-board ceiling. I had to lay on the floor to get this one....



We managed to save most of the wood paneling. Irene's tub here has the scrap in it. The wood was super dried out redwood so not splitting the tongues was hard. We're not sure where exactly in the new bath the bead-board will go but hopefully we will figure out someplace cool to make this work worthwhile.

So that's what we got accomplished on our one day of house work on a four day weekend. We both can't wait for the foundation work to start. We can now also call for an inspection for our demo permits, hmmm, I think we'll wait for the first foundation inspection and just kill two birds with one stone.

Rats!!! Or Yay!!!!! Our Dream Home

This post is all about rats. More specifically all the dang rats nests we've been cleaning up lately. We have been cleaning the heck out of the house for the last couple of weekends. After the weekend of the floor scrubber we were totally convinced that the place would not stink anymore.....dang were we wrong. We've gutted the top floor and soaked it with the oxidizing solution. We've gutted the bottom floor and soaked it with the oxidizing solution. Both top and bottom floor smell fine absolutely no trace of rat urine stink. The middle floor (the floor where we are going to live) still stinks!!!! Well, not the back half of the floor, the kitchen and bedroom and sunroom smell fine but the entryway and front two rooms still reek!!!
We have to be moved into this place by the end of June and we are getting a bit discouraged. I unfortunately have a very sensitive nose so its my job to sniff out the stank. My nose was telling me that the stench was coming from behind the walls in the the middle room....this was the room that was the kitchen and had all the food and consequently all the rats!!!!


The main stench was coming from behind the wall where the sink was. A couple of taps of the hammer and this is what I found...
Here's the rats nest I found in the wall next to the sink. That's chip board behind it and its absolutely soaked with rat urine!! Yay!!!!!!!!
That black thing in the corner is a dead mumified rat!!! Yay double G's, thanks for poisoning them!!!

Another stud bay filled with ratty love. Here's a question for y'all. Why, why, why in the world would they put fiberglass insulation in the interior walls in the house? It's just fricken made for rats, and oh does it soak up the urine.

This is the coolest spider I've ever seen. Actually there were a bunch of them living in the walls...This thing had a huge purple pearlescent rear end. They must of been feasting on all the blowflies (they eat dead stuff) that were hatching out of all the dead poisoned rats...Wow, now I'm grossing myself out. Yay, our dream house....


Here's something that I thought was interesting. That looped wire here in this pic is LIVE!!! Just sitting there in the wall next to the chimney with no flashing. Probably got wet every time it rained!!
A major stench was coming from the area of the fire place. We are having it torn down anyways so I opened the walls up to see what I could see.


Here's a close up of the live wire. Wanna know how I know its live?? It sizzled when I got it wet with he oxidizing solution!!! Yay, what fun....in our dream home....

So, way up in in the corner of the chimney chase I spy this bit of frelling fiberglass insulation. The stench of this area was really, really, really strong....
So what do I do?? The rocket surgeon that I am?? I reach up right over my head and pull it down!!!
It was a huge rats nest with at least one dead rat in it!!! It rained rat poop on me for like 2 hours!!! (it seemed that way anyways!!) Here's a shot of the poop that rained down on the fireplace! Man it stinks in there... I think actually the bricks have soaked up ten years of rat pee and stink also!! Can't wait for them to be gone!


Remember that shot from above of behind the sink area? Well, I went a little crazy and knocked out some more drywall. This entire wall was one giant rats nest...smelled really fabulous also....yay, our dream home...


Here's the rest of the wall opened up. See the insulation that looks okay in the picture? Well it's not. The rats were running up the lathe wall behind it and had chewed out little vertical way stations all along the route up. This giant vertical rat highrise ran all the way to the ceiling joists where they chewed out the blocking and were expanding horizontally into the floor joist bays...

I bagged up all the drywall and insulation and rats nest nastyness into countless contractor bags. I cleaned up the joists with the vacuum and then it was time to hit the entire area with the oxidizing solution.

Here's me soaking the framing with the solution. I have to wear a vapor respirator and goggles cause the stuff is so nasty. I think I'm getting blonder the more I use it...I can tell when I'm hitting a juicy part cause the solution foams up a bit when its oxidizing something. I had to soak this entire wall and the chimney chase and it still stunk the next day. Today I resoaked the entire mess and I hope that when we next go back to the house it smells better. I'm going to wait till after the chimney comes down before I start to get seriously bummed about the stink. I just keep repeating to myself, ' The stink will go away with the chimney!!' Or at least it will be easier to spray way up inside the chimney chase when its empty.

Why oh why did they insulate the hell out of the interior walls of this house?? If our child ever wants a pet rat I'm going to make them read this blog!!! Because I tell you what, that ain't a gonna happen.