On to the Master Suite...

Restoration

Oct 11

This is how the added master bedroom looked when we bought LMV!!!
And yes, that is a bed in the right corner!
And a hole in the ceiling from a leaky skylight with a rotted floor underneath exposing DIRT!!!
And the French doors which are boarded shut, opened to a 2 foot drop. No steps. EVER.

So for the last few months, between holidays, vacations, Campmeeting, the grand's football games, and other family events, we have been continuing our weekend warrior job. We have completed the process of repairing walls, rim joists, floor joists and subfloors on the newer master bedroom suite and the original master bedroom area. There was lots of work to be done in this wing.

Out with the Old...

North Front Master Suite Before Reconstruction
The Side wall of the Master Suite
The repaired walls. End windows removed. HVAC and gas tanke will be outside the blank wall.
Original Master bedroom
Added Master bedroom.
Added Master bathroom.

The original and added master bedroom areas had to be completed gutted. Additionally, all wiring, plumbing, insulation, and duct work was removed--all the way to the dirt which was raked and swept to prepare for the crawlspace encapsulation. The bathroom floor joists, sub-floors, and outside walls had to be rebuilt. Dwight had to remove the damaged wood and rebuild the original bedroom which will become a small den and the original bathroom and closets which will become a utility room. (The previous utility room was outside in a separate building that was destroyed by a damaged tree during HUGO. ) This reconstruction included rebuilding/restoring EIGHT windows in the bedroom suite wing.

Some Things Cannot be Saved

Old house purists probably wonder why we would remove the Cinderella tub and the blue tile walls and floor. If it could have been repaired, it could have been saved! It would have saved my husband months of work. But years of water damage had rotted the studs and joists. And the wall tiles which were embedded in cement walls, with concrete and mortar at least 2 inches thick, had to be tediously cut on the grout lines with a diamond blade saw in order to be sledge hammered and pried off with a crowbar. The floor tiles were embedded into an even thicker bed of concrete and mortar! A lot of time, sweat and pain went into their removal during the heat of this southern summer. So...that's where we've been working for the past few months!

In with the New

Once it was all gone and the space was opened up and the debris hauled away, it was time to put the puzzle back together. Every rim and floor joist and most exterior walls had to be repaired. And that has proved to be the challenge! The floor had dropped over an inch. So the roof was braced. The walls jacked up. And wall by wall, triple 2x10s were replaced and shimmed to bring the walls back level. But with so many walls resting on piers with staggered triple joists...which one comes first was the age old question! The complicated rim joist replacement is complete and we are moving on to our last major floor joist repair in the original living room, which is directly over the basement.