So it's high time for an update on our housing adventures in
Salida. I'm going to break up the posts into different topics because if I put
it all down here in one post, you might possibly get sucked into your screen
like that episode of Doctor Who. So for today, we're talking ceilings. Here's a
little review: we closed on the
house at the very beginning of April so we went down the first weekend and got
right to work. The first order of business was tearing down the drop ceiling in
the living room, dining room, and front bedroom. We decided to leave the drop
ceiling for now in the kitchen and second bedroom because of the plumbing so
we’ll just have to live with that for a little while. Luckily, the drop ceiling
came down really fast and it was super simple. All the tiles just pop out of
the metal frame individually and then the frame is just a lot of smaller metal
pieces that are kind of just resting on each other and hung from the ceiling by
metal wire. Once the ceiling came down it made an immediate impact. It was
miraculous. Without the drop ceiling we gain almost two feet of ceiling space
which is amazing. We still have to remove all the little hooks from the ceiling
and the metal frame that is attached to the walls but that is all child's play
compared to the other stuff.
So now the plan goes a little haywire. We were jumping at
the idea that we would find an HVAC or ductwork specialist to come in and help
us find a product that would allow us to move all the ductwork into the floor
joists of the original ceiling. Then we would bring in a drywaller to replace
the original ceiling which would now be containing all the ductwork and
electrical. However, this plan went south after a series of unfortunate events.
First, our drywall guy had a heart attack and had to be care-flighted to
Denver. Needless to say, that puts him out of commission. Second, I lost the
piece of scrap trash paper I was taking notes on that had the HVAC guy’s name
and number on it so now I can't remember who I talked to or his number. Finally,
we had a conversation with our radon mitigator & electrician who basically
told us that plan sounded like a huge pain in the ass and we should rethink our
options.
So now we are kind of floating back to our original plan to
build a new ceiling right below the ductwork as it stands. Sure we won't get to
keep all 11 or 12 feet of original ceiling, but we’ll still have gained about a
foot and a half in height so it's really not a loss. Our radon guy told us
about a ceiling he had built in another house in town and he took us over to see
it and we kind of fell in love. It is a ceiling made of pvc ceiling tiles that
have a pattern to make them look like old tin ceiling tiles. Shockingly
beautiful and not corny. And the other plus is that the ceiling tiles are
really light so we wouldn't have to build a big huge frame like we would for a
new drywall ceiling, which would help us to keep as much height as we possibly
can. Here are some pictures of that ceiling we're using for reference:
So two ceiling ideas currently that we are tossing over. Oh
and I almost forgot to tell you about the radon mitigation! Super exciting
stuff. Long story short our house tested super high for radon which is
supposedly a huge cause of lung cancer so not something we want floating around
our house. However, it's still sort of an issue like climate change where you
see the science and it's super simple to see that it's a real problem but you
still have your crazy naysayers walking around saying shit like, “I don’t really
believe in radon.” Needless to say, we’re in the first camp so we wanted to
knock that out immediately. Luckily we found the best guy ever to tackle our
radon issue and he did an amazing job. When we bought the house it was testing
at 13 for radon (the epa has set a normal range limit at 4) and now just a
couple weeks later it is testing in between 1 and 2. Thank you for saving our
lives, mr. radon mitigator. He had to completely wrap our crawl space up with
plastic and then build a fan to blow out all the radon and install it on the
outside of our house. The fan just continually blows for a year and then we
test again to make sure the wrapping job he did on the crawl space is still
containing the radon. And just
because he's the raddest dude ever, he also shored up the stairs leading down
to our crawl space and reinforced some of our foundation while he was down
there you know, just because. He is our hero. (Here's a picture of the crawl space and all the beautiful plastic wrapping that is covering the surface and containing all the poisonous radon and preventing us all from dying a slow and painful death; and in the next picture you can see the fan that has been installed in the right corner of the house.)
Okay that's enough for this update. Next I'll tell you about
the floors. What a shit show.
xoxo
-mel
