Who needs toilets

I needed to get rid of the toilet in the upstairs bathroom.  I could have just walked it down the stairs and put it in my trailer like a normal person, but instead I decided drop it out of the 2nd floor window.  I also drove down to Kenosha to pick up my friend who lives in Chicago so we could film the whole thing and make a Youtube video out of it.  Here's a link to the full Youtube video:  https://youtu.be/2X7lvaCvO4M

Somehow he made the whole adventure into a 15 minute video, so in case you just want to see the toilet fall, it's here:

Running temporary wiring

I cut the romex going through that closet, so that means I didn't have any power on the 2nd floor anymore, so I ran a 14AWG extension cord from the basement to a homemade outletbox and switch.

It worked out, there was an unused GFCI in connected directly to the breaker panel, and since I didn't need the bedroom outlets anymore, I was able to put it on a dedicated breaker.  You can see the wiring coming right out the front that is for my temporary bedroom and the extension cord for upstairs coming out of the GFCI outlet on the bottom.

I had a ton of extra cat5e, and LED bulbs don't draw much current at 120V, so I figured I'd just use that along with the bulb bases from the old light fixtures for lights.  To be "safe" I took some of a single twisted pair to work with my and put it on the hipot tester, and I was able to max it out (3kV@60Hz) without a blinding flash, so it should be good for this.

I also took out that bathroom inside wall, now its like movie/TV set

And more cleaning. 

Tearing up the master bedroom

This was one of the few rooms in the house where there was no wood paneling.  Instead, there was modern drywall, which was clearly put on top of some other material that wasn't the studs since in places it was even with the molding.  It gave a really odd look because the room was fine at a glance, but when you looked closer at it, the way the wall met the molding wasn't consistent.  Removing it was pretty easy since it essentially peeled off and then showed the old Beaver Bestwall, along with a ton of holes that were around the wiring.  Definitely an interesting choice in wallpaper though.

Clearly when the chimney was put in it was designed to be behind a wall since it is incredibly sloppy, plus more of those sideways 2x4s.

And it turns out that space on the left side of the closet door was just there to run 1 sewer vent and some romex for the bedrooms and bathrooms.  Nice use of space.

Then I decided to take down some of that old drywall to open things up a bit, it's pretty interesting how they mounted their switches in the middle of the stud cavity (the old 3 way switch for the stairs/hallway which was live knob and tube).

I bagged up that cellulose insulation in the dead space left of the closet and then took down the rest of the drywall in there.

Opening up the stairs

Took out those walls over the stairs, as well as the fake ceiling over it

Also noticed a nice Russia-style light in the basement, it even has a bare wire on it

And since I was inspired by it, I figured I'd do the same upstairs, but without the exposed wire

Removed that wood paneling from the stairs, covering up more of that wallpaper

And pulled down the wall in front of the bathroom, more sideways 2x4s

Time to move

I realized that it would be easier to just live downstairs while I work on the whole upstairs, so I converted the living room into a bedroom by building a really shitty temporary wall with a door from upstairs.  I had never really done any nailing for framing before, and I thought it would be pretty easy... I was very very very wrong, I think I bent more nails than I actually put in.

Since that original finish floor is extremely uneven, I pulled up some of the 1/4" OSB from upstairs and put it down here, you can tell which came from the master bedroom and which didn't from the infused plaster dust.

Then I moved that floating vinyl plank floor again, so this makes it the 3rd room it's been in.

Put up some contact paper on the wall around where I put my bed since it was dirty

Temporary closet

Also added some outlets since I don't trust the wiring in this room (the light flickers if its plugged into one of the outlets), as well as a light switch, and an outlet to plug the light into

And put up some plastic by the stairs to try and keep the dust out.  This time I used some lath and screwed it in over the duck tape to keep it from coming off like it did upstairs.