For those interested I thought I would update this thread.

My nephew living in the apartment next to me had a baby on the way so I spent my time updating his side of the house. We expanded the size of the bathroom which was ridiculously small and installed a new tub, sink, and window. All new electric, ceiling fan/light combo, leveled the floor and we were able to raise the ceiling about 8 inches.

Both bedrooms were remodeled. Added insulation, new electric, new subfloor (added blocking to help stiffen the floor), sheetrock and carpet.


I had mentioned earlier that I was having to deal with the removal of the 'insulation' used in the attic floor in my house. I finally created a method to remove it.

I bought a cyclonic separator and mounted it to the lid of a 20 gallon barrel. I'd put a garbage in the barrel and lock the lid down. In my shop vac I used a regular filter and a sheetrock dust collection bag. The ultra fine particles that escaped the cyclonic separator would end up in the collection bag inside the shop vac rather than clogging up the filter.

This still took a long time to remove all of the insulation material and debris because is would get stuck in the hose - lots of bits of scrap lathe whatever else. I do not recall how many bags we pulled out, but I think it was at least 50-60 of a manageable, easy to carry, weight.

Remainder of the ceilings were removed along with non-load bearing walls.

At this point work upstairs had stopped. The rink I was working at had closed and shortly after that I began working 6 months out of the year in VA, and during the other 6 months my GF and I began working on and investing in our own business. We had been using the upstairs as our workshop. Our work season was extended almost 4 months two years ago which left us just enough time to operate our own business.

Last year we had changed what we do for our own business and no longer need the workshop space upstairs. But her sister was expecting her first baby so we focused our attention on making her house ready for the baby. We replaced the stove in the kitchen, shored up the wall behind the stove to be able to mount a microwave above the stove along with new cabinetry. Repaired and reshingled the roof and built new front steps. Replaced subfloor in the living room and installed hardwood floor in the baby's room. Fixed some electric and other stuff along the way. The baby turns 11 months old shortly and she has been such a beautiful addition to the world.

So now that we have some time we are ready to start work again upstairs. We started removing the flooring to expose the floor joists in an effort to level the floors and add blocking. In the meantime we are reviewing the floor plans and have determined that we do want to add a master bath. Due to limited income the process will be slower than we want it to be. We also are trying to open a retail store for the summer. At the beginning of October we'll be back in VA for 6 months.

I'll add some photos when I get a chance.