The Bagster: All filled!
It may not look like much progress was made over the last few days, but we have actually done quite a bit. Our contractor was over on Friday to put in the footings for our 2 new columns to support one of the main beams in the house. Now the concrete needs to cure for a while before the final posts can go in. He also added a second temporary column for the time being. We also demoed the bathroom and picked up a Bagster.Â
What is the Bagster you ask? It is a giant bag that acts like a mini-dumpster (imagine a super giant Ikea bag). It is less expensive than a dumpster and best of all you can pick it up at your local hardware or big box store. We picked ours up on Saturday morning and laid it out on the driveway and by Saturday afternoon it was full of all the big and awkward stuff we hadn’t put out in the garbage: paneling, studs, the shower stall (broken down thanks to the sawsall), the toilet and sink. I also filled in with some of the clay and concrete that the contractor dug up for the footings. It is just over 8′ long and 4′ wide (to fit a standard sheet of plywood or drywall). And the cost? The bag itself will run you about $30. The pick up cost varies by zipcode. For us it is $139. This is less than a dumpster (which normally start in the $300-400 range) but obviously doesn’t hold as much. It also takes some work to organize your junk since the sides are soft. It won’t stand up until it is about half full. We also tied the handles together, since it is a requirement that the handles have to be able to touch for the crane/truck to pick it up. Now I just need to schedule a pick up. Yeah!
The Gutted Bathroom w/ exposed stack vent/ waste pipe.
The gross unused bathroom (well except for cleaning paint brushes) before demolition
The bathroom demolition went pretty well. Thanks to the sawsall we took the shower out without much difficulty. And fortunately the walls were quite willing to fall down. It was really nice to see this corner emptied out (well except for the big hole under the shower. When the previous owner aka “Tony the cheap”, put in the shower drain he didn’t bother to pour concrete around the drain. No wonder we had some ground water from this area during the hurricane! It was also interesting to see the main wastepipe/stack vent. It was unfortunate to see that the washer drain was so poorly connected to it!
New footings w/ temporary columns. I know it is really hard to see with all of the mess!
New Footing w/ pressure treated columns drying out.
The new reinforced concrete footings are all in! One of the oddities of digging up the floor was that on one side we found clay (as expected) but on the other side we found ash, so they had to dig deeper on that side to find undisturbed earth. Can’t wait until they can get the new columns in!
Basement stairs now that the weird enclosure is gone! On the right is the parging that was never covered up.
Because we had the bagster, we also decided to remove the strange “vestibule” at the bottom of the stairs. Before you would go down the stairs and then open a door to get into the basement. I am not sure what the logic on that one was, I think maybe to keep the cold air from coming up the stairs. I hope to remedy this in other ways.
