Up Up and Awaayyyy - Taking Down Our Chimney

Sunday, we had things coming down from the sky. It was white little things with six sided shapes in a very frosty cold natural composition. Yep. It was snowing in Wisconsin. It was actually really pretty and it started Sunday night. Watching the snowflakes reflected in the new backyard light on the flagpole was almost magical. It was like little glittery crystals coming down into the beams of light.

By Monday morning, we woke up to snow on the ground. It wasn't much, and we knew it was going to melt quickly. But it sure looked nice. It clung to all of the roofs, the tree branches, and the grass.

I was out on the road early because I had to get going up to Peshtigo to the vet's office with my little buddy Finnegan. Everything was frosted over, and it looked like a winter wonderland.

I snapped a few pictures while I pulled over on the side of the road. I don't do this while I'm driving of course!

I figured I would get a few shots before the sun came out and melted it all away. I was a few minutes early for this little guy's appointment, so I was able to pull over to take these pictures.

And if this little guy had his way, he would prefer that I didn't go at all and brought him right back home. Just look at that face! He knew we were going back to the doggy doctor and he was not happy about it.  It's amazing how they know things, and figured it out.

If dogs spoke in swear words 

I'm sure he would have said:

"|₩☆~$(<×$%]¿《~●"

I tearfully dropped him off.  Any time a dog has to go under anesthetic, there is a risk.  I said to be a Good Boy, and let them take him inside. 

I had to get my butt in gear and get back home. Steve was waiting for the next contractor to come. Like I said in my previous blogs, we've had to hire a couple contractors to do some of the heavy duty stuff that we aren't able to do ourselves any more. Like blowing in the new insulation or getting rid of the bats in the attic. This is the third contractor now--- this is the guy that's going to take down our broken chimney to a lower level and cap it off!

He pulled on up in front of the house with his big equipment and we were ready to roll!

His name is Gary Vandenhouten. We met him back when we lived in Chilton.  He was taking down a chimney and cutting some trees for a neighbor down the street. We had him come over and take care of the chimney on our house in Chilton as well. We found him to be a very likeable guy, hardworking, a small business owner, and willing to do a good job for a good day's pay. Hard to find those kind of guys anymore!

https://www.facebook.com/Gvgaryvandenhouten

Here is the front and back of 

his business card:

Gary has a cottage up this way, another 30 or 40 miles beyond Oconto. He promised us that sometime this fall he would be able to come up and take care of our chimney on this house. He had planned to take his equipment up here to do a couple other jobs plus some things at his own cottage. If we could arrange a couple of our neighbors to have some work done, it would make it more advantageous for him to come and spend a couple days up here.  He arrived with his big powered high lift device, ready to go to work.

Here's what we needed to have done: We have this huge clay brick chimney on our home. We are not using it anymore for either the fireplace in the living room or for a furnace or hot water heater vent. Everything now is vented out the side of the house for the furnace, and the water heater is electric. We are not using the fireplace in the living room, and it had been long ago blocked off by the previous owners. Someday we may put a vent-free natural gas fireplace in it's place, or maybe an electric one, but we will never again be using the dual chimney flues. 

As you can see, we are missing quite a few bricks. We are worried about the chimney falling apart or crashing into the attic. It's best to take care of these things before they ever get any worse. So now was the perfect time to do it!

Our proposed plan with Gary is to take down the chimney about this far to where the good bricks start. Then he will cap it off permanently and seal it to make sure we don't get any water or bats intruding into the old flues. We are not in any position to completely remove the chimney from the entire roof and attic or patch up the roof. So the next best bet is to get it down to where it's structurally sound - and then permanently cap it off.

Gary got all of his equipment together and drove around to our backyard. We took down the four mesh panels of the doggy potty yard fence so he could gain access from the back of the house. It was an easier position for him to work from, compared to the front of the house. This is quite a piece of wonderful equipment and he can move it up, around, and down at will--- with the little controllers located up in the basket with him.  He is a One Man Show.  

There was still a little bit of snow on the roof as he was starting to work. But that's okay, he is safe inside of his fenced-in basket to do the project. Here he is starting on the very first rows of bricks. It was mortared together stronger than we originally thought. We have been thinking that the bricks would just fall apart in his hand. (they did on our house in Chilton!)  But no, he was using an air powered chisel tool to hammer them apart brick-by-brick and stack them on the platform next to him.

Each time he would bring a load down, we transfered them onto our trailer. He was making good progress and Steve was keeping up quite well on the bottom with loading things up.

You can see here the charred area and smell the acrid old smoke from where there had been a chimney fire at one time long ago! There was also a sticky residue that may have been from the fireman's flame retardant foam all down the inside of the flue. Look at the holes that were burned right through the chimney flue liner blocks!

If we had ever tried to light a fire in this fireplace, it would have been extremely damaging and dangerous. I'm glad we never attempted it. Of course we would never do that without a thorough chimney inspection anyhow. Any person buying a home should have the chimney inspected, because you never know what happened in the past. So, the unanimous conclusion is that it's best that we take this down and get rid of the dangerous condition.

The sun came out and melted away all of the snow. Working conditions were really pretty good as he maneuvered this high lift up and down with each load. 

Once the snow was off the roofs,

he got off the lift to pick up any stray pieces that fell down.

Steve and I went over to the city refuse department to unload the bricks each time. This is a free service from our city where we can unload them into specially designated areas. What a great way to dispose of this mess, without having to go out to a landfill somewhere or find somebody who is looking for rubble and fill on a building site to dump it.

I think it turned out to be a pretty nice day for him to work up there. The sun was shining to warm things up and there wasn't much wind. By noon he completed with ripping down all of the bricks.  

He cleaned up the entire roof area, including any surrounding little pieces that may have fallen onto the roof shingles. Gary was very thorough and attentive to his work to make sure he was not leaving any mess behind at all.

Gary had sheet metal along as well as a press break device to create the corners and the edges and custom build us a chimney cap. Some people want chimney caps with screens to be able to still use their fireplace but keep out birds and bats. Other people, like us, want a complete chimney cap to seal the entire top. Using special mortar adhesive in caulk tubes, he sealed the cap down on all sides to make sure nothing could ever intrude in that space again. It sure looks good to us. Job well done!

This is quite the fun 

"Big Boy Sandbox Toy", 

isn't it? 

Now we had a little project for him to help us out with, and then it was time for him to move on to all of our neighbors. We made contact with a couple of other people around the neighborhood for him to do jobs for them as well.

Steve had one angled tree limb on a crazy Box Elder tree that needed to come down. It was growing overhead and blocking the growth of a beautiful black walnut tree and a crabapple tree underneath it. But if Steve had cut it off with just our chainsaw and dropped it, it would have ruined the good trees below. So Gary was able to cut this one branch off into smaller pieces and load them onto his high lift.

From there, he moved on to the other jobs with the neighbors. He was working on their chimneys and trees and had enough lined up for the next day....  he left his equipment here parked safely overnight to come back again today to finish up for our neighbors. We are glad we were able to make it worth his while. We gave him a nice tip as well as his pay for a good job well done. 

After Gary drove away over to our neighbor's house, Steve and I put the four mesh panels and the gate back up on the doggy potty yard. Everything was back together again and we were happy with his job that he did for us.

In the meantime, while all this was going on, a little girl doggie was terrified of all the scary noises going on outside and up on the roof. She was just lost without her support buddy, Finnegan. They are so bonded together and rely on each other.  She was hiding out wherever she could and I was trying to keep her as calm as possible in between our loads to the city refuse dump. You can see her here hiding back in the corner watching as I went in and out of the door.

She was forlorn and heartbroken, 

her buddy was gone 

and she didn't know what was happening.

By 3:30, we got the magical phone call that said we could come and pick up our little Finnegan. His dental surgery went quite well. Not only did they remove the one offending infected tooth, but they had to remove two more as well! His teeth are in very rough shape because of really bad genetics and bad breeding from the hoarding situation he came from. They said there was actually calcium growth between the teeth locking them together that needed to be broken apart. We also opted to pay a little extra for laser healing which would be a lot easier on him with less bleeding and discomfort. During this covid-19 situation, everything at the veterinarian is curbside service.  After we handled all the paperwork and a credit card payment over the phone, they brought out this Groggy Doggy to us! 

He looked quite bewildered and battered and seemed to be very relieved that he was going home again. We got one slight tail wag and that was about it. He crashed on the back seat of the car and was out like a light. Little Binney was so happy to have her buddy back. She sniffed him all over and licked the tip of his nose to let him know that it was all going to be okay now.

When we got home, he wobbled around a little bit like a drunken sailor. He was able to do a little bathroom break in the yard. Then he managed to come back in and plopped down on a sheepskin to lay at our feet. Zonk! 

Binney was his little nurse and sat by, carefully tending over him and seriously wondering what the heck happened to her buddy.

Later on in the evening, he surprised us by barking a little bit at the deer in the backyard. Then he ate a full slice of ham, cut into little pieces, and we hand fed him one tiny square at a time. He drank some water so we knew things were back on track. Then he spent the rest of the evening curled up on a quilt on my lap, totally enjoying the warmth and comfort of being back home again.  I was gently rubbing his cheeks and chin. We watched TV all evening long, and I didn't want to move until it was time to go to bed.

Normally both of our dogs sleep on little doggie beds on the floor, near the base of our bed. But last night, we decided to treat them by letting them both lay up on the bed with us. Of course this is difficult, even in a king-size bed, because they lay on top of the blankets and trap our feet. I think they both got better sleep last night than Steve and I did!

Our little guy seems pretty chipper this morning. 

We are hand feeding him some ham again. 

Hope this doesn't become a "thing"!

~~~~~~~~

Oh, as a PS.in my last blog, the photos left the impression that I removed the entire piece of glass from the fireplace screen and that it was an open space. No it's not. There's actually a clear sheet of a polymer type product still in that space. It's just that it's so clear you cannot see it in the photos.

I have this handy-dandy can of etching spray that I had used on the lacey door window of the front porch down in Chilton. I figured this would be really good to cover that shinier piece and make it more clouded like the rest of the screen.

It worked! 

Now I will touch up the silicone edge 

with a bit of black paint. 

The weatherman is predicting some warmer weather in the 50's later this week, and maybe into next week.  We might get in ONE more camping trip.  We will see. 

Brick by Brick or Taking Things in Another Direction

I wasn't sure which title best fits this blog so I decided to use both of them.

Dontcha you just love it when a plan comes together?  Or two plans? or three plans? Or four?

As most of you know,

 we have a 103 year old home. 

I love to call it Our Old House. 

Up on the roof is also a 103 year old chimney....  The chimney is only used now by our water heater vent system. The furnace comes out the side of the wall now with the PVC high efficiency pipes.

We did notice that we could see missing chinking between the bricks and it was in sore need of tuckpointing. What we didn't know until just a few weeks ago is that there is water running in between the bricks, and down into our attic. From there it was leaking onto our plaster ceiling over our upstairs hallway.

Time for repairs!

Plan A.... Steve's First Choice was to grab a long ladder and jump up there and do some tuckpointing himself. I don't think so! This is a two-story house, plus 5 more steps to get up inside of it, plus the height of our attic makes this pretty much three stories high. Three stories plus a man just three months away from retirement do not mix! I am feeling mortality and caution with old age. Him, not so much.  I told him old bodies no longer bounce.  Nor did I go this far in life with him to live the rest as a widow or with a guy in a wheelchair because he wants to be stupidly brave and macho.

I told him we had to come up with a better plan.

Plan B... He decided to hire somebody to come and give us an estimate of taking the chimney down to a level just above the roof line and putting a new cap on it for the vent for the water heater.

That sounded agreeable with me.

We contacted a local contractor who came over to give us an estimate. He went up there on the roof and said the bricks are in very bad shape. Actually, most of them are already loose, and he could do the job for $800 complete with a new cap on top. The only problem was he couldn't start until the middle of November.

So we kept it on the back burner and figured we would wait until then. That is really not the best idea though you know, to wait.

Of course with all the abundance of rain that we have been having, we decided we should speed this up a bit and get it fixed now before the weather turns. What if in November the guy calls and says sorry, we do not have time to do it?

I know it is still in Steve's mind to do it himself. Steve went ahead and measured the dimensions by going up into the attic to measure on the chimney itself right before it goes up through the roof. He made up a wonderful new cap with a wide flange that could slide over the existing chimney once it was taken down to a more sensible level. On the top he put on a specially-designed vent for water heaters.

Now how do we get the bricks down and get this cap up there?

Plan C ... We decided to try to rent a powered boom lift device that has a large flat wide deck that he can raise up to do the work ourselves.  He figured he could drop the bricks down one at a time through the chimney and I could pull them out through the bottom clean-out access door!  Either that or set a big bucket on the lift deck and put the bricks into that and lower each time he reaches its weight limit.  That sounded good to me. The cost is $160 for four hours or $240 for a full day.

He has rented this same powered boom lift machine in the past a couple times, for work at the park. The only problem is that we don't have a truck to tow it because it's very large. He made a deal with a co-worker to use his truck to do this job, so he called the hardware store in the neighboring town about 6 miles away. He had it all planned to do this work last Saturday while the weather was nice, but the employees at the hardware store said that they didn't know if it was rented or not. And their boss wasn't there so they didn't know if he rented it out or not. Nobody seemed to know anything and they said we had to wait till the last minute and try to call there and see if we can rent it on Saturday. Well that didn't work out and nobody still knows when it can be rented because nobody knows anything there. ARGGHH!

That brings us to Plan D.....  We were taking a walk and noticed a neighbor was having a very large tree cut down in his front yard. He had a contractor there with a powered boom lift who was working very hard to remove this big huge tree, limb by limb. We stopped to chat with the neighbor while we watched. It turns out that right before the tree job was started, the neighbor also had this contractor take down his chimney! The very thing we needed done to ours!

Well, wouldn't you know that here was a guy 3 houses away across the street doing exactly what we needed done at our house.

We waited until the contractor guy took a break and Steve spoke to him and got his business card. He had a couple other jobs lined up but would be here on Tuesday morning to take care of our chimney.  He drove past and eyeballed our chimney and driveway access and quoted us $200.00!

Gary Vandenhouten

GV Construction

roofing - windows - siding

920-418-3684

garyvandenhouten@yahoo.com

Sure enough----  he drove the machine right up the street and into the driveway. We had a little discussion first while he told me what he was going to do. He looked over the cap Steve made and said it would work well.  We also had ready two big tubes of masonry caulk that Steve had purchased in advance.

They started at 11 a.m.,

 it was amazing to watch them take down this chimney 

---- Brick by Brick. 

Almost every brick was totally loose and could be lifted off by hand! They were very careful not to drop any bricks on our roofing or rain gutters.  They took down each load of bricks setting on the platform next to them, and piled them on our lawn. We said we would dispose of them.

Back up they went for another load. Most of the mortar was missing on the entire chimney! There were only two sections of brick that were still mortared together that they were able to lift off and set onto the platform. The two top sections of chimney flue liner came out with ease, leaving it perfectly level at the height we needed for the cap without having to cut into a third one.

Once he had it all leveled off and the bricks wiped off. He applied a liberal dose of the mortar cement from the big caulking tube. They carefully set the new cap in place. Well done!

Can you believe that they removed all those bricks in a half hour? Then they got the new cap on, brought the machine down, loaded up all their cords, hoses and loaded up their air compressor.  Ready to go in less than one hour.

 Best $200 we ever spent!

Off they went on their merry way, 

out our driveway..... 

and down the street.  

Gotta love small towns! 

~~~~~

Here are a few photos I took this morning as the sun was coming up. It was very humid when we woke up at 6 am, and the fog rolled in as the sun was rising. It was really amazing it went from clear skies to total dense fog in the matter of a few minutes.

An hour later, the sun rose a little higher and burned it all off. We had gorgeous sunshine and clear blue skies all day long.

~~~~~~~

I will have some interesting stuff to write about after tomorrow for my quilting and fibery reader people. Mary Fons from the Fons and Porter  Love of Quilting TV show on PBS is giving a two-part hands on workshop here in Oshkosh. Of course I am enrolled in both classes morning and afternoon. Then there is a free option open lecture in the evening to attend.

It's going to be a full day long quilting event for this quilty crafty person.