The Un-hole-y House

The week got off to a bad start as the contractor roughed in the plumbing to the pantry that we’re turning into a half bath. There was water left in the basement and a sizeable piece of wood missing from the floor joist. One of the contractors had accidentally cut into a heating pipe and had to fix the heating system. There is still air in the lines but the front bedrooms are getting heat. Once summer arrives we will add bleeder valves to the radiators to avoid this problem in the future. Vince, the general contractor made sure the floor joist was correctly reinforced.

The mudroom just off the den is going to be turned into a sunroom. This was the place the previous owner kept the dogs during the day. It was extremely smelly and scratched up. The contractors removed the windows, doors, and brick wall this week. They will begin the sunroom wall installation soon.

The tree guy was able to remove the last tree on the right side of the house. He had given us an estimate to remove the other trees but it was too high. We got a couple other estimates and hired a guy named Snake. Snake and his crew removed a lot of the trees yesterday and will complete the job today. Once the trees are removed, the roof replacement can begin.

The big project that we tackled over our three day weekend was to repair the 5” holes in the walls. The process wasn’t as straight forward as it seems. The wall varied in thickness from ½ inch to 1 ½ inches. Each room was like a giant puzzle – we had to make sure that we had the right plug in the right hole.


To start the patching process, 1” x 2” boards were cut to 8” lengths. We then had to screw them to the backsides of the walls. We drilled a shallow countersink for each screw. Every plug and hole edge was beveled. The plugs were then screwed to the boards to fill the voids. Even though we tried to work out the puzzle, there were still a lot of plugs with high spots. It was a good opportunity to use our new orbital sander. Dust was everywhere, filling the entire house with a white cloud. Fortunately, it was a very nice day, and we were able to open the windows to let out the dust.

After we sanded all the high spots, we started mixing and applying the drywall compound. We were able to apply two coats to most of the holes before the weekend was over. The contractors told us yesterday that the patches were very well done and were surprised that we were the ones to complete the job. In all, there were about 150 holes to patch. It was a job well worth the effort.