Chapter 13 - Friends to the Rescue

In the last 3 months, we have filled 9 construction trash dumpsters! That is a lot of garbage! By the time we are done, they may end up dedicating a portion of the city landfill to the "House of Lisa Lane" or maybe just "Coffey's Corner of Crap." We have had a lot of help from a lot of wonderful friends on the distruction and renovation of the house so far.

To help fill up a few of the last dumpsters, we enlisted the help of Steve's long-time friend, John Gilbert. He offered to bring his tractor and scoop and dump the rock and rubble that is just too heavy for us to move. John came over to Lisa Lane at 6:00am several mornings to clean up the debris scattered around the house. Steve and John wrapped chains around some of the trees and large cactus to rip them out of the ground. They demolished a few of the ugly brick planter boxes surrounding the front of the house.

The jacuzzi has been a perplexing and maddening problem since we bought the house because it is so large and so heavy and so wedged into the side porch. We tried saws and sledge hammers but nothing seemed to dent the relic until John chained the spa to his tracker and yanked it right off the porch. John has been a wonderful help!

So, we were stuck - we have a a large dumpster and a large jacuzzi but we can't get the jacuzzi into the dumpster. The Guamanian Friends to the Rescue! My friends from work, Joyce and Leina rounded up their men and helped us out. I couldn't believe how many of the men from Guam showed up to help us, including Joyce's Dad! (Apparently, she couldn't stop him from coming over!) There was Joyce's husband-Ron, Ron's brother-Jeff, Jeff's son-Junior, Joyce's niece's boyfriend-Frankie, Joyce's dad-Antonio and Leina's husband-Jay.

First, they debated on exactly what to do and then they decided it was best to go up and over.

Moving the dumpster to the side.
Testing the weight of the jacuzzi.












Going up... and going over!

Goodby to the turquoise jacuzzi and the end of an era. The last of the 70's has left the house!


Steve and I are so grateful for all the help that we have received on this project so far. Thanks to our incredibly wonderful friends, John Gilbert, The Guam Men, Stacy Slade and Steven Chidister!

Chapter 12 - Getting rid of the South-side Patio

On the south side of the house, right off of the Living Room is a patio with a turquoise jacuzzi. This part of the house, like the original front door , was done in a hacinda style and it has cast-iron gates fixed between large, wide columns that create a very dark, inhospitable, caged-like atomosphere. I don't think that a jacuzzi party would be very fun in here. Especially with all the cobwebs and spiders hanging out.

Our plans call for a transformation from Mexican Hacinda into Tuscanny Villa that includes an open, light airy veranda with classic Italian stone columns. The heavy stucco ceiling will be replaced with beautiful tongue-and-grove cedar. We started to carefully dismantle the columns in order to see how the patio was actually contructed. It would obviously be very important not to remove any load-baring columns so the roof doesn't collapse. (Please! we have enough deliberate destruction going on!) Our good friend and construction guru, Stacey Slade gave us his advice on what to remove and what to keep as we chipped off the stucco to find heavy chicken-wire and plywood. We discovered that the big fat wide columns were just for looks and did not have the more important role of holding up the roof. So, we decided to take them out all together.

Stacey loaned us a large grinder and reciprocating saw and Steve went to town, cutting them into pieces and then pulling them down. It has really hard work carving through the cement, 6 2-by-4s, chicken wire and very large head boards. Then Steve had to push, pull and wiggle the super heavy piece until it disconnected and fell to the ground. He managed to get rid of several columns in one day but there are a few more to go.

It was exhausting watching Steve do all that work.....

Chapter 11 - Exterior Demolition

If you thought the outside of the house was a little sad and dumpy before, then we have added "demolished" and "dismantled" to the picture. Steve and Steven completely ripped off the face of the front entrance. It had to be done. A little repair and paint job would be like putting lipstick on a pig and who wants to kiss a dressed-up pig? Or buy a house with zero curb appeal? We are completely changing the facade of the house to change the entire look and it's personality.

The front entrance used to have a low overhang that made the entry very dark, like walking into a cave, certainly not inviting. The outside foyer was taken down and then the balcony, which was rotten through and very unsafe, was destroyed. The entrance will change radically when we add a very open, 2-story portico with rock pillars and 14 feet tall front doors.

With the front of the house liberated and ready for a new contemporary make-over, we moved to the back of the house to continue our destruction. The 2nd floor balcony off of the master bedroom was covered in decayed artifical grass and Steve pulled up the floor boards piece by piece. Then, he took down the beams. In the matter of a couple hours, we had a 2-story free-fall to the cold hard concrete patio below that if we ever get too discouraged with this project, we can use for relief and escape. Ha.

Our annihilation advances to the side of the house where the garage door and driveway is located. The utilities - power and cable are already located here but we are adding gas and water to the house this week. The house has always been on a water-well but in our inspection we discovered that the well pump was broken. We also discovered that to subdivide the 1-acre land, we would be required to hook up to City Water. Thanks to a state program, we are able to hook up to the water line for a minimal fee. The City will pay 85% of the cost but of course, take our water rights as payment. We need to dig a trench from the street through the driveway to connect a water pipe to the house.

And while we are at it, we are hooking up to the City Gasline since natural gas is preferred for the kitchen appliances, heating/air-conditioning and water-dryer hook ups here in Las Vegas and is a big selling point. To allow the utilities access to the house, both of the Steves had to help jackhammer half of the driveway which was completely exhausting using one of those gigantic professional contruction-sized jackhammers.

Chapter 10 - Ceilings & Walls

I’ve heard it said many times…”the older the home, the more problems waiting to be uncovered”…and this home is old. Oh no! One problem we didn’t anticipate was with the walls. At first glance, we simply thought we had some wallpaper to remove and then some painting to do. But no matter what we tried on the wallpaper it just wouldn’t come off without tearing the wallboard. This really baffled and frustrated us because we thought it was all ready to just come down almost by itself. (If you look closely at some of the earlier pictures you can see spots where the paper is falling off the wall.) We talked to a couple of pros about our troubles, and at first thought their advice sounded extreme as they told us that it would ultimately be quicker and easier to rip down the walls and put up new drywall. Also, the walls would give us the look of a new home rather than walls 30+ years old with several layers of paint and wallpaper buildup on them.

As it turned out, we weren’t ready to put the sledge hammers away just yet. For those of you who haven’t swung a hammer through a wall before, you just don’t know what you’re missing! At first you feel a bit naughty knocking a hole in the wall, but after your first couple of swings it’s pretty fun! As you can see from these pictures, approx 80-90% of the walls are now gone. It only took us a couple of days to bring it all down and outside to another waiting dumpster (#7 and counting).

You guessed it, more problems were uncovered as we ripped down the walls. We found a few plumbing, electrical and framing issues that will need to be fixed before the new wall panels can go back up. Nothing alarming, really, and its best I guess to get things corrected and done right. Opening up the walls will also make it a lot easier for the electrician and plumber to do their work. With the walls opened up, the plumber can more easily run his pipe for the natural gas line, and we’re asking the electrician to install a few more lights and switches for a minimal cost.

When it came to tackling the ceilings, thank goodness we didn’t have to resort to taking those down too. Every ceiling in the home (including the high vaulted ceiling in the great room) was covered in plaster popcorn bumps. At first, we used a squirt bottle to spray water on the ceiling, which loosened the plaster enough to be scraped off. The process worked well, but it was slow because the hand spray bottle was so small. Looking for a faster process, we thought to fill a large bug sprayer with water instead and it worked great! We were able to spray down a much larger area faster and move right through the entire house in no time. The 70’s are almost gone now from this home!