Well, we visited the house last night and much to our dismay, the previous owners had not taken all of their belongings out of the house yet. Probably around 60% of their stuff was still in the house. We met with our real estate agent and then talked to the sellers. They've agreed to remove everything by 6pm Sunday.

So, after visiting the house today, we didn't do much other than take some measurements and do some investigation. We created a hole in a closet on the 3rd floor to get access to the attic space. We wanted to have access for Monday, as we're having an energy audit done and one of the things they look at is attic insulation. We have about 1-2" of loose fill insulation, it looks wool or an older variant of fibre glass. The good news is that we don't appear to have any vermiculite insulation up there.

Also, we made a small hole in the wall in a room on the second floor to determine if our house is a brick veneer over wood framing, or if it's a double-brick structure. After removing a very small section of plaster and lathe and making a small hole in some thin paper, we discovered that there is wood strapping over what looks like a barn board material. I used a 1.5" hole drilling attachment on my drill and exposed the same loose fill insulation that is in the attic. That fills a cavity behind the barn board that is probably 1" thick. Then more barn board. We left it there, we're not sure if there's double brick or not behind there. The cavity doesn't seem thick enough for framing and I doubt they'd have two layers of framing. I'll do more investigation tomorrow.

We also figured out the location of the gas lines, and how we might put in a small laundry room in an old sunroom off the kitchen, and how to rework the kitchen to make it usable. We still haven't made any decisions but this is all part of the process.

Lastly, we discovered a tile floor section in front of the chimney bulkhead in a second floor room. It appears that at one time, they had a working fireplace there that was removed. We might consider putting one back on.

I refrained from taking photos of the interior as I wanted to wait until the house was empty. I'll take some more tomorrow, provided that the sellers have removed everyting by then.