Nails - the basement remodel

Maybe I am a foolish biscuit and I should have monetized my journey. I'm easily 50% finished with our basement remodel and it's been a journey but instead of getting clever and setting up a time lapse for you all to share in our sweaty summer I will write the occasional update here instead.

I know. C’est l’école qui est très vieille.

Visualize me digging out tonnes of soil and passing it through a basement window to shift dirt via our weekly city garbage pick up like we're extras in The Great Escape. Picture me vacuuming out a century of cobwebs from the rafters. That took several days. Now picture li'l ol' me hanging by a pair of needle-nose pliers or crowbar from said rafters as I laboriously pull dozens of giant iron nails from the beams. All of them precariously at forehead height before we removed the dirt to lower the floor / raise the ceiling.

Wires and beams and vents and spiderwebs galore!

But my question remains and I pose it to you. Iron nail overkill. The beams were polka-dotted with these giant nails and I spent hours pulling them out. (Followed by dragon boat practice because rawr I want the muscular arms.) The house was built in 1921. Why did they require such giant nails and what in the world were they securing on these beams anyway?

The size of this honker!

I wonder what they kept on these nails. What manner of wires or sides of beef. Prior to our recent digging, the basement area we affectionally call "the dirt room" was a mere crawl space where we had to hunch over to go inside. Cleaning out the sump pump turned into a filthy adventure. I'm excited to share more of the journey with you but meanwhile I continue to pull these from the beams. I hear the distinctive squeak of iron unwillingly sliding against old dry wood in my dreams. But I admit, there's something thrilling about suspending my weight from one of these nails and feeling it finally shift.