Our little remodel

moving day v.2

Let me start by wishing a Happy holidays to all of "Our Little Remodel" readers.  Today's title refers to Gina's Grandpa moving in with us Jan 1. 

Last time we left off with the green bedroom ready for him to move in and me getting ready to lay tile in the 2nd bathroom.  This second bathroom has been a unique part of the project for us.  First of all it is the first time I have been under a hard deadline to get something done.  Secondly, we wanted to make this bathroom handicapped friendly for now while still letting us change back to a more standard bath in the future without having to do a full remodel of the room. 

First I had to install the door to the dog room.

Normally the doors go in after all the drywall and flooring is done, but in this case I needed to have the door installed first  because the aluminum trim/threshold needed to fit inside the door trim and jamb to look right.

Next I layed the same tile that we put in our master bathroom.  I then grouted the tile.

 

Normally, It is not standard practice to put down the finished floor before drywall gets hung, but I had to in this case because the handicapped tub we are installing sits on top of the finished floor and then you drywall up to it.

 
With the tub in place I then built the end wall on the right side of the tub, drywalled and then textured the room.

 

The other unique part of this bathroom was the wheelchair sink.  This is a big sink that is cantilevered off of the wall.  Here is a shot of the back of the sink.

 
There are expensive mounting brackets you can buy for these sinks, and they are certainly worth the money in commercial exposures where people might try sitting on the sink.  We however didn't want to spend the $400+ so I went to my local welder buddy, Robert (Bucknife) Harmon and had him fabricate a really high tech solution.

 
And there they are.  Two pieces of steel square tube welded at 90 degrees and lagged to the stud in the wall.  I also had him put some leveling bolts on the front.  The sink will just slide onto the arms of the bracket and then lagged into a extra piece of framing I put in between the two studs (not pictured above).

Here is a picture of the sink being tested for height.

 
With the correct height determined, the sink came off and the drywall gets hung around the brackets.

 

Now that all the texturing is done the painting can be done and the room starts to look complete.

 

 
 With that done I finished up the electric, and as of now I still need to get towel bars hung, cabinetry and trim made and installed and the washer/dryer installed, but at least it is functional in time for the move.  Next time I'll have some pictures of the finished product.

See you again soon!

 

Long time coming

Hello again from the worst blogger in the history of blogging.  Some of you have probably wondered whether or not we gave up on our little remodel, but rest assured, we have not.  We have just been taking it far easier the last 4 months.  Not that we haven't been doing anything, just not at the pace we were previously and on not quite bloggable stuff.  I mean one weekend we did some landscaping....

 
We laid down pavers and then mulched.  Not exactly worth a blog all by itself. 

Another weekend was spent cleaning up after a windstorm that took out a few trees and building my bat houses.  Long time followers will remember the May 2009 entry with me discovering a fully functioning ecosystem behind our wood siding.  I actually appreciate the bats being around, after all they are a great natural bug control, I just don't like the idea of co-habitating with them.  So I built bat houses....

 
And pictured above is one of them placed behind the new woodpile and the beside the leftover limestone from the retaining walls. 

I've also done some work finishing up the dog room, which is where we left off last time.

 

This room is now about done except I will add a small desk and some cabinetry opposite the pictured wall above.

Another project that has been finished is the heated water into our concrete floors.

 
As I've mentioned before, the floor in the porch is heated by a small water heater (which will be cheap to replace) meanwhile the rest of the equipment is pretty typical for a radiant heated floor.  My favorite part is the microbubble resorber (the little brass deal above the green expansion tank).  A fancy name for something that takes air bubbles out of the line.  Now that November is here we have been enjoying that warm floor!

Instead of starting on the kitchen, as the last post said we were going to, we decided instead to finish another bedroom and the 2nd bath.  This is because Gina's grandpa (who we bought the house from) is going to come stay with us starting at the beginning of the year.  This has made the second bathroom a little more interesting because we want the bath to be more handicap friendly while not committing ourself to huge remodel when grandpa is no longer staying with us.  We are going to have a wheelchair type sink where the shower was originally going to go and we are putting in a walk in bathtub instead of the soaker tub.  We will have more on that in the coming weeks.  For now.....

 
Above is a shot of some of the rough in plumbing done and the hardibacker down for the tile to adhere to.

We also finished grandpa's old room, or as we call it now, the green bedroom.  First I had to make some trim.  Below is 100 board feet of trim. 

 
Kinda scary but this was enough for one bedroom and half of the hallway, which means I've got a lot more to do before we are done with the house!

 
Above is just a shot of the baseboard down and below is more of the low voltage plates finished up.

 

And last of all, before the weather turned cold I built a ramp to the front door.

I started by making 4 joists out of treated wood, and then finished it up with composite decking.  Nothing permanent here it just sits on the ground.

 

So there is an update for the last four months.  Like I said it's been nice to take it a little easier and  now we can go into the cold winter months relaxed and ready for inside work.  See you again soon.... (this time I really mean it!)

 

 

Getting Settled

 
As promised, today I am going to share with you what the house looks like now that we are living in it.... well the master suite anyway.  And update you on the progress made the last few weeks.

Here are some (by now pretty familiar shots) pictures of the master closet now filled with lots of Gina's clothes and a few of mine!

You may notice that there are no mens shoes present on the shelf.  Those of you who are married, of course, understand this.  My shoes are in the proper bedroom in the wall of cabinets.

 And below is a view of the bed itself.

We also have the dining room table set up.  Mom dropped by with some flowers the other day and of course we don't have any vases unpacked, so thank you Canada Dry!

Over the last few weeks the light fixtures and fans have come in for the kitchen area.  I have been installing them now before I start on cabinets and have to work around them.  Below is a shot of all the peak boxes along the length of the kitchen.

I like the big light bulb look.  Gina was worried I would hate them but I think they are a lot of fun.  They will be the pendants above the island.  The fans are little 24" fans that work perfectly in the space we had.

The green bedroom has also been set up for when we have company over.  Below is a shot of the closet doors which recently arrived.

And below is a shot of the bed.

At the time of our last visit, we were fighting with the concrete floor in the porch.  Since that time we purchased a high quality sealer recommended by the colorant salesperson and our results were much better.  Here are a few shots of the porch now partially moved into.

The last project we've been working on the last few days is finishing up the mud room off of the lake.  Last weekend we got the ceiling up.  I had the rest of the porch done, but had never gotten around to painting more of the reclaimed redwood for this room.  Now it's done.

And with that done we hung the sheetrock.  You may notice that the floor appears more glossy and this is because we put extra coats of the sealer on out here anticipating it to have heavier traffic.  We also determined that we have enough redwood left to do a wainscoating of it around the lower half of the walls and under the windows.

So there it is.  To be honest we have been taking it a little easier the past few weeks.  Kind of the calm before the storm that will be the kitchen.  Hopefully we will have enough saved up for the lumber next month and will get started on that.  Until then I am enjoying just easing around on a few smaller, easier and less stressful projects.

  

   
  
  

odds and ends

Greetings and salutations, since our last visit we have been finishing up a few projects before we start on the kitchen.  We'll start with the most recent one. 

Over the past few weeks we have been trying to seal the new concrete floor.  I didn't mention it in the last post because it was not going well at that time (notice I said trying above!)   First a little background: the floor was poured on a Tuesday.  Wednesday the Adams crew came back and cut the relief joints and poured more concrete (but more on that later).  Thursday we mopped the floor until all the dust from the cutting was cleaned up.  On Friday we applied the first coat of acrylic sealer to the floor.  We used a roller just like the instructions on the product said and as it dried we noticed a bubbling effect.  I have finished a lot of wood in my day so I wasn't too worried at that point, the first coat never looks very good.  On Saturday we took some scotch brite pads attached to my random orbit sander and tried to smooth out the first coat before applying the second.  It looked like I expected at this point so we proceeded with the second coat.  Gina brushed on the second coat to avoid air bubbles and  to achieve a smoother coat and as it dried it made the high points of the first coat even more pronounced.  In short the second coat looked much worse than the first.

With that we quit for the weekend.  On Monday I called Larry Adams and he put me in contact with the concrete color salesman.  I told him the name of the product we bought and that we got it at Menard's.  It was at this point that I expected a comment like "K-mart sucks Ray" because I already was assuming what we bought was the problem.  The color guy confirmed my suspicion and proceeded to tell me I would have to strip the sealer I put on.  So off to the store I go to get xylene to strip my first attempts. 

For those of you who have never worked with xylene let me try to put it into perspective:  If the Sears tower was a scale of carcinogenic, caustic and terrible smelling solvents, paint thinner would be the ground level, lacquer thinner would be on the fifth floor and xylene would be the observation deck.  I'll admit that there are probably worse solvents out there, but I haven't met them, and after my xylene experience, I don't want to.  Sooooooo...

Gina and I spent 5 hours with our plastic gloves and masks crawling over the floor with scrub brushes and scrappers to get the stuff off.  So I learned two lessons the hard way once again  .  Number one, don't cheap out on finishing products, and number two, don't trust anyone at any big box store.  Just because they work there does not mean they have received any training or have any type of expertise.

So at this point we are debating whether to wax the floor, knowing that we will have to reapply it every now and then or to try a better quality acrylic sealer recommended by the concrete color sales guy.  At this point, we are leaning to trying the new acrylic in the smaller mud room area and see how it turns out.  I'll keep you posted.

The other part of the porch project that we worked on (and went much more smoothly) was the new exterior doors.  One out of the mudroom and pictured above, one out of the west side of the porch.  At this point I am pretty much done with the porch for now.  I will come back to it and drywall and trim out windows once the kitchen is done.

The other project has a longer history.  Late last summer I came home one day to find two young men in my backyard.

Regular readers of this great literary masterpiece should recognize the young man in red as Brandon.  The other young man is Travis Peterson.  Gina had hired them to come and start a job I was refusing to start at that time.

That job was unstacking the limestone retaining walls around the walkout basement door.  This area was a problem for many years before we bought the house.  A drain that didn't work at the foot of the steps, the limestone retaining walls that were beginning to buckle and a door that had both bottom corners rotted out which let copious amounts of water into our basement with every rainfall. 

 
As you can see from the picture above it came on a day shortly after a rain.  I think that's why she got so fired up.  I do have to give those two young men credit.  They did a very hard and dirty job pretty darn quick and didn't complain once.

Why didn't I want to get this taken care of?  I'll admit every time I looked at it in the context of everything else we had to do with the house, it rated high in the "need to do" category but very low in the "want to do" list.  So Gina took it upon herself to start.  I was not very happy because I knew that I would have to finish it. But I was determined to put it off until this spring.  Which was nice because the hole in front of the door was a nice pond all spring.

The preparation for the porch concrete got us fired back up on this.  Since Larry showed up with a full crew to pour the porch but didn't need all of them to finish troweling it he sent them to start forming up the new pad and drain. 

The next morning the cement truck showed up again and they got the pour done.  This little bit of concrete was way above my head mainly because of my lack of experience with forming.  All slopes needed to go to the drain but we had a very limited amount of fall due to the tile it tied into on the inside of the house.  This tile is what we tied into to get the water to the sump pump we had installed last spring that drains everything out to the ditch. So I let the pros take care of that  and when they were done I got the new door and window in.

And now the part I was dreading...... the limestone retaining walls.  We debated putting in a new retaining wall made of those interlocking concrete blocks, but then we had to figure out how to get rid of the limestone and would have had to spend a lot more money.  So ultimately we decided to re-use the old blocks.  After all they were there for close to 40 years up against the black dirt. So we hope by backfilling with pea gravel and running tile through that, that we can get at least that long again.

Talk about filthy, dirty, heavy and hard work!  Gina and I started Saturday morning and had about half of one wall up when Dad stopped by around 3:00.  What a difference another set of hands make!  He decided we looked miserable and that he would like to share in it!  By 7:00 that night we had the right side finished and had a good start on the left.  Then much to everyone's surprise, Dad said "See you at 8:00 tomorrow".  I looked at him hopefully and asked "AM?"  Sure enough he was coming back to our little hell hole as I call it!  By the time he left the next morning at 11:00 the left side was 80% done and we were out of gravel.  So we thanked dad profusely, left to get more rock and then were finished up to the point you see below by about 2:30. 

Needless to say we all slept well that night!  Thanks to everyone who helped with this horrible project and in doing so got us one step closer to a dry basement!

Until next time....
 
 
 

toasty toes

Hello again, since we last talked we have moved into the house and done our best to settle in.  Of course that means the master suite.  But more on that in the next post.  Since last time we got a couple of pretty major projects done in addition to moving in.  The one I'll cover today is the porch floor.

The first step was to fir out and insulate the walls. Below is a picture of the wall between the kitchen and the porch.  This was an easy one, just 1 x's attached to the wall.  No need to insulate it since it is an interior wall.

Next was the lake side wall.  All exterior walls neede insulation so the radiant heat from the heated floor doesn't go out the sides to the outside.  I started on the lake side wall by applying 3/4" foam to the brick.

I then framed up a low 2x4 stub wall so I could easily run some outlets along this wall and insulated the bays with fiberglass. 

 You might have noticed above that I then applied pressure treated plywood along the bottom.  This acts as a form for the concrete and also gives a good surface to mark a level line on.  Below is a shot of the interior wall and the curved step.

Since the west wall has a door, I didn't want that ledge to trim around.  So the west wall got firred out and two layers of foam.

The next step was to insulate the floor.  Some people don't feel that this is necessary since heat rises, but I felt the more I kept the heat from moving any way but up into the room where I wanted it, the better.  It also made the next step of stapling the tubing down much easier.

As hinted at above, the next thing to do was to staple down the water tubing.  Pretty easy here, just needed to make sure we exited the same way that we came out.  That's why you see the curves at the end intead of the straight lines.

With that done, we were ready for Larry Adams and his guys to come in and put in the re-bar and pour the pad.  Below are a few pictures of that process.

It is always amazing to me to see a good concrete crew work together.  They barely said two words to each other and everyone knew there job and when to be where.  What would have taken me and a few of my handy friends a day to do, they had done in a few hours.  My thanks to the Adams crew!

So that's all I have time for today.  Coming soon:  The back door walkout and retaining walls and a few pics of the master suite all moved in!
   
 
 
  
 
 

Moving day is fast approaching!

As the title implies we are getting close to the big moving day into the master suite (and the rest of the house which will not be finished :)!  Which is good because we have a hard deadline to get out of the house we are living in currently by June 1st.  The past few weeks have found me working solely in the master suite rooms.  Lets start with the master entry...

 

Above is a shot taken about a week ago standing in the doorway to the master suite.  On the left is the pocket door to the bathroom and directly ahead is the master closet.  The bedroom is to the right.  The window you see in the closet has since been trimmed out.  The trim has been one of the major accomplishments since our last visit.  The door casing is simply 3" wide maple boards that I cut out, sanded and finished, while the baseboard is 4" boards.

 
Above is a shot standing in the master closet doorway.  Since last time, I got the face frames on the cabinets finished and the drawer fronts and remaining hardware installed. 

Below is a shot as you make the turn to look down the length of the closet.  It's not a very big space so it's hard to take pictures that show everything that we packed into it!

I even built in a pullout tray that will hold the hamper bags right next to the washer!  You probably also notice the detergent... We did our first load of laundry the other night and I think Gina loves her washer and dryer.  Good thing because the warranty is almost gone since they've been sitting in our garage for the last year!

And below is a shot looking back towards the door with the shoe shelving unit behind where the door opens.

 

 

Above is a shot looking into the master bath.  Not a lot has changed in here except for getting the mirror hung and the door handles installed.

Below is a shot of the master bed's "Wall of Cabinets" getting their face frames installed.  This illustrates one of the reasons I am extremely happy that I can build my own cabinets.  Typically when you buy cabinets you get boxes delivered to your home that already have the face frames attached to each individual box.  You then screw the boxes together and  get a seam at each of those points.  By building our own we are able to install the boxes in one step and then attach the face frames over the seams where the boxes are screwed together, giving a  "built in furniture" look.

Since I have shown the way the doors are constructed in a previous post and will probably post a lot more about cabinets when we do the kitchen I'll jump ahead to my favorite part of the last month.

I've been installing speaker wire and speakers in the ceilings for over a year now and for the first time have been truly ready to hook up the whole house audio.  Aboveis a shot of the wiring mess!  On the right is my receiver on top of my CD Player and on the left (where the majority of the  wires are going) is the whole house audio head end.  So far everything works great, although I still have some programming to do on the keypads (pictured below)

All that is left to do after the programming is done, is to put on a standard decora two gang switch plate and it is done!  Several of the keypads are single gang and don't require programming so pictured below is the master bath keypad.

The single gang keypads don't afford the same level of control, but especially in the master bath we don't have the real estate or the need for the it.

Below is a picture of most of the gear pushed back into the cabinet.

 

 I will still need to hook up the satellite TV Receiver but that will be down the road.  If you haven't guessed already, I'm a total geek about home theater and stereo stuff. 

Below is a shot of the "wall of cabinets" completed with the AV gear all installed.

You might have noticed the light in the upper left corner of the last picture....  Well Gina said if I got to screw around with all my electronics she got to install her light.  And below is a picture of it.

So there it is.  It felt more like a tour this time but I guess that is good since we are moving in!  The next few weeks will consist of a few minor final touch ups,  cleaning up all the dust and then settling in before the next major phase.  More on that later!
  

 

The countdown begins

Welcome once again, one and all!  Our goal has been to be able to move into the master suite before summer and after the progress we made in March it is looking like it will be possible.  Cabinetry and interior doors have been the projects since our last visit, so we will start with the doors.

The view above is standing in the orange bedroom looking out to the hall.  The door with the handle goes out to the media room and the one without enters into the master suite.  The doors are all this 3-panel maple door that we ordered unfinished.  By going with unfinished doors we were able to make sure that the finish will match all the cabinetry and other woodwork that I will make, but it did add an extra couple days to the project.  So far we have 7 of the doors installed but are waiting to install the one to the main bathroom until that room is done.

Some of you may be wondering why I didn't make the doors.  There are two reasons.  The first is that for the money that you can purchase them it isn't worth my time to make them myself (especially when you consider reason two).  Reason two, is that these doors are a mixture of plywood and real wood which makes the door extremely stable and resistant to any bowing or warping.  I simply do not have the tools and equipment available to me to make a "hybrid" door like this with the same quality of construction.

The next project I tackled was the closet system.  Long time followers of the site may remember me cutting the parts for the closet last spring.  Since that time the parts have been sitting out in the garage with the washer and dryer that go in the closet.  Well they are finally assembled and set in place.  Below is a view looking from the entry door to the closet.

 

I am actually really excited about the ironing board so I had to pull it out for the photo.  It folds in half and then pushes back into the cabinet and then has a door that will match the drawer fronts below.  At the point that the picture was taken the face frames and drawer fronts were not installed (I will probably get those on next weekend) but all the hardware and other fun accessory things are.  The closet is a relatively small space for a walk in, so we put lots of things like the ironing board, extendable belt and tie racks, and extendable hanging rods in to maximize the space.

Here is another view looking back towards the door.

The cabinet behind the door is a shoe shelving unit but doesn't have any of the adjustable shelves installed yet.

The final thing we tackled since we last visited was the cabinetry for the master bedroom.  I got this designed and cut out about a week ago and got the last cabinet installed last night.  Much like the closet system, what is shown here is the cabinet carcasses without the doors, drawers and trim work done.

This wall of cabinets is a hybrid of a entertainment system, dresser, and linen closet.  The lower center cabinet will house the head end for the whole house audio system as well as the subwoofer and other home theater components (yes we will have surround sound in our bedroom!)  The top center cabinet will hold the TV and have some display shelving.  The cabinets on either side of the TV will also be open shelving.  The rest of the cabinetry will either have doors or drawers and will be much needed additional storage. 

The doors, drawer fronts and face frames have all been made and sanding has begun, so next weekend I hope to get all  of the cabinetry in the master suite finished up.  After that a little window and door trim and we could move in! 

See you soon.

 

flooring v.2

The last two weekends have been two of the longest weekends since we started the project.  6AM-11PM both Saturdays and 8AM to 11PM on both Sundays, but the good news is that the wood floor is all laid and sanded. 

Two Friday's ago began with Beau and Dad getting over to our place about 5:00PM.  We spent the night getting the flooring laid out and all of our lines chalked.  One of the side effects of flooring v.1 was that I knew I could get a better layout of the wood to avoid thin strips against walls and other flooring transitions.  We took about 4 hours that night trying different things and getting our first couple courses stapled down so we could make time on Saturday.  Those of you who have laid floor before know that this can be one of the most frustrating and time consuming parts of the process, but like the old saying goes..." Prior planning prevents piss poor performance!"

Saturday morning began at 6 for Beau and I and dad got there about 7:30.  The big surprise of the day was when Captain Curt showed up a little after noon.  When asked what he was doing, he said he had never laid wood floor and wanted to see what it was all about.  With that he jumped right in.  This was great timing because we were just finishing up with the dining side of the great room and allowed us to split up into two crews and do two bedrooms at once (fortunately I do have two flooring staplers).  Here is a shot of all of us in the orange bedroom....

We were giving Gina a hard time that the orange paint was too bright, so we each put a little black tape on to help with the glare!  Thanks to everyone who helped and especially Curt who just showed up on his day off!

Sunday, Dad and I finished up the master closet, landing out to the family room and the green bedroom.  Beau was not able to attend the flooring festivities due to his being entered into the 2010 Toads Chili Cook On, which he won for the third consecutive year.  Congrats Beau!

 

Below are a couple of pre-sanding shots.

A picture doesn't really show it but even the best milled flooring still has little ridges and variations along the seams.  That, of course, is one of the benefits of not going prefinished flooring.  We had that in our last house and while it was less work you felt every seam when you walked across it.

This weekend was the sanding weekend.  Pictured below is Gina working on the hallway with the orbital sander.  If any of you are going to attempt laying your own raw wood floor, I would highly recommend this type of sander.  It is not as aggressive as a drum sander, but does a satisfactory job of removing material quickly with virtually no risk of gouging.  The one pictured below also has it's own vacuum built onto the unit and did a surprisingly good job of collecting the dust.

We had a return member of the cast to help with sanding also....

Brandon was good enough to let us use his 19 year old knees for the edge sanding.  Something Gina's and my knees don't take well anymore.  Thanks Brandon for the 21 hrs of help this weekend! 

Not a lot more to talk about here... sanding is sanding.... and is dull, dusty and time consuming. 

Here are a few shots of a few of the rooms sanded.

So there it is, I hope to add an addendum to this post in the next couple of days as Gina is taking the day off of work to get everything cleaned up and start the sealing and finishing process today.

See you again soon!

_______________________________________________________________________________________

Ok, here is the addendum I was hoping to get out there.  The last two nights Gina and I have been working on the finish.  We are using a water-based product called Bona-Traffic that has been highly recommended to us.  The first step was a sealer that Gina put on Monday.  Since it is a water based finish the sealer is put on not only to keep the finish from absorbing into the wood but to also help prevent grain raise (which really isn't a big deal with a tight grained wood like maple).

With the sealer done, we vacuumed and mopped and put on the first coat of finish.  The finish is applied with a roller.  The first coat looked pretty blotchy, almost orange peeled, which I assume is normal.  With the first coat on we then took a buffer with a 150 grit sanding screen and went over everything and smoothed out any "nubs" and imperfections.

We put on the second coat last night and it looks a ton better than the first.  Below are a few pictures I took this morning.

Although they say that you can stop at two coats, we are going to put on a third coat tonight and then call it good.   The process will be the same, lightly sand everything, vacuum, mop and then roll on the third coat.  We figure it's better to take the time now, put on the third coat and hopefully buy a little more time before we have to re-finish in the future. 

So there it is... a big part of the project basically done.  We are actually taking the weekend off this weekend and visiting some family.  It will be nice to have the break and will also allow the finish to fully cure while we are gone.  So if you are planning on stopping by for a visit, don't, we won't be there and I am barricading the floor so no one can walk on it!!!! :)

See you again soon....
   

ahead full

After the disappointment of the floor that I shared last time, the last few weeks have been good for our attitude as we have made some good progress forward.  But first, I found some pictures that I neglected to share last time, and to make sure proper credit is given, I decided to post them this time.

I posted pictures of the new ceiling in the family room last time but didn't give you any action shots.  Gina was running around with her camera that day and I had forgotten that she had taken them.  So here they are.... (and it's been a while since I had any messy shots!)

Of course we picked one of the coldest days of the year to do the insulation.... (I know you are supposed to insulate before it gets cold.....) so I made sure to have a good pile of wood to burn to keep warm.

Dad came over Friday afternoon and we got the ceiling dropped and pulled all the old nails.

Saturday the rest of the crew showed up...  Captain Curt was busy running the duct work in the attic (not pictured) my cousin Scott Strother and brother Beau helped me hang the new ceiling.  Dad also showed up to supervise!

I should be fair here.... Dad and Scott were one crew and Beau and I were another until we got to the end... then Raybo supervised!  Thanks to everyone who helped!

Now to the current projects.  The first thing we did since we last visited was got the painting done in the kitchen/dining room.

I'm sure a lot of you are saying the same thing I was thinking... "Wow, those are really bright, bold colors!"  Gina assures me, so I'll pass it along to you, that by the time she is done decorating, the colors are going to pull everything together!

As Gina was finishing up the painting, I ripped up all the wood floor that we visited about last time.  With that done I backtracked on a decision I made early last year about the subfloor.  I decided to rip up about half of it. 

The reason I decided to do this was that the floor joists change direction about 2/3 of the way down the hallway.  The original part of the house has the joists running north and south.  The first addition's joists run east and west.  Typically you always lay wood floor perpendicular to the subfloor boards (Obviously with plywood this is not an issue.)  This is because if you lay the top floor parallel over the subfloor, your top floor will show any cupping in the subfloor boards and when the subfloor boards expand and contract (which we are all painfully aware of now!) it will magnify the expansion and contraction of your top floor.  We want to lay all our wood floor north and south through all the rooms with this flooring and don't want to have any thresholds or transitions.  This would mean that in the highest traffic area of the house we would have the parallel problem.  Since I am now risk adverse on this expansion and contraction issue I did this!

I only did the half of the kitchen that will have the hard wood.  The rest will be tile so the direction issue won't be relevant.  Here is an in progress shot looking out to the porch

 

In the upper left corner you see the transition out to the porch.

We didn't want an abrupt step down into the porch, so we decided to put a very slight arch to the transition.  I also had to deal with framing out over the old concrete block, and here is my solution.  And below is a view of the finished product looking out to the porch...

It really is amazing to me how much getting that transition done defined the two areas and gave it a feeling of being finished.

The last little thing we did before re-starting on the wood flooring, was to get the area that the island will occupy defined.

The island will be two tiered with a raised bar area.  We wanted outlets in the island and I decided the easiest thing to do is to frame up the raised area now.  It not only provides an easy way to run the wire but gives good support for the concrete counter to rest on.

So there we are.... truly ready to begin the wood flooring.  Looking back at it now I was in too much of a hurry to get the bedrooms done and rushed to bad results. Next weekend I have the crew coming back and hope to get the flooring down, sanded, and finished over the next 3 weeks (before another season change!)

  
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 

We begin another year (I know it's almost February)

Hello again, and yes we are still alive, and yes we are still trying to work on the house.  And thank-you to the fan of this blog for riding me about getting it updated.  This one is for you Adam!

I wish I had more to show you for the last two months that I have been silent.  Between the holidays and moving snow I have not made the amount of progress that we've all become accustomed to.  Last we spoke I was finishing up some wiring in the kitchen area and was hoping to drywall that room.  That mission has been accomplished.

This is the view looking northeast toward the front door and hallway.  I built the entry closet and drywalled the outside.  I'm waiting on the inside just in case I missed any wiring.  As you can also see I have not drywalled the north wall and the back of the entry stub wall.  Once again.... just in case I missed any wiring.  These walls also will be covered almost entirely by cabinets and backsplash so I don't need to texture the drywall that will be hung there.  Basically what you see hung and mudded needs textured and what isn't completed doesn't.  That way I can get all that mess done and still leave me some flexibility for changing things in the kichen.

Above is a view looking toward the southwest and the porch.  Below is a picture of the skylight tunnels finished.

As January came in I took a break from sheetrock, and with the new year (and the new year's reset efficiency tax credit)  began to insulate the cielings above the bedrooms.  This was all blown in fiberglass so I needed to get the old cieling down and the new cieling up in the media room.

With this an amazing thing happened..... the furnace actually shut off.  Something it probably hadn't done for a month!  And for those of you who remember the redwood beams that spaned the cieling in this room.......

Don't worry, we saved them and they will be put to use in a future project.  Before I could insulate I had to take care of a few additional loose ends like wiring the doorbell, and running power to the porch and the 2nd bathroom (I won't bore you with pictures of those!)

Another project I had begun when we last spoke was the cabinet doors and drawers for the bathroom.  They are now installed and pictured below. 

This was my first time ever constructing full overlay doors for cabinets and I am definately glad it was on a small project like this bathroom.  Much like full inlay doors, everything has to be absolutely square, level and plumb.  I will also build my cabinet boxes slightly different from now on.  And for those of you who have been asking about the shower..... yes we have now tried it and yes it is as awesome as it looks!!

Now for the bad news, with the delays we had on completing the flooring (having to floor the kitchen/dining area which was not ready when I began the bedrooms)  we crossed from fall to winter.  I think everyone knows that wood will expand and contract with the changes in seasons (I know I did and should have known better), but I never expected this to happen.

Basically every joint in the floor opened up  (up to 3/16") when the humidity plummeted between November to December.  I since have done a lot of research and talked to a lot of experienced people and now have two options.  One is to wait until this summer when the wood has re-expanded to apply the finish, or two, rip up everthing I have done, start over and make sure I have it finished prior to spring.  Unfortunately we can't wait until summer so over the next week or two I will be ripping up all the flooring I have laid and will be starting over.  Yes that stinks but at least I only had two bedrooms done and if that is the only mistake we make on this project, I will be happy in the end.

So there it is, another year and a few success's, one failure and a few challenges are under our belt already.  Someday we may even be done!