Posts from August 2010
progress report: week 19 (part 2)
On Friday morning, the wallboard, mud and tape were delivered. These are just the 12′ sheets. (There were about the same number of 8′ sheets – half went to the loft and half to the 2nd bedroom.) It was at this moment that I thanked my lucky stars that we had decided to hire this out. We’re all for sweat equity and figuring things out on our own, but not when it comes to this. For one, we lack the combined required muscle (when we hung sheetrock on our bedroom ceiling – I resorted to using my head after my arms gave out – it wasn’t pretty). In fact, I’d even put hanging drywall on the list of things spouses should never do together (it’s right up there with a 2-person kayak). We also recognize that doing a smoothwall finish is an art and something we don’t have the time or patience to acquire. And really, I think that’s ok. We’re not out to win the Ironman of home remodeling or anything. Doing more work ourselves just means that it costs less, we learn something, and (usually) it’s pretty fun.
This weekend was also HOT (by Seattle standards anyways). We don’t have our stair fan installed yet, so we picked up two box fans to help encourage airflow (one in the basement blowing cooler air up, one in the roof window in the loft pulling hot air out). Along with the new insulation, it kept the house mostly tolerable.
With insulation done, it was time to install the plywood bead board ceiling and reglets. Reglets are basically aluminum shapes that (in our case) serve as transition pieces between two different materials (drywall and plywood).
The shape on the right has a notch on one side to accept the drywall of the flat ceiling and a deep lip on the left side which acts as a visual termination for the plywood. For the “J” shape on the left (think upside down J) the drywall for the walls will slide up into the reglet. This way, there’s no weird seam where the drywall of the wall and bead board of the ceiling meet. An additional trim piece could be used instead, but being the modernists that we are…we like clean lines and reveals. It’s a lot more work, but we think it will be worth it.
And then the plywood ceiling went up! (Kyle actually installed half the ceiling by himself while I was getting a pedicure and brunch with girlfriends. Did I feel guilty? A bit. Secretly overjoyed. Yes!) We’re using plywood bead board because it’s less expensive and a lot less laborious than installing individual tongue and groove boards. After drywall, we’ll paint it white to match everything else. The tapered header and edges at the skylights will be drywall, with more reglets between the two materials.
I was surprised how much taller the space felt once the ceiling was up. The rest of the install turned out to be a bit trickier, as we had to do small customizations to several pieces so the horizontal grooves all aligned. Oh the joys of dealing with 100-year-old framing!
And there you have it. We are now on week 20 (20!@*), but thrilled that the drywall is going up this week.
progress report: week 19 (part 1)
Electrical inspection…passed! Framing inspection…passed! Insulation inspection…passed!
Boom!
Lots to report on this week…so much in fact, that I decided to break up the weekly post into two parts. Kyle and I both took off on Friday and with inspections scheduled and a looming drywall start date, we got a lot done. And it feels so good.
Hello light at the end of the tunnel…is that you?
1. We (finally) wrapped up the electrical work and Kyle got a big gold star from the inspector (ok, not really…but I would have given him one).
2. For our doors and windows, we’re doing a simple casing around the frame that the drywall will then butt into. This meant trim had to go up pre-drywall. When we did the bedroom and bathroom two years ago, we used MDF that we then painted white. This time around we decided to go VG fir (with a coat of benite and a few coats of clear finish).
We even found FSC (Forest Stewardship Council) fir at our local lumber yard. For consistency, we redid the bathroom and bedroom door casing too. I’m really pleased with how it turned out – it really pops against the white walls. We also decided to install the boards a bit proud of the drywall (that just means it sticks out further). It’s a nice touch.
To properly undercut the jamb pieces, we used one of our cork flooring samples. So exciting to visualize the final product…we’re getting there!
I really love the fir sill at the kitchen window and couldn’t resist transferring the lavender from the bathroom for a quick photo. Actually, I think this image is a good metaphor for our current situation – focus on the end goal, not the big pile of crap in the background.
3. As mentioned last week, one of our “before drywall” tasks was to rough in for the stair guard rail/cabinet. The base of the cabinet is composed of four IKEA upper cabinets (we chose those since they’re shallower than the base cabinets). The cabinet boxes are designed so that the top and bottom pieces extend about a 1/2″ out to provide clearance for the mounting rail. Since we weren’t going to use a mounting rail here, Kyle installed a piece of 1/2″ plywood within this recess which provided extra rigidity.
Quick side note – Kyle loves basset hounds. Each Christmas, as a sorta joke I used to get him a day-by-day basset hound calender…which really is a great way to start the day because they’re just so funny. Anyhow, a few years worth of bassets and we had a nice stock pile of scrap paper that we use for dimensions, notes, etc. During a remodel, a little comic relief can go a long way.
Here’s the semi-completed unit. After the boxes were structurally tied together, we mounted them on a plinth made of 2x4s and then installed another layer of 3/4″ plywood to the back as a substrate for drywall. Kyle then installed another layer of plywood above the cabinet boxes to serve as a substrate for the open shelving. (More on the design of this unit later.)
Here’s a glimpse of the backside that will be sheetrocked over. Since we had some concern about lateral forces on this guy (i.e. – people leaning against it) we thoroughly fastened the assembly to the floor to resist an overturning moment. Literally. No one wants that kind of party foul.
One of the challenges of a small, open house is figuring out where the various system components will go. We only need one return grille for our forced air system, but we didn’t have many options as to where to put it. Ideally, it would be centrally located and away from the kitchen. We also wanted it to be wall mounted instead of just a hole in the floor, which would inevitably get clogged with dog fur. But who wants to see a return grille? So we decided to incorporate it into the base of the stair cabinet. Essentially, the two cabinets on the right have an open area underneath that acts as a plenum. Eventually, we’ll put a custom grille/toe kick over this opening and air will travel through that and then down into a hole in the floor and through the return duct in the basement back to the furnace. The toe kick cover will be removable so we can periodically get down there and vacuum out any errant Bailey fur.
4. With the framing inspection complete, it was finally time to insulate! Our house may look like some version of Smurfville now, but it’s so gratifying to finally have a fully insulated house. With the hot temperatures this weekend, we noticed a perceivable difference right away (even though we tend to think about insulation during the winter time, it also helps to keep the heat out during the summer). We used recycled denim insulation from Ultra Touch (purchased at Ecohaus). It’s a bit more expensive than fiberglass but, 1) it doesn’t make your skin itch like crazy, 2) it’s not damaging to your lungs if you inhale it (although we always wore a mask because really…who wants blue boogers?)and 3) it’s the dream product for old or remodeled homes, where the stud spacing is nowhere near consistent and so there’s a high level of “customization”. We ended up buying a couple of bundles each of 16″ and 24″ batts and the scraps were easily incorporated into other areas or shoved in various cavities here and there so there’s virtually no waste.
We also insulated all of the interior walls for sound attenuation. It certainly can’t hurt and acoustic privacy is one of the few hard-to-solve challenges of living small. (We did buy some r-30 fiberglass batts for the attic side of the vaulted ceiling, but the rafter bays were consistent and they came in a plastic sleeve which made handling a bit better.)
Bailey, what do you think this is? Fashion week?
That’s it for now…stay tuned for part two where we dive into the world of reglets and bead board!
progress report: week 18
The good news is…we are done with electrical. DONE. Finally! The not so celebratory news is…well, we still have a lot of other work to do. Drywall is tentatively starting in the next week or so, which gives us limited time to get our electrical and framing inspections, insulate, install the drywall reglets and bead board at the vault and move a bunch of stuff out of the house.
1. On Monday, we celebrated Kyle’s 32nd birthday. Exhausted from the weekend before, we kept things pretty low-key.
I picked up cupcakes earlier that day and brought them to dinner with friends that night.
My caption for this one is, “Happy Birthday. Now get back to work!”.
Since both of our birthdays and our anniversary are in August/September (and since we’re directing most of our extra pennies towards the remodel) we decided to get each other things for the house. I saw this print on Jenn Ski’s site a while back and thought it was perfect for chezerbey. I love the colors, the graphics and maybe…someday soon, we’ll have the real Eames deal. I think the print would also look mighty fine on a steel ledge.
2. Sometime during the last month or two, we decided that we needed a new shower curtain rod. Our old one was the IKEA adjustable model, paired with simple stainless steel o-rings, which often had a tendency to catch on the rod. So after an extensive online search we found a Moen commercial rod that was a single length and had hidden fasteners and satin finish end caps. I also found ball-bearing rings in a satin finish (do you know how hard it is to find shower rings that aren’t chrome??). When the rod was finally delivered, we opened the box to find two satin finish end caps/brackets and one chrome finish rod. What? Annoyed that they made a mistake and I would have to return an odd-shaped item that came in a box about 10x too wide, I got back online and tracked down the specifications so I could figure out the right part number. And then I saw, “satin finish end caps with chrome rod”. Umm. Hmm. Whatever. It’s not that big of a deal.
3. Before the walls get insulated and covered up, we decided to install a couple runs of conduit from the basement up to the attic, just in case we need to run more wire in the future. You never know.
4. On Saturday, I went to IKEA and picked up 4 kitchen wall cabinets to use as part of our stair guard rail/storage cabinet (we chose the wall cabinets since they’re shallower). The boxes will sit on top of a 2×4 plinth (similar to what we did at the island) and will have shelves and doors with open shelving above and a wood wrap along the sides and top. The plan is to install 3/4″ plywood and then drywall the backside of this unit (since it will be an extension of the stair wall) so finishing the basic build out for this is on our pre-drywall to-do list.
We’re keeping the original jamb trim at the front door, but needed to come up with a simple detail to transition from the drywall to the jamb.
We also redid (for the 3rd time) the layout for the media components. The orange flexible non-metallic tubing will house the speaker wire and runs to the two speaker locations.
5. One of the things on our electrical odds and ends list was to install an outdoor light at the basement door. It’s the same light that we have at the front door and mud room. Simple and inexpensive.
Kyle also installed an outdoor outlet (which we had zero of) at the back of the house.
Since we’ll eventually have some type of deck out here with outdoor speakers, he also installed a speaker volume control. Our backyard doesn’t exactly exude ambience right now, but it will. Oh it will.
6. Since we don’t have a kitchen, I didn’t plant much in our veggie garden this summer. We do have 3 tomato plants that are just starting to turn. Ripen, little guys, ripen!
Dude, I know how you feel. (This is Bailey’s “baby”. He’s had a hard week too.)
And that’s what’s up at our house. We cannot wait for drywall to start! Not only will it give us a bit of a break (or at least allow us to scale back from our current frenzied state), but it’s going to radically change the feel of the space and put us that much closer to being done with this thing. Actually, what I’m really looking forward to is being able to mull over a different set of details – like artwork, area rugs, and which side of the couch the throw blanket looks better on.
the other houses
It’s been four years now since we first laid eyes on our little fixer. We’ve mentioned it here a few times, but chezerbey was the 6th house we were serious about (after 6 months of house hunting). So we thought we’d take a little stroll down memory lane and reminisce about the houses that could have been.
[Sorry for the crappy photos, they’re mostly low-res scans from the listings we kept. I know, we kept the listings. I have a thing for nostalgia.]
1. This was our first. A cute little flat roof from the ’20s. It must have been so avant-garde! Actually, this photo is from the listing after someone flipped it. When we first looked at the house, it was brown (mud brown) and in need of a lot of TLC. But we had big dreams of popping a second story on top, which would have given us views of the Olympic mountain range. Oh well. It would have been a lot of work. And thanks to our savvy sleuthing skills, we also knew that there were plans to build a large mixed-use building behind.
2. When we looked at our first house, it was unlisted. For our second house, it was our first real taste of the Seattle housing market. This modest little guy had multiple, multiple offers and went for way above it’s asking price. (We tracked list vs. sale price for every potential house we looked at. Yeah, I know.) Looking back, it certainly had potential and was in a funky neighborhood, but there wasn’t really a wow factor. And everything moved so quickly that we never had a chance to become attached to it.
3. Oh man. The little turquoise house. We really, really wanted this house. It was so tiny! It had to be under 600 SF (there was also an itsy bitsy basement). But what got us really excited was that the house was set way back on the lot, which had us scheming about living in the tiny house while building a new modern house in the front. But it wasn’t meant to be. This was the first time I cried over losing a house. Looking back, even though it was in an up-and-coming neighborhood, it wasn’t anywhere near where we worked or where our friends lived. And realistically, we probably would have had to live in the tiny house for a long time before building something new.
4. This house had a lot of great things going for it. It didn’t need a lot of work and it overlooked a neighborhood playfield. This probably would have been the one had there not been some real estate craziness in the 11th hour. Oh well, about a month or so after the offer the playfield grass was converted to astroturf. We took solace in that.
5. This was probably the cutest house we looked at. It was in a great neighborhood and close to lots of things but it just didn’t work out for us. (There was also no garage which, looking back, would have been challenging for us.) But at this point, we were pretty numb to rejection. We even considered taking a break. But we knew we couldn’t do that either.
6A. I call this one 6A because it came on the market the same day as chezerbey. Actually, it had a lot of similarities to our actual house but ultimately we decided to pursue ours because we liked the street a bit better. As you can see though, we had our own plans for this guy. I think this is why house hunting was so taxing for us. Not only did we look at a ton of houses, but with each one we were even marginally interested in, we felt compelled to research the zoning, investigate the neighborhood and in some cases, do a little conceptual redesigning.
6B. Aww, and this is the one that was meant to be. I love that it looks like it’s leaning (it’s just the photo, trust us!). Truthfully, it wasn’t love at first sight, but we thought it had lots of potential, the price was right and it was in our favorite neighborhood. Sadly, our main competition on this house were people who wanted to tear it down(!) But karma prevailed and here we are, 4 years later, still working away on the “sweet 1910 craftsman ready for a face-lift”.
progress report: week 17
This week got off to a slow construction start, but we made some good progress over the weekend. The electrical is oh so close to being done. We also put together a list of “to do before inspections” and “to do before drywall”. The list is still a bit daunting but at least we know what needs to happen.
1. After the craziness of the last few weeks, we took a couple of nights to get reorganized.
Sadly, the garage did not get the same attention.
2. Kyle finished the wiring for all six(!) smoke/CO detectors.
To avoid a deep electrical box, we used 1/2″ pancake boxes for areas where we had existing ceilings. For the bedroom, it worked like a charm and the drywall was very cooperative.
For the old plaster in the 2nd bedroom, it was a different story. Fortunately, we’ll be covering this ceiling with 1/2″ drywall (this is the only plaster we couldn’t demo since there’s a large pile of attic insulation on top).
3. We also finished the wiring in the loft! Since we think this will make a great sleeping nook for overnight guests, we gave a lot of thought to the sequence of lighting to ensure that the no one would have to go up or down the ladder in the dark. So we installed two switches at the top of the ladder – one that is wired to a switchable outlet on the opposite side of the room and one for a light above the ladder. We also ran cat 5 and co-ax cable to the middle of the gable wall, with the idea that the space might make a sweet little office too.
4. For the living room lighting, we’re doing two runs of low voltage cable lighting. The install for this was not exactly fun and involved running non-metallic conduit from the basement up through the living room walls and out between the exposed joists. Kyle then fabricated a custom blocking assembly to accept the special 2″ j-boxes.
The two remote transformers (one for each run) were then installed in the basement laundry room and a couple runs of armored cable wired them to a nearby junction box. Ugh. These lights better be awesome. Just sayin.
5. We’re still plugging away (pun intended there) on the structured media panel. Kyle finished the cat 5 and co-ax cable portion today, but we still need to install the gigabit switch and wireless router. Yeah. Yeah!
6. We continue to neglect our yard. However, this time we have pretty yellow flower weeds!
7. Depressed from the realization that he would not be going camping again, Bailey slept most of the weekend. Thanks a lot Bails…you’re a real help.
So that’s what’s going on over here. We’re also continuing our investigation of different furniture potentials, designing an affordable but semi custom stairway storage unit and redesigning the layout of the basement.
There’s really no “off” switch, y’know?
