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progress report: week 5
Last week’s to-do list took a bit of a detour from framing, but we still made some good progress. It was definitely one of those weeks where the tasks were more detail-oriented and thus took more time. Also, thanks to our recent decision to add the loft, there was a good deal of thinking, designing and number crunching going on. So let’s pick up where we left off:
1. After we painted the first two sheets of MDO, we were able to install them and give ourselves enough space to lay out and paint the remaining sheets. One huge advantage of remodeling a larger space is that you can actually work in it.
Any guesses as to what this is?
Our new living room ceiling! It was so exciting to get a sense of the finished space! We knew we were taking a risk to pre-paint the MDO, but it paid off and Kyle and I were very, very gentle as we hoisted them up into place and screwed them to the joists. The metal strip in the middle is an aluminum T that hides the inevitable seam between panels. We considered painting it white but right now we might just rock the exposed look. We’re planning on some linear, cable lighting so it might just work.
2. As a result of the new ceiling, we also have a new loft space (sort of). We still have to build the enclosing walls and light well over the basement stiar.
It will certainly be cozy (it’s only about 6′-0″ at the ridge), but we’ve already come up with all sorts of ways to use the space.
Here’s the view as you’re coming up into the space. In addition to framing out the surrounding walls and light well, we’ll need to move more insulation (ughh) and lay down more plywood in the area to the right.
3. Kyle mowed the lawn! (Which looks 100x better even with the giant clumps of cut grass.)
4. With the living room ceiling DONE, we moved our work table (which is just our dining room table with a sheet of plywood over it) and stored our kitchen cabinets underneath. And just like the good people at IKEA advised us, I aligned all the SKU numbers to (hopefully) make the install process go a bit smoother.
5. Last but not least, I talked Kyle into installing the dishwasher last weekend. Hand washing dishes is an inconvenience in itself, but hand washing dishes in your bathtub is something entirely different. I lasted 5 weeks.
When we gutted our bathroom in ’08, all the plumbing had to be replaced. Since the bathroom was a majority of the plumbing we went ahead and replaced all of the supply and drain/waste/vent lines and stubbed out for the future kitchen sink and dishwasher. Word to the wise, anytime you have an opportunity to plan ahead for future projects, DO IT! You will thank yourselves. So yesterday Kyle got to work installing the new supply and drain lines that drop down into the short basement and tie into the main lines.
This step may have been a bit out of sequence, but we figured there really wasn’t any drawback to doing it now (even though we won’t have cabinets or a sink for some time).
Oh, and there was some electrical work too. Hard to believe this was our old back porch!
So the stainless steel panel could use a good cleaning, but she works! We ran a load last night and the first thing I did this morning was open the dishwasher to stare lovingly at all the clean dishes. The plumbing to the right is for the new kitchen sink (the flexible gray hose is the drain line coming form the dishwasher). The red cap covers the sink drain so no debris falls in and the whitish cap behind is an air admittance valve (which replaces the need for a through-the-roof vent). Although the photo is too dark to see, the hot and cold pex lines and valves are also installed so when it comes time to install the sink and faucet – plug and play!
So that’s it for last week! This week we’ll be picking up some more lumber and turning our focus back to rough framing.
layers of history
When we bought our house, most of the walls were a drab, off-white color. During our first demo project a few years ago, we expected that we’d find layer upon layer of paint over the plaster walls, but what we didn’t anticipate was the four to five layers of vintage wallpaper under the plaster! As the mystery unraveled (or…fell off the walls), we learned that plaster walls must have been a luxury back in 1910 because only our living/dining room had them. The rest of the house consisted of wallpaper over shiplap wood siding. (At some point, someone took it up a notch and plaster was added over the wallpapered rooms.)
Above and below are a sampling from our recent demo. This is what we found in the kitchen under all those layers…I knew our house had a feminine side.
And below is the old vinyl that was under the astroturf-esque carpet in our old back porch space.
Apparently the living room once had pink walls!
In 2006, when we tore out some cabinets to install the dishwasher, we found this old newspaper used as a shelf liner .
The bedroom demo two years ago uncovered another set of surprises. The wall paper in this space was also installed directly over the shiplap siding and then lath and plaster was added afterwards.
Despite the headaches that can come with an old house, it’s so interesting to discover its past life and think about the people who lived there and what was happening in the world at that time. I’m a little sad that we have now opened up every nook and cranny and there is no room left for surprises.
Maybe we should add our own…for the next 100 years.
progress report: week 1
It’s been almost a week since we did a post, but not because there is a lack of activity here at chezerbey. There’s just not a lot of visual difference to get excited about. So we thought it might be a good idea to start weekly progress posts – a summary of what we’ve done the previous week and what’s slated for the upcoming week. In addition, if there is anything that warrants its own post, we’ll do that too. Besides keeping up with the blog, we’re still getting in the groove of working full-time, working on our house, and squeezing in time to eat and do laundry (which seems to double during renovation projects!), but we’ll aim for a Sunday/Monday update from here on out. So let’s say the first progress report will cover April 5th-11th (since we already shared the thrill that was demo weekend).
As soon as the dust settled from demo, Kyle got to work on the basement stair. But first, a little history – the house was not built with a fancy interior stair to the basement, but one was added at some point. We’re not really sure what the logic was in this or the numerous other stair issues, but we knew the whole thing had to be re-done. During the great basement dig out of ’08, we rebuilt the stair per our new design. The only problem was that you had to duck under the new beam which was doable but pretty awkward.
Not anymore!
With the interior wall gone, Kyle was now able to cut out the piece of oak flooring and framing (after heading it off), allowing us to walk down to the basement minus the ol’ crouch and duck. As you can see though, there was some serious patching that needed to happen as well.
After a couple of days we were all patched up and ready to go. We’ll be adding another stair stringer and putting down new treads and risers that will span the full 36″ width.
As a side note, one day I was picking up debris and came across this – and it reminded us of home.
After the framing for the stair opening was complete, it was time to tackle a few other areas. On demo day, we discovered that the framing under the kitchen cabinets was pretty sub-standard…as in, there was no rim joist for the subfloor to bear on. So all that got ripped out, a new rim joist was added and new plywood went down. We also had the old back porch flooring to deal with. Since it was built as a porch, all the floor framing sloped away from the house. This meant setting up the laser level (Dad – best present ever!) and sistering on new joists, each one slightly angled to make up for the slope. Since our new kitchen cabinets will be going in here, it was extra important to make sure everything was level and plumb.
The complexity with these two areas is that most of our plumbing, electrical and ductwork happens in this area. So there was a lot of time spent re-routing (annoying, but necessary). At least there was a nice crawl space slab to stand on…
One of the challenges in creating one space from several small ones is that you have to compensate for different floor materials and thicknesses. Fortunately, the oak floor in the living/dining room flushed out with the old fir kitchen floors, which were hidden under two layers of linoleum (leading us to believe that the oak floors were original and not an upgrade). Much to our surprise and gratitude, the linoleum came up very easily (the black color is the glue residue). The patch at the back door is where part of our old bathroom used to be and was filled in over a year ago. The next step is to cover all the floor with 1/2″ plywood. This will add some extra rigidity and will even out any subtle changes in floor elevations (the 4×8 sheet in the corner is sheet #1).
So yes, at this point we’re planning on doing cork everywhere. Part of me wanted to re-finish (and maybe stain) the oak floors, but this would have meant an awkward threshold between the oak and cork which (in my experience) can be a toe-stubbing nightmare and would take away from the goal of creating a cohesive space.
We took tonight off, which is shaping up to be a good way to recover from the weekend blitz (especially when House MD is on and someone invites you over for a homemade meal! Thanks Aud!). This week we’ll focus on installing the 1/2″ plywood and some minor electrical work. And then, skylights? We could use more light…
the aftermath
Friday, April 2nd
Kyle and I took some time off work to prep for the big event.
Our friend Dustin came over and we finished moving out furniture and pulled the “temporary” trim around the new windows.
A few finals shots of the kitchen, before its demise.
(The greenboard above the sink was a temporary patch job from when we removed the old window last summer.)
Before we could tear out the ceilings, we needed to get up in the attic and move all the loose fill insulation over to one side of the attic.
Kyle and Dustin quickly got to business…
…but were more than happy to be done.
On Friday evening we installed temporary collar ties in the attic. We didn’t anticipate any issues with removing the joists that span parallel to the ridge beam, but it couldn’t hurt to take a few precautionary measures.
One of the rare times I handed the camera to Kyle…
Saturday, April 3rd
We woke up bright and early and took care of a few last-minute items. Masks, gloves, glasses, crowbars…time to go! (We covered our dining room table with a sheet up plywood so we could continue to use it to store things on during construction.)
First of all, a HUGE thank you to our awesome demo crew! You really brought your a-game.
After a safety briefing and a soundtrack of heavy metal pumping from the bedroom, a cloud of dust quickly filled the house.
We discovered that, like the bedroom, plaster walls were not original to the kitchen. Under the lath and plaster we found about 4-5 layers of wallpaper and then the 3/4″ ship lap.
Since the dining room ceiling was just lath and plaster over the joists, we knew the easiest way to take it down would be to attack it from above. So Kyle and Dustin went back up into the attic and stomped it out.
And it worked!
These are the joists that will be exposed (we’ll install sheets of MDO over the top) in the future living room.
One of the joists had the word “Carkeek” written on it. It’s a local name (i.e. Carkeek Park) but we’re curious if there was maybe a lumber yard with the same name a hundred years ago.
Around noon we took a much-needed break in the basement for pizza.
After lunch, we attacked the kitchen ceiling. Unfortunately, this area was lath and plaster over 3/4″ ship lap which meant we couldn’t stomp it out. We also need to remove the joists since this is the section that will be vaulted. So the architects of the group put their heads together and decided the best strategy would be to cut the ceiling out in sections from above…
Boom! It worked! (Mostly, besides the section that swung into the backside of the bedroom wall and left a small puncture right by Kyle’s nightstand.)
We should pause to say that Bailey was safe in the backyard (tied to the tree) during all this. At least he got to keep an eye on the dumpster action.
Phew, done for the day!
And this is what was created:
Sunday, April 4th
After a good nine hours of sleep, we were up and it again. Kyle started by pulling all the old electrical from the panel.
We also made sure to uncover all the registers and reconnect the thermostat.
A few glimpses of our new space. It feels a lot like a barn right now, with our bedroom and bathroom as a smaller box that sits inside. It’s very cool.
Once we saw this vantage point, we couldn’t help but think “LOFT!”. (More on that later!)
We were also really pleased with our plastic zipper doors (bedroom on the left, bathroom on the right). We simply cut sheets of plastic, stapled them to the wall, covered the edges with tape and then applied the zipper (it has a sticky backing). After the zipper is on, you just unzip and cut the plastic behind.
And they keep Bailey safe inside the bedroom!
Unfortunately, we didn’t get any action shots of the wheelbarrow process, but it worked out really well. We added another small ramp up to the dumpster (the doors in the back swing open) and were able to wheel all the debris straight in, dump and then head back into the house for a refill. And yes, we completely filled the dumpster!
So there you have it! We are completely exhausted but really happy with how everything went and the work that lies ahead. Our next step is to redo the framing around the stair to the basement (which Kyle started yesterday). So far, the strategy is to just take it day by day and not follow a schedule too closely. We realize that some days we’ll come home from work and plug away till 9 or 10 and other nights we’ll just want to relax. The ultimate completion date is mid-September.
So we have plenty of time, right?
2 days till demo
This Saturday we are having a party…a demolition party. It will be like a barn raising, except the opposite.
And when you’re demolishing the main habitable spaces of your home (while living in said home), there’s a lot of preparation involved. In fact, we have spent the last couple of months getting ready for this epic project and we’re optimistic that Saturday will go smoothly!
The living/dining room is nearly empty. The couch and lamp will go to the basement and we’ll move the piano to the center of the room and cover it with plastic. (Unless someone is in the market for a piano…and will move it.) Monday night we moved the TV and media components to…
…oh yes we did. Typically we’re anti-TV-in-the-bedroom, but sacrifices were made. We figured that with the [fill in the blank] months of remodeling ahead, it would be nice to balance the craziness with some movies in bed (which sounds way more appealing than watching movies in the basement). Despite my initial reluctance, Kyle insisted on installing the surround sound as well. Netflix, you’re welcome.
We’ve also been collecting materials! When you’re in the depths of remodeling, having the necessary materials on hand is a time and sanity saver. After compiling our master list, Kyle purchased most of the construction goods from the nearby big box store and ordered the framing package from a local lumber yard.
MDO for the new living room “ceiling” and insulation for the vaulted ceiling over the kitchen.
Tonight, Kyle is building a ramp! The majority of demo will be lath and plaster. It usually comes off the wall/ceiling with surprising ease, but it’s ridiculously heavy. The ramp will be part of a system that involves loading contractor bags into a wheelbarrow and then out the door, down the ramp and then up another ramp and into the dumpster. Did I mention we’re getting a dumpster? Things are about to get real.
Stay tuned for more details in the coming days, including a demo party recap and a tour of our new “basement apartment”. Kyle and I are downright giddy about diving into this project and we can’t wait to see how the space will instantly transform post-demo! To see past posts about our big plans, click here, here or here.
