Category: Home Renovations

Demolition – and the nursery work begins

With only 2 months to go until the baby arrives!  Yikes (it’s actually about 10 weeks but who knows!).  We finally got a start on the nursery this weekend.  While most people just paint a nursery – we are building from scratch – per usual in this house 🙂

So this weekend it was demolition.  Unfortunately Ryan was not feeling well, and Saturday was not a good day for him.  I wake up a lot in the middle of the night and I noticed Friday night that he was not sleeping due to congestion, so by 5am I gave him some nyquil and let him sleep late – it definitely helped.

Since we had prepped Friday night, we were really ready to just start in on the demo and after 2 hours had the nursery ceiling done (and cleaned up) – which is really the hardest part!  Another 2 hours and we had the main exterior wall done, half of the next wall and the closet done and cleaned up.  With the light fading and no light in the room (the fan was not mounted to a box so I think the wires came a bit loose – will rectify that this week but we’ll be running new wiring anyway).

So here’s where we were starting Sunday morning:

Ceiling done - and yes it was filled with insulation - uck!
Another ceiling shot
Outside wall finished!
Half of the next wall and most of the closet finished

So that brought us to Sunday, we didn’t sleep quite as late but after a day of hard work we definitely needed a bit of extra sleep.  And then we commenced the demo.  This was easier demo in one respect (most of the walls were exposed from the other side so Ryan could kick them in from the outside), but harder in others – it was this hard cement board which is super heavy and hard to get off, so when we didn’t have access to the backside it was extra work compared to plaster and lathe.

Cleanup consisted of throwing all wood/lathe out the window, the all chunks of plaster board out as well.  We ended up with a truck load full of plaster and a huge pile (probably 2 truck loads) of wood/lathe to bring to the dump.  The rest of the plaster (and insulation) we bagged up and Ryan lugged down the back stairs to pile up for future dump runs.

The view of the nursery from the top of the stairs 🙂
And the view from our bedroom - no more walls 🙂
Our wood pile
And my dump load for today

With that done I spent the rest of the evening cleaning up – vacuum, clean out vacuum, vacuum more etc.  The dust was minimal since the plaster board does not generate as much as plaster and lathe and we did all the plaster/lathe while the walls were still up.  But I still had to vacuum a few times and probably a good mopping is in order out in our hallway.  Still by dinner time the house felt clean enough to relax!

Of course I still have to vacuum the ceiling and chunks of insulation that did not come down – some evening(s) this week after I get a light in that room again, I’ll get to that.  But this is great progress.  So what’s left…

  1. Cleanup (vacuum ceiling, take down nails etc.)
  2. Take down the siding (aluminum and wood)
  3. Prep for windows
  4. Install windows (3) – including the one at the top of the stairs
  5. Some minor framing to make sure we have nailers in the corners, close up the extra doorway etc.
  6. Run electrical throughout nursery (main light, closet light and outlet circuit)
  7. INSULATION (spray foam so we need to hire someone), then insulate the ceiling with bats ourselves probably
  8. Drywall
  9. Finish drywall (tape/spackle/sand)
  10. Install all trim
  11. Paint paint and more paint
  12. Re-finish the floors

Hmmm… I’d like to get up to number 10 before the baby comes – doable? yes/no?  yikes!

Weekend Update

Well this weekend was eventful but not quite productive 🙂  Ryan was away with his friends for a long weekend so after getting the house cleaned up and organized, and doing lots of baking I had a little girl party on Saturday (stitch friends).  One of the treats I made was these homemade strawberry sorbet in chocolate cups treat:

Mmmmm - strawberry sorbet!

Fitzy had his cousin Buddy over to play for the weekend and they really are best buds.

Tuckered out on sunday 🙂

Saturday was  a long day and after the girls all left I just crashed for the night (after clean up of course).  Sunday I had big plans to be productive – but when i woke up I was still tired so the dogs and I chilled for most of the day (I finished up a good books with them cuddled on the couch).  In the afternoon I did manage to do one little household item that’s been on my list for a long time…

We have this old switch (turn style) for the basement entryway light and it doesn’t always work (the wiring is old and loose).  Since we put in new basement lights when we first bought the house I’ve been meaning to run a new light and switch off of that circuit so I could reliably see going down the first half of the basement stairs with laundry in my arms.  Plus this means I could disconnect a bunch of the knob and tube that’s spliced numerous times for this light/switch and an old outlet.

Took a little while but we have a light.  This isn’t permanent, when we remodel the kitchen we’ll be redoing this entryway a bit but who knows when that will be so for now we have a light!

New switch (see the turn style one to the right - that's now disconnected)
New light fixture (the old one was definitely not up to par)

I also hung up a sheet to keep the dust more contained in our work area (since I’ll be sanding the drawers and shelves of the built-ins as soon as I’m motivated to).

Work area dust sheet 🙂

I spent Sunday evening over at my uncle’s house for my cousin Maia’s birthday.  Buddy is going to stay the week with them so he made the trip with me.  The dogs must have worn each other out because Fitz was pretty tired most of Monday when I worked from home.  He has completely recovered however and thank goodness it was daycare day – he was driving me nuts this morning!

And last night I decided to do something fun and make a baby quilt for Itty Bitty! I actually only intended to get the strips cut but it went so quickly I couldn’t stop myself.  This is the same pattern I used for the crib quilt for little Jason but this time I used all flannels.   I just have to figure out what to use for backing and binding now.  The one unfortunate thing was that I could only use 10 flannels so I had to limit my choices and now i have leftover favorites so I may need another quilt.  But after I finish this up I need to make an owl wallhanging.  Maybe I’ll make burp cloths or bibs something with my scrap pieces.

Fabrics that I selected for the quilt
Quilt top all put together (crib size)

The corners of the blocks definitely do not line up well but the nature of flannels is that they are stretchy so that was challenging and since the quilt is so busy I wasn’t worried about it.  Plus I plan to lay it on the floor for tummy time – not exactly important that it’s perfect 🙂  This quilt took only 3 hours to cut and piece (for future reference)!

That was my ‘weekend’ with a work day 🙂

 

Valentines surprise

Ryan had to work this past weekend so I was QUITE surprised when I got home to find progress on the tvroom!  The first thing I could see was a baseboard across the front of the built-in – YES!!!  Finally, no more Fitz toys stuck under there 🙂

The baseboards aren’t complete because he couldn’t find a cap molding (like we did in the gym) that he likes, so we have to head over to Brookline when they’re open over there to get the matching one.  But for now I’d say the hard half of the tvroom has the main part of the baseboard completed!

The closet also has a door!  And the two doors he previously installed have trim!  I’d say at this point that the moldings/trim are about 1/2 way done since 2 out of 4 doors are trimmed out and baseboards go around half the room (as does the crown).

I’ll let the pictures show the progress I came home to!

The closet has a door - and the door to the front hall has trim!
Baseboards in front of the built-ins (note that cap molding is just sitting there to see if we like it, not happy with it)
And trim and baseboards over to the door going towards the kitchen!

We’ll see what happens this week and next weekend.  I’m still working on the closet project in my free time (evenings) and next weekend Ryan is away and I’m having some friends over so progress will be limited but there should be some!

Then the following weekend we’ll be demoing the nursery!

Some sanding

It sure is hard to do something like sand plaster when you’re pregnant.  The exertion required (and movement) is draining.  So I didn’t do much last night but get the closet prepped (hung a sheet and got the vacuum ready) and started some sanding.  The wall that’s drywall wasn’t bad of course so that’s done, the left wall actually wasn’t too bad either so that got a decent sanding.  What WAS hard was the ceiling/back wall that’s curved under the stairs.  It got a start at sanding but that’s in.  I think I need to do another spackle coat to make it smoother before giving it another try.  I don’t have the energy to really give it a good sanding so I need to have done a great job spackling.

If i’m up to it tonight I’ll do touchups on the walls I did sand so those will be done and maybe get another spackle coat on this one back wall/ceiling.

Closet spackling

After getting Fitz from daycare and getting home at a reasonable time I decided to get another coat of spackle on the closet while Fitz slept and Ryan was playing basketball.  It was tiring but went pretty quickly and I think we may be good with the closet now.

Next up is to sand the closet walls/ceiling and see if there are any spots to touch up after that.  It is JUST a closet after all and most of it will be covered with shelving or hooks with coats hanging.

Going to IKEA this weekend and hoping to get some shelving for the closet and some hooks for coats.  So if I’m up to sanding the closet tonight maybe I’ll get it primed tomorrow night (waiting for my new respirator to come to protect me from the paint fumes, although the closet will be latex paint which is much less VOCs than oil based, the built-ins will be oil based paint so the respirator is a good safety precaution).

 

A surprising amount of progress!

With the amount of work ryan had to do this weekend, he really surprised me when he said he’d do house work on sat and just work Sunday.  I had not been getting my hopes up with the late nights he’s been pulling that he’d have time this weekend.

Saturday we got to work on the drawers, ryan hung the last bit of hardware for the drawer slides, then we built the last 4 drawers!  Next we made face frames for them all with a nice routed top and attached them.  All 10 drawers are finally done!  Just doors to finish up and the built-ins will be done.

The right hand cabinet with finished drawers!
The middle cabinets with finished drawers
And the left hand cabinet with drawers - that's 10 total!

After that we put together the glider we got for the nursery (our first nursery purchase).   For now it will live in our room because we don’t have a place for it and Fitz is not a fan when it moves 🙂

As if that wasn’t enough for a day, Ryan said he would hang one of the tvroom doors if I could find the door and door frame I wanted to use.  Unfortunately this was harder than I though and he almost put in three frames before we found the real matching frame for the original door.  (The frame was hiding).  And we have a door (Fitz is also not a fan of this 🙂 )

Door to the front entry hung! This swings out into the entryway as it originally did.

After that we settled in for some chili for dinner and went to bed early.  Sunday Ryan had to work so I decided I would do some spackling and then end the day with some sewing while he watched the big game.  There was one section up by the crown molding that needed to be spackled so I got 2 coats on that (maybe one more needed) and I got the closet corners all taped and a skim coat on both the left side and back walls (including the ceiling).

I think in general I need one more skim coat on every surface and the closet will be ready to be sanded!  Considering how this started I’m very impressed with it.

Corner taped and another coat on the seam of this wall. Taping that curved seam was HARD!
Ceiling got a good skim coat as well as that left wall. This side did not get taped since it was in decent shape (not great shape) but didn't have a hole that needed taping at least.
And a view of the back wall, after this I actually skim coated that whole descending wall so everything except the right wall has a skim coat or more now.

While I was skim coating I think Ryan was looking for a break because he said that if I got everything set up and found a door and door frame (for sure this time) he would install the other door in the tvroom!  I dropped everything and went on the hunt.  This door originally was replaced by a newer door so I had to go through the collection of ‘removed’ doors and frames to find one for this spot – and we were in luck!

Door from the tvroom to the kitchen area installed!
A view of the built-ins and the door hung 🙂

That leaves only 1 more door (which I’ve already picked out) to be hung in the tvroom – the closet door.  It’s kind of nice to wait until the spackling is done though in there first (almost!).  We can start baseboards (which will make the built-ins look more finished) anytime now!

At this point I was going to caulk the built-ins but the game was about to start and I would have been blocking the tv so instead I went up to my sewing room and spent the next 4 hours making up a crib skirt for my sister’s nursery (hey it’s never too late – well it’s not too late yet – my nephew does still use a crib) 🙂

Pleated crib skirt, the main material is white with green stripes and the pleats are solid green that match the stripes nicely.
A better view of the pleats.

The only reason that took so long is that I overlocked every seam so it could put up with harsh washing (not that it will but just in case).  This probably wasn’t necessary but I had the time and it was good practice (i’ll have to make one of these for my nursery soon and being a dust fanatic it will definitely get washed a lot).  AND I used up 2 spools of thread almost on this – overlocking uses a lot of thread!  Me thinks I need a surger soon 🙂

What a great amount of progress we made!  I can really see a finish in sight for the tvroom which is good since pretty soon we’ll be switching gears to start the nursery and focusing on that room!.  I’ve planned out what I want to do storage wise in the closet in the tvroom which has motivated me to finish that soon so I can get some stuff stored in there (I currently have no closets downstairs at all!).

Finally a productive weekend to share…

It’s been a while since I posted because we hadn’t done much around the house but this weekend we got a lot done.

First up on Saturday morning we went shopping.  We went over to AcMoore and got the antique maps my dad gave us framed (well we’ll get them in a few weeks – but we picked out frames and mats etc).  This was not cheap but we’re very excited to see how they look and they’ll be preserved now.  One is an old atlas (1905) of NH and the other is a survey map from 1892, it has our street before our house was built.  I’ll definitely show pictures when we get them back framed!

Then we headed over to babiesrus and bought a glider for the nursery (it has to be ordered) – so our first nursery purchase has been made!  We still haven’t picked out a crib set yet but since the nursery hasn’t even been demo’d yet we’re not in a rush 🙂  We had a 20% off coupon, hence the purchase of the glider!

Finally we finished up at home depot, buying the hardibacker for the master bathroom floor.  When we got home we got right to work, I moved all the oak flooring that was stacked in there and vacuumed, then Ryan put down the hardbacker.  Then I put up some plastic over the exposed part of the ceiling to keep insulation from dropping on anyone in there (1/2 of the ceiling hasn’t been demo’d at all yet).

hardibacker laid down ... we still have to remove the radiator when we really refinish this room so we just layed enough to make the room usable, on the right where it's still exposed is where I've now stacked all the oak floor we pulled up.
The ceiling covered
We'll probably put the head of the guest bed up against this wall. Very classy guest room 🙂

Once that was done we moved on to working on drawers for the built-ins (7 left to do).  This was quite a project, first we had to make the blocking for the hardware to hang on (so the drawers could slide out without hitting the doors), then we cut some of our poplar planks down to size and then planed it to 5/8″ (the hardware I bought only fits up to 5/8″ thick wood – oops).  This took a LONG time but once that was done we dado’d the boards (to slide the plywood bottoms in) and I got to work cutting the drawer pieces to length and pocket hole drilling them while Ryan installed the blocking and hardware slides in the cabinets themselves.

On Sunday we started making drawers, unfortunately they didn’t quite fit where they were planned to fit but they all fit someplace so 3 are done.  It’s possible we’ll have to cut the fronts and backs of one drawer fresh at the end from the one plank we have left.  Not sure why since the measurements aren’t different but something is off with one of them (the blank space).

3 more drawers done and installed (still need face frames but we're saving those for last)
4 more drawers ready to go!
The last cabinet, ready for the hardware to be hung!

The absolute worst part about all of this is that we have to hang the drawers to make sure they all fit properly etc.  However then we have to take off all the hardware so we can paint the built-ins – ugg!  But we’re getting close now, only 4 more drawers to make and the hard parts are done.

The rest of sunday we relaxed (ryan had work to do) so we put on some movies (ending the evening with Emma!) and I stitched.

Royalty ABC - I had previously finished the large queen stitched diamonds and backstitched row below it so Sunday I did the long arm row and then scrolled...
And this is the bulk of what I stitched on Sunday. The next part of the alphabet, a satin stitch design row and the start of the large flower. This is now page 3 of the design! More than halfway done!

I really love having some time to stitch again, it’s been so long and doing a piece like this where each row feels like a little ‘finish’ is really easy to pick up with just a little free time.

The only downside about this weekend was that poor Fitz got an eye infection (dogs can get pink eye evidently).  Luckily not contagious to humans, I felt bad for him and after a visit to the vet this morning he’s on antibiotic drops a couple times a day for a week.  It’s already clearing up and he’s definitely acting himself.  I’m undecided about daycare tomorrow (i need to call them and hear what they think) but might just postpone and do daycare on Thursday this week instead of Tuesday, give him more time to fight it off.  Even though he’s acting normal and definitely needs an energy outlet!

That was our weekend!  With 4 drawers left to build, face frames for all 10, then the doors to finish the built-ins are getting closer!  Let’s see what next weekend brings (besides the super bowl of course).

A little spackling

Last week (Thursday night) I managed to motivate myself to do a little spackling on the tvroom closet!  Got a skim coat on the left side plaster wall and taped the right wall.  The ‘corner’ has to be taped on the right and that’s going to be interesting with the curve but that’s for next time.  The ceiling also needs a lot of skim coats (the left wall needs a few skim coats as well).  This will be a slow project but at least progress was made!

Skim coat on the left hand wall
Taped the right hand wall

Stomach bugs…

What a strange weekend we had.  Saturday I was feeling so much better from my cold finally so we worked on the house (knowing we had only one day this weekend since Ryan had a bunch of work work to do on sunday).  First we ran to the dump to drop off the final loads from last weekend, then over to pick up our new windows from Marvin.

Home again we decided to continue the demolition in the upstairs diningroom so we could put up the new wall for the hallway.  It was very messy demo due to the insulation in the ceiling and we only did half of the ceiling (just enough to put up the new wall), since the master bathroom will not be done for a long while and i’d rather get the floor down before we demo the rest (it’s not fun cleaning demo debri from the upstairs and downstairs due to cracks in the subfloor).  The demo went pretty quickly (poor Ryan had to do all of it) but I helped with bagging it all up and now we have another dump load for another weekend waiting outside (hopefully before it snows!).

With that completed I spent about an hour vacuuming up the exposed insulation and the debri.  Finally we started the new wall.  We left a few of the studs out so there’s a makeshift doorway to get through for now (since we’re not finishing the bathroom for a while we’ll use it as our ‘guest room’ while we work on the nursery – need to put the bed someplace!).

Finally with the wall in and secured to both the upper and lower joists it was time to remove the jacks to see if the floor had any less movement or not.  It has definitely improved, it still moves (the joists included) if you jump on it so we may need to take future measures but there was definite improvement over before.

Ceiling demolition

 

And the other side
New wall started (still needs 2 more studs and blocking but it's enough for now).

Unfortunately on Sunday, even though we knew Ryan wouldn’t be able to work on the house I still had hopes to get a few things done but I woke up with a sore throat and headache (cold really doesn’t want to go away).  The sore throat was probably due to not drinking enough water on saturday because staying hydrated sunday certainly helped.  So while Ryan worked I crashed on the couch with some Pride & Prejudice and stitched as well as napped.

Stitching Progress update. Making good progress on this piece.

Then the stomach bugs came to our house.  Kind of.  Fitz was the first to go down.  Sometime after dinner he got sick (right in his bed too), and it was horrible.  He continued to get sick 4 times total over the next few hours and we were on high alert for any sign he might need to rush outside.  I have a nice big load of dog blankets that need to be washed (waiting to see how today goes first).  Poor Fitzy.  I finally took away his water (since he was just throwing it back up) and he was okay through the night.

Of course then later in the evening I got a bit of a bug (or just an IBS attack).   I was up till 3am with uncontrollable shivers every 20 minutes or so.  Not fun.  Poor Fitz and I are quite the pair.  So I decided to work from home today due to my lack of sleep and wanting to be able to keep an eye on Fitz (who is acting fine but wants to eat grass now – can’t find any!  – which makes me think he’s not better yet).  He is allowed a little water (although he hasn’t touched it yet) and I gave him some yogurt with peanut butter  for breakfast so we’ll see how that goes.  If he doesn’t get sick he’ll get rice and chicken for dinner tonight.  Hopefully whatever it was has passed and he can go to his new daycare tomorrow.

I myself am feeling better, I feel like I always do after an IBS attack so that’s probably what it was (from eating too much yesterday?).  I’ll take it easy with what I eat today and stay hydrated.  I should be able to work most of the day (maybe a short nap at some point).  And poor Fitz is stuck in the room with me so I can keep an eye on him.

That was our weekend – so much fun 🙂  I am very excited about the house progress, we can now put down hardi-backer in the master bathroom area and make it into a temporary guest room with sheets for walls  and the bed moved in there.  Then the nursery clean out project begins and eventually we’ll demo that room and get it going!

Happy New Year

It’s a new year – and how did we spend New Year’s Eve?  Well working on the house of course!

We determined that the upstairs diningroom/master bathroom floor had way too much movement to hold a new bathroom at some point.  Just Fitz walking across made it sway (not good for grout).  So today we worked on the floor.  First Ryan and his dad took up the wood floor (we saved almost all of it).  We’ll re-lay it for the hallway but the bathroom will be tiled.  Then we de-nailed all the boards to save them and I cleaned up the subfloor.

Upstairs diningroom floor - gone! (see it piled on the right, that's most of it)
A farther back view - we still need to reframe what will be the entry to the hallway but at least there's a doorway.
A different view (toward the bathroom)
And back toward the stairway hallway
A view of the old chimney way - we're waiting to close off this hole in the floor until we know what we need to run to the attic through here.

Ryan and his dad then worked on supporting the floor joists from below – using 1/2″ plywood on each side of every joist after jacking up the floor a bit.  We have to wait 5 days for the adhesive to dry fully before we take down the jacks and see if the floor feels more secure (it feels very secure with the jacks under it) 🙂

Jacks holding up the floor joists for extra support temporarily
The supported floor joists - 1/2 inch plywood on each side, glued, nailed and screwed in
The other half of the room
And a different view

Suzanne made a potato, bacon soup for the guys for lunch that Ryan has been enjoying the leftovers from today as well.  We ended the evening with a night out at Chunky’s to see the new Sherlock Holmes – love sitting in comfy seats and getting to eat while watching a movie!  Unfortunately probably due to the dust, I was starting to feel like I was getting a cold/sinus infection by the evening and didn’t wake up feeling much better today.  But a day of relaxing certainly helped (as did tylenol for the headache).  I also think the high pressure system we had passed through which was not helping.  By tonight I was feeling much better and got the house vacuumed to remove the dust pretty thoroughly.

We’ll see what tomorrow brings … drawers maybe??