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Drywalled Kitchen

This never would have gotten done like this if Dad (and mom) didn’t come out this weekend! They came out saturday morning around 9am so Friday night ryan and I worked on the electrical, finishing up almost all of the lights (we couldn’t install 2 of the recessed lights because the oscillating saw was needed and it would have woken Alex). We were up past 11pm working on electrical and we still had some left to do Saturday.

Saturday morning Alex and I headed out to home depot and the grocery store in the morning while Ryan put in those last 2 lights. At 9am when Mom and Dad arrived Alex was napping so we got ready to drywall (moved stuff around) and I worked on electrical. The rest of the day Mom watched Alex, Dad and Ryan sheetrocked and I did electrical. (A couple of new outlets for fridge/freezer, the lights finished, old wiring removed in the basement and hooking up the lights once the ceiling was up so we had some good lighting).

By dinner time the sheetrock was up not only in the kitchen but the back hallway and the little bumpout area by the bathroom! We have one little section to do (a 2×4 width basically) in the back hall but otherwise it’s done. Next up spackle.

After a relatively early night, Dad was up early and taped all the seams before they headed home for the last day of hunting. I got the screw holes all spackled and a second coat on the wall seams. Then Ryan bought a small rolling scaffolding so this week I can work on the ceiling spackle without having to use a ladder. It’s small but i can reach the ceiling. Hopefully we can get the ceiling done before next weekend. Very little needs to be done on the walls since they are mostly covered by cabinets and eventually a tiled backsplash. Just the 2 ft or so above the cabinets is going to be visible and with crown molding we didnt’ worry about the upper corners at all.

Here are some pics from this morning…

bumpout wall, this wall will have floor to ceiling cabinets/fridge next to the bumpout

So even though Sunday was a pretty lazy day (recuperation from friday night/saturday), we still got a TON done thanks to all the help! Now we just have to get the spackling done this week so we can sand/prime and get the cabinets up next weekend – sure that sounds easy *sarcasm* 🙂 Luckily we also have help coming next weekend so maybe this is doable and we can get the counter guys out to measure next week??

Hiring carpenters

So i know everyone (all 3 readers) are dying to know how it went hiring carpenters after our completely failed attempt to hire exterior painters!

It went great, but we knew it would because we’d hired these guys before. Mostly it’s one guy and he has a roommate that he likes to have help him. From what i can tell the roommate does all the grunt work but the main guy is the brains and the meticulous one. Works well for us. Just waiting on the bill to see what this costs us.

What did they do Wed-Fri? Well they got us the rest of the way prepped for drywall. Wednesday they supported the floor joist that had been hacked to pieces when the upstairs bathroom was originally put in. It’s not wonderful but it’s WAY better than it was and really eased my mind! Then they built the bumpout wall around the plumbing that Ryan had gotten the sill plate in for.

Hard to see, but that new lumber is the supported floor joist

They also cleaned out the old pipes (gas pipes, we had gotten the plumbing pipes out) and got all ready to do firring strips thursday (so they removed all the old drywall screws etc).

Thursday they flattened/leveled (not really level but made it flat as possible), the ceiling and added new firring strips where the old had been cut or removed for plumbing.

new firring strips and all firring is now ‘flat’ for ceiling

They leveled out the walls for cabinets which included planing some wood down and firring other wood out. I must not have taken a picture of that.

Next they took out the old arch that we decided to remove and rebuild because we needed to extend the one wall (and hence both walls to make it even). So they did demo and cut the cement board and dry fit it to put in Friday morning. They also cleaned up the back hallway, removing the doorway to the basement (new door will go in there as well).

back hallway cleaned up and doorway removed (ceiling cleaned up)

dry fit of cement board outside bathroom

And back friday with some lumber they got the cement board all laid down and screwed (and glued) down. Just about a foot left of the kitchen floor to go for that (plus the back hallway). Next up they built the archway!

new arch, should match the height of the front entry one

And now that lunch is over they are starting on the back hallway. One corner needs a nailer/firring strip added so they are going to clean up the plaster that’s there and add that (i cleaned out that bookcase so they can move it). Then they’re going to take up that back floor and put down the cement board for the rest.

So tonight I just have to finish up the electrical! Oh and get some glue for the cement board, we’ll probably have to finish it ourselves since we ran out of glue but if it’s dry fit it will go fast. Drywall should be here in about half an hour (storing it on the porch) so tonight our list is:

Electrical (3 recessed lights, some switches, pendant light boxes and 2 center light boxes), all mapped out, (outlets for fridge and microwave).
Home depot for glue and insulation (this happens during my grocery shopping trip)
Glue down floor pieces that aren’t done yet/screw them down
Cleanup
Move cabinets around to make room to fit drywall in the front door – ugg!
Insulate the ceilings for sound if i buy insulation i like (i dont’ like fiberglass) not a real requirement here

With all this prep, drywall should be a breeze with Dad coming out to help. Hopefully we’ll get the seams all taped too while he’s here. Coming together!!!

A little this a little that

This renovation weekend was one of those problem weekends with MULTIPLE unplanned trips to home depot that really bite into the schedule. We’ve really gotten to the point where we rarely need to go to home depot unplanned, we usually know what we need and can plan to go at a convenient time. However fate was working against us.

In the morning Ryan started with putting the base to the new wall around the bumpout in. This involved first taking out some more pipe and some wires, then fixing the subfloor and finally putting in a new bumpout base, it’s a causeway for the plumbing and it bumps out enough to match the cabinets.

Once that was done and Alex had napped we all went out to the dump and our first trip to home depot (planned), we needed cement board to finish up the kitchen floor, a new hardi blade for the saw and Alex was along for the trip. Plus we had a burned out drill (brand new) that we decided to replace. So off to the store we go and it was uneventful, unless you count Alex having a blast sitting up in the cart for the first time uneventful!

come on – look at that face – she was LOVIN IT!

Then things went down hill. First, I bought the wrong blade, it was too big for the saw so Ryan had to run back to get the correct blade. Then he got his piece cut and went to install it and our ‘new’ drill was actually one someone had replaced (it was very obviously used) AND it was the wrong model, someone had stuck their OLD model in the new box and scammed homedepot. Not cool. So back to home depot ryan went to get a new drill.

Finally he was able to make some progress on cement board and got most of the floor in. We have the last foot of the kitchen to do (all cut pieces), the one piece that will go under the fridge – currently the wire for the stove comes up there and I was hesitant to remove it because we are temporarily using said stove still. And the pieces by the bathroom need to be put in (one is cut but not screwed in).

So that was the floor. I’m pretty sure some other small stuff got done but I was occupied with a little someone so I missed it.

Then came sunday, up early, out to breakfast, out to home depot (planned) for some duct work to put in a vent for the stove hood. It’s a 7″ (ridiculous) because we went with the GE Cafe series stove and hood. First, home depot had plenty of 7″ everything EXCEPT for the piece that goes on the outside and downconverting it to 6″ kind of defeats the purpose of using all 7″ duct work. So then we saw the 3×12 or whatever the square version is, so we went with that for the outside and first piece, then a converter piece to the 7″ round. Anyone that has done duct work knows you need some crimp tool to make the pieces fit together if they are not pre-crimped. We did not have said tool but most of the pieces were crimped – we made it work when it wasn’t.

Then we got to our round duct, cut it to length, put it together and oops – it doesn’t fit!???!! Turns out they had 6″ round in the bin for 7″ and since it’s not put together we didn’t notice it. So back to home depot to get 7″ round … ugg! This wasn’t easy, they had the 7″ hidden in the back and I needed help to get it, the bin was full of 6″ though. Finally we got the duct in the ceiling, just popping down a bit so we can drywall around it (the 90 degree bend pops down). It all just barely fits up there in our 8″ floor joists.

With that done we got one firring strip in (ryan had to rip a 2×4 down to match the width of the old firring strips). We have a number that need to be replaced. Over the years one floor joist was basically removed for plumbing and firring strips were hacked around said missing joist. So we are trying to clean it up so our ceiling will lie flat and we can do crown later.

Again, more work may have been done that I missed but due to all the running around this weekend it felt slow. Ryan also had work to do Sunday and we had a baby to play with.

The good news is that even though there’s some work left before sheetrock, we decided to call ‘our’ carpenter and he can come out Wednesday and work on the rest. He’ll build out the walls that need it and fix the rest of the firring strips and maybe install some new doors for us if we have time to buy said doors (new back porch door and basement door – insulated). So we’re still planning on sheetrocking this coming weekend (drywall is on order and hopefully coming friday!). Then cabinets the following weekend. It will be nice to see it come back together finally. Too much of my house is down to the studs!

Catch-up

Wow, been a little bad about blogging lately! I will try to remember everything that we did since the last post. We have since had a weekend to work on the house, then I took thanksgiving week off and the first part of the week worked on the house then back to NY to visit family for thanksgiving. Finally ending in a Sunday at home relaxing (out to breakfast!) and during a late 2 hour nap we went through all our cabinets to make sure they were all in good shape (they weren’t, so they are express ordering 3 of them – 1 of which was broken and 2 had minor issues).

Anyway so back to the weekend of the 17th. Ryan finished the upstairs bathroom floor (patching in some subfloor, then laying down new cement board). So the upstairs bathrooms are all ready for plumbing rough-in when Jason can come out (this week).

Then it was on to the kitchen floor – it was a lot of work but Ryan got up the old kitchen floor layers and then we started putting down cement board (2 pieces) 🙂 Our drill does not like this kind of work evidently and it was over heating (it’s new because our old one burned out the batteries and we have to take them someplace to get replaced – no time yet!) – we may be replacing this new one though).

kitchen floor removed and 2 pieces of cement board glued and screwed down.

a view from the other side of the kitchen

Once the weekend was over Alli went off to daycare per usual but I was home to work on the house! I actually don’t remember what day I did what but I ran to the dump every day (monday through wednesday). I caulked the new siding and windows on the driveway side of the house (it was crazy cold on my poor little finger!). I moved everything in the attic over to the small section we are not having insulated yet for storage reasons. I cleaned up the basement really well (the kitchen demo did a number on the basement below).

I also demo’d most of the outside wall in the hidden section off the kitchen (old stair well). This way they can insulate that section for us.

Hidden stair well – with wall demo’d for insulation

After that i finished up the outside wall electrical, running a cable/ethernet drop, the feed for the outlet run, a feed and wires for the disposal and dishwasher, the recessed lights over the sink and counter. I also put down 2 more pieces of cement board in the kitchen but wasn’t able to get the saw to cut the other pieces I needed to install so that kind of halted.

dishwasher and disposal lines (the disposal is on a switch), both run under the sink.

I’m pretty sure that’s all I did other than pack and get ready to head out Wednesday night to NY. I don’t have recent pictures of the kitchen – I’ll get some before insulation goes in on thursday. Jason is also coming out thursday to rough in the upstairs bathroom and laundry room plumbing so we can drywall the kitchen as our next project.

We realized this past weekend that another driving factor for getting the cabinets installed before xmas (besides the major one of wanting a working kitchen again) is that we can’t put up a xmas tree in our cupola until the cabinets are out of the way and it’s Alli’s first xmas – we need a tree!!!

Weekend Update

Weekend plans went a little wonky this past weekend. We were supposed to go back to NY originally to celebrate Aimee’s birthday. Then Ryan decided he needed to stay home to make progress on the house so we can still get this kitchen done in time (there’s been more work upstairs than we had hoped before we can finish said kitchen). So it was going to be Alex and I driving back.

Then Aimee’s back which had been really bad all week wasn’t getting better (worse?) so we considered getting together in CT instead for just a day trip, then PJ couldn’t make the trip and my cold that started thursday actually got worse for the weekend. So we cancelled the whole thing.

So Saturday Ryan got up and started the dump runs (since the dump is only open till 1 on saturday we usually have a couple of runs to do with last weekend’s demo). By the second (or third?) trip, Alex had finished her nap and we decided to hit home depot all together and get cement board and 2x4s. The rest of the day included Ryan taking down the bathroom walls, putting in new sill plates for the new walls and cutting out tons of piping (cast iron drains/vents). The good thing about only using a single bathroom in our house is that the only plumbing that needs to be on is that single bathroom.

The upstairs is mostly done for now (on hold till the kitchen is done) but we do need to finish the sub floor (patch it and then add cement board). Ryan also framed in the old pantry door (into a wall) in the kitchen so we can now run the rest of the outlet circuit around that corner and finish it up.

The final project was getting some stain on our new railings, they needed a nice final sanding and then the stain to match the deck:

cedar railings with red semi-transparent stain

Don’t be fooled by little I have to report for the weekend, taking those pipes out took quite a while, as did the floor prep up to this point. What is left in the upstairs is minor. One more weekend before thanksgiving and then insulation. The kitchen is almost ready for insulation (just a bit more electrical) and the upstairs needs very little prep (some nails pulled). I took the whole week off for thanksgiving so I can work up in the attic to prep that for insulation on monday and tuesday. That’s where the real work is at this point.

Once insulation is in, we just have to finish the kitchen electrical, then drywall and put in cabinets (that’s all?!) not really, but those are the big ones.

Cabinets are here

Before I get to the weekend update (I haven’t take pics yet), I figured I’d show the cabinets. On friday our stove, hood and cabinets all arrived. We now can barely walk through our front livingroom and diningroom. Not quite sure how we plan to get drywall into the kitchen… future problem.

I opened the wall corner cabinet up to take some pics. These are Martha Stuart (from Home Depot), in maidstone style – finish pictured here.

And here is a view from our kitchen – the diningroom and livingroom are packed…

coming soon… how we spent our weekend

The demo never ends!

What a long weekend, the little tiny bathroom upstairs was insane, Ryan said there were 3 layers of renovation and each time they renovated they didn’t take anything down so we had more plaster from a tiny bathroom than we did from our entire kitchen demo!

Saturday morning Ryan got to work on the demo (starting with some dump runs which will never end!). Our neighbor came over to play with alex for a couple of hours saturday so I was able to help here and there with demo and other things. Ryan got most of the bathroom demo’d and what will be the laundry room, leaving the tub, toilet and floor (and miscellaneous unfinished demo) for sunday.

Then Ryan’s parents showed up for the evening and we all went out to dinner (Alli-boo got some great snuggles in at the restaurant and did great considering it was latish for her to be out and about). No melt downs though and she got to try a sippy cup for the first time (which she grabbed right on to!).

Sunday Ryan and I finished up the bathroom demo and cleanup while Suzanne spent the day with Alli-boo and Mark installed our new railings he built! They look amazing, and half of our porch is going to be the envy of the neighborhood for sure now! Hopefully next summer the whole porch will be 🙂

Alli gets some snuggles from grandma at the restaurant

new railings – they look exactly like the original but better! We plan to stain that top piece of cedar to match the deck (maroon), the rest will be yellow.

from the street – half of the porch is done!

Unfortunately the bathroom took SO long to demo (come on it was a TINY bathroom, we didn’t think it would take more than half a day!) that we’re a bit behind on the renovation. Plus one wall needs to come down completely and be rebuilt, these walls are just horrible. So we have to come up with a game plan to get a few things done quickly and soon.

a start on the electrical – saturday morning

hard to tell but a bunch of the old plumbing and gas lines were removed (water capped in the basement). The only water in our house right now is in the downstairs bathroom running off our manifold and our washing machine in the basement!

upstairs bathroom all gone. notice the old doorway – always interesting finding different layouts to the house. this is a view from the master bathroom

a view from the hallway outside the bathroom. This wall is the one that we’ll take down and rebuild. It will have the washer/dryer on one side and the sink on the other side plumbing wise.

Happy Halloween

Alex had her first halloween and she was such a good sport for it! She was dressed up as Pubert Addams (easiest costume I’ve made yet – a grand total of 2 hours to complete it!). Since it was designed after one of her jumpers it was nice and comfy (although she’s already growing out of it!).

She got dressed up, with makeup and got to play with candy for the first time. Then we went trick-or-treating to a couple neighbor’s houses where she proceeded to dry to grab candy from bowls. Back home to hand out candy until bedtime, where she got to play with candy in our bowl for another 20 minutes. So I think halloween is her favorite holiday, she got very very mad when I took candy away from her (evidently wrappers taste really yummy).

handing out candy (yes that is the bowl right there for her to play in)

And now it’s almost the weekend again! We’re very excited about this weekend, Ryan is going to demo the upstairs bathroom and soon to be laundry room. Then we plan to get new cement board down for flooring up there. After that it’s back to the kitchen to work on electrical and the floor down there (has to come up and cement board put down). We have one more weekend before thanksgiving and insulation so this weekend has to really count!

Kitchen Demo

The plan this weekend was to do demo, lots of demo. Mom came out to watch Alex on saturday so I could help out a lot more than normal lately. Ryan got the rest of the kitchen and back hallway all demo’d so we’re ready to start putting it back together. He got 3 trips to the dump before it closed but with Obama coming to Nashua it took forever to take each trip.

With that in mind we decided to wait on demolishing the upstairs bathroom because we have no place to put all the debris. As it is the truck is loaded and we have a huge pile of wood and bags. Probably 3 more loads just to get rid of the kitchen debris. Next weekend we’ll have to demo the upstairs which means the electrical we planned on doing next weekend needed to get started this weekend.

So Ryan got the holes drilled for the electrical and so far the outlet boxes have been put in on the exterior wall. I’ll get the outlet wires run tonight or some night this week. Then we have to get the recessed lights up.

the hidden staircase to no where… nothing interesting hiding back here except for some old wallpaper 🙂

kitchen view from the diningroom (see the staircase to no where)

The exterior wall is a jig saw puzzle with a cut header. The kitchen was remodeled at some point maybe 50 years ago and it wasn’t well done.

So we have next weekend to get the upstairs demo done and the electrical done (at least the outside wall and lights). Then the 17/18th we have to get the kitchen floor up and the range hood vent installed out the side. Any other prep for insulation. We hope to get insulation the week after thanksgiving then on to drywall the first weekend in december and cabinets the weekend after that.

Ambitious – absolutely. Let’s hope we can manage this so we have a usable kitchen by xmas!

Painters

Well the painters are officially on the naughty list! They haven’t been over in more than a month, since Ryan’s paternity leave. They never finished stripping, we hired a carpenter to replace the wood they took down when they kept messing it up (and wasting tons of supplies). On top of that they never followed any of the laws with regards to lead paint removal after discussing it with them multiple times.

The bad news:

At the very very least we need to do a few things our selves, we’ve kind of given up hope after leaving multiple messages and trying to get a hold of the owner…

We have bare wood they stripped that needs primer before winter!
We have stripped wood that needs to be sanded before it can be primed, the person stripping was new and did a kind of terrible job chipping into the wood over and over!
We have new primed wood installed that needs caulk before winter!
Our new siding needs to be caulked (4 new sections)

The good news:

We only paid them a down payment of a 1/4 the amount wanted and they have done about a 1/4 of the work if you include materials purchased
We know never to hire them again!
We ended up finding a good carpenter we like for future work

So Ryan is going to spend some time Saturday doing some prep work on the porch (there’s still paint to be stripped, then it all needs to be sanded). We’re really in doubt that we could find anyone that is available next week to get primer/paint on the house! We did put out feelers to some people we know/trust to see if any painters they know happen to have a couple days available but it’s very very unlikely.

I may take a day off (monday) to caulk and do what i can (prime?) if the weather is nice. It gets cold by next thursday so we don’t have long to get this buttoned up. We’ve weathered winters with just primer before but we are trying to be better about this, surely starting at the beginning of august was not too much to ask to get this job done before winter!