Sweat and drywall

Sami has gotten pretty good at mudding drywall. This part is not much fun and with 90 degree weather the dust sticks to everything.

We got the door to the second bedroom installed. It is starting to look like a house again. Yes the carpet in the hall is that nasty. I pulled out the old Kimsol tar-soaked paper insulation. Good thing we only had a little left, it really smelled bad. I have a special wall bath vent ordered since we can't go out the ceiling.
Here you can see better the new second bedroom door and the expanded bathroom.
Tomorrow is another day for sweating, hopefully the tub comes in and we start to put the bath back together.

Big progress, bad pictures

Ok this is what our floorboards and roof decking are made of, 1 5/8" thick tongue and groove planking. That should hold more than enough weight. This hole is from the old toilet. The plumber came today and moved the toilet and the sink services so we can swap them. Our water pressure was too high so we had a reducing value put in.

Bad picture but you can see where the toilet used to be and where it is now. We couldn't go any closer to the tub since there is a load bearing joist down below. Some of the old plumbing was ABS which is not allowed by code anymore. The plumber spliced in new PVC for the sink drain and the tub.
Here is a better shot. When there aren't many walls lots of stuff needs to be in the same place. This ugly mess should be covered up soon. You can see where an old owner must have drilled a wrong hole for the toliet location, oops.
Now that all of the plumbing is completed we can drop in the tub and start laying tile.

Baby steps

Well, our plumbing hardware and wall tile arrived. The floor tile we originally ordered was discontinued so we were given a refund on that. Good news for us since we decided to go with something simpler anyway. Here is a picture of the wall tile out of the box. Very cool. We scratched the river rock as well. It was much bigger than I had expected and we have a lot going on in the bathroom already. Hopefully we can use it somewhere else in the future.


I spent last evening at Home Depot trying to pick up our order and then I mudded everything that I could in the house. I think my technique is improving. If you're looking for cheap entertainment, stand in line at the Home Depot service desk. I love old Italian guys.



Our plumber is at the house as we speak. We will be fitting all of the small drywall pieces in on Friday. The tub should show up on Saturday so then we can start laying the subflooring and tile backer. Things are starting to take shape!

Memorial Day is for working

This weekend and next weekend it is $10 off any purchase of $50 or more at Lowe's. So we made 5 trips at $50 for drywall, compound, and cement board. Today was for drywalling and we got most of it finished.

Now there are two rooms again. The second room is much bigger.
The second room got a first coat of mud and John got compound placed in the storage area above the bathroom closet.
The bathroom is starting to take shape, first wall and medicine cabinet installed.

The marvels of modern chemistry

While this may not look that impressive, I spent a good part on the day with tin snips making a 6" round piece of HVAC duct fit into a 6" square hole. I felt like part of Apollo 13. It looks much nicer with the duct vent on.
Before: the brick wall we wanted to expose in the bathroom that had some industrial paint on it.
After: a brush, gloves and paint remover. Wonderful stuff, just don't forget to open the window. And just so you know, there will be a cabinet at the top where the paint is still there. Note the block electrical box. You can't even guess how many times I hit that with my arm and managed to shock myself.
John did most of the work - he hung drywall in the entire closet and mudded most of it. I tried my hand at muddin' at the end of the day. My dad would be so proud.
The interior of the closet is drywalled and since it's hard to get a picture, you'll have to believe me when I tell you it's actually starting to look like a room.
Tomorrow it should really start coming together - we're hanging drywall most of the day since the plumbing stuff isn't in yet.

Nice day for some work

We were pretty tired after yesterday's activities so here is the update. Sam worked on removing the railing from the section that is now in the bathroom. These were schedule 40 3-inch pipes that could have held back a car. We burned through all of the sawzall blades but got them removed.

They also made one impressive pan pipe.
The plan is to put frosted glass here to let extra light into the bathroom.
The box will be a tiled portion in the shower to keep shampoo bottles and the like.
The tub, fixtures, valves, and tile are still being shipped. Once those show up we can get the plumber in to install the new equipment.

Back to work

We finished the last of the framing today. Almost back to two bedrooms.

Kind of a bad shot but this is the door for the closet in the bathroom.
Here is the progress freeing the tubes from the wall. It might take all day tomorrow but those babies are coming out. Since this section will now be in the bathroom we are going to put some type of frosted glass in.
It's a short post, I am tired and have to make big progress in the next three days.

Let the shopping begin!

Now that everything is torn out, we have to start putting it back together. Not much will get done this week, but we have started shopping, so here are some picture of what we're using. This is going to be the tile in the tub surround and for the sink backsplash. (Click on the picture to see better detail) It's 100% recycled glass as well.

We ordered new fixtures for the tub before we decided to replace it, but we would have went with the same style regardless. This is a Kohler from the Purist line.

This is the sink faucet, also from the Purist line. We will have two faucets in a trough-style sink, made of concrete of course. John will have more details on that later. The floor will be 12" tile for the most part, white with light gray veining. Then we're going to put this pebble inlay in part of the floor as well. I have a feeling by the end of this, we will be experts at laying tile.

My last two tasks for the day are to order the new tub and to check on the house to make sure the dumpster was picked up without incident and water the plants. The plumber will be in as soon as our valve for the shower shows up and then the real work begins!

As far as my race results, I still don't have any. There was a mix up with the timing chips and to make a long story short, they will post my results and update the master sheet later tonight. At least I didn't get disqualified! By my time estimation, I finished at 25/57. Not bad considering I wanted to throw up through the entire run!

Sunday, Sunday, Sunday

Our sunday started WAY too early. 5 am, to be exact, so we had enough time to get to Olathe for the Bike Source triathlon. Temps were pretty warm and the water was a balmy 70 degrees, but still cool enough for me to don my wetsuit. Tip: when they say practice with a wetsuit before using one, you should do just that. Another tip: BBQ and onion rings at 9 pm the night before a race is not a good idea. I wanted to hurl through the entire run. But all that aside, I finished somewhere around 1:20, which is a personal best by about 7 min. I haven't checked the reults so I don't know my exact time or place.

No rest for the weary. After a good nap, we ordered our faucet fixtures and floor tile, and then went back to the house. Our goal was to demo the rest of the bathroom tile and floor. As this picture shows, we had quite a bit of rotten backerboard. A giant centipede crawled out while I was pulling tile off. Luckily John was there to squash it for me. Gross.
A very tired John happy to have the tub out and all ten fingers. A little smashed, cut, and bruised, but they are all there.
Well, I guess we have to start putting it back together there isn't anything left to demo. We were going to try to salvage the tub, but when you put this much time, energy (and money) into something, you don't want to cut corners. Oh yeah, it got a little beat up in the tile removal process.
Our Lady of the Blessed Demolition, the patron saint of home remodling.

Hmmm, the dumpster is larger than the bathroom yet we have managed to fill it, interesting?

Big day

You will notice in this picture that the lights are on, not mounted, but on. I finished all of the wiring today and did a test run. The light swaps and repositioning worked out and didn't burn the house down.

Here is my little tile squaw. We spent the rest of the day ripping out tub tile and the cement board on the floor. So far this is the most time consuming and least fun job.
Tomorrow Sam has a triathlon and we need to finish cleaning up. Monday I fly to Denver and the dumpster leaves. All messes after that need to be small ones.

Electrical day

No big changes today, I spent all day rerunning wire for wall switches.

I pulled the ceiling down and got a facefull of 50 year old dust. The white PVC pipe is from the central vac.
The new thermostat location and wall switch for the hallway lights.
Tomorrow I should be able to try the lights and hopefully I got all of the wires reconnected correctly. Wish me luck.

Good progress

Well, the one section of wall I so carefully kept had to go to make room for the pocket door kit.

The pocket door and back wall of the bathroom went in pretty quickly, those pink speaker wires on the other hand took all afternoon.
The house has speaker wires run the the entertainment center to other parts of the living room and outside. Unfortunately they came through the floor right where the pocket door needed to go. I had to route sections into the floor and the studs to fit the wires and splice in new sections of wire. The electrical tape is there to make sure the wires stay in their place.
Today's progress, pocket door installed and bathroom closet almost framed out. Sam came after work and finished ripping out the bathroom tile but left the cement board for me.

Still going

Today was a little bit slower. I finished removing the wall and ran electrical.

You can see the opening for the new entrance to the second bedroom. Expanding the bathroom into the hallway close to doubles the size.
Tomorrow I should start putting things back together.

Fewer walls, progress?

A hillbilly love letter.

Fewer walls.
Knocking out the wall between the bedrooms.

The black pieces are some of the original VCT tiles. Some of the floorboards are soft near the toilet, hopefully that doesn't require too much replacement.

The Work Begins

Our full bath, the ceiling is vaulted above the tub. It only has one sink which won't work very well in the mornings. The plan is to expand the bathroom. I am off of work this week and am going to make a mess.

Well the sawzall seems to work just fine.
Like true engineers, after we make the biggest purchase of our lives we proceed to take it apart to see how it works. Kind of looks like a tornado.
After cleaning up it already looks more open.

Garage pictures

Here is the picture of my garage, like the gates of heaven parting. So here is the rundown, 2 car, 48 feet deep, 40 recessed lghts, storage above front 2 parking stalls, vaulted ceiling over back half, exhaust fan, industrial air compressor plumbed into the drywall.

Here is the back half with the cabinets and heater.
In this picture you can see the air compressor, washtub, central vac unit, and my urinal. We are going to epoxy the floor and install a beer frig and I will never have to go in the house.

Pictures, Take 2

Ta Da! Here it is. And while John complained out my borrowed internet in KC, his isn't much better here in Ames. We're back in IA for John's graduation and as of today, I can tell people I'm married to a doctor. Here are the official "before" pictures. The house is in great shape, but we're looking forward to making it ours.

This is the front corner of the house with the privacy screen between us and the neighbors.

This is the backyard sunken patio where much grilling and drinking will take place I'm sure. We haven't decided yet where the fire pit will go...
Here is a shot of the backyard taken from the upstairs balcony. Master balcony, I should say, accessible only from our bedroom.

The house is post and beam construction, a hallmark of mid-century modern construction and apparent with the vaulted ceiling and beams. Mark (the previous owner and our new neighbor) insulated the roof and drywalled the ceiling and beams. I'm a little disappointed the original roof plank and beams are covered, but the extra insulation and recessed lighting more than make up for it.

The house has a split floorplan. From the living room, you can see upstairs in the bedroom level and downstairs into the kitchen and dining room. It's not huge by any means, but the open layout and vaulted ceiling make it seem much larger.

This is the lowest level and again the beams are noticable. Mark did leave the floor plank exposed here and I think it looks fantastic. You can see it better in a later picture.

From this corner of the dining room you can see into the living room. The amount of window and natural light is unbelievable. There are skylights in the living room and bedrooms and windows on every wall.
I think this may be my favorite part of the house - the exposed brick wall with the white beams and exposed planks. I can't wait until we get to the point where we can furnish and decorate! This house has so much potential!

Here's a shot of the vaulted ceiling in the living roof, showing off all the best features.


This is a view from the kitchen looking up into the living room. You can see from one corner of the house to the other almost anywhere you stand.


The other cool feature in the living room - the fireplace open on two sides. It needs a good scrub down but we have a lot of cleaning to do.

Here is the master bedroom with access to the porch. The only bad thing about the skylights is that it may be hard to sleep in on the weekends.

That's all we have for now. We have plans to expand the bathroom and adjust the size of the bedrooms. (The second is so small I couldn't get a good picture. Same for the bathroom) We'll post pics once we start the demo and construction. I better run, I have a graduation ceremony to get ready for!

I just wrote the biggest check of my life!

The master bedroom opens onto the balcony overlooking the sunken patio. The living room is on the front of the house and the dining room and kitchen downstairs and the bedrooms and bathroom upstairs face the rear. I will get more pictures posted soon (the "borrowed" internet connection at Sam's placed is slow)

We just closed on our house today, I guess now we joined the real world. Here we go! There are several homes with this floorplan on our circle. Our house has the least interesting side facing the street but that allows the balcony to overlook the patio.