Drywall Goes Up

The combination of some delays and a broken digital camera led to a slowdown in construction and halt of updates for the site. However, everything is back on track and we are entering the home stretch. (Getting it.. home... because it is a home proje... oh, never mind.)

The drywall was delayed but when it arrived, wow, was it cool! I mean what could be more exciting than 4'x8' sheets made of several plies of paper bonded to a hardened gypsum plaster core stacked up in a room? I think this photo captures the moment...

I know my limitations. Hanging drywall is one of them. A sub-contractor handled all the hanging, mudding, sanding and priming. Totally worth it. Rather pleasant gentleman from Bolivia. Trained by his dad to do plastering. It only took him a few days of work to do it all, but it ended up being spread out over about two weeks.

So here you go:

Before	After
Dining Room
 This used to be the back door to our house.	Now it is the opening between the dining room and kitchen.
The patio door is 9ft wide.	Honestly, it has only snowed like twice this year.
The roughed in sky lights.	All drywalled.
Utility Room
 Was an outside window and wall.	We finally have a utility room.
 This will be the shop area.	Already have started filling it with junk.
Den
Looking into the den from the family room.	Looking the other direction. Patio doors are gone now.
It is funny just how much stuff ends up just being around all the time.	The den also has two sky lights but the lights are wall mounted.

So as of now, the drywall is all up, sanded and painted. The utility room has been painted. (I decided to go crazy and paint it white. I'm such a rebel!) The day after it was painted, we filled it with stuff so that the floors could be stained in the other two rooms.

Anyway, the end is in sight.

Insulation and Electrical

Work has slowed down a bit because of Christmas and just some schedule/timing issues. We are entering the home stretch though.

Some work was done on finishing up the interior framing and plumbing but the most obvious changes over the last few weeks have been the electrical and insulation. In short, all the outlets are in place and the switches for the light are done. The ceiling and wall insulation was put up but a subcontractor who is also going to do our drywalling. Since there is only so much that can be said about this, on to the pictures.

First off, the skylights in the den and kitchen/dining room make a HUGE difference. Even when it is overcast a fair amount of light comes into the room. I'm really happy with them. Also, with the heavy rain and light snow we've gotten lately, I know they are watertight.

The washer and dryer are getting a workout with the whole family together for Christmas. This is the plumbing from the backside before the drywall goes up. You can see the PEX water supplies and the assorted PVC drains and vents. The blue tube is just a color coded piece of PEX to help keep the cold water supply easily identified. The vent for the dryer hasn't worked out the way we wanted. The plan had been to go through the wall and out the back of the addition but it isn't going to happen. We are exploring going into the attic and out through the roof.

The HVAC ducting is in the ceiling and ends in these round registers so they will match the rest of the house. You can also see the wires that will eventually go into ceiling canisters to be the overhead lights in the kitchen/dining room area. It is pretty funny how relatively simple the most important things in the house are but how silly little extras tend to be the fiddly complicated parts.

This is the back wall of the utility room/shop. Most of the wall outlets in there are double boxes with two outlets on a 20 amp line. The washing machine is on a separate line so, if I really needed to split things up, I could use that outlet as well. All in all though, I'm hoping seven outlets will get the job done for me. The switches to the left are for the back light and a three way switch for the overhead light.  Plan is for a semi-industrial looking fluorescent tube fixture.

The outlets are all up high for easy access and are protected by a GFI outlet at the beginning of the run. Installing the outlets was actually one of the few hands on parts of this project that I've done. It felt good to be involved and it worked out that I had time and the required knowledge to do this. The outlets had a different method of connection than I was used to. I really liked it though. Instead of pushing the wires in through the back or try and loop them around the appropriate screws, theses guys have avmetal clip that is screwed down to firmly hold the wires in place. Way less fiddly than the other ways if you ask me.

The box pictured above has the switch for the exhaust fan installed. The paints I use on the toys I make are non-toxic and don't smell but the spray acrylic and other finishes I use on occasion can really be pretty intense. I have a nice window in the room I intend to take full advantage of but I felt an exhaust fan was a must. It is on the opposite side of the room so when used with the window open, I should get a decent cross ventilation situation going.

The den will have wall mounted lights (dare I say sconces.) That space has really come together but some of the brick work needs to be repaired and we still haven't settled on the entrance doors to the room. I really like how traditional French doors would look, but they do take up extra space to allow the swing of the door and we need to accept that they will open most of the time. There are other options though... we're keeping an open mind.

One bit of semi-goofiness that happened was insulation was installed on the interior wall between the den and utility room. It was a mistake but being a glass half full kind on guy, I'm gonna say that it might help with some of the noise reduction in that part of the house. I don't think firing up the table say at 10pm will ever be a good idea, but in general, less noise for the others in the house is better. (As long as they can hear me scream for help.) Teddy likes that there is still a cut through there though. All the better to get on the other side and wait to attack me when I come through.

 A scene from my upcoming novel

"Snow Falling on Mud"

So, we are about seven months into this in terms of real work. (Not counting the initial planning and some preliminary work.) I'm anxious to get it finished and in use. My guess is about 6 or 8 more weeks to be "done." Winter hasn't been too bad so far but January and February is real winter around here. The house is noticeably colder but the recently added insulation has helped. Drywall and the caulking of the windows and doors should start to give us an accurate feel for how the house will be going forward.

Happy New Year.

Taking Down the Porch and Taking Up the Deck

Well, we had a few weeks on hold because of various schedule issues but we are back up and running. Our contractor finished up the official drawing of the addition and then we walked it through the permit process. All in all, it could have been worse but it is pretty much the nature of the beast that 15 minutes of talking to people and filling out the required forms ends up taking 3-4 hours of waiting in various lines. However at the end of the day (well, actually two days) we were all set. The plans were approved and we got our building permit and have it proudly displayed in the front window.

One of the early "sweat equity" opportunities identified for us in this project was the destruction of our porch and deck.

The area of the porch and deck fit entirely inside the walls of the new addition. There are partial concrete slabs that are going to be kept in place to help make the basis of the new floor in the addition. (Fresh concrete will be poured over them.) The Porch was 10'x15' and the deck was 10'x17'. Both had been built before we purchased the house and honestly, they had been built very well. They served their purposes but their time had come.


The first issue was clearing everything out of the way. The porch had turned into a bit of an outdoor junk room years ago but after last summer it had served as a temporary shed as well. As you can see, there was a lot of "stuff" that needed to go some place else before we could start wrecking anything.



So after a little child labor, we had a lot of stuff in the trash and the rest of it under tarps. (This did remind me that, "Oh yeah... I'm still gonna need a new shed with this is all over." D'oh.)

---

Being fully aware of our limitations, Mrs Toy Making Dad and myself called in some assistance...

To the Crawfish Signal!

Lucky for us, Crawfish himself was available to pop on by in the Saab-marine with assorted pry bars and a nifty hammer or two. He was a tremendous help and honestly, there is no way we could have gotten this project done without his help. (Seriously - Thanks man.)

Having seen enough videos of people pulling down structures and taking the rest of the house or a bunch of windows with them, we decided that we would "unbuild" both structures as opposed to just smashing them and then cutting stuff up.

Act 1, Scene 2 from Tennessee Williams'
"Crawfish on a Hot Tar Roof"

We started on the roof. Initially I carefully took each staple out of the shingles and pulled them off one at a time. I really didn't want to worry about anyone, especially our little one, stepping on those. We made good progress but as the sun came up and we got closer to the edge of the porch, we switched to pulling up big sheets at a time. The staples pretty much pulled right up and the ones left behind were no threat since we left them in the boards. The tar paper underneath was a real, ahem, sticking point. I wonder if we had started earlier in the day if it would have peeled off easier? Live and learn.

With the shingles gone it was now, HAMMER TIME!

We hammered the plywood from inside off of the 2x4 rafters and bent them back to pry off as needed. A little difficult back at the new roof line because of the tar paper, but it went surprisingly fast. So fast in fact... that I failed to get any pictures with the sheathing in place.

Sledge hammer hits on the gutter end freed up the rafters and then we were able to twist them off of the hangers attached to the house. The far wall was made of 4x4s that were bolted together. Seriously  sturdy stuff. Lacking a Sawzall (or similar non-trademarked reciprocating saw) we took the back wall down as one piece and tossed it in the dumpster. Bye porch. (Memories include a dinner when we first moved in, the older girls' birthday party in 1st grade, a lot of toys and whole bunch of lint from the dryer covering the floor. And spiders. Lots of spiders.)

We then turned our attention to the deck. The deck was made of 2x8's and everything was nailed, as opposed to screwed, together. Pretty much just attacked it one board at a time with pry bars and hammers.

No big surprises in the destruction although there was an odd dynamic where every board that my wife went to take up just popped up with no problem while the boards Crawfish and I attempted were all held in with tungsten or depleted uranium 17" long twisted nails. We got it done. Eventually.

There were a couple a surprises that we uncovered though. First off we found that there was a slab poured along the back door that was covered by the deck. This may save us a few bucks when the new slab is poured for the addition floor.

 

 

 

 

There were quite a lot of patio stones used as supports and various places around the porch and deck. There are enough that I think they could form the basis of the floor for the new shed and we wouldn't have to pour a slab for it instead. That would save money, but the main thing is I like the idea of not having to break up a slab if I ever want to move the shed

We also found a concrete monkey skull. We set it on post as a warning to all the followers of the various monkey cults in our neighborhood. (Note to self - maybe you should play with concrete more often.)

So, a second day of a few tidbits of destruction and some general cleaning up and we are set and ready for the footings to be dug and then poured. The sand is from, of all places, the sand box.







The back of the house looks huge now, so we have to fill it up with buildings and what not.