The To-Do List Grows

I guess it's not really growing. Every time we scratch something off, we find another task to complete that wasn't on the list in the first place. It just doesn't really appear to be decreasing right now. For example, we finished the bonus room sub-floor and determined that it was going to be necessary to remove the wood floor in the kitchen.

Now, before you go getting upset that we ripped out "original" wood floors, let's discuss some things.

1) The floor in the kitchen was a mixture of plaster and wood.
2) Large pieces of the wood floor were missing due to wall locations, leaving sub-floor exposed.
3) Two layers of linoleum had been directly glued on top of the original wood floor, leaving a mess of paper on top.
4) That paper backing had asbestos in it (which was all properly removed, but that wood was still tainted in our opinion).
5) Leaving the original floor would require a pretty hefty transition between the dining room and kitchen, the kitchen and bonus room, and the bonus room and living room.

Removing the kitchen floor, while time consuming would allow for a more seamless application of tile, only one transition and the install would feel "right" or "new" instead of feeling like a renovation project.

So Paul got to work removing the wood which turned out to be quite a bit harder than expected, as usual.

 

We still have to remove the plaster portion (seen by the back door) and the rows of nails that run up and down the room but once it's completely finished, it'll be a breeze for us to install our tile.

We've decided to have a very small transition between the living room and bonus room (capped with a wood transition strip) and also between the dining room and kitchen.

We've opted to use a marble threshold between the bonus room and kitchen. While I'm not a fan of breaking up the tile (I would much prefer a seamless application), this doorway is much smaller, read: less noticeable, and for a 1/2" transition, it's no higher than a typical transition accepted by code.

On to more tasks - marking off and adding to.

Bonus Room Sub-Floor, A Theme Song & Thanksgiving

Saturday afternoon my brother took a nap on my couch while Addison took her nap so that I could work at the house with Paul for a couple of hours.

Over the past few weeks, we've been in a pretty good place with the house. We're behind schedule and the money belt is starting to tighten but we've been in that state of 'just keep moving'. Saturday, we were busy laying a new sub-floor in the bonus room and we were both exhausted, physically and emotionally. Just getting the plywood to screw into the joists was unraveling us from both ends. By the time we'd laid the sixth piece of plywood, we both stood, starring at each other, saying, "Well, aren't you going to get started?" with our eyes. We both knew better than to say it out loud.

When we left off last, this is where we were:

We started by laying a 4' x 8' sheet of 3/4" plywood down, cutting out a hole for the floor vent, then another, cutting where necessary, leaving at least 1/8" gap between sheets until we ended with a full layer of 3/4" plywood down. We used the Liquid Nails Sub-Floor adhesive again, running it along each support and around the edges, then screwing the first layer of sub floor in, every 8" around the perimeter of the room and every 12" along the supports.

This is the floor transition between the original hardwood in the living room which is staying and the one layer of 3/4" plywood in the bonus room. The kitchen to bonus room transition is quite a bit more stout. In order to make these transitions less noticeable we had to complete a couple of tasks. We decided to do a second layer of 3/4" plywood in the bonus room.

 

We started laying the second layer of plywood at a 90 degree turn and continued laying sheets until the entire room had a full second layer.

The second layer of sub-floor we skipped the adhesive (we want the floor to contract without cracking the tile or grout on top) and used framing nails instead of screws, also making sure to leave at the minimum, a 1/8" gap between sheets.

I'd only been at the house for a few hours but I needed to get back to Addison. I went to the front of the living room and stared at the work we'd just accomplished. Trying to figure out if it was worth the work, I suppose. Paul stood under the arched cased opening, observing the plywood as well. And while I was standing there, doubt started to creep back in. That voice in my brain that said, "You two are nuts". I put my hands on my hips, took a deep breath and in that split second of a breath, Phillip Phillips came on Pandora.

Hold on, to me as we go;
as we roll down this unfamiliar road.
And although this wave is stringing us along,
just know you’re not alone,
'cause I’m going to make this place your home.

We looked at each other, laughing, tears welling up in my eyes. This guy. This guy that I met seven years ago, is making me a home. A big, expensive, tiring and all together wonderful, special home. The song continued and Paul might as well have written the song himself.

Settle down, it'll all be clear.
Don't pay no mind to the demons,
they fill you with fear.
The trouble, it might drag you down.
If you get lost, you can always be found.

Just know you’re not alone,
'cause I’m going to make this place your home.

We stood in our big, empty living room, my head resting on his shoulder while the song finished and I all I could think about was how thankful I was. Thankful for him. Thankful for this house.

While I am thankful for many things, this year, I think most of all, I am thankful for Six Twelve and for the man that is building it for me.

Open Invitation?

Apparently, when a house sits unoccupied for a certain amount of time, someone, somewhere hires a crew to "winterize the house".

The crew comes out, slaps stickers on every window telling you they believe the property to be abandoned or vacant. That you have a certain number of days to contact them and tell them otherwise or they are going to flush out the house.

To no ones surprise, no one at the property contacted the said company, and so our house got flushed.

Which we really aren't complaining about.

What I am complaining about (because you knew it was coming) are the stickers that were on the windows, and the residue of stickers, telling all sorts of people that the home was vacant.

This might have had something to do with UPS refusing to drop my packages off at the house.

We should have removed them immediately. But did we? Of course not.

So basically, for the last few months we've just been inviting the bad guys to come on in. Thankfully, they didn't take us up on the offer. But this past weekend the stickers got a good spray of Goof-Off and a razor blade taken to them and they are long gone.

So at least the invitation has been removed.

3 Day Weekend Recap

Three day weekends are supercalifragilisticexpialidocious. That's a legitimate word by the way. Mary Poppins and my web dictionary said so.

Saturday we had more help (so thankful).

We plugged away a good 7 hours of hard work. Remember that sub-floor I told you was done? Well it wasn't really. I took up the loose laid sub-floor and removed the previous "sub-floor" in order to install foam for even better insulation in the front entry.

 

Then we layered on some sub-floor Liquid Nails on each floor joist, laid the sub-floor back into place and screwed that sucker down.

So it's truly (deeply, madly) done now.

While I was at it, the boys were busy in the kitchen framing for our new ceiling. Originally, the kitchen was two rooms. All of the ceilings on the first floor are at 9'-6" except for a strip in the kitchen that led from the basement door to the back door of the house. It was lower in order to hide a structural beam.

When we ripped out the wall to make the room one large space, I hated the drop and decided we'd lose 1'-0' in the rest of the room to have a consistent ceiling height. It really wouldn't be too low and I'd have one ceiling plane instead of two. Knowing how many strange things will exist in this house (odd bump outs, etc.) I wanted a clean ceiling in this room.

So the boys started by adding a beam in place of where the original wall was. Then they added cross members between the existing beam and the new and then the new beam and the opposite wall.

Next up, they installed nailer boards around the perimeter of the room to attach the new framing too.

Then the joist hangers...

 

And before we knew it, the entire framing job was done.

It's amazing how just the framing of a ceiling makes the entire room appear to be one consistent room now.

We decided to make the ceiling level, instead of true, after much discussion and review of the process. While the windows are crooked (due to the previously sinking foundation in this room) we decided it would be best to have a level ceiling instead of one that would be crooked but would make everything else look semi-correct. It's an 82 year old house, for goodness sake, so some crooked windows can be expected right?

Our helpers even pulled all of the screws and nails from the existing floor joists in the dining room, living room and under the covered porch before we called it quits. And there were plenty of them. Now that that task is complete and once the plumbing is re-routed, we'll be ready for the new ceilings.

Sunday afternoon while Addison was having her nap and I was at home baking brownies (for real) Paul went to the house and cut holes in all of the tops of the exterior walls on the 1st floor.

We're doing this for our insulation company to be able to blow in insulation from the top of the walls between studs. Other than the brand new house that was built on our corner in 2009, our house is going to be the most energy efficient one in the neighborhood. Woot woot for low(er) electric bills! I mean, really, how low can an electric bill be for a 4,000 square foot building get? We still need to cut small holes beneath each of the windows and all of the holes on the 2nd floor but we're getting there. 

And then Monday, thanks to the Veteran's of the USA and our company, we had the day off. We dropped Addison off at daycare and we went to work at Six Twelve.

I pulled carpet tack up from the 2nd floor bedrooms. I had already tried pawning this task off on many individuals and some how it had never been accomplished (because these people weren't idiots). So it was finally time, I got down on my hands and knees and started chipping away.

Other than just a couple of feet in one last room, it's done. The whole time I was up and down and hammering and pulling and cursing under my breath, I concocted an entire scene of how the carpet came to be. I could see little ole Dorothy Cathey, convincing her husband that wood flooring was old and outdated. That carpet was the wave of the future and that they better hop on board fast. She would throw herself across a chaise lounge in the sun room, in her long skirt and button up shirt, hair coiffed perfectly, and oh so dramatically she would tell him that all of her friends had carpet floors and that they should too or they'd look behind the times. By the time the carpet crew was there for the install she'd convinced him that everyone would love the carpet. I mean who wouldn't?

This girl, Dorothy. This girl.

After I finished the 7/8ths of the carpet tack before giving up (still cursing little ole Dorothy), I finished spray painting that dang railing outside. The minute it got over 50 degrees I was out there finishing the 1-1/2 railings I had left to complete. I can finally check that task off of my list. Can I get a "Hallelujah"?!

All the while Paul was working downstairs, cleaning and prepping and installing the new joists for the floor in what we've deemed the "bonus room". It is currently 5" sunken from the living room and 5-1/2" sunken from the kitchen floor. We're raising it to be a flush floor across. Or kind of.

Once Addison was down for the evening, Paul was back at the house, sweeping, organizing and prepping for the coming week.

That's the cleanest our living room has been in a month!

Entry Sub-Floor

Two weeks ago our front entry received a sub-floor.

It's sad how exciting that statement is.

Right before we bought the house, we noticed that the floor was rotting out of one of the entry closets. Termite damage it appeared.

We decided to forgo most of the typical inspections for buying a home since so many of the systems would be replaced anyways. We did decide to get the termite inspection to verify how bad the damage we saw in the closet was and how far it had spread.

Ninety-five dollars later, we didn't have termites or termite damage anywhere in the house. The damage we saw in the closet was all water damage from an old leaky flat roof. Since we were replacing the roof, we knew we could remedy the situation.

This meant that when it came time for construction we'd have to lose the floors in the closets to be able to put new ones down. Which turned into getting rid of the closets entirely. Which turned into getting rid of the tile entry between the closets. Which turned into, which turned into, until we were left with this:

 

Because of the damage to the floors and joists we decided to laminate some of the floor joists with sister members in order have a stable piece of wood to nail our new subfloor into.



 

We then added a couple of plywood strips at each door to keep the subfloor from bowing in at the first point of contact.

 

After we laid the first sheet of plywood, we pulled it back out, made a template for the air supply, using a jigsaw cut it out from the subfloor and laid it back down for a (perfect) test fit.

 

We trimmed down the second piece of plywood, carried it inside and by the end of the day had our new, level sub-floor.

 

Each bathroom will receive a new subfloor after we have re-routed the plumbing (hopefully soon). And those rooms, along with this room will receive new tile floors.

I love that we have an entry. A place to remove our wet shoes and snowy boots, our muddy work shoes. I've spent time looking at entry and vestibule images on the web and on pinterest. Pinning console tables and lights. I love not walking straight into someone's living room but rather just having a place to enter. A room that (when muddy boots are put away) our guests get welcomed into our home. The starting point for the entire sha-bang.

And so the design pressure builds.