Boundless DIY - Mid September Update

There's not much outside of our DIY for me to blog about these days. It's pretty much all our household does outside of work hours. We do spend some time eating and occasionally (crap! F's only got one pair of undies left!) some laundry. Otherwise it's either house fixing or procuring supplies to complete another stage of house fixing.

The bathroom is done. It's been done for a few weeks now. It's still got some blue tape on the walls marking spots where the painter needs to do some touch-up, but we've moved back in and it's fully functional. And wonderful. So wonderful! I can't wait for it to get cold enough to turn on the heated floor.  Pictures of completion soon, but here's a narrow angle shot with an annoying reflection of my arms and phone.

Remember a couple weekends ago (facebook/instagram followers) when I posted popcorn removal in the hall and dining room? Those two spaces are finally repaired, textured and painted. Travis spent last weekend cutting holes for new wiring and new lighting. Sunday we took the day off to go to football (GO BRONCOS!) but he's back at it late tonight and will wrap it up tomorrow.

The family room isn't un-popcorned yet and it's a really easy place to see the makeover. We're noticing our house get lighter and brighter the more popcorn disappears.

This is a pretty typical scene around here these days. Rooms with no lights, holes in the ceiling, wires dangling everywhere, furniture smashed up as far away from the mess as possible.

We still have entire rooms encased in plastic, awaiting their next step.... No lights in this room right now, either, or on the landing which is where I'm standing to take this picture.

 There used to be a light there in this ceiling and now it's just a foil covered hole. FFM totally freaked out yesterday - I had a window open upstairs and the gusting air pressure changes between upstairs and the attic were making the tin foil covering the hole "breathe." He was 100% convinced there was some terrible thing living in the attic.

The giant hole is the attic fan and the tiny hole was an ancient hard wired smoke alarm. The two little holes are going to get patched up and a single smaller hole for a new light will go in. This ceiling is still popcorned, but it is on the schedule for removal this weekend. The stairs are still an intentional catastrophe and are slowly coming apart even more since Travis cut down their supports. It was necessary to do this demo early so we have time make drywall repairs (next week) and adjust the stair treads prior to the new stair railing getting installed (by us, hopefully early October).

The hardest part about all this isn't the mess in the house, although that is hard. The hard part is that we have to empty furniture out of so many rooms at once. Our poor basement has been overflowing with upstairs furniture and items since May. As soon as the bathroom finished we cleared out a little basement space which promptly got filled with guest room furniture, FFM's non-essential furniture, and more! Once we move out of a room we don't move much back in because any carpeted room will need to be empty when the new carpet comes in about three weeks.

Our bedroom, which has been mostly empty since May, is the transitional dumping ground for anything that doesn't go to the basement. Right now it's full of art from the rooms currently undergoing ceiling work, which isn't so bad. Last week F had to be totally out of his room while scraping, repair, texture, and many many many coats of ceiling paint went up so he moved in with us (the guest room is torn up, so he couldn't move in there). In this space below were all the items you see here plus his trundle bed, a few special stuffed animals that aren't in a box in the basement, two laundry baskets of his stuff, lamps, a handful of books (again, those not boxed in the basement) and his giant GIANT GIANT  dresser. No pictures because I could hardly walk without stepping on stuff or our child, but trust me, it was cozy. I was tempted to send Travis to get the camper and park it on the street so we could all have a little more elbow room.

 Ie you noticed, that is a pile of tools, hardware, and plastic in our bedroom (plastic everywhere, we have plastic everywhere!) over in the corner. The garage is pretty crowded and it's handy to have quick and easy access to your tools anytime! You know, for those middle of the night electrical or drywall emergencies.

We've started to joke that we live in one of those sliding puzzles...

We keep shuffling pieces/furniture around so we've got an empty slot or two to work in. The dining room table is in the kitchen. The kitchen table is in the garage. All the bedroom furniture is mostly in the basement...you get the picture. The last couple weeks F has had to go through an obstacle course to get to his piano and this past week we were blocked out of the kitchen, office, and basement for most of the week. It feels like we've hit the tipping point, though. We're slowly, day by day, getting out of the chaos and into the phase where rooms can get put back together. We won't move back in to most rooms until after carpet is done, but this week enough progress was made that once the carpet does arrive we'll be ready to wrap up this renovation adventure and put stuff back where it belongs.

Bathroom and Whole House Update - August

The bathroom paused for about a month after our contractor (and we) fired our tile guy. This time of year it takes about a month to get on the schedule for anyone new, so next weekend we should have 100% photos.

View from the window ledge.

I love my new bathtub!

View from the new doorway. More tile going up on the wall with the light on it. The 2nd light will get installed, the medicine cabinets will go up, and the shower enclosure will go in.

New look in bedroom, clean ceiling, white doors, and a bed on floor b/c we're waiting for carpet and so aren't moving all our furniture back in yet.

Why is the carpet taking so long you ask? Why, because we added more to our little construction project. This phase is DIY so will take longer since it'll get done on weekends. See that stair railing? Very early 80's. Slightly better after I painted it a few years ago. It's bolted to the drywall and notches were cut out of each stair tread to allow for the post to be flush to the wall going up the stairs.

All those cut notches in the treads make it look pretty crummy from the side. With brand new carpet on the horizon we decided we didn't want it to look like this anymore.

 Yesterday FFM and I made ourselves scarce so Travis could work without distractions. He was BUSY! He cut back the carpet a few days ago, and yesterday started by taking out the pickets which were bolted, nailed, AND glued to the wall.

Then he worked on the 'balcony' area and took out as much as he could while still leaving a handrail.

Our new railing plan calls for the treads to be flush with the wall, so then Travis started on cutting off the protruding bits of stair tread. Hard to see, but the 3rd stair up in this picture has the excess cut off.

 That all wrapped up on Saturday afternoon, leaving Sunday to start a new project. Popcorn ceilings called...so we started in on our dining room ceiling. After watching the pros do it in our bathroom and bedroom we thought we'd tackle a room ourselves to see how it turned out. We've heard horror stories about the challenges, so weren't sure how things would turn out.

Right off the bat I'll admit it's pretty awesome to be married to a tall man! I sprayed water and he followed me with the scraper. We have an old paint power roller/sprayer that we used to spray with water - stuck the hose in a 5 gallon bucket of water and sprayed and sprayed and sprayed.

 After about 30 minutes of prep, and hour of spraying and scraping, and 30 minutes of clean up we had this! Next weekend we'll attempt to mud it, then perhaps on to more rooms.

I would like to take a moment here to tell readers that nearly all of the ads on this little bathroom job have been from my darling husband. The stair rail is kind of my fault (I pointed out the nice new carpet would still look icky going up the stairs) but everything else was his idea. We're happier now that most of the trades are out of our house (still have tile and finish trim to go next week) and the railing parts take a month to come so we're not under too much of a time crunch with our DIY add ons.  Projects done and cleaned up before dinner are way easier than those that are still going strong at 11pm!

Turning the Corner on the Bath Redo

Finishes have started going in for the bathroom!

The heated floor in all it's orange glory.

 Floor and wall tile.

 Shower area. We decided to add more wall tile so the entire wall on the left will be tiled.

 Vanity and tub.

Our pal Rob hung the vanity and did trim carpentry this weekend.

The painters and plumber will be here this week. Painters will tackle the bathroom and master bedroom plus part of FFM's room where some drywall had to be touched up (his room shares a wall with the bathroom). We decided to change the color of the bedroom so all the walls, trim, and the ceiling beam will get a fresh look. Today measurements went in for the shower enclosure, after months of flip flopping Travis decided against the frame-less "Euro" style and will go with a minimalist framed choice. It feels like the home stretch, although due to various events the schedule has actually slowed down a bit.

Post-Drywall Reno Update

The last couple weeks have been an adventure. Our first issues cropped up, we discovered one minor leak that stained the ceiling downstairs, and Travis put his electrical and tinner (HVAC) skills put to the test.

The electrical bids came in SUPER high so Travis opted to do the rewiring himself. Not a difficult task, just time consuming. F and I disappeared from the house for a weekend so he could work uninterrupted.

Here's a view of wiring completion - new switches in the new wall, power for the heated tile, moving the lights, and some clean up of the entire wiring system. All that bright blue stuff is his handiwork.

Next came the plumber again, finishing up rough plumbing. He checked the tub, drain and filler to ensure everything lined up properly and set the new shower pan.

After the plumber came drywall and popcorn removal in the skylight.
A new wall! Pocket door now slides into the left side.

Mud and texture took a few days longer than normal in Colorado. It's so dry here mud usually cures faster than in other places, but with a month of rain everything has been taking longer. Our rain seems to be normalizing so we dried pretty fast, but the contractors are all behind still so we had a few days of downtime until they could get to us.

Previously we had no HVAC register in our bathroom. This seemed strange, but buying a 30+ year old house you end up with all kinds of mysteries. In the summer our bathroom gets a little warm, no big deal, but on chilly winter nights that tile floor was COLD! Our fix was to heat the floor. Lo and behold after cutting up some of the sub floor, there was a closed up duct! Our contractor made an attempt on Friday afternoon, and Travis opted to knock out the project after our swim meet yesterday. It took some mad tin cutting skills to get everything to fit right, but now we'll have heat/AC in our bathroom for the first time in decades (AND a heated floor!). I'm probably going to put my sleeping bag in my new bathtub and move into the new bathroom because it will be super snazzy compared to the rest of the house!

Travis' new duct.

Demo Complete

Stage 1 is done, with demolition completed and the first part of new framing underway. We also ran into our first hiccup...

Everything out, wiring exposed, noticed some holes in the sub-floor. No biggie, provides wiring access and easily patched.

Plumbing all capped off and ready for next step, moving it all over the room.

 Existing pocket door exposed and ready to be taken out.

Master view of torn out wall and existing pocket door.

Making extra sure we like the way our new layout is going to look by using F's art paper and drawing out tub and vanity to scale. Tried out the look of the new tub filler, too bad it'll get mostly covered up by the tub, it's pretty!

New framing for the new pocket door location. Our first hiccup, they added a 2x4 to the header and it made the door opening small enough that now Travis has to duck. They'll be back in during the next framing stage to correct.

Master bedroom view of new pocket door location.