The New House #9 – Today I scraped more wallpaper

The New House #10 – Today I did a first coat of joint compound

The New House #11 – Today I sanded and did a second coat of joint compound

I will dedicate a later blog to some pics of what that was all about… but for the sake of keeping this interesting, I’ll skip to the fun stuff.

So, with that said… Here’s the Kitchen Floor!

This was my first foray into flooring. Lots of firsts for me on this, huh?

About 4 years ago, my wife and I bought our first property, an 1800 sq. foot “condex” and hired out the flooring. I ripped up about 1000 sq. feet of NASTY carpeting, and hired a flooring contractor to install laminate flooring. We didn’t have a lot of money, so we found the least expensive Pergo-knockoff we could. I think we paid less than a dollar per sq ft for it. Well, 4 years, 2 kids and 2 cats later, and it’s showing much more wear than I thought it would.

This is really a long way of me saying “you get what you pay for”. We decided to do laminate flooring in the kitchen to save money and labor vs. installing tile, which was what we really wanted, but we did go with a premium floor.

If you’ve never done laminate flooring, I’ll say this: It is physically impossible to install it under anything. Due to the way the joints work, each board is angled in at about 30 degrees until the surfaces are flush, and then rotated flat. You need at least four inches of height to wedge them in.

I started by cleaning the leveled subfloor, and stapled the underlayment down. My first course was along the wall opposite the cabinets, which looked something like this:

There’s about 1 1/2 inches of clearance under the baseboard heater, so I was able to do the first course out to the end of the heater, and the first board of the adjoining courses and slide the triangle-shaped mass of flooring in under the heater. Typically, one would use spacers, but that wasn’t possible with the heater. Another problem is that once the first course is laid down, you angle the adjoining courses on the long edge, and use a hammer and a shaped block to whack the end joints in. Without the spacers, it’s tough… the whole floor has to float to allow for seasonal movement, and when you start whacking the ends… well, you get the idea.

This was the point in the project where I really stopped taking so many pictures… I just wanted to get it done, and only had a few days until move day. The first course of Pergo took the longest, of course, due to all the cuts and whatnot, but after that it went pretty smoothly. Here’s one shot:

And another, with the fridge in place:

As you can see, I had appliances at that point, and since I was working alone, I needed to have them delivered right into the kitchen. Let me tell you from experience that installing flooring by yourself iin a 10×11 kitchen, with cabinets installed, and a fridge, stove and dishwasher in the room (that couldn’t be installed until the flooring was done!) is challenging!

I was very happy with the end results, and since I had done all the demo prior, was able to remove the majority of the baseboards and undercut the door casings, thus avoiding the need to finish with quarter-round.

This is getting long, so I’ll hold off on the joys of the upstairs bathroom for another post.

Thanks to all who have read and commented… I appreciate all your kind words of encouragement!

When we last saw our intrepid home refurber, the kitchen was getting prepped for cabinets and floors… let’s see how it went, shall we?

After ripping up the rotten floors, of course the next step was to re-build them and get it all leveled:

Once I had rebuilt the floor sections, the room was cleared and cleaned, ready for installation of the cabinets.

By this time, the floors were in the middle of being refinished, and cabinets had been delivered:

I had already laid out the locations of all the cabinets, however when I primed the walls, of course those layout lines disappeared… so they needed to be re-done.

I spent a full day on the kitchen (that is to say, a full 16 hour day!). Having never hung cabinets before, I was learning as I went. All things considered, it went very well. I also had nobody around to help, and the wall cabinets were 36” high to maximize the available cabinet space, so hanging the wall cabinets was a challenge. I attached 1×3 furring strips to the studs to rest the bottom of the wall cabinets on, and went to work.

Prep was key… using a diagram, I identified each cabinet box, numbered in the order they would be installed, and stacked them (in order) the adjoining three-season porch. I unpacked the first cabinet…(not the first to be installed, but a small drawer unit… I had to see what they looked like!)

The first base cabinet in place…

And so on…

For the cabinet over the fridge, I had to build a jig to support it…

Countertops were next:

Then the range hood:

I was able to get the whole thing done in a day… which was amazing considering that all this was interspersed with a visit from my father, appliance deliveries, floors being refinished, and coordinating the yard cleanup(with the help of a couple of entrepreneurial neighborhood kids!):

They filled 42 (Forty Two!) of those leaf bags!

Having never done a kitchen, I was very pleased with the end results…

I did make one rookie mistake… when marking out the locations of the range and adjoining cabinets, I installed the drawer unit with the back of the cabinet flush with the layout line, neglecting to account for the additional 1/4” face frame. Since the back wall had EXACTLY enough space for the cabinets I had selected, there was basically zero wiggle room, which meant that I ended up having to trim the face frame of the two cabinets on either side of the range to be flush with the carcase itself… Using a jigsaw on brand new, expensive cherry cabinets to get the required clearance for the range was nerve-racking… but I managed to pull it off!

Coming up next: Kitchen floor, and a recap of the work on the upstairs bath.

Let’s all jump into the time machine, and go back to recap how it all went down…

Kitchen Nightmares:

After clearing the super-nasty cabinets out, I started taking the old self-adhesive linoleum tiles off, and discovered that there was apparently a slow leak in the fridge that had never been fixed.

Under the tiles was a layer of 1/4” plywood, with two layers of linoleum under that, a 3/4” plywood subfloor and 3/4” planks below that. As I pulled up the tile, I discovered that the 1/4” ply was still damp, and the water had gone through both layers of linoleum at the wall, and had rotted through both subfloor layers below that.

I started cutting…


In order to get it all out, I ended up having to go back a full joist away

Under the sink was a similar situation, but I was able to save the planks and only needed to take off the 3/4” plywood:

I didn’t take any pictures, but when I started prepping the ceiling for paint, stripping off the peeling paint, I found that the layer of paint was pretty much all that was holding the ceiling in place under the tub upstairs! I ended up having to re-drywall a section of ceiling that was about 6 sq. ft.

When this house was built in the early 60’s, they decided to use 7/16” drywall in 2’ x 8’ strips, with a 7/16” layer of plaster skimcoat over the top. Makes for a very solid wall, but repairs are complicated! I found that using 5/8” drywall with a 1/4” luan sublayer was close enough, so I used that to repair the holes…

Speaking of holes, with the holes in the cedar shingle siding above two of the windows:

Water had been getting in and rotted out two sills, all the brick molding, and even had gotten behind the interior walls and caused significant damage:

Needless to say, I had some work to do to get it all patched up…

I’ll try to keep adding entries in the coming days, and will eventually catch up… Stay tuned!

I was able to take last week off from work, allowing me to get into a rhythm of work from 10am to 2am, sleep from 3am to 9am… Of course on the days where I did have to work at my real job, it was office from 8am to 6pm, house from 7pm to 1am. The biggest time chunk that I wish I had back was the hours upon hours of driving all over the place to get supplies/materials/etc… we’ve been finding some major deals, but they do require some traveling! Needless to say, I’ve been busy.

The move date is scheduled for this Friday, so it’s crunch time. I’m as done as I’m going to be with the painting.

The single biggest mistake I’ve made on this project was drastically underestimating the amount of time and effort that went into prepping the walls/ceilings for paint. I uncovered problems that weren’t apparent until I really dug in. Now that that phase is done, I’m very glad that I spent the time I did on them… never have I seen almost 50 year old walls that look as good as these do!

My priorities for this week are getting the kitchen and 1st floor bath re-built… floors, cabinets, sinks, etc.

Once I’ve got a bit more time, I’ll take you all on a little trip back in time to document the process as it unfolded… but I’ve got bigger and better things to worry about right now!

Here’s a quick preview:

All will be revealed in coming posts… this is what it’s all about!

My two biggest “projects” inside this giant project…. are the painting/wall prep and re-doing the kitchen.

The kitchen was by far the nastiest room in the house…

I started pulling stuff out… cabinets went into the basement for a good power washing and possible use in other parts of the house…

As I was pulling more and more out, I was discovering some underlying issues that were going to have to be dealt with:

And under the fridge…

Under the self-adhesive tile was a layer of 1/4” plywood and under that, the original linoleum.

It looks to me as if the water feed to the fridge has had a slow leak for a LONG time… Managed to get all the tile and plywood off, but the ply was still damp in a large section of the kitchen, so the ply was ripping through the nail heads on the 2” nails (EVERY EIGHT INCHES… there were so many freakin’ nails!) and then trying to get under the nail heads to get enough purchase to pull ‘em out, well… it was a pain.

Stay tuned… next time: What did I find under the linoleum?

First thing I did was pull the mom-mobile (our minivan, which I have co-opted for the duration of this project!) up to my workshop and load it all in. I’m one of those guys who needs to be organized, and I figure that my first step would be to clean out the basement area and set up a work space for myself.

Once that was set up, I started scraping…

There were several layers… from the wall out it was: Paint, wallpaper, paint, wallpaper, wallpaper, paint. Needless to mention, scraping was a big job…

More to come, but I’ve gotten a lot done, and wanted to get a quick update posted…

Next installment: Kitchen demo begins…

This is great, not only because I can’t wait to be the proud owner of a new place, but also because it almost doubles the window of time I have to be able to complete all that needs to be done.

I’ll be getting in as soon as this weekend to start working. First steps will probably be trash removal and some small demo work. I’ll hope to get at least one room prepped for paint, including wallpaper removal, skim-coating (or patching? Depends on how the walls look once they’re stripped) sanding the walls and trim, and masking off the room.

My plan is to do all the prep work for paint throughout, then do all the painting in one fell swoop.

A question for y’all…

I’m weighing my options for painting. I’ve got to decide between:
1: Buying a sprayer and masking like crazy, doing all the interior walls with the sprayer
2: Getting a roller attachment for the sprayer, cutting in by hand and then rolling with the power roller or:
3: Doing all the painting by hand.

I’ve got a pretty good amount of experience with interior painting, I worked as a painter for about a year, so I’m pretty quick, but I’m wondering if the sprayer increase in speed will be offset by the increased amount of prep?

I’ll try to post some updates early next week to recap my progress over the weekend.

The new house is on 1/3 of an acre, it’s about 1500 Sq. Feet. Here’s the front:

It needs a TON of work. the last two owners both lost the house to foreclosure, (you’d think that the first bank that had to foreclose would have learned their lesson… see “Credit Crisis” above!) and absolutely no maintenance has been done in at least 10 years.

I’ve got about a 2-3 week window between closing and moving day, so I’ll need to “get on the stick”, and have got my work cut out for me.

Here’s my (big picture) list of what needs to be done:
Kitchen – Redo – Cabinets, Countertop, Sink, Floor

Main Bath – Redo down to the studs

3 exterior doors, 3 interior doors, garage door – replace
Paint the entire interior
Basement – Insulate, clean-up, paint (Waterproofing paint)
Exterior – Masonry repairs on chimney/foundation
Gutters,
Siding repairs/waterproofing 2 windows, trim all around the house.

I’m hiring out the floors (hardwood throughout except for the kitchen and the two baths), which haven’t been refinished since they were installed in ‘62, and the main bath renovations, I can’t see getting it all done otherwise.

Stay tuned. I’ll eventually get most of it documented, although it will probably be after the fact. I anticipate 2 consecutive weekends with the week in-between working all day and into the night to get this done in time for me to move my family (including two kids under four!) in… Wish me luck!