Family Room Demo

One thing both Kristin and I agree on is our dislike of popcorn ceilings and Wood Paneling. Nothing SCREAMS 1960 - 1970 like cheap looking wood Paneling. Of course our family room was covered in the stuff. With the kitchen and living room almost completed I started tackling the family room.

Step one was to Remove the Nasty Popcorn Ceilings.

Very Messy Job. Not fun at all.

Once the ceilings were done I got a burst of energy and this was the result........

Bye Bye Wood Paneling.

living room Painted, Speakers in :)

With all the messy dry wall and trim work in the living room complete Kristin tackled the paint while I cut the wall mounted Speakers holes (Very Cool).

With all the construction gear out of the room it will look even better

Once the speaker holes were cut we install the wall plates for the wires and hooked up the speakers

these are Energy RC Micro speakers made in Canada

I love me some under cabinet lighting

Under Cabinet light is just plan cool. Enough said.

All Hardwired and on a digital dimmer :)

Re Insulating The Attic

So why did I take all that insulation out of the attic??????? This is a job I have not been looking forward to. Can you tell? I  took the insulation out the first week in Oct and here it is the second week of Dec and I still haven't done it. Well the last few days here in the south have been mighty cold (below freezing). I have visions of my future energy bill if I didn't do something about this huge uninsulated hole in my ceiling. A month back HD had a sale on unfaced R19 so I  bought enough of it to do the attic. I put it all up there just didn't unroll it.

     My procrastination is over now was the time. With scissors in hand resporator and bunny suit on I started the evil job.

     Even in this cold weather I was still sweating up there. I would have hated this in the summer. 3 hours later and few bumps and bruises from the joists and roof I am complete.

New Insulation.

The New Range

     Well the new stove was delivered this past weekend. It is super sweet. Now I just have to get a gas line run to the kitchen and I will be able to finish this island and install the stove.

     The gas guy came this morning and quoted the work. $500 bucks to run a gas pipe from the meter to the the island. The seems high I must say. The meter is maybe 14 feet away from the island location. I sure is a good thing I have done 90% of the work on this house myself. I would never be able to afford to  the labor costs.

The Fort

With both Kristin and I active in this remodel Gavin has had to find things to do to amuse himself. He has been a great helper when he can. Oscar has never had so much attention. With the colder weather lately and it being not so sunny Gavin has had to be creative.

His fort is made from all the Cabinet Boxes

He is very proud of the fort he built. 

     I remember spending hours amusing myself with refrigerator and moving boxes. 

Box Forts Rock 

Crown Molding Week 2 (The Main Floor)

With the upstairs complete I moved to get the molding into the main floor (foyer / Living room / Breakfast Area). The crown molding that was originally  in this room was larger than what I had bought for the upstairs. Back to Home Depot to get the correct size. The larger crown of course doesn't come in a contractor pack so you have to pay full price for this stuff. At 1.75 a linear foot it was 3 times what I payed for the bulk contractor crown. I would have used the smaller stuff on the main floor but the old crown left a seam where it had touched the wall. SO we could have either wasted 2 days sanding the wall flat or get the bigger crown. The bigger crown won!

Have I mentioned that I just love my Nail gun. This would have been a really ugly job without one.

Kitchen Cabinets Complete

With the uppers in for the most part next on the list was to fit in the lower cabinets. Luckily the floors were pretty level. They were a bit out from the front to the back but that was to be expected. Hopeful everything measures out well and they all fit :)

Gavin making sure I measure correctly

     I made sure that when the under sink cabinet was being placed that I took special care in measuring out the cut outs for the water supplies/ Drain and power for the Disposal.

     With a bit of patience and a lot  measuring and leveling the base cabinets are in.

The Refrigerator even fits :)

Once the gas guy finally shows up and runs the gas line to the range we will be able to complete the island as well.

Upper Cabinets Installed

The kitchen cabinets have been sitting in our living room now since the beginning of Nov. The take up 90% of the space there leaving none to sit and eat or do anything. Basically they are in the way. So finally with the kitchen painted and the ceilings done we could start with the cabinetry. I still want to put another coat of Poly on the floor so it will just be the uppers this weekend. That and I don't have the time to put the bottoms in.

Armed with my drill a couple of trusty levels, our friend Ben and some 2 x 4's we proceeded to install the uppers. Surprisingly the floors were very level so that helped. We only needed a few shims for the uppers.

It is starting to look like a kitchen. Kinda :)

Crown Molding Day 1

     There is nothing that finishes a room off like crown molding. There is also nothing that will frustrate you to no end like crown molding. This is one of those tasks where measuring 2 twice and cutting once is just not good enough. With Crown molding one must measure 5 times then go back measure again, stand in front of your saw and think about which direction to make the cut. To make things even more fun everything is cut backwards and upside down. So when you are buying your material you will definitely need about 25% extra at least.

I think I measured this piece 7 times

     This first weekend Ben and I decided to work on two of the bed rooms (Gavin's and the Master). We also constructed the corner molding for the larger crown in the main floor.

Fancy Corner molding oooooooo! :)

     Once you have tried your hand at finished Carpentry you will realize that wood filler and painters putty is your best friend. No matter how many times you measure and how good you think you are there will always be a gap/crack/misalignment. Besides the filler makes the edge and corner look so much smoother.

Gavin's Bed Room With Crown Molding (Unpainted)

     Also you will come to notice that none of your walls are straight or corners at 90 degrees. Some of the corners in Gavin's room  were a wonderful 94 degrees which makes for a ticky miter cut.

Those Cuts were not fun. Walls are not straight or 90 degrees :(

Kitchen Walls Painted

With a crazy burst of energy that hasn't been seen is a month Kristin attacked the kitchen on her two days off this week. With the Dry wall all up and mudded Kristin primed and painted the kitchen walls a lovely sage green. Now I just have to finish with the ceiling and that will be painted as well.

Kitchen All Mudded up

Outside of insulation there is no dirtier nastier job than mudding dry wall. I don't think there is a nook or a cranny in our house that doesn't have some amount of dry wall dust on it. Getting it cut to size was not to bad. Didn't have to re-cut any pieces. Had a bunch of stripped dry wall screws though.

The only was I was able to minimize the amount of dust was to attach my shop-vac to my orbital sander. That seemed to reduce it by a good 70%. Even with that it is still nasty. Two coat of mudd later and a bunch of sanding we are left with.......

Renovating the front yard

We have a huge 67 year old Magnolia tree in the front of the house. 

During the home inspection it was mentioned that it would need to be cut back so that it didn't interfere with the roof. After the weekend of raking and cleaning up the yard we removed the old pine straw from around the base of the Magnolia to see that the rot system had started to grow up and under the house and the front walk. Definitely time to call in the tree pro's. The tree service came and quoted a crown/root reduction.

We also decided our 4 pine trees were more of a head ache then they are worth. They are like 4 tall pencils on the corner of our driveway. They are not very attractive and look like they would fall over in a really stiff wind. Also the 20 bags of Pine needles was just to much.

 So we decided to have the 4 pines removed and the Magnolia worked on.......

The Result

A MUCH smaller Magnolia

The must have taken 8 to 10 feet off the crown of this tree. I don't think t will be touching the roof any tine soon

Bye Bye Nasty Pine Trees

With the 4 pines gone the front yard is so much more open. No more pine needles! Yippy!!!!!

The Tree services Gear.