Bedroom renovation progress

This room had a bad reno done by the previous owner. He ripped out the old plaster, and replaced it with a horrible drywall job, and sub-standard electrical work. The drywall on the ceiling was hung the wrong way, and some of the joints were hanging between joists. He ripped out the closet on the dining room side to make one large closet. He filled in the floor with some door trim, and a hockey stick. There were no closet doors, and he just stuck some carpet to cover his handiwork on the floor. The vapour barrier didn't have any acoustic sealant, and was taped with packing tape. The insulation job wasn't great either, so I tore it back to the studs. It took longer than I though, a couple days to do the demo.

Here I am doing the new electrical. He had the wires almost at the bottom, and chiseled the corners, with no protection plates. The room had 3 circuits too, when one is sufficient for one room.

Here it is down to the studs. I couldn't get he electrical through the corners, so I ran it across the top.

Here we are with 2 coats of mud. I need to get a new sill for the window, since the previous owner cut it off, to make it easier to install drywall. I have to replace all the trim, since it was all missing. We're going to build a bench along the window, and bookcases on the sides.



Here's the closet filled back in. We're going to build a build-in for the closet, with drawers on the bottom, and doors on the top. The closet on the dining room side is going to be a mini office. We're going to have the computer in there. Hopefully we'll be able to prime tomorrow, or Monday. We're planning wallpaper on the back wall opposite the door, and we're matching colours from the wallpaper for the walls and ceiling. We need to sand and varnish the floor as well, maybe next weekend.

Under the Deck

We continued work on the back of the house, specifically, under the deck. There was one corner that still needed the stucco removed. For some reason, it was more brittle, in didn't come off in sheets. I removed the old water table, the part at the bottom of the house that diverts water away from the foundation. Instead of flashing, the house originally had a piece of wood sticking out. That was removed, when the stucco was applied. I've been using pressure treated 2x8" with metal flashing, so I just continued that section. We moved the dryer vent as well, it used to go under the stairs, but the stairs are there no more, so now it goes straight out (well it still has to go up). The top of the 2x8" has a 15 degree bevel, I just used the circular saw this time, a lot easier than the table saw, with wet heavy pressure treated lumber.
The other job was to secure the deck to the house. The deck is self supported (it doesn't depend on the house to hold it up), we planned it that way, because our house is settling at the back, and they didn't use footings on the foundation. We secured it to the house just for lateral support. The house doesn't have a 2x8" on the end of the joists, just sheathing, so I toe nailed (actually screwed) blocking between the joists. Then I used carriage bolts to attach the deck. The holes were difficult to drill, with all the wiring and plumbing in the way. It was a struggle, probably why I hadn't done it until now. There's a space between the deck and the house, so I used a 2x4 block to fill the space, wrapped with house wrap, to make it more water tight. There's a fairly large overhang on the house, so not a lot of water gets in there, unless it's blown in.
We were planning on doing the electrical for under the deck as well. I bought the stuff, but we ran out of time. I bought all the stuff. I've never worked with the plastic conduit before, so it's new to me. We're in need of light under there, so hopefully, we'll get that done soon. I'm not sure whether to put in an outdoor switch. Probably would be better for over the bbq.

Odds and Ends

We've slowed down a bit since the frantic pace of the summer. We finished the tile in the bathroom downstairs, since the counter is now in. We finished grouting it on the weekend, Deb helped me with the grouting, not one of my favourite tasks. We still have to seal the grout, and do all the silicone, around the sink, and where the tile meets the counter and wall. I need to cut off some of the excess membrane from the tile, and fix the drywall, and put the final piece of wood below the window. Some quarter round on the baseboard, and it's pretty much done.
Deb got me some Ikea storage shelves on the weekend too. My shop is pretty much in shambles most of the time. There's still a lot of drywall work to do in the shop. The shelves helped a lot, all the tools are neatly off the floor, and I have some room to work. Once I sort out all the scrap wood hanging about, it'll be even better.
I did my first 3 way switch the other day, it took a lot longer to hook up then I thought it would. I had to remove the existing wiring, so that's part of it, but 3 hours seems like a long time. I followed the instructions I found online, it has the switch on both ends of the lights, so I needed 4 wires between the 2 lights. I put the traveller on the wrong one at first, I followed the diagram, which showed it on the top. Once I changed it around it works perfectly.
So the other 3 - 3 way switches I need in the basement should go a little more smoothly. We should have some pics of the bathroom soon, maybe we'll finish it this weekend, stranger things have happened.

Progress Pics

Trim is currently being stained. This is the bathroom and dining room doors, I took the 2 corner pieces off, because I couldn't fix the plaster without taking them off. I didn't want to take off all the trim, since it's a little brittle.



View down the hall, the pantry door is currently taken off for stripping and varnishing. The butterfly hinges say they're made in Sweden.



Painted heat vent and door stop from Rejuevenation Hardware. There's a lot of sapwood in this piece of trim. The trim was originally faux bois (painted wood pattern), I could see some of it on the grate. Must have looked crazy with the grate painted to look wood.

The framing, plumbing and electrical are done on the powder room. I had a couple scary moments plumbing, I was using a piece of metal for a heat shield, and still managed to lit the joist on fire. It went out easy enough, the pipe was so tight in there, I couldn't get a piece of drywall behind it. The electrical went pretty smoothly, I still have to get a fan, it's wired, so I can put it in when I'm ready. It seems like it'll be a little difficult to vent though. Should start drywalling tomorrow, or the next day.

Final Energuide preparations

We had a snowboarding day at work on Friday, so we all got to go snowboarding on the company's dime. So Saturday started out a little slow. I mainly worked on caulking all the cracks in the bead board ceiling in Seth's room. That probably only took an hour to do, and most of that time seemed to be moving toys out of my way, so I could work. We have to repaint the ceiling now, since there's white stripes of caulk everywhere.

Sunday was plumbing day. I bought a MAPP gas torch, since I heard they were so much better. It's a self igniting one too, so it lights every time you press the button. For some reason, somebody thought it would be good idea to put the plumbing right against the concrete wall. since I'm working in that area, and the spigot is there, I added a frost free anti-siphon spigot. I haven't done a lot of work soldering copper, so I was a little nervous. I know enough people that can bail us out if we run in to problems though, and of course we ran in to problems. And I did run in to problems, it turns out that it is important to open every fixture to drain the lines. I thought the pipe was empty enough, I guess not. So my father in law came out and brought his fancy acetylene torch, and his flux and solder, which seemed to be better as well. So now we had water back to the house. He left me with the rest to do myself, which is good, since I really want to learn to do this. I read in my plumbing book again, how to solder. I'd already cleaned everything really well, I think it was just the water in the bottom of the pipe. The 5 or 6 joints I did for the spigot worked perfectly, so I was really happy.

It was supposed to rain all weekend, and the sun was out, so before adding insulation to the last bay on this wall, I added an outlet for the driveway. I bought all the stuff the night before, a gfci recepticle, cover etc. I got the outlet in, it's not connected yet though. I filled all the cracks outside on the wall with fire resistant silicone, around the spigot, the electrical service etc. We're going to have to repaint that wall anyway, so it's not so bad that I made a bit of a mess. Now I just have to finish insulating, and we're mostly done. I only have one day left, the inspection in on Tuesday.