Seems like progress is actually being made here. If you read my last post you can tell the disdain that I felt towards our old stairs. Needless to say (but I’ll say it anyway) I took great pleasure in ending them with a sledge hammer, disposing of them and promptly parking on the murder scene. The reason I can do this is because the new stairs are 125% complete. The extra 25% percent is because they already run halfway to the second story that doesn’t even exist yet. Now comes the fun part or running all of my electrical, speaker wires, cable, internet, etc to the outside of the stairway wall since that’s where our TV is going to reside.

Check out the gallery below. Buster already likes the new stairs. I’d like to note that the poster of puppies came with the house, however we haven’t removed it because it may be load bearing. We’ll have to see what the engineers say.

-Tim

Today while I was toiling away at work Dad was toiling at the house cutting his way from the site of our former guest bedroom into our basement storage room.

This is the home of our future stairway. The current stairs sit in a pretty crummy spot. As most of you know our basement is also our garage, so for me to park my car I have to angle it within inches between a support post and the stairs. It’s pretty annoying and it makes my walk down to the laundry/fuse box/kegerator at least 15 steps longer than necessary, so naturally they must be destroyed. In addition to that they are hindering our ability to finish the kitchen seeing as that’s where our pantry is going to be. I could go on and on about why I hate our stairs but that doesn’t matter; they’ll be gone soon.

Our new stairs will allow us to make a proper entry way from the garage and give us easier access to the storage area, not to mention finally give us a place to store the cat box so Ash doesn’t track litter all over my office every time he heeds nature’s call (gross).

Now that we’ve covered how and why I’ve arrived here, let’s look at the real issue at hand. Now that Dad cut the opening for the stairs there was some electrical that needed to be removed. The basement store room had a few electric outlets in the ceiling and a fluorescent light. As I went to work taking them out it became increasingly clear that it’s a miracle this house still exists. First problem, the light fixture was wired in with part of an old extension cord and electrical taped together without a junction box. Next, as I went to remove the first outlet this is what I was greeted with.

Now I’m no expert electrician but I’m pretty sure that you’re not supposed to let your black and white wires touch let alone screw them to the same terminal, and that ground wire should probably be attached to something in there. Oh well, it’s a weird outlet guess you can’t win em all. Let’s take down the next one.

Surprise! Here’s another mess of wrong for you. That lone black wire is actually the one in the right spot.  I’ll mention again that I’m no expert, in fact electrical work is the scariest part of this whole remodel for me and I seek help whenever possible. That’s why I always have to use color association to remember that outlets are like oil: “Black Gold”. Stick the black wire on the gold screw and the white wire on the silver screw.

As I finally made it to the last outlet in the series, I was almost done, then I noticed one last line coming from the box. Where did it lead? Nowhere. From the box I had a nice bare wire chillaxing in my ceiling. The perfect icing on cake.

At least it’s all gone now but I can’t wait for what I’m going to find next.

-Tim

The fridge for our first kegerator had to be replaced.  It no longer was keeping the keg cold, and the model was so old, there was no chance in finding parts to repair it.  We bought this cheap, used fridge and have Kegerator 2.0 up and running.  If you come help us with the house, this is where you’ll find your wages at the end of the day.

I haven’t had counter tops in my kitchen since late April, so you can imagine how ecstatic I am to not only have beautiful new counters, but also the large amount of surface area that I do.  We still have to install the counters for the breakfast bar area, but I’m really enjoying having so much work space.  I also love my new under mount sink.  It looks fantastic!  The kitchen tile came in the same day as the counters, so I’ve included some pictures of the tile along with the cabinets and counters to give you an idea of what the final product will look like.  There’s a lot of work to be done yet in the kitchen (tile, back splash, some dry walling, etc.), but all the appliances and plumbing are where they are supposed to be and there is plenty of room to move and work now.

On Memorial Day weekend, we were lucky enough to have several volunteers help us do the last of the demo work on the house.  Thank you Josh, Beth, Bryan, and Marta!  We knocked down the walls of the bedroom that will eventually be the stairs up to the second story addition.  With the 6 of us working together, we completed in 4 hours what probably would have taken Tim and I an entire weekend.  Our house is almost completely open at this point.  The only defined rooms are the two back bedrooms and bathroom.  We had to knock out the closet to one room, so as you can see in one of the pictures, we’re enjoying having two doors into the office.

Hopefully we can get this many volunteers when it’s time to take off the roof.  As always, there will be free food and beer for those who participate.  I’ll keep everyone updated for when we pick a date to start.

We’ve been MIA on the blog for quite awhile now, but that doesn’t mean we haven’t been making progress on the remodel.  A few weeks ago, Tim and our friend Jason (pictured with his handy work), upgraded the electrical service on the house.  It was two-day process that Tim and Jason attempted to complete in one shot.  It took 15+ hours and the boys worked until 2:00 am, but they got the majority of the work done, leaving just a few odds and ends to finish up the next afternoon.  I’m also glad that neither of the boys got struck by lightening while playing with electric on the roof during a storm. Thank you so much, Jason! We couldn’t have done it without you!

Tomorrow is my birthday, and one of the best gifts I could get is having the kitchen(at least part of the way) back together.  Tim and his dad put the cabinets in this morning.  Not only do the cabinets look beautiful, but the real gift is being able to put things back into their place.  Before gutting the kitchen we had to box up all of our dishes, utensils, pots/pans, and various other things.  The boxes have been living in our office, bedroom, bathroom…basically anywhere we’ve been able to find a free spot.  This afternoon’s project is putting things away and seeing our floors again!  I’ll be glad when our microwave and coffeepot are no longer in the bedroom, but that will have to wait until we get counter tops.

Speaking of counter tops, my sister-in-law Stephanie went shopping with me today and helped me to pick out flooring, counters, and lighting.  Steph has such a wonderful sense of design, so her input was invaluable.  We brought home some samples to run past Tim, and we got his stamp of approval.  The last photo included here is my flooring sample, and two potential counter tops.  The one on the left is solid surface, and on the right is quartz.  We’re waiting to hear back on estimates, and if the quartz is comparable in price to the solid surface, we’ll go with it.  Either way I’m happy because both counter tops will be gorgeous!

So, this week was quite the experience. Since last week we’ve managed to knock out 2 walls tear up 2 layers of floors from 2 rooms and begin putting it all back together.

They make the demolition work look like so much fun on the home remodeling shows. “Here, lets knock out this wall and rip everything down to bare studs!”, then after a few words from some advertisers it’s time to start building. It is certainly not that easy. I spent my time tearing the walls and cabinets down piece by piece, since our cabinets were seemingly spawned from the wall and were not going to be taken down peacefully. Brooke however took the painstaking job of carting the shards of cabinet and drywall out to outbuilding one cart at a time. By the end of the demo we managed to fill the entire front area of the outbuilding with material that needed to get to the dump. I was assured by Dad that it would be fully worth it to not rent a dumpster, but instead fill his white cargo van with loads and take them out to the dump. Aside from the overwhelming disapointment in not being able to toss large pieces of wall and cabinet out the window into a dumpster below, he was totally right. The dumpter most likely would have cost around $400, while 3 trips to the dump only ran us $75 plus the price of gas. Even with the gallons per mile that a 97 NASA space shuttle gets, it still turned out to be a win. I even managed to trick some poor shmuck into helping me load it all out of the outbuilding into the van, then out of the van at the dump, and knock down the last wall. Thanks Matt!

As far as the rebuilding goes, were now to the point where the cabinets go on the wall. I’ve learned that there is such a thing as a four way switch, electrical wire is expensive, and that new fangled snap on compression water shutoffs with teeth will fire off a pipe like a model rocket if touched in any way. As you may have guessed the plumbing has been the only real frustration. It always goes really well until the last part of a plumbing project with me. I needed to route water over to where the new sink is going to be. Luckily it was right in the place where the worlds tiniest bathroom once stood. I put some good shut-offs in the basement and brought the pipes up to inside the cabinet. The first shutoffs I used were sweat on shut-offs with the brilliant design feature of plastic handles which melted about 10 degrees cooler than the temperature needed for the solder to bind with the pipe. So off those came. Next it was suggested that I try these new shut-offs that simply snap into place and have teeth to hold them in place. I’ll admit I didn’t have much hope for them, but I gave them a whirl, bought them crammed em on, fired up the water, and they held. The next day I went to hook up the dishwasher and the minute I touched it, it fired from the pipe and left me relativly wet and angry. After further inspection of the label it says that you cannot “connect hoses or turn shutoff while pipe is under pressure”. What good is a shut-off that you can’t use to “shut-off” the water? Oh well, lesson learned. Stick with molten metal to hold things together and remove handles before soldering.

Aside from all of that progress has been great. Unfortunately it’s back to work next week and I won’t have the time to devote to the remodel that I had this week. Also the grass has been thoroughly neglected. The neighbor has mowed his yard 4 times to my 0 and I think I’m the shame of the neighborhood. Time to fire up the tractor for the first time and do some lawn work tomorrow.

-Tim

At the end of today’s work, our kitchen is showing a lot of progress.  Now that the drywall is going up, it’s starting to look like a real room again.

Ok, only a Lost fan would get this title, but when writing a post about an island, I couldn’t resist quoting the most island-centric show in recent history.  I guess the quote should be reversed; we aren’t done with the island yet, but it’s coming together.  I had to work most of the day, but when I came home this is what I saw.  Seeing this really shows the progress we’re making!  Now if only Tim could make faster progress with the plumbing….