Day 66- Hardest tile job EVER

So I have tiled twice before at my old house. I did the hallway bathroom floor and a small mosaic countertop to a built-in buffet. So I thought to myself- Hey this is definitely one place I can save myself a TON of money. And honestly just with the tile jobs I did I probably could go on that show "10 Grand in your Hand". (I should have gotten a quote first just so I would know how much I really did save). Anyways, needless to say I was once a novice and now I would call myself "experienced"...but still not an expert.

So the first room that was ready for Tile was the 2nd floor bathroom. I wanted to do something very simple so that the floor could go with any decor scheme because if I am living here for 13 years then I am not sure my 16 & 18 year old teenagers will want a bright blue and orange fish bathroom...but you never know! I was glad to be starting with this room too because it was small and there was nothing to work around except a shower basin.

Well all I can say is even though the tile is awesome (and I am awesome) this turned into the hardest tile job ever. Essentially I took what i think was suppose to be a backsplash wall tile and turned it into a floor tile and there were sooooo many grout lines and so many crooked walls and soooo many tile cuts that it took me 5 hours to lay it, 2 hours to grout it and 2 hours just to go back and wipe off the grout because it was drying too fast for me to catch up with it. Anyways I don't think I can describe the angony on my knees and the fact that I did all of this on a 2nd story at 85 degrees with no power except a fan that was blowing directly on me (and therefore drying the grout). BUT...it does look fabulous! (if you don't look too close)...

the things sticking up below are spacers if you haven't done tile before...

Day 40- 81 Square Feet

So do you remember the Attic Dormer/Birds Nest/Scary Room? Well it was the front A-frame to the house, an unfinished attic space that was kinda creepy and it was behind the little door you see below.

My brilliant idea was to turn it into a toy room for the kids, gut the space, add a window in place of the vent, insulate and drywall. So here it is gutted:
then we added side walls and insulation: Removed the vent, installed a window and drywall and mud:

And here it is primed and ready for some toy niches and a built-in desk space.

This space and the upstairs in general are definitely the biggest transformations to the house. So far I think it is pretty exciting! I added only 81 square feet to my floorplate and I think increased my value by at least $3-5000. Now I call that some bang for you buck! What do you think?

Day 39- Where Knights will Sleep

Well Lucas might have got the small end of the deal in regards to size of his bedroom but I made up for it with a very cool bed fit for a Knight (sorry you will have to wait in suspense!)

So...old room with wood paneling and carpet:

And new room with drywall and wood floors underneath! Sweet!

The room didn't have a closet before but we moved the entrance from a hall closet to a spot behind his door (if you remember this brilliant idea) No accent walls for Lucas since his dresser is green and his new bed is...

oh snap I almost gave it away! hehehe.

Day 38- The Princess' Tower (i.e. Lilly's Room)

The tower use to be dark and gloomy...definitely not fit for a princess.

The difference between the paneling and drywall is honestly insane. The space is so much brighter and feels even bigger.
I actually did pretty good here with the same picture positioning- check out the progress:
Existing:

1/2 demoed":

And drywall:

And the paint request from the princess was originally pink...then she changed it to "Rainbow Colors". Being her assistant I did talk her into staying with the pink and adding the rainbow colors into her bedding. She thought that was a perfect idea!

Day 27- Watch your Step!

Well the floor of the bathroom upstairs was very soft from water damage and was now an issue once the tile had been removed. Part of it needed to be replaced and since I wasn't sure how I felt about cutting out floor and kneeling on rafters with a giant opening I had my contractor do it.
So all the sudden when I walked in one day I saw alot of light coming into the downstairs bathroom and when I realized that it was streaming from the big "skylight" above from lack of floor i will have to admit I was a little freaked out. But of course I had to grab a picture because hopefully this is something that I will never see again.

And the mess below from the falling rotten floor. Awesome. Can I just tell you how many times I have cleaned out this bathroom?? And I'm not even living there yet!

Day 20- Plumbing and Insulation

Last Thursday was exciting because 80% of my plumbing went in and 70% of my insulation. Big day in my world. Probably not such an exciting blog though...except I do have a great picture of me with sticky foam insulation all over my arm. Mental note to self: wear gloves and long sleeves when using foam insulation in a tight attic space...otherwise you might get it all over yourself, then you might get it covered in dust and dirt, then you might not be able to scrub it off with anything except turpentine and a week later there might still be remnants of it all over your arms. Just an FYI to people who ignore instructions on the can...

Here is the attic before Insulation (and after digging out the old)...

Here is it afterward...

And the walls got R30 which is VERY thick (to keep my babies warm) Plumbing went in in both bathrooms, kitchen, washer, etc. I went with PEX which is both affordable and very durable. So all the white tubing you see below is actually my water lines run from the basement up to the 2nd floor. PEX contracts and expands with hot and cold so you cannot get pipes that burst in the winter. It is run in alot of the newer homes and so far seems pretty cool. I was also able to get a VERY good price on the plumbing due to the ease of installation.

And here is my new shower location. I am actually able to fit a 6'tub in my main bathroom but after comparing costs it was not worth an extra $1200 for 12" of tub space, so I am going to go with a standard 60"x32" tub but dress it up with amazing tile with hopefully only spending 1/3rd of that price.

I will keep you waiting in suspense for what the tile is going to look like...especially since I have not even picked it out myself. But no worries...it is on this weekends agenda!

Day 19- The PROJECT

Well, let's just say I have been feeling adventurous...(obviously). I bought a power tool combo pack and you have got to try everything out right? So this past weekend with all of the brilliant ideas going around I decided to try and add to the brilliantness. Last week I thought of a laundry chute option which would drop directly from the kids bathroom to the top of my washing machine...brilliant right? Because if I made it easy..maybe I would actually do the laundry??

There use to be a tall linen cabinet in the corner of the 2nd floor bath which was cool, I was going to keep it and paint it but once everything got gutted the bathroom looked so much bigger without it. But then I realized that the bottom of the cabinet had a laundry hamper in it which I thought was the coolest thing ever and was trying to figure out how to use it. So I went upstairs and measured and realized that I could fit the bottom half of the cabinet into the bathroom wall and with a little retro-fitting of the hamper depth (by my dad- thanks dad!) it could all magically work. Now I just needed to figure out how to get some linen storage in. So I came up with an open towel shelf. I think it would be fun to have bright and colorful towels on display that are also easily accessible and some extra toiletries stored in fun bins would fit too. So I started cutting my shelf this past weekend. Let me just first start to explain that this is really the first time I have used a circular saw to any extent. I mean I have helped cut deck boards and misc trim or whatever for our old house but to actually take a big 4x8 sheet of nice wood and build something...never happened. So hey why not give it a try right? It can't be that hard!

Ummmmm...yeah.

Let's just say I cut some wood this weekend but put off the rest until my dad could help me. Not that my dad wants to take any credit in the final product though since it is not straight and there are numerous gaps from crooked cuts...but I still think it is pretty cool. And will look great with a little putty, some trim and a few coats of paint! lol

The shelf will be mounted to the left as shown and the cabinet on the right is the one being retrofitted into the framing behind it and the chute opening is below (which I got to use my sawz all for!). What do you think?

Day 17- Brilliant Ideas

So the great thing about working with great people is that together you can come up with brilliant ideas. I think sometimes you stare at something too long and you don't think past what you already had planned.

Once the walls were opened up completely and everything was actually clean I was talking with my contractor about what to do in Lucas' room because there was not actually a closet in his room. There was one right outside it, but I had always planned on putting a small closet behind his door because the space wasn't very useful, but my contractor said- "Why don't you just recess it into the wall?" Oh...well now that is brilliant since there is just wasted attic space. Problem being it was going to be short with the roof angle which probably wouldn't have been a big deal. But then we got thinking- why don't we take the hall closet and make an opening to it off of his room. There was just enough space for a 24" door to go into a "walk-in" closet that we extended about 3' into the attic space. So it got framed out that night! The shorter side is unusable for hanging clothes probably but it is perfect for rubbermaid tubs of old/future clothes. And I have a feeling that Lucas will turn this room into a pretty cool hang out while he is little.

Then in Lilly's room there was a closet already in place, but it had two large ducts (supply and return) running through the closet from the basement. These were added on when the upstairs was finished (guessing about the 50's based on finishes). My contractor asked why I didn't just change these ducts to flex ducts and run them through the attic instead? Again...brilliant.
So that is what we did! You can kind of see them in the picture below inside the closet, and then a 6" duct use to run all the way up to the vent you see at the top.
Here are the new flex ducts back behind the closet.
Now I just need to fix the hole in the floor!

Day 16- Getting Dirty

Well the fun part of demolition is the tear down, breaking walls, using sledge hammers etc. But cleaning up always follows and it seems to take just as long...if not longer. Especially when you are tearing down plaster walls that just crumble and turn to dust. So needless to say it is boring to blog about cleaning up but basically half of the time at the house that is what I am doing. I always say I will be sick of cleaning this house before I even move into it...but what I am hoping is that when it is actually clean and livable I will just want to keep it that way all the time.

The whole house is a dusty mess and I have not been able to work upstairs without a mask on since we opened up the walls. The amount of dust and insulation and 80 years worth of crap is just floating through the air and if you are not wearing a mask you will be blowing black snot later that day (just being honest).

So, this past weekend I cleaned and also finished cleaning out all of the attic bays. Once I had decided to tear off the paneling and realized the other boards were behind it and the nasty insulation that was behind that I decided that $500 was worth paying someone else to do it. And it was a good thing I did for the following reasons:

1. It would have taken me a four days to do by myself

2. It was very hot up there and you could hardly breathe even with a mask

3. The brown mexican that went in came out black...seriously

Even this past weekend when I was just cleaning up final insulation residue my arms and face were charcoal in color and my mask was covered in dust. This is what it looked like when the walls were opened up:

This is what it looked like after I paid the guy to dig it all out:

And then I essentially this past weekend I shop vac'd all the little leftover insulation debris, ashphalt shingle debris (that had come through the rooff during tear-off) and 80 year old dust. It was not fun, but felt so good to see this at the end:

And now we are ready for new insulation!

Renovation Day 14- Final Demo

So after the waterfall we decided to rip out the plaster sticks and insulation that was between the two bathrooms...so the carefulness thatwe had taken with taking off the ceiling or my dad taking out each nail the week before was pointless...but really not very much damage for what could have been much worse. The plaster on the walls also needed to come off so the plumber could get access. So here is what it looked like in the morning...

Here is after we ripped out the ceiling exposing the pipes above...

And here are the walls after we tore off the plaster. There was a foot of plaster and sticks on the floor before we cleaned up. Can you imagine building a house with all of those sticks?? Wow.

We also finished demo of the 2nd floor. Things were really starting to open up. The picture below shows the new toy room. I have opened up the attic dorner of the house and will put in a small half-circle window instead of the vent which I sketched below:

Standing at the top of the stairs looking into Lilly's room.

Demolition Day 8- Progress

So Friday there was some big progress upstairs. (Essentially because I paid some guys to do what I didn't have the energy to do). Biggest difference was the upstairs bathroom. It use to be all peach tile...everything was peach and wallpapered.

And YES...that is wallpaper on the ceiling.

And yes, that is the same angle for this picture after they ripped everything out. The bathroom is actually a decent size...just a bad layout. No worries, I will fix that!

And the insulation board and insulation was all taken out. I will have to tell you more stories about this insulation on Day 11...suspenseful I know!

And do you remember Lilly's room before?

Well here is is paritally done. With just a quick jump to the stairs!

It is getting there...wall by wall.

Demolition Day 7- Bye Bye Paneling

This was actually easier than I expected...kinda. The entire 2nd floor which is considered 1/2 a floor? is essentially a big finished attic. The entire thing was covered in wood paneling except for the bathroom which was covered in peach tile (and wallcovering of course).

Big difference with the nasty carpet and paneling gone! Much brighter.
Now one question I do have and would love your vote on. Ok, I love the wood stairs, they are definitely keepable...although a little squeeky. But my inital thought was to carpet them with the new play room at the top of the stairs because I was worried about the kids falling down them (or myself). They are kinda steep and turn quickly 90degress at the end. What is your vote? Leave a comment to let me know!

Big Difference in Lilly's future room too.

And there is actually particle board and very old insulation behind the paneling. I comtemplated with leaving it and laminating drywall over it but decided the best idea would be to rip it all out now and do it right. But that just does not sound fun at all!