House Project - Day ???: Tunnel<-Light

Keeping to my recent bi-monthly update schedule, I thought I'd take the opportunity to write-up another entry about the status of our house remodeling project.

In the last episode, the drywall had just been installed. Since then, as expected, a lot more has happened, and we're getting really close to being able to move in.

The kitchen cabinets got installed, and they really look nice and crisp and clean. The color we chose for the cabinets -- Bisque Glaze -- was a little yellower than we expected, especially when seeing them next to the flat white of the wall primer. It would all turn out for the best, as we shall see later.

On the exterior of the house, the existing roof shingles were taken off, and the entire house reshingled with the Certainteed Independence Weathered Wood shingles that we used on the new garage a couple of years ago. In addition, the existing furnace chimney was also rebuilt.

Then the siding crew came in and started to trim the windows and put up the siding. The trim for the older windows ended up being a bit wider then originally envisioned, and perhaps a tad off from a proportion standpoint. It was necessary to add this width due to the construction of the original window trim, and the fact that it was necessary to retain this original trim.

Meanwhile, work continued inside as Kevin the tile guy laid down the tile in the powder room, kid's bathroom, and master bathroom. We chose hexagonal ceramic tiles for the upstairs bathrooms, to try and retain some period flavor. For the powder room, we chose a simple, squarish pattern with natural stone, to complement the natural material richness of the kitchen countertop.

After the tile got laid, the bathroom vanities got installed.

New windows were punched through and installed in the dining room and Miranda's room.

John started milling and installing the window trim work, as well as the baseboard trim, trying to replicate the original trim work as much as possible.

Outside, the siding continued to go up, along with detail pieces for mounting lights. When done, the new siding gave the house a nice and cleaner look. The 5" clapboard might not be absolutely historically correct for our Dutch Colonial Revival style, but we think it looks good. The deck railings are PVC and maintenance-free (yea!), and look great!

It then came time to paint the interior of the house. Originally we planned on tackling the painting ourselves, but when it came time to paint, neither Wendy or I thought we could muster the energy to tackle the painting ourselves. So we hired a painter. And thank God we did, because the painting was truly a larger task than we had anticipated, and the painter we hired has been doing a great job.

Finally, within the last month, came the installation of various finish materials. First, the masons installed the brick surround of the fireplace. We had a choice of tumbled or non-tumbled brick, and we chose non-tumbled for, again, a crisper look.

At around the same time, the kitchen granite countertop and kid's bathroom countertop got installed by SMC Stone. They had to come back to install the master bath countertop, because the sink holes got cut incorrectly.

And the Kempas wood flooring was installed through the new portions of the house. The flooring installer originally started laying out the floor using a pattern, given the 4-5 differently sized pieces that the flooring came in. However, neither Wendy and I were very happy with the results, so we asked him to just use a random pattern, making sure that repetition in sizes, seams, and color was minimized.

The end is near, the light at the end of the tunnel grows brighter, and we are tentatively scheduled to move back in the weekend of September 24.

And of course, as usual, there are more pictures uploaded to my Flickr "House" picture set than I've shown and/or linked to on this blog.

House Project - Day 113 - Drywall

It's been a long while since the last house project update. Since then, a lot has happened in the house: plumbing and electrical rough-ins were completed and passed inspection. More doors and windows were installed.

Our existing house did not have any insulation in the walls, so we took the opportunity to have insulation blown in during the remodeling. One place they didn't blow it into was the ceiling above the sun room. John the Builder still has to get the insulation in there somehow.

A central air-conditioning was installed in the attic to service the second floor. And the electrical system was consequently upgraded.

The new Majestic fireplace insert got installed into the fireplace bay in the family room. As is becoming the norm, Wendy and I struggled to find the unit with just the right combination of: size, efficiency, viewing area, refractory brick pattern, and install dimensions. Some compromises were made, as you might expect, and we ended up with a Majestic unit that had slightly less viewing area than originally planned. But the brick patter of the refractory ended up being just what Wendy wanted.

The door to the basement had to be relocated to the foyer, with the stairs re-routed to match. This would have made for a tight squeeze for moving anything into and out of the basement. Fortunately, the new foundation area has a bulkhead.

Most of the drywall was put up this past weekend. In the family room, the application of the drywall has predictably made the room feel smaller.

In particular, the ceiling feels lower than we otherwise would like. This may be because we recently visited my sister's new place in Brooklyn, with its nearly 10 foot ceilings!

With drywall in place, the new master bedroom has turned into the most dramatic new room in the house. The transition from hallway to raised bedroom level accentuates the feeling of the ceiling's height here, and the tray ceiling adds depth (I'm talking like an Iron Chef commentator). It's sort of a Frank Lloyd Wright thing happening there.

I hope to update with a little more regularity, but with an upcoming business trip, the next update probably won't happen until a bit after that.

As usual, there are more pictures uploaded to my Flickr "House" picture set than I've shown and/or linked to on this blog.

ONE

House Project - Day 53 - Sheathing

One week later, and the addition is almost fully framed and sheathed. The window plan is now fully evident from the exterior, at least for the new-built portion of the remodel. And there is now a more fully-developed sense of space on the interior.

One of the critical areas that we've been wanting to take a look at has been the area in the kitchen-to-family transition space around the peninsula. There are a lot of things happening there: the wall jogs in, the countertop peninsula wraps around the jog, the ceiling height transitions, and a window is placed in the area. The location of the ceiling beam that defines the height transition was moved about 1 foot towards the rear of the house, so that the bathroom cabinets on the second floor would not have to be cut to "ride" the beam.

This means that the ceiling height transition happens right at the left edge of the window. It also means, though, that the height transition does not happen right above the heads of whomever happens to be sitting at the peninsula. Plus, it gives us more flexibility to use drawers in our bathroom vanity cabinets.

My favorite feature of the new addition, so far, is the walk into the master bedroom. It's still a bit misleading at this point since the ceiling isn't in yet, and it appears as though the bedroom will have cathedral ceilings. Part of me wishes that we had specified cathedral ceilings in the bedroom, but I'll just have to see how the tray ceiling looks.

A note to those clicking on the links to the pictures: in these blog entries, I've only linked to a subset of what's available on Flickr, the hosting site for the photos. There are more pictures in the "House" set of photos, which you can browse through using the navigation on the right side of each picture's page.

House Project - Supplemental: New Furnace

Back when they were laying the foundation, they also installed a new furnace. Our old furnace was an ancient model that looked like it was at least 50 years old. In addition to being inadequate to heat the expanded structure, it was also probably horribly inefficient.

This new Weil-McLain unit comes universally recommended by many plumbers and heating experts, although if you squint at the yellow Energy Guide label you can see that it falls within the lower range, efficiency-wise, of other comparable units. Hmm.

You can also see from the picture that we're going to be set for 3 zones of heat: the original portion of the house (except for Miranda's room) will be on one zone. The master bedroom and bathroom, and Miranda's bedroom will be the second zone, and the new family room and kitchen will be in the 3rd zone.