Our Remodel in Progress
Greetings
We received some feedback via other threads and dove into our remodel a while back. I figured I'd start an as-it-goes thread. It's also a place to put out questions / ideas as things come up, right?
So, here are the as-built and remodel floor plans:
We had some issues with plan development that I won't get into here. It did cause a delay, but, soon enough, we got going.
Some background: contractor is friend of ours, high integrity guy. He allowed me to do some DIY to save some $. I'll explain those items as they come up.
Some before pics:
I don't have a lot of interior before pics, but this was during a flooring update:
demo:
Comments (11)
elbell19
7 years agoThe plan was to cover the 2 porches that are within the footprint to gain some square footage and add a 1/4 bath. Digging out foundation and concrete:
to this point, no real surprises other than the plan delays.Framing time!
closing in the front porch. Pillars for new porch in foreground. Could only do single door (so sidelight) due to engineer being a dumbarse and calling for hold-downs and sheer walls where they weren't needed.
standing in new entry looking toward opening to kitchen/dining. Back of pantry on right.
standing in old back porch area. Kitchen will be to my left.
New sink looking toward back. If we had to do this over again, would have made this window wider and taller.
framing and insulation in! The tape on the floor is the new island. We shortened it by 12" as it pinched the corner of the pantry too much and it was too late to make a corner pantry. Also, making it 96x42 saved $300 in counter material cost (walnut butcher block)
time to build the new front porch:
he morticed (sp?) in the ends vs. using hardware. it was cool woodworking mojo.
elbell19
7 years ago
the original plan called for the gutter to continue across the front above the door (yes, we had design/plan issues). Obviously, that was dumb so we improvised. shingles going in above door.
T&G going up.
mostly finished. Lots of debate about stain vs. paint. We went with painting the beams, staining the T&G and painting the shingles (see below)
whoops..painting those shingles didn't turn out so good. Should have stained them.
So, that's on the list before finishing. Re-do those shingles and stain natural.
the HVAC was by me. Neighbor is a structural engineer and used to do HVAC..got some lessons and ended up re-doing the whole side. We also set it up to do a "2-zone" system with electronic dampers which we will complete once we do phase II.
drywall!! We were going to hang it ourselves, but contractor decided to sub it out. 30 something sheets and 3 guys had it done in 3hrs. Crazy. We taped. Contractor textured. "Imperfect smooth" texture looks great. Got rid of all that old 70's skip trowel. (didn't get any pics of plumbing and electrical going in..)
last 2 days we did prep coat and PVA primer. Time to install cabinets. Contractor used to be a cabinet builder and has been hard at work.Related Discussions
bathroom drywall
Comments (3)National Gypsum makes a purple-faced product. It's usually used in rooms where large purple cartoon-looking dinosaurs play. Consider it a newer version of the old moisture resistant green board. It's still gypsum-based, but it's moisture-resistant, mold-resistant, it's even more abrasion and puncture resistant. And I think it's even rated as a fire board. Not sure about the fire board though. Greenboard was the "original" moisture resistant gypsum board. It's been phased out around here. Blueboard is for veneer-coat plaster. Wonderboard and Durock are cement boards. They have a cement core instead of a gypsum core. They are used as a tile backer board in wet areas like tub and shower surrounds. While the "Drywall" sheets (green, purple, blue board, etc) most commonly come in 4' by 8' sheets, the cement boards (wonder and durock) are mostly found in 3' by 5' sheets. Convenient, in that it generally takes 4 sheets to cover the three walls of a typical tub surround....See MoreIn Progress:Sneak Peak of our white to dark remodel
Comments (7)Awwww, Ginger, thank you. You are very sweet. I just re-posted because the original was MIA for a while. That was a lot of work. Let me see: The cabinets were ordered online through Cabinet Giant in Kansas City, I think. The are cherry stained maple, solid wood, dovetailed full-extension drawers with soft close. They are RTA which sounds scary, but I'll tell you, aside from the lazy susan and the pantries, each cabinet took around 7 minutes to put together. The color is Brindleton Maple- the Reserve Line. The counter top is Corian Dusk (light speckled gray) the integrated sink is white. The floor below froggy is Brazilian Cherry Natural- not wood, but Mannington Revolutions Diamond Bay laminate. Thank you again for your kind words! My apologies to everyone for the double post. If you can tell me how to get rid of one, I will!...See MoreHelp with Basement color!
Comments (8)I suspect part of your confusion might be evaluating the color boards against your current new drywall. Give it a coat of primer (which you'll have to do anyway), and look at your color preferences once again. Do this in both daytime and with artificial lighting. Are you planning baseboards? White? This will separate your wall and floor colors - most any color wall paint should work with your tile color. I believe in a colorful basement. How you intend to use the space is key. The secret to making a finished basement work is the lighting. A variety of artificial options (cans, sconses, pendants and table) is helpful and dimmers enable a mood to be adjusted. We selected an off-white as the basic color (wall and ceiling) for our basement, then used colorful posters on those walls. Different accent wall colors define individual areas within a great room concept. Our basement is primarily used for entertaining. You might need to go to the second page of the link to see the various wall colors. Hope this helps. Good luck. Here is a link that might be useful: Basement...See MoreOur kitchen is finished
Comments (36)Hi Fern, Our runs are approx. 6" shorter than the cabinet lengths, leaving 3 - 4" at each end. This is also true where we have a corner; the two runs do not extend all the way into the corner space and meet. They are connected by an extension cable. We installed the strips 3" back from the front edge of the cabinets. This gives a very even distribution of light on the counters, with no noticeable fall-off at the ends of the cabinets. I don't think we would have wanted to make the runs much shorter. An inch or so less than what we've done will probably not matter too much, though. Our runs include 8" sections; that means that they are not dimmable. We really don't think that matters. The lighting is more for task lighting then ambient lighting. The ceiling lights dim if we want to soften the room....See Moreelbell19
7 years agolast modified: 7 years ago
wine cabinet
cleanup sink
oven/micro cabinet adjoining fridge (the back of it, anyway).
I'll post more pics tomorrow of cabinets. We also have a bunch of aesthetics choices to make. We've chosen PA Soapstone (harder version, but similar to Barroca, I believe). Walnut Butcher Block will be on Island.
Need to figure out what shade of white to do the cabinets and trim. Designer suggested good ole Swiss Coffee (exterior trim is this color on her suggestion), but might be too stark?
This is one of our issues in that the contractor has his idea of the order things should be chosen and the designer has another. Our contractor doesn't care much for the designer (long story). I do have to say that our contractor has been right on nearly every choice/decision/prediction up to this point....
So, it's late, so will post more tomorrow. I'm bummed I didn't start this earlier in the project, but just too busy! Hope folks will enjoy it and be able to help out with opinions!
elbell19
7 years agoelbell19
7 years agoOne of the soapstone counters installed on template day so we could mount the wine cabinet upper. I'll get a better pic
We also need to choose the shade of white for cabinets and trim asap! That should be fun....
nancyjwb
7 years ago
jml248