You should do it.

No pics because I haven't put them up yet, but the big things are that the sink and everything around there is in and connected, the dishwasher is installed along with its panel, and I finished putting in the ceiling except for the last ~1.5in row next to the beam at the low side. Today I need to get that last row in, finish caulking everything and put as much of the final coat of paint on as possible. Once that's complete I can put all the furniture on and move on to the next step.

I'm going to use an exterior door for the door between the bedroom and family room, and basically treat it like an exterior door to soundproof it. I'm also going that route because it's been way too hard finding appropriate interior doors but I can find one like I'm looking for in exterior thickness because it's a bit larger. I'd like to buy this one now because it's getting a little old not having one and because the inlaws are coming for a visit next week. I'm going to frame the other two doorways so I can start getting casing and baseboards up and make the place look a lot more complete.

Grasscloth is also on order. Once that shows up I can get that in and basically finish complete the formal living room.

August 1st is around the corner, then I have to go turn around a rental I own. That means a new kitchen + half bath if there's room for it.

Door problems continue - I can't get them in birch in any of the big boxes. I'll have to buy them from... somewhere.

The ceiling is wrapped up now. It was kind of a pain but looks a lot better than drywall. I went with the same color as the walls, but with a semi gloss. The place is cleaned up and the in laws are in town for a week. While they're out doing their thing I'm working on the wallpaper now. I primed it first with wallpaper primer (release agent). That's what made the stuff so easy to remove at the last house in TX. I removed 400sq ft of it in the first half of an A&M game. Unfortunately it was during the Sherman era, but the walls were completely undamaged and ready to go.





The dishwasher is to the left of the sink. Wish there was such a thing as a panel ready microwave drawer.


Wallpaper going up in the entry hall.

Looks great! What your plan with the exposed beams?

Nice work!! your millwork looks great!

Thanks!

I will cover the beam with veneer of some kind. It's about 18.5' so it can't be something with a grain that's too strong or it will obviously look like multiple pieces. Not too sure of the particulars yet. Things are sort of being worked in order of what bugs my wife most to least, but that's a moving target.

Great job Fife!
Looks awesome!!!

Gorgeous! Don't mark up the countertop!

You may have mentioned it already, but where is the cabinetry from?

Fife have you considered covering the beam with steel plate either hot rolled with matte clearcoat or even galvanized. May not be the look you're after but you can use plate and have a nice fastening pattern on the face, just a thought.

Thanks! The countertops are quartz and have resisted my attacks so far. The cabinets would be a hipster's dream. They're from a local place that I was the last customer for called Live Oak Custom Cabinets. They did work mostly in the Charleston-Kiawah area but also went up to DC on occasion. I wanted to have them build a new entertainment center but have to find somewhere else now. I still need to adjust the decor and furniture too.

I'll have to look into different options for the beam. I would be reluctant to drill it because it is very structural though.

The goal is to be done with wallpaper by the end of the weekend.

10-4. I suppose that wouldn't help me, then. I'm moving soon to Fort Worth. I happened upon a MCM house in the process of being remodeled and the opportunity to get in and pick all the finishes before some idiot travertines the hell out of it. We will see, though. I think they're already wanting too much for it and they've done some things I don't agree with such as using orange peel texture on brand new sheet rock. Lazy.

If you want the place along with the opportunity to build the kitchen the way you want it why not go with some basic unfinished cabinets from Lowes or even Habitat.

I don't see why a reputable custom cabinet place wouldn't be able to build something. It's bookmatched walnut veneer, which they should be at least relatively familiar with. If they aren't that might be enough of a red flag to find another place anyway. I got lucky with finding the place though, I'm friends with a couple of custom builders and if I ever need to know who does or supplies what I can just ask.

Materials are finally showing up now. The backsplash is in and the entry hall slate should hit my front door today. It took a lot of planning to make the outlets line up like they did. The wall boxes line up with the bottom of row of tile so I only had to trim about 3/16 from the row above it. This afternoon I seal the grout, put the faceplates on and move the KA, toaster and blender back across the room where they belong.

Interior doors are a week or two out and the pantry door... closer to 6-9 weeks. The pendant lighting is on order and once this stuff is done it's just small odds and ends for the kitchen. The formal living room light is on order too. Still need to figure out the accent light above the wall art.





[This message has been edited by The Fife (edited 9/2/2014 5:41a).]

The slate is in the entry hall now. I bought it from http://www.vermontslatedepot.com and with shipping it was barely $200. They had fast shipping too.

Now that this is in I'm looking into putting in the pendant lights and figuring out where to hang the light for the breakfast area table. The table is offset from the center of the eating area so I'm guessing it's best to center the light over the table? I'm also working out the details for how I'm going to build this front door that I had in mind. That should be pretty quick and easy to do.

Here's how the floor came out...

Too bad you can't wallpaper the beam. Are you wanting it to match the doors?

I'll take pretty much anything that looks good so if birch doesn't have a strong enough grain so that the different pieces of veneer would be obvious I'm ok with that.

At this point the new doors are installed and pendant lights are in. The globe for one of them arrived with a chip in the glass and a new one should get here in a couple of days. This afternoon I'm putting in the new light in the formal living room (There was no overhead light before) and finishing the doors. Having those in makes the place feel a lot nicer.

The pendant lights and formal living room light are in. Still waiting on Fedex Freight to call me about what time today the delivery guy will be here. I was hoping it would be early so I would have more of the day at home to finish the doors. The sample area I did yesterday turned out great.

Spectacular!

Thanks! Today I hope to complete finishing the three doors from the family room on one side, then move on to the reverse and small sides. Getting more casing and baseboards in would be an added bonus. I also have a little rework to do around a light switch since the drywallers did a bad job there and the faceplate does not cover it all up.

The list of things to do keeps getting shorter though, and I hope to be done by the end of October.

I would wrap the beam with the boards used on the ceiling!

Interesting idea, however we decided to go with veneer since it turns out to be easy to install and can handle any kind of uneveness pretty well.

I've been doing more finishing up stuff that makes for pretty boring pictures. All trim is cut and installed except for the baseboards in the entry hall that need about 3/8" taken off the bottom. After that I make the front door.

Today orders for all remaining materials go out - that will be the light for the breakfast area, doorknobs and a Big Ass Fan.

How is the mess at your rent house?

Are you ordering an actual BAF or the haiku?

Haiku, in medium size. One of their larger ones would create a wonderful strobe light effect in the room.

That rental house is probably going to end up in a lawsuit. The material supplier's liability insurance has completely ignored everything and everyone for over a month. There also appears to be no sign of any investigation on their end or well... anything. They forced my decision to find an attorney. I'm meeting with a builder and engineer on site this afternoon, along with someone from the law office to go over next steps.

What happened with the rental? I guess I didn't see any update on that thread.

~egon

In a nutshell...

- Roofing material supplier disregards written instructions and loads materials on the roof, overloading it. Rafters go down, exterior walls are pushed outward. HVAC crushed, that sort of damage.
- City wants the place stabilized, I find an engineer to draw up a plan
- Spoke with the supplier's insurance a few times early on. They suggest this will be quick / no need to stabilize anything but make plans to anyway to keep the city happy.
- Insurance disappears. I'm forced to hire an attorney.
- Insurance also ignores attorney, more to come later.

Much more to come once everything is settled, whenever that is.

Keep us updated. I hate that you are going through that but legal threads are always entertaining.

Holy crap. Unbelievable.

I've enjoyed reading enough legal story threads... guess it's time to have my own.

With that place, a few of us met up yesterday afternoon, including a civil engineer. One of the first things he said was that it's a good thing I stabilized it instead of listening to the insurance company because otherwise the house would have collapsed by now. As it currently sits the place has maybe a month to survive unless it can somehow be dried in, which will be a real challenge because of what can and can't support any load. Structurally, what the suppliers did made things very bad and it could easily turn into $150-$200K+ to fix. The place is historical and the city won't issue a demolition permit, so sucks to be them.

I'll know more next week.

What type of material did you go for the baseboard?

Poplar 1x4. I rounded the corner with a palm sander. If I had a band saw I'd like to have ripped it in half but with the tools that I have that would have been a little risky. I like having all of my fingers attached.

Things are still moving forward. Updates aren't very interesting when all I was doing is caulking and painting more baseboards though. Here's where I am with things that are still needed:

Family Room
- Big Ass Fan on order
- Light over the dining area table has shipped. Easy install because I already ran wiring and a switch and just need the ceiling box
- Veneer for the beam is being ordered today. I need to go paper backed because it's not going to be completely flat.
- Doorknobs are on order and should be here...?

Kitchen
- Still need to finish and install the top pantry shelf
- Pantry doors should get here someday
- Trim still needs another coat or two
- Need toe kick / already know where to get it
- Need to finish one small run of toe kick lighting already
- Now that it's not hot in the attic I should think about running the cooktop vent up through the roof

Formal Living
- The accent light for the wall art came in the mail this week. It's also prewired/switch in place so that's also easy.

Entry Hall
- Transition molding from the slate to oak are on order.
- Need to trim up baseboards and get those in already
- Can't modify the sidelight until after the Halloween party...
- I made the front door. Glass is on order and I'm ordering the hardware today. Today we're also picking out what color to stain it and I can get started on that. This is how it looks.

Sweet door! What's the thought process behind making a door?

Sorry for the late response, my brother died last Monday. He was class of 2010 and I have had a lot of things to take care of.

The thought process was...
- see door I like at Crestview Doors. Decide to order a door light kit (windows + templates)
- door light kits are discontinued, a door will run > $2,500 now. (Was told 2,700) Not good...
- open a large picture of the door I wanted in PPT. A normal door is 36"W x 80"H. Measure and scale down to calculate the size and position of the windows.
- Buy a blank door slab from your nearest friendly big box store ($65)
- Get a router - a good one that will plunge. Mark your windows, clamp some wood to the door to serve as a router guide and cut some holes.
- measure the windows (minus 1/8" or so) and order from a local glass place in the kind of glass of your choice.
- stain and varnish the door, then put in the windows. I used some spare strips of poplar I had, cut down to 3/8" as stops for the glass.

There you have it, new front door with $2,400 saved.