Nothing like food poisoning to steal a Saturday.

Superspeck was right again on the spray foam, by the way. While lying down trying not to be sick for the 8th time today and listening to the rain I kept hearing a tapping coming from the living room. It was a leak above the couch that would have gone unnoticed for years.

*buffs fingernails on chest*

Double post, dude? Yeah, I bet you don't feel good. I was down the past few weekends with neck/shoulder pain ... Just starting to tile my bathroom this weekend. Rest up, man.

I'm back at it but progress has been slow. It took a stupid amount of work to go from the 3 outlets way up high (benind the PO's bar area a couple pages back) to two outlets down where they should be. Before the addition there were a lot of windows on that wall adding light to the den/office and now it's been drywalled over. That makes running wire from up in the attic heaps of fun.

I had to go down, under the house, over, back up to each new outlet and down from below to the next outlet in the circuit on the next wall instead of tying into existing wiring in the attic because the wall is blocked off due to the old windows.

Cabinets are ordered though. I have 8 weeks to get ready...

I have been watching this project for a while and it is truly impressive. What you have done so far looks great and I can't wait to see what the kitchen will look like with the cabinets installed. It will be nice when you can kick back and enjoy it instead of trying to figure out what to do next.

Thanks, one thing that's different between this project and others from the past is that we've gotten a bit project weary over time. The longest project we've dealt with was a 6 week demo-rebuild of the kitchen in the last house we lived in. It was mostly cosmetics - nothing really moved besides the microwave and it was basically cabinets out, tile out, tile in, cabinets in, done. This time with the major rebuild work and utilities upgrades that are a lot less visible it can get hard to keep going.

We're only one item away from being able to close up all the open floor area covered by loose plywood. If I can get all the pipes underneath the house insulated tonight I can pull the last of the flooring and subfloor up to the middle of the family room, then start permanently installing the new plywood up until that point. Right now being done with that by the end of this weekend is the target we're shooting for.

I don't have any pictures of it, but this weekend I crossed a border of sorts underneath the addition. I've reached a point where the lumber coming out is serviceable and the subfloor is solid. I have to keep replacing joists along this section anyway because the new ones are double 2x8 and the old are notched 2x10s that are overspanned anyway but I thought that was sort of interesting. When I do the last section of the family room I might get lucky and only have to sister in lumber and put the joists on hangers instead of completely rebuilding it all.

I'm almost at the point where I can put down a few hundred square feet of new subfloor. That'll make a huge difference in how far along everything looks. After that I'm not sure if I'll do a little framing for the pantry or if I'll finish up the work underneath the floor...

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we've gotten a bit project weary over time.

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So true. I'm at that point in my own renovations -- I'm ready to be done and out of here, but there's so much work that's left to be done that it's overwhelming.

We've had a lot going on at home this week. The big stuff is...

Flooring is on order. It's hard to find anyone that sells unfinished, long length, rift and quartered white oak in long lengths to the general public with a reasonable lead time. We went up to clear grade in order to take advantage of existing stock that a mill already had. It should be nice and quick to install, lengths are mostly 8-12 feet with a few going down to 6.

Subfloor is done. Not done, done but installed up to the beam running about 2/3 of the way through the family room. On the other side of the beam there appears to be much less rot and I may be able to get away with pulling the floor and subfloor, sistering in new wood and putting the joists back on with hangers.

We picked out a stain for the cabinets this week. This one I just lucked out on - the wife and I looked at about 8 different samples separately from one another and we both liked the same one best. I was worried this would be a battle.

The cabinet place is going to be able to have everything done on their end MUCH faster than I thought they would - they'll be ready in about 5 weeks (I thought 8). That means I need to hurry things up and focus on anything that will keep me from putting in flooring and drywall. I need to have half a clue what we want to do with lighting in the family room, which I haven't thought about at all.

5 weeks for custom cabinets is pretty good.

I'm excited for you guys getting to the final stretch of this phase of the renno.

Thanks. To be fair we're closer to 7 weeks from start to finish. The cabinet maker seems to have no more than 5 people total and they're off in West Virginia doing an installation this week. At this point they have a list of appliances we are getting, the drawings I already had and I'm following their experience when it comes to drawer sizes and whatnot. I think we're filling some extra time they had while working on a couple of projects that are large enough to last a year or so.

Flooring arrives on Tuesday so in theory I could start installing it around March 5th or so. Honestly the thought of all the measurements needed to make sure the first row goes in straight scare the hell out of me.

[This message has been edited by the fife (edited 2/21/2014 1:13p).]

The pantry is framed in now. The final size came in at 9' wide x 2.5' deep. I had originally planned it to be a bit smaller but it's a lot easier to just bump it out so that it matches up with studs and joists that are already there.



Today I'm framing in the columns, and I'd like to also do the two HVAC returns in the family room and move the closet door over however many inches it needs to go. If I can get all that done I'm finished with framing for this project (joists don't count). The next stop I guess is the sink drain, then moving everything over so I can take care of the joists in the far end of the family room this week.

No need to do columns by the pantry anymore. I realized the only reason they were there was because of beam span issues before the support column was added, and so pantry doors wouldn't open into the family room before we changed the design to sliding doors.

I think we'll go with a room partition instead. It's age appropriate for the place and looks nice IMO.



http://www.houzz.com/photos/75718/Martin-residence-modern-living-room-seattle

The stupid closet doorway is moved now. That only took about 8 hours... I had to move 4 electrical lines, take out part of the PO's shelves, move the t*t light, then the smoke detector because they were too close, and then I could finally start working on the doorway. If this wasn't so important to having enough room for the TV and turning this 1 closet into 2 next year it would have been a complete waste of time.

If it helps, my bathroom still isn't done...

True but your kitchen is done, right?

I think we're 4 weeks away from cabinets and however long after that for countertops + sink. I'm seriously considering farming out drywall because I really, really hate doing large areas of the stuff and I'm also not very good at it. Sort of a lose, lose situation. If we outsource that, there's time to spare because there isn't that much work left to do.

Yep, my kitchen is done. Took them about 8 working days. It wasn't a DIY project, so that's probably why it's done already.

I used a vacation day today because the flooring was supposed to be delivered this morning. After a phone call last week and two today Fedex finally realized that "residential street" + "neighborhood" = someone's house and that there aren't warehouse workers here to unload things. There's only me.

So of course they need to reschedule and now we're looking at Saturday after I get off work. Instead of completely wasting the vacation day I'm rounding up anything even remotely tax related. Not fun.

I'm wondering how that is going to work when ours is delivered. It looks like Home Depot is sending it via "Estes Express Lines" (some hotshot company I guess). Hopefully they have the means to unload it without one guy bringing in all 50 boxes individually.

Curbside service is typical; sometimes they'll help get things into the garage if it's shipping on a pallet and they have a jack on hand but it usually stops there. I want to say things we've ordered have come mostly from R&L and maybe a shipment or two with them and they're fine as long as you know what to expect. Your boxes of flooring will probably be no more than 6-8 feet long and unless it's a thick engineered flooring they should be pretty manageable.

I think what caused the trouble with us is that the wood is longer than the truck is wide, so the lift gate doesn't help any. Now you have someone in the trailer working with someone outside passing the stuff off lengthwise and I guess that takes too long on a weekday. The only easy way to remove the stuff is if you have a loading dock or ramps to back into.

[This message has been edited by The Fife (edited 2/25/2014 11:23a).]

I'll race you to the end. We started a new build in October and it's being insulated and drywalled this week. You are very patient that's for sure!

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I'm wondering how that is going to work when ours is delivered. It looks like Home Depot is sending it via "Estes Express Lines" (some hotshot company I guess). Hopefully they have the means to unload it without one guy bringing in all 50 boxes individually.

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I bought my flooring from HD including underlayment, baseboards, etc. None of it was on a pallet and they happily put the flooring in my house (to acclimate) and the rest in the garage. They used a third party company that called the day before to confirm the time window and 30 min. before the delivery to make sure I would be home. They counted everything, I counted everything, signed the paperwork and they were gone. Took like 20 min. (after talking about Manziel for 10 min.)

I started tearing out the flooring from the last part of the family room this evening. Most of it is out now and it looks like an hour or so to finish up. The subfloor comes up easily after that. This will be a lot faster than it was in other areas because the joists are not rotten. I'm going to remove, sister them and reinstall level with joist hangers.

I also have a basic critical path to finish up the project.
-Lighting and HVAC mods
-insulation
-drywall and paint
-flooring
-cabinets and appliances
-countertops

Other things I will do as time allows and some can be delayed until the end. I still think we can have cabinets in a month...

Recessed lighting is in for the bigger half of the family room. The LEDs I ordered from Amazon come in on Tuesday so in the mean time I stuck a bunch of non-dimmable CFLs in just to see how it lit up the room. I'm going to wait a couple of days until the LEDs come in, but I think I'm going to have to shift the pattern over 6in or so because the ceiling is at about a 5 degree angle. There's more light in the direction the bulbs are angled towards than the other side.

Also when I dimmed the lights in the kitchen the CFLs in the family room started cycling off and on. They're on totally different circuits and the only thing in common is the wall box. All wiring is separate and nothing is touching. I'm going to wait until I have the correct bulbs installed before investigating any further (both switches are for LEDs and dimmable CFLs anyway).

The only other weekend changes are that the other wiring for the family room is (fan, cove lighting) is in. I still need to frame the cove lighting sometime soon. I was thinking about making a cove by running 2x4s horizontally, then installing a 1/2 inch lip at the end to hide the LED strip.

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Also when I dimmed the lights in the kitchen the CFLs in the family room started cycling off and on. They're on totally different circuits and the only thing in common is the wall box. All wiring is separate and nothing is touching. I'm going to wait until I have the correct bulbs installed before investigating any further (both switches are for LEDs and dimmable CFLs anyway).

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Fife, sounds like you have a "shared neutral" that is causing the problem. I ran across a similar issue when I was helping a friend out that installed a couple of dimmer switches on his kitchen and dining room lights.

That's what I'm thinking... there are only two opportunities where I may have had a mental lapse and wired in the neutral for the family room overhead lighting circuit with the one for the kitchen lighting. Otherwise the two don't even come near to each other.

I checked the switch wiring and everything g is correct. Also everything is behaving as it should now so, great. When I swap out the last couple of 3 way switches for dimmers I'll have to double check to make sure nothing is touching anything that it shouldn't.

We're getting pretty close to drywall I hope. I'm meeting up with someone about it tomorrow so we'll see... in any case the only thing keeping us from being ready for drywall are me putting up the framing for the cove lighting. I'm thinking a 2x4 with the wide part parallel to the floor should work pretty well as a cove, with the part facing the ceiling having drywall on only the front half. The LED strip would sit in the lower area with no drywall closest to the wall.

The sink is still a big question. Countertops will be white quartz, Cabinets are walnut with bookmatched veneer and walls will probably be some shade of white. Flooring will be white oak with a bleached finish. The overall look of the kitchen is very clean and modern. I have no clue what color sink to go with.

All that we know at this point is that we would like about 36" width (cabinets will be custom so that's flexible), undermount, we don't like stainless, and we'll be supplying it on our own so being able to buy one online is a huge plus. We like having multiple compartments in the sink but I think they're all like that.

Maybe something white would work, or perhaps gray? I'm kind of clueless in terms of what brands are good, compartments and whatnot.

what about a farmhouse style sink?

Maybe if we were doing a contemporary look, but it's not really something done with modern styling. It's sort of conservative compared with the rest of the room.

Giant, single basin, square edge stainless undercounter gets my vote. Blanco makes an excellent product.

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farmhouse style sink

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Check out granite composite sinks...I think you'll find what you're looking for. They have them in all different colors. If you're worried about whites matching, go with grey.

That looks like a good idea... they seem to come highly recommended on Gardenweb too and cost a few hundred $ than the last sink from Ferguson's that I put in at our previous house.

The wood arrived yesterday. I need to get a moisture meter already and start scattering the pieces around the house so they can acclimate.



Each bundle has pieces that run the entire length.



Did I mention the stack is big?



Here it is with a couple of everyday objects for comparison.



Shipping worked surprisingly well too. I counted only eight damaged pieces and they aren't to the point where I can't use them so overall it was a success. The goal is to be drywall ready by next Tuesday or so and paint everything by a week after that. At that point it'll look like an actual house again and the flooring will probably be acclimated by then.

The electrical is almost complete. There's been a lot more 'while the walls are still open you might as well...' going on with the dining room wiring. Right now there's only a light above the table but someday there will also be an accent light near the far wall for art so I went ahead and wired that. I also ran wiring for a similar light in the formal living room, relocated the switch to the den/office for the second time and removed one of the obsolete recessed lights in the breakfast area.

At this point I'm only working items on the ready for drywall punchlist. This evening's tasks are to finish up the recessed lighting in the family room, line up the two kitchen HVAC vents with the recessed lighting (thanks to Aggietaco for pointing that out), put in an order for all the LED strip stuff we'll need and frame the cove lighting. Ideally we'll be ready for drywall next Monday/Tuesday.