Miscellaneous Stuff

Re-modeling
With the baby on the way, we had to undergo many re-modeling projects to prepare for its arrival. The first thing that we needed was a nursery since I didn't want the baby in our room and the Nightmare Before Christmas room was a tad on the gothic side. We decided to convert what was probably supposed to be a dining room but that we mainly used as a dumping ground for all the stuff we didn't feel like putting away on cleaning day.

This room has serious issues. It had no door, no closet, nasty looking brick on 1½ walls, disgusting carpet, ugly painted baseboard, a cheap ceiling fan, electric heat, no smoke detetctor and bad paint condition. Here are some of the pictures after we'd removed most of the junk from the room:

Not being very handy ourselves (all photos of work we've previously attempted were destroyed in a freak accident), we hired someone to come and install a closet, cover the brick and put in a door.

The other main thing that had to be dealt with was heat. Our house came with electric heat which I never turned on because I thought we would burn the house down. So, we installed a wood burning stove and the thought of burning the house down didn't seem as big a threat (how logical). The woodstove gave off plenty of heat when it was running, but during the night, when the fire died out, the temperature in the house would drop to 40 degrees, which is no good for a newborn. So, we tried to get forced hot air installed so that we could have central AC also, but 4 separate contractors said "no way". One of them suggested getting hot water baseboard since it was easier to hide a 1" pipe in existing walls and ceilings than a 10-12" duct. After much wrangling, I finally got a plumber that calls people back.

As is the case with just about everything dealing with re-modeling, nothing is ever as simple as it should be. The heating project set of a chain of contracting events that all depended on something else. There is some mystical formula not availab;e to the common man for figuring out how much baseboard is needed in a given room based one room dimensions, window size and the alignment of certain celestial bodies. This formula indicated that the main room downstairs needed 22' (yes, feet) of heater to be located on an exterior wall. Of the three exterior walls in the room, one was covered by the kitchen, one was covered by the kitchen and two 8' sliding glass doors and the third had another 8' sliding glass door. This left about 6' of useable floorboard space. So, we decided to fast track the plan to replace the sliding glass doors with windows (it was going to be part of the addition project).

Installing the windows meant that we needed carpentry people again, an electrician and a plasterer. It also meant that I had to actually get some windows for them to install. So, I ordered the windows and the plumber got to work on installing the pipes for all the heat and got the upstairs zone completed, and all the work for the first floor done and was waiting on the windows to be installed to finish the first floor. In a stroke of luck not often found in home re-modeling projects, the inspector came and signed off on the boiler installation right as the propane people were coming to install the tanks. The inspection was a pre-requisite for the gas people to drop off the tanks and had the inspection not been done, it would've been 3 weeks before I could get them to come back. The only bad thing about the heat install process was having to re-arrange everything in the basement and other affected rooms so that they could get to the walls to install the baseboards. The house looked like this (chaos) for 2 weeks and the basement still looks like this. The garage looks worse.

The window installation looks great. I can't believe what a difference it makes having the windows instead of the sliders, both aesthetically and in lack of heat loss. Here are some before, during and after photos:

Once the windows were in, the electrician had installed outlets, the plasterer had come and plastered the walls, parts of the floor, some of the furniture and anything else that had the audacity to get in the way, the plumber came and finished the heat. Yay! It's so nice to actually have a thermostat again. To decide on a whim that it's too cold today and go and turn the heat up instead of going down to the basement to lug 50 lbs. of wood up the stairs. The plasterer also finished the nursery room walls, enabling me to get in there and rip up the carpet and paint the room.

There was, of course, more drama once we were preparing the room to be painted. In some areas of the wall, the primer was not adhering very well. So when I pulled the tape off the wall, it pulled the primer with it. Eventually, I gave up on trying to tape those areas and just decided to be cautious when painting there (we're using 2 colors). I got the room painted finally, here's what it looked like:

My mother and I decided to tackle the trim around the windows and the chair rail and I got to use my spiffy new saw with a laser. Yes, the saw is overkill for trim, but I tried to do miter cuts by hand for a different project and it got ugly. We did really well and didn't really have to re-cut everything. If it wasn't for me not adding the right amount of inches for the window trim, we woud have had enough wood. Some of the pieces we had to use had zero room for error and we still managed to get it done right! We had some trouble on the inside corners with the chair rail because coping is a big pain in the butt. Also, I didn't adjust the fence when trying to do a bevel cut and the saw cut through the metal fence, which was scary. But, that was our only mishap and I'm glad it was the fence and not someone's finger. That's a sharp blade!

We didn't finish the trim because it was getting late-ish and we were tired. The only bad thing was that shortly after we stopped, my body revolted and my sciatic nerves (they run through both sides of your butt) decided to make themselves known and I couldn't walk. This is not a good thing when you have to go to the bathroom at least every 2 hours. You really don't realize how these muscles are used for everything until they hurt. So, changing postions in bed, sitting up, walking, even standing was either extremely painful or impossible. I took the next day off from working on the room even though I wanted to get it done. Here are the pictures of the trim we did and hopefully we'll finish the rest this week.

To be continued.....



courtney@dogpower.net