More surprises

Today I spent the evening finishing the drywall on the inside of our closet. this leaves me with just the walls in the room to do. Unfortunately that will need to wail till Saturday as I am out of drywall and am going away as well.

This evening Mel and I decided that we are going to renovate the kitchen next, which means we are headed to Ikea to order the cabinets. Based on our measurements we have an excellent idea of what we need. Since we are shelling out a fair bit of money on the cabinets I figured it would be a good idea to measure the room again. Our current measurements have the kitchen at 16' long and 9'10" wide. On the shared wall there is a little jig because of the chimney, what is weird is that it starts near the entry into the kitchen and runs the entire wall. On the second floor the chimney is only 36" long...so what's up?

Well I decided since we can easily hide any holes with the cabinets, that I should make a few...holes that is. Well much to my surprise I found that behind our kitchen wall is at least 6" but more likely closer to 8" of wasted space. It seems that they just built overtop of the original wall. So in the 60s they dropped the ceiling by almost a foot wasting that space as well as the wasted wall space. Also to my surprise we found 60s style soundproofing, layers of cardboard. I was worried that the cardboard was nailed to more lath and plaster which would mean that we would be instore for another huge mess as I also plan to expose the studs and add soundproofing and fire protection. Lucky for us there is old cottage style boards left over from the original kitchen on the old walls.

Despite the added work I am happy to find this wasted space in the kitchen as it will really allow us to build a nice U shaped kitchen. Our original plans were looking a little cramped but now that we gain 6 to 8 inches it will really open everything up.

This house never stops amazing me I can't wait to see what is burried behind the wall, maybe someone left behind their inheritance...

Getting there...slowly

It's been a few days since I last posted, not a lot has changed. The last few days have seen us work on some of the minor deficiencies in our bedroom, ones that had to get done before we could start drywalling the room.

We spent the afternoon drywalling the ceiling in the master. After a good days work we managed to get it all done. Things went well and have to give Mel credit for putting up with me. she did an excellent job even learned how to use a drill...kidding.

Hopefully tomorrow after work I can get the rest of the walls done. Once that is done I will start mudding. Once that is done we willl start painting, unfortunately I am headed to Toronto for business on Wednesday and won't have a chance to get much of the mudding done before. So it looks like it'll be at least 2 weeks before the master will be move in ready.

Heard on Saturday that our bed has been shipped and is on its way, so we ordered our mattress and are now trying to get the bedroom done ASAP! We'll be ordering the kitchen cabinets this week, and hope to receive them late April. There is so much to do!

1 closet down, drywall to go

We are really starting to move along. We have decided to concentrate our attention once again on the master bedroom in order to get it done as quickly as possible. The reason we have decided to do this is because we have decided to completely renovate our kitchen in April and figured we may as well save our bamboo floors from all the potential damage from that renovation.

I spent my evening working on the electrical and cleaning up the master. The master turned out to be the most intricate electrical work I've had to do so far. I must say that I am getting pretty good at this electrical thing. All the wiring worked out perfectly and passed all my circuit tests. The master got all new wiring which was also nice, anytime I can get ride of the older 2 wire wiring it's all good.

After the wiring I cleaned and cleaned the room. I want to get rid of as much of the dust as possible before I start drywalling the room tomorrow.

So now that the closet is completely done and all the wiring in the room is done, I can start on the drywall and fixing up a couple deficiencies. I will need to make sure I have the proper backings in corners to ensure that the drywall has something to be nailed to. I will also have to put up a few more strips of strapping (which holds the ceiling drywall).

I have some areas where the lath and plaster has been removed I will have to put in shims to bring that area out level with the rest of the lath and plaster so that when I drywall over it, it all comes out even.

Closet time

Since most of the first floor work is dependant on moving some plumbing and mudding the drywall, Mel and I decided to move up to the master.

Today was one of the first days Mel really got a chance to do some serious carpentry because she has been stuck studying her butt off for her Architecture exams.

First thing we did was install the sound and fire barrier between the two houses and boy does it make a difference, you can't hear a thing through the stuff. As you can see in the above photo.

Next we started on building the closet. The closet will measure 10 wide and 2 feet deep and top out at just over 7 feet. We had a good day of work and managed to get the entire closet framed today.

Tomorrow we get to work on the electrical and finalize it before moving onto drywalling on Wednesday...fingers crossed. One issue I am having is that I have no clue why we do not have electricity in our bathroom and spare room. I thought the power for those rooms came from the master but that is not the case. So one of these days I will need to dig around the basement and find out exactly why there is no electricity in those rooms. Until then we have a flashlight as our primary lighting source.

PS-If anyone is interested our old refridgerator is available, surprisingly our neighbours have not swooped up the beast yet.

Items for sale

For sale - 1 shed
We are willing to part with this beautiful well constructed back shed. Its an 8x12 shed made of lovely particle board. For those who act now we will throw in over 40 garbage bags filled with lath and plaster.

We are willing to barter, heck we'd even except 'one red paperclip'.

Note: shipping is at the buyers expense.


For sale - 1 fridge

Now that we have a new fridge we are willing to part with the old one. Act now as this is an offer that will go quickly, one of our neighbours will pick it up this evening guranteed.

HAPPY ST. PATTY'S DAY

Just a quick Happy St. Patty's day wish.

I probably won't have a chance to post again today as my hands will likely be busy holding and tipping back the occasional green beer. For those of you who are in Ottawa, we'll be in the Hintonburg/Westboro area today, give me a shout on my cell or email me.

New photos and a new fridge

I spent most of my evening working on finishing small tasks. We will shortly be mostly finished with the living room, leaving only the mudding of the drywall, the painting, tiling the foyer floor and installing the bamboo flooring...oh yeah and some little finishing touches. We also got our new and very needed fridge today, it is quite something. Now I have to drag our old piece of crap out to the curb. Maybe I will host a competition on how long it lasts before one of my neighbours grabs it.

I am mostly done drwyalling the half-wall and pillar just waiting on cutting a new heating vent in the master and hooking up the heating. Once that is done I will be able to close off the pillar. I also put on some drywall edge tape.

I hung the last big sheet of drywall on the ground floor, the one around the window in the dining area.

I also spent the evening getting ride of the last bit of garbage in the master as well as sweeping and moping the room. It is ready to be worked on now. The next few days will likely mean a break from renovating as the NCAA basketball tourney starts (Thursday) and its St. Patty's day on Friday. I am hoping on Saturday to insulate the master, build the new closet, redo all the electrical and maybe get some drywall hung.

As promised here are some new (colour) photos of the master.

Here is a photo looking at the front wall of the master, it's 15' in length. We will eventually replace the door to the front balcony. I will also drywall over the existing plaster rather than trying to patch the holes and bumps in it.

This photo is looking from the north wall where the headboard of our bed will be. This wall is 13' in length. As you can see I have exposed the studs of the shared wall.

This view is from the north-east corner of the room and shows the entrance to the room. The shared wall will soon be insulated noise reduction and fire protection. After that I will build a new closet that will be about 10' in length and 24" deep. The wall of the closet closest to the door will house the electrical switches for the room. I will also add several new recepticles to the room as well.

One last picture showing the entrance from the coner of the front wall and the shared wall. You can still see the door to an old closet from the adjacent bedroom. I will drywall over the door closing it off and leaving the adjacent room with no closet but we now have a huge master.

Dust and more dust

Here are some new photos, I am not sure why some came out in black and white the next ones will hopefully show how the master is progressing.

This photo is of The Bish and I putting up the first of many drywall sheets. I'm obviously displaying my supervisory skills. I am very thankful Robin was able to help and we are now a major step closer to finishing. If you look carefully you will see some wood nailed into the existing walls, these help support the sheet and make it a heck of a lot easier on us (good idea Robin).

The next photo shows the almost finished ceiling, we are getting a professional mudder to finish the drywall joints correctly.

Well the lazy garbage men didn't take our 20+ bags of garbage...go figure. It looks like we will end up renting a bin and get rid of the garbage then.

Today I tore down the lath and plaster shared wall exposing the studs. After working at that for an hour and getting completely covered in dust I decided to leave the clean up till tomorrow. Once everything is cleaned up I will then be able to insulate the wall, build the new closet, wire the electrical, extend the heating to the master and then finally drywall the walls and ceiling....look out Robin.

After that I started drywalling the half-wall, my initial worry was that the wall would not being steady enough, but that worry was quickly alleviated. I built in as much support as possible and figured that along with the drywall, would make it pretty solid. It sure did, the wall doesn't move an inch when shook.

Tomorrow will be a clean up in the master followed by finishing the drywall on the half-wall and maybe even the end wall in the dining area.

Drywall and the Master Bedroom

It's been a while since I last posted and boy a lot has gone on in the last four days.

I've spent most of the time tinkering with the electrical. I have been replacing the old wiring whenever possible. At one point the basement was quite a mess of wires, I have since drilled holes and strung the wires giving the basement a much better sense of order. I am adding a lot of new circuits as the house was poorly wired. We will be replacing our old fuse panel towards the end of the month with a new breaker panel.

On Saturday my buddy 'The Bish' (Robin) came over and helped me drywall the ground floor ceiling. The original ceiling was an ugly stucco and because of the demo had a lot of holes in it. So we just decided to drywall over it. Things went really well and we managed to get to the Elmdale Tavern in abut 3 1/2 hours for a pint or two.

I do have some advice for other DIY home renovators if you are planning on drywalling a ceiling and don't have an army to help you out, make sure you go with 8 foot sheets. I ordered 12 and 10 footers and we were forced to cut them as they would have been completely unmanageable by two people.

The other piece of advice is don't go with Manotick Building Supplies, as they are completely inept. I placed an order with them on Wednesday, requesting that it be delivered by 1 on Friday. They never even showed leaving us to scramble and try and find someone to deliver with one days notice. Thank goodness for Rona, heck they even gave us a $30 gift card.

Today (Sunday) we tackled the master bedroom as it needed some cleaning and some more demo. We filled 20 garbage bags of plaster and wood, now my fingers are crossed that our garbage guys will take it all away tomorrow. We have basically put out over 30 bags of garbage in the last 2 weeks.

The master is looking great now and boy is it huge. Tomorrow we will finish tearing down lath and plaster on the shared wall, the plan will be to put in a noise barrier since there is nothing but lath and plaster between the two homes. Then one last clean up and the room will be ready for the next step.

Check back tomorrow as I will post some new pictures of the living room as well as the master so you can get a better idea of what we have done.

Just to let everyone know I have changed the settings on the blog, anyone can now post comments without registering.

On my way to being an electrician...not quite

Just a quick update tonight. I managed to get all the electrical hooked up without having a fire or even blowing a fuse. I am however getting a weird reading with one of my testers, it is telling me that my neutral and hot wires are reversed but the receptacles work just fine. I did try the tester out on an original receptacle and got the same issue. The good news is a buddy of mine who is an electrician is swinging by tomorrow night, I will get him to take a look at it.

I also managed to get our new thermostat installed, now I can trash the old mercury one which is straight from the 60s. I guess I better call the city to ask them how I should dispose of a mercury switch.

Next steps are:

- clean up the master bedroom.
- finish some minor demo in the master.
- redo electrical in master
- redo the heating
- build a new much bigger closet
- drywall the ceiling

Good news, my buddy the electrician just swung by. For the most part my wiring was correct I just had the wrong switches, I was using a 3-way switch when only a 2-way was required. All I know is that the lights go on when I turn on the switch and nothing catches fire.

Some carpentry and electrical

Now that all the major demolition is done it's time to focus my attention on the rebuilding. We have changed plans a bit and are starting with the downstairs living area as the first place to get finished, the Master bedroom can wait.

I spent yesterday afternoon building our new half wall separating the living room and the front entrance. I built a pillar against the wall that will house the heating and electrical for the master bedroom. I was a little worried that the foundation of the house would run past the exterior wall into the house making my 1 foot by 6 in pillar mostly useless for the heating duct. I was right, the foundation (old stone) runs at least a foot into the house. I did however come up with a great work around.

I decided to build a smaller pillar that is the height of the half-wall and the same 1 foot width of the pillar. It is attached to the pillar as well. This will allow me to easily get the mechanical to the 2nd floor bedroom without any negative effect on the openness of the room. Not to mention it also provides us with a great place to put a sculpture or plant.

Today I am working on the electrical, this should be interesting. The plan is to put in a 3 gang outlet box on the living room side of the half-wall as this is where my TV and Stereo equipment will be located. The outlet box will then connect to a 3 gang box of switches and will power the foyer light. One of the switches will control the ceiling light in the living room, which shortly will be a ceiling fan while the other switch will control the outdoor light. During my demo I accidentally cut the power cable to the outdoor light, lucky for me that the switch was off. We are also adding a new exterior light, one that better reflects our tastes and it only cost $14.

Well the wiring went well, I managed to get all the wire in place and even some of them connected. The best part is the house is still standing. I still have some of the complexities to get down and have bought some books to help. I will hopefully finish up the wiring tomorrow as well as install the new thermostat.

On a side note our bamboo floors are now here and boy do they look sweet. I can't wait to get the ceiling drywalled and painted, once that is done we will be installing the floor.

It's great to be home

Well we are all moved in, the final move was done on Friday. Thankfully I hired movers as we have lots of stuff I never want to lift them again. If you are looking for a mover I suggest, actually I recommend Checker Movers. We were done in 2 hours with me helping, although I did take over 10 or so carloads during the day.

Today (saturday) we ran some early errands and cleaned the place. First thing this morning we went by the old apartement to pick up a few things left behind, including our alarm clock which I had set to go off ealry as loud as it could ring...trying to pay back our upstairs neighbour for her inconsideration.

After that I ran off to Home Depot to pick up some materials and electrical...I hate that place on a saturday, it's almost as bad as Ikea. I am hoping to build the half-wall, do some re-wiring as well as install the heating duct to the master bedroom tomorrow. Since we are going out tonight..to the Carleton Tavern the wall may look like Homer Simpson built it as I may have a slight hangover.

Mel spent the day cleaning the kitchen, she did a fantastic job we can almost last a month before we have to tear it apart. It was such a disgusting mess but I will let her tell you.

.... that was one of the most disgusting things I ever had to deal with! I honestly don't know how those people are still alive today after eating food that was sitting in that fridge! I started with the freezer, which wasn't too bad other than the fact that the rubber gasketing around the door was sticking to the freezer and I had to used two hands to pry it open... eeewww! So I cleaned out the freezer, with bleach, might I add, and put our forzen foods into it before tackling the refrigerator part.

So it smelled awful... I started by pulling out the metal shelves and cleaning the inner walls before pulling out the vegetable crispers... as I pulled one out, the entire shelf above it came out and fell to the floor... It left a thick line of black gooo on the walls of the fridge, and a huge puddle of brown water at the bottom... have I mentioned how disgusting it was?? So I made the mistake of flipping the bottom shelf over... the top of it was white.... the underside of it was a dark grey... it was covered in fuzzy black mold... completely covered. eeeeewww!!! By this time, I was seriously considering heading out and buying a new fridge and forgetting about this one... I ended up soaking the shelf in pure bleach for about 15 minutes, then scrubbing it before it finally came off... Tell me how can people eat vegetables with 20 years of mold hanging inches above their vegetable crisper? And below the crisper... a pool of brown, disgusting water... sheesh! To top it off, the rubber gasketing is so dried up and cracked that holding your hand beside the closed door, you feel all the cold air coming out... maybe it doubles as an air conditioner in the summertime...

So, all this to say that when Brad came back from running his errands, we headed out to Direct Buy to get a new fridge. So in a couple of weeks, we've got 26 cubic feet of clean, stainless steel refrigerating power... and energy savings to top it off. Man, that thing can't arrive soo enough. I've used a whole bottle of bleach on that fridge and it still grosses me out!

That's it for now...hopefully tomorrow will go well and I will have all my fingers to type.

As promised photos and oh what a difference

Sorry for the late posting of pictures. Here is how the place looks now that we have finished all the major demolition work on the first floor. Tonight we spent the evening getting ready to move in tomorrow, lots and lots of cleaning.

As you can see the place has really opened up, in fact we get great sunlight in the afternoon. The photo on the left shows the view from the kitchen looking at the dining room. On the left is a pillar where the mechanical (electrical and plumbing) are located. We are hoping to move the venting (furthest to the right) in to the dining room. There is also a pipe in the way, which means we will need a plumber. The other option would be to just box it in as it is, however I think the extra foot really makes a huge difference. Hopefully it doesn't cost too much....its good to know a plumber.

This photos shows the view from the door way. I have left the pillar supporting the 2nd floor, it's probably not a good Idea to remove it quite yet....at least till we have a replacement for it. To the right of the picture is some dangling electrical at the front foyer that will be relocated into a half wall we are building. I guess I get to try my hand at the electrical as well.

This is my favourite photo so far, it really shows off the openness of the space. As you can see the heating duct really needs to go, it opens up the space even more.

Also notice how nice the stairwell looks exposed. We have some interesting ideas in how we are going to finish it. The wall under the stairwell will be covered in tile. We are going to try and keep two main themes through out the place, tile and bamboo flooring. The tile we have chosen is quite amazing...its a black tile from Emerald Flooring called "Master Plan African". I wish I had a picture of it, but soon enough we will have it installed.

So this weekend means some more clean-up, particularily in the master bedroom. There is a closet to remove as well as a bit of wall to take out. After the clean-up is done Mel and I will need to decide where in the master our new shared closet will go but more on that in a bit. I will also have to start the construction of the half-wall at the front of the house.

So much to do, at least its fun.

For now that is.

I declare an end to all major demolition

At least I hope so. I will likey have some small bits left to demolish mostly in the master. At least with the master the mess is contained in the room.

I'd post some photos but I forgot to take pictures, I blame Mel. Check back tomorrow for photos of the new and very open first floor. Today I spent my time exposing the stairwell and removing the kitchen wall. We then spent a fair bit of time cleaning as we officially move in on Friday.

Well its off to bed, I'm getting a little tired working 14 hours a day doing two jobs.