Project Home Renovation

[Chris]

Looking great Thayer! congrats on the house

[Ryan T]

More progress. It's a bit slower than I was hoping but the best we could do. I got the 24 hour stomach bug last monday...and ignored it to get work done. Got the back bedroom floored and some of the furniture moved in. By Wednesday night I was so dehydrated I could barely stand. I was so sick thursday I could barely get off the couch. Friday and Saturday it was all I could do to move the furniture without passing out. We broke out the 16' steel tractor trailer to move and it made quick work of our stuff. After we got moved we started pulling out the old cabinets and setting the new ones up. Once they are all in place we can start laying tile in the kitchen. Bathrooms and kitchen should be done by the end of the week.



We had some options with the flooring as far as doing thresholds at each door but we decided to go with the seamless look. It was a bit more work forcing us to strip thinner pieces all the way up both hallways and the front walls of rooms, but I think it was well worth it for the look.



Living Room is done:



Master bedroom. Slight moving accident caused the hinge on the door to snap. It's antique furniture and each door is about 15lbs so it didn't take much force to snap it



Cabinets coming out. Whoever put those cabinets up in the bellbottom days decided that it would be funny to nail all of them in place rather than screw them which means the primary removal tool is a crowbar and not a drill. Sucks.



Most of the new lower cabinets in and backerboard screwed down for the tile



Tentative first tile in place

[ScottyB]

that's really impressive man, talk about taking the years off of the interior...

[Ryan T]

Few other quick tidbits. I picked up a Huskee 13hp 38" cut riding mower. The belt on it slips a little but it's liveable until I can get it fixed. It slips a little when pulling uphill with the blade on in a high gear, just have to gear down to 2nd or 3rd to get past the steep part then it's fine. The blades need to be sharpened and the oil changed. I'm going to pull it up on some ramps and clean out the deck while the blades are off. One little trick I learned from my dad and uncle is that after you clean all the old grass off the underside of the deck to paint it with the old motor oil that your changing. It will keep new grass from sticking to it and keep it from rusting. We've done this with our bushhog for years and years and it's still in great shape.

I've got 3 stumps in the bottom portion of my yard. I can drive my mower over 1 of them and the other 2 are too tall. I obviously haven't lived here long enough to tell if they are growing or if they were just not cut off short enough, either way there are a few options. First is to rent a stump grinder and grind them down into nothing, cover in soil and plant grass. This is expensive, time consuming, etc etc. I won't be doing that. You can spend money on stump killer if you intend to dig them out. You paint it on and leave it for 4-6 weeks then dig it out. Honestly, the other grass has grown around them and they aren't an eyesore, so I'm going to kill them the slow way. I'm going to cut them off right at the ground with a powersaw so the mower will go over them. Then I'm going to drill 4 or 5 holes deep into them with the biggest drill bit I've got. Fill the holes up with salt, plug the top of the holes and leave them alone. It will keep the root from growing and over time will kill it.

There is a semi-large bare spot where a 40ft tree used to stand in the back yard. I broke up the surface dirt yesterday and planted new grass seed to try to get some grass growing there. When it doesn't rain I will be watering it every other day. Should take about 4-6 weeks for substantial roots to take place and hopefully get a strong base of grass there.

[.RJ]

Wow, rock out. Looking nice! I wish I had the motivation/time for this kind of project...

[D_Eclipse9916]

So when I buy a house im having a big house warming party with you...for a few weeks....helping my dumb ass out . No but seriously, insane job man, I hope to do half the work your doing in 4x the amount of time! Looks fantastic!

[Goodspeed]

Seriously, you're like the secret labratory love-child of MacGuyver and Bob Vila

[Jeff]

I should have sold you my Kitchen setup. I have that same range and washer! I need to get NG for my house so I have been trying to sell the electric!

[Steve85]

Curious about the cabinets first then tile in the kitchen. Wouldn't it be easier to tile the floor then put the cabinets in? We had to contract out our kitchen (knocked out a load bearing wall) and I'm pretty sure they did the floor first but can't remember fer sure.

[Ryan T]

It's really easy to mount cabinets to the wall and get them level on the subfloor. Once they are mounted you just have to cut a few tile to mount around them. This saves us money on tile and ease with installation. I've never really tried to install cabinets on top of tile floor before but given the irregularities in some surface tile and grouts I can't imagine it would be much fun. This just seemed way simplier and my buddy that's helping me (retired contractor) recommended that we do it this way.

[Steve85]

Sounds good to me :thumbup:

[WRXtranceformed]

When you build new homes, cabinets generally go in before tile, so that makes sense.

[Ryan T]

So, tiles down in the kitchen, spacers are in and it should be dry by morning. Tomorrow it gets grout and we can finally move some of our kitchen stuff in and actually use the room. We've been trying to go pick up our countertop for 3 days now and it keeps on raining in the evenings. As soon as we get a sunny day with no rain we can bring them home and put them in.

The tiles are 13"x13" and ended up looking a little bit bigger in the kitchen than I thought they would. I think once the table and everything is in there...and the fridge isn't in the middle of the room...I'll like them a lot more. Also, all cabinets are hung except for one. We had to special order the one to go over the fridge.





So our dryer is a 4-plug cord and the wall in our house has a 3 plug (all homes built after 1996 have to have a 4-plug recepticle installed, but the 3-plug units are grandfathered in and can still be used. They just don't use a seperate ground and neutral line). I thought about swapping the wall recepticle out but after I took the cover off I find that there is no 4th ground or extra conduit to make into the neutral, so I put it back in and swapped the power cord from the old dryer over. After all the work I spin the dryer around just to discover that the old dryer cord is about a foot too short. So I removed it, went to lowes and picked up a new 6' 3-prong unit for about $18 and put it in. Dryer works like a charm.

Turned the cold water line on for the washing machine and had a semi-slow drip going on. I guess where the house sat empty and unused for 2 years the seals in it dried up. So I got some wonder putty and covered it. It pretty much stopped the drip, but it's merely a band-aid until I can get around to doing a proper fix for it.

[Goodspeed]

Scotty needs to make a Thayer/Bob the Builder meme a la "Go Jeff, Go!" for this thread.

[ViPER1313]

Turned the cold water line on for the washing machine and had a semi-slow drip going on. I guess where the house sat empty and unused for 2 years the seals in it dried up. So I got some wonder putty and covered it. It pretty much stopped the drip, but it's merely a band-aid until I can get around to doing a proper fix for it.

Did you try tightening the compression nut for the valve? Usually that will fix a slow drip :dunno:

[Ryan T]

Cabinets, appliances, and countertops are in. Sink is in but it isn't hooked up yet. We've got to get some different plumbing equipment to make it work. Also, don't mind the white fridge. We've got a nice black side by side I've just got to get to my moms house and pick it up.

Take a look at these pictures and give me your opinion on what color we should paint the kitchen. We can't decide but we know we don't want white. Mute green? Light blue? Universal Gold? Red?
Countertops waiting to go in



Miley wondering what in the hell is happening to her house

[JustinG]

Im feeling a darker orange, burnt orange vibe.

Sent from my DROIDX using Tapatalk

[ScottyB]

light blue would work well, from a color perspective they are very complimentary especially with the wood being so light. i would say light green/mint but that would be better suited to dark wood IMO.

[HAULN-SS]

blonde wood is in the color wheel for gray too

[Ryan T]

I think we've got it narrowed down to blue or green. I fought the good fight for gray but got veto'd.

Most all the hard work is done. All appliances are in and working, leak free after a bit of tweaking. Didn't have an outlet behind the cabinets so we dropped the wiring from the receptacles above the counter top to get power for the garbage disposal. Both outlets on the wall still work, the power is just tapped into and hard wired into the appliances. Shouldn't cause any problems unless we try to run the dishwasher at the same time as two high amp pulling appliances. For instance, if we ran the dishwasher, a fridge and a big mixer all at one time all on that outlet we might kick the breaker. Otherwise shouldn't ever cause a problem. We muscled my moms basement fridge to the house. Had to take the doors off to get it in the front door, but it's in, installed and we now have all black appliances. It had stopped working a few weeks ago. Had my friend Tim look at it and found out it needed a new electrical panel. Had power going into the panel but not comning out. $160 and fifteen minutes later and the fridge works! I need to reinstall the trim on the walls, put the kickpanels on the cabinets, install the above fridge cabinet that came in on sunday and run the ductwork to vent the exhaust fan outside. Other than those little things the kitchen is DONE.





Tile is down and grout is down in both bathrooms. Decided to take the vanities out and lay tile underneath them as we plan to replace them one day. We are gonna paint them in the near future, but eventually will be replaced. Doing this caused a few problems. The backerboard plus the tile raised the floor about 1/2" to 3/4" which caused the water connection pipes to be to short. Required a trip a Lowe's to buy longer water lines. Go to install the toilets and the wax rings we bought weren't deep enough. Another trip to Lowe's. Anyways, long story short, the tile is in and the bathrooms can be used. Just to make sure the grout is dry we are only stepping on the center of the tiles until tomorrow night sometime. Still gotta put in the threshold from the tile to the wood floor but that won't be hard.

Goodbye linoleum, hello tile.