Demolition Derby

Tonight, my buddy Derrick Weaver came by to help me tear out the closet wall under the stairs and rebuild the divider wall and new closet door in the hall way. Derrick and I go way back in our remodeling world, in fact, I helped him demolish his old kitchen about 6 years ago so I suppose turn about is fair play!


We began by tearing out the 3 layers of linoleum and luan sub flooring (I kid you not, there were actually 3 layers of linoleum, 2 of which were identical...go figure?!?). This resulted in a big pile of debris and a whole lot of sweat.





We broke for dinner (thanks to Suzanne, who made her famous black bean lasagna last night so that all we had to do was pop it in the oven and 45 minutes later, dinner was served!). With full bellies, we went back to work. My grand plan..or actually, Wendy Smith's "grand plan" was to move the fridge from its intrusive spot in the kitchen and tuck it away in the closet under the stairs. In doing this, we would actually gain some additional counter top and cabinet space so it sounded like a good plan to Suzanne and me.


Derrick and I started the demo of the load bearing wall by adding temporary supports to the ceiling joists. While I have never dealt with load bearing walls before, this turned out to be a fairly simple task...thanks to Derrick and his previous experiences. I was especially happy because I got to use my reciprocating saw to tear out the old studs and base plates of the existing wall...exciting, I know!


Derrick stuck around long enough to give me some pointers on how to frame up the new closet door for the chest freezer, then headed home to his family at 9:30 PM. With Derrick gone, I finished the rough-in of the new closet door, built the new divider wall that will go between the fridge closet and the freezer closet, and closed up the original door opening. All in all, it was a good night.


Next up, I need to finish scraping the popcorn off the kitchen ceiling, sand and mud the areas of the ceiling that need touching up, and then install my lighting and finally paint the ceiling. My plan is to try and knock out all of this before the bamboo floor installers show up on the 22nd of this month. It's going to be a busy couple of week nights for me for sure.

What a mess!

It's late...I'm tired...this will be short.

Yesterday, I moved the furniture from the dining room upstairs to the guest bedroom/staging area in preparation for beginning the demo. This leaves me with plenty of room in the dining room to store things from the kitchen.

Today, I finally started demo on the kitchen. I started with scraping the ceilings in the sun room and half-bath.

Then, I moved on to tearing out the wall where the frig will go.

Later this week, I'll finish scraping the remaining popcorn from the kitchen ceiling, mud the ceiling, sand it, and hopefully get it painted before the weekend. After that, I'm planning on installing the new lights!!

Good night

A little side-tracked

Well, that big weekend I promised everyone...it, um, well, you see...

Needless to say, it didn't happen as I had originally planned, but then again most things typically don't for me these days. Instead, I decided it was time to go ahead and get gutters installed on the house because I was worried that the new doors that we had installed this past Spring would start to rot like the old ones if I didn't get gutters installed soon. The purpose of the gutters being that they would divert the runoff from the roof instead of dumping it onto the ground in front of the doors, and then splashing back up onto the threshold and frame of the door and eventually causing it to rot. However, before the gutters could go up, I needed a way to handle the additional drainage from the downspouts. To make a long story short, I ended up renting one of these

yep, ain't she a beauty!? You're looking at 1015 lbs. (yes, a HALF-TON) of solid, honest-to-goodness, earth crunching, root tearing, mud slinging power! That's right, I rented a 24" trencher to dig a 110' long, 4" wide, 12" deep trench from the house, across the backyard, and down the slope towards a small stream. What would have probably taken me a good 2 days to dig by hand, ended up taking me only an hour and a half with this baby. If you have any need to dig a trench anytime in the near future, I highly recommend renting one of these!

So with the drainage and gutter work done (oh yeah, they installed them today...I would recommend these guys for anyone looking for gutters), my focus is back to the kitchen and downstairs. This weekend, I plan on removing all of the popcorn ceiling in the kitchen and sun room, tearing out the base mouldings, and hopefully reconfiguring the walk-in-closet in the kitchen so that the frig will fit in there. I'll post pictures as they become available :)

Everything including the kitchen sink...

With the master bath now complete, and a little one due in March of next year, my schedule for completing the kitchen/half bath/downstairs/stairs/upstairs landing remodel just got seriously compressed!

So, without wasting a second, I started on what I am currently referring to as "Phase 2 - Everything including the kitchen sink." That's right folks, take a good long look at her, because in a few short months, she's going to look completely different...and no, I'm not referring to my lovely, pregnant wife Suzanne, rather our ugly, outdated, and cramped kitchen! Here's a picture for you to ponder...oh, what will he do, what will he do?

O.K., o.k., I know, the suspense is killing you right?! Well, for starters, I'll be installing this (yep, all 37 boxes of it!)

throughout the downstairs, including the kitchen, sun room, half-bath, back hallway, family room, dining room, and foyer. And as if that weren't enough, I'll also install this up the stairs and in the upstairs landing. But before I can do that, I have to scrape the popcorn ceilings in the kitchen, sun room, and half-bath, and also tear out the existing kitchen cabinets. Things should start rolling later this weekend...I'll try and post an update late Sunday night!

Next Project

So I started a new project back in June of this year that is slowly taking shape...if rumors are correct, this one will last a lifetime and be the greatest project that I've ever accomplished!

Stay tuned...

Look familiar???

Interesting similarity...no???

Suzanne's Toyota Prius

Start Button

Suzanne's new dual flush toilet
Flush buttons (1.6L and 0.8L)

and so it ends...

well folks, that's a wrap!

On Sunday, I grouted the wall tile and sink backsplash. Lesson learned...don't try and grout an entire room before going back and wiping down the grout lines. Unfortunately, this lesson was learned the hard way. By the time I grouted the wall tile, shower surround, and sink backsplash, just about all of the grout had dried to a nice haze. When I started to wipe it down with the sponge to remove the excess grout and smooth the grout lines, I realized that I had waited too long and the grout had started to set-up. I scrubbed furiously at the first patch of wall tile and realized that it was going take a ton of elbow grease to clean up the tiles! So I called in the reinforcements. Yep, that's right, I put in the call to Suzanne, who was relaxing downstairs doing her Sunday crossword puzzle. To my astonishment, she came willingly (sucker!). Well, we worked our butts off scrubbing the grout from the tile as best we could. All in all, it turned out o.k., but never again will I grout that much square footage before going back and cleaning the grout. Thanks Suzanne, you were a life saver on this!

Today, I came home from work and installed the dual-flush toilet, mounted the towel bar behind the toilet, hung the two bath robe pegs behind the door, and installed the hand towel ring next to the sink. That pretty much wraps it up for the master bath. I have a "punch list" going right now that includes installing the toilet paper holder (you may notice the roll sitting on the window ledge in one of the pictures), cleaning the tiles where I have some grout that didn't really come off during the installation, and a general overall cleaning to get rid of the dust from the grout (man, and I thought sanding drywall made a mess!!).

For those of you who didn't get your fill of photos, you can check out the entire collection of bathroom remodeling shots here (http://www.kodakgallery.com/I.jsp?c=1994rry7.2dld117z&x=0&y=-3jhnh2 ). Thanks for tuning in and for posting your kind words of encouragement! Check back in a couple of weeks and hopefully I'll have some updates on the upcoming kitchen remodel (oh boy!)