Second half of December

The most anticipated but boring item is finally installed. We now have a dehumidifier in the HVAC system! Indoor humidity would routinely get into the mid-60% range which was incredibly uncomfortable so this should help bring that down. The hardest part about putting this thing in was getting it up the ladder and into the attic.

At this point I’ve been on hold for the framing crew so I decided it would be a good time to finalize the kitchen layout. Here we are at yet another revision… I can recommend a couple of places to post proposed layouts where experts tear them all apart and point out things that need to be changed.

First half of December

To start the month I finished wiring the recessed lighting cans. There isn’t a lot of space to move around in some parts of the attic. This is a job that can only be completed in Winter.

The bulbs finally arrived so of course the first thing I did was put them in!

It was time to take another break so we decided to visit Savannah. We had a great time there. Unfortunately while on her way to pick up the dog the new car was totaled by someone in a truck who admitted to falling asleep at the wheel. Brilliant. That put most things on hold so all I accomplished was more wire runs for toe kick/undercabinet lighting, and prep work for the dehumidifier I’ve always wanted. The framing crew is supposed to walk through in the following week so soon other people will be doing something instead of only me.

Second half of November

Things are really starting to get busy now. We went to St Augustine, FL with a bunch of others for a race they ran. It was nice to escape constructionland for a weekend and we stayed in a nice house that I took lots of notes at. The wife also got a new car. We kept the Volvo because the tradein value was basically $0.

Thanksgiving week was still the estimated date the framers would arrive so that’s what I was working to. That means it’s time for the drywall between the kitchen and family room to go away! It’s our first preview of what things will look like once this project is over. Taking down drywall is easy and fun.

The first picture shows the window that was closed off when the addition was built. The kitchen originally had a breakfast area, but after the addition was built it was just a dark, useless corner.

At the last minute I found out that the framing crew could not make it. I took the time to start installing recessed lighting cans and the ecobee. Happy Thanksgiving!

First half of November

I finally finished excavating! The stairs in the second picture should look familiar. Go back a couple of years and you can see them in pictures I took from underneath the place.

Digging was incredibly boring. I came across concrete that dried in someone’s wheelbarrow more than twice, the occasional leftover piece of tile from the master bathroom, lots of extra scraps of the original countertops and some bits of the original flooring. The original cabinets were probably wood with turquoise walls in the kitchen/paneling in the adjacent area and these as the floor and countertop.

Now that the digging is complete it’s time to start replacing joists again. This time I had a huge shipmen of lumber dropped off from Lowes instead of making numerous trips back and forth to get it. By the middle of the month 11 of them were replaced, but there was a growing transmission issue with the wife’s car and we needed to do something about it.

Second half of October

I touched on this one in an update that was actually made during the second half of the month but it was mostly more planning for future things to come.

The engineer I talked to asked if I could get pictures from the attic space above the family room. Those are far too boring to post here because it’s mostly a bunch of shots of a dark space with framing and insulation. I also needed to cut out a strip about 1’ long of the ceiling just to see how it all ties together. The family room is now officially a part of the work zone. The engineer determined that a column will be needed due to a point load caused by the way the original roof was built and we put a design together.

As mentioned earlier, I also cut and framed the opening for the new doorway to the master bedroom. That wasn’t so bad – it was pretty much a weekend project.

I was still having problems figuring out just how bright LED lighting would be and how it would look in our kitchen. Answers from people I talked to ranged from not enough lighting to it’s way too much. The only way I could tell how it would look is to see for myself. It’s not pretty but at least it answered my questions.

With a week remaining in the month we have a design for what will be needed in order to remove the wall and raise the ceiling and the framers indicated that work should be able to happen around Thanksgiving. There wasn’t much that I could do in the kitchen at that point, so it’s time to really start working on the family room. That means the breakfast area table is now gone and I’m breaking through the floor again. All of this dirt is from a concrete topped patio original to the house. When the addition was put on the joists sat about ½” above the dirt and this area was badly rotten, in addition to not being built well to begin with. These two pictures were taken six days apart.

Dirt disposal took as long as the digging did and was every bit as tiring. I finally had to bring the truck around to the back of the house so I could load up heavy debris (broken bricks and pieces of concrete) and take those to the dump, and I dumped regular dirt in an overgrown area that someday will make a wonderful raised bed garden. Even on Halloween night I was making trips back and forth out there.

Catching Up... First Half of October

I was out of state for a bit so a lot less was accomplished . Mostly boring things…

• Oven wiring
• I put in a water line behind the oven just in case these things become useful or necessary at some point in the future. A hole was also put in for a drain line just in case.
• Crawlspace encapsulation was completed.
• The first three rows of the subfloor were FINALLY installed.
• First draft of the lighting design for the kitchen, featuring entirely too many lights in a layout that was less than ideal. That’s why they’re called a draft.
• I finally started looking into what it would take to make the wall go away.

All of these things mean very little to the way the place looks, so it’s a text only update this time!

I'm still alive, promise!

There's been a huge lack of updates for the last few months. That can either be a good thing (lots of stuff getting accomplished) or a bad thing (horrible accident, someone is missing a hand). In our case it's the former.

I've been way too busy to post much but all the pictures are there and I PROMISE that there will be updates soon. I'll need something to do anyway because while the floor is getting finished we'll need to be out of here for a week or so, and sitting around in a hotel/extended stay is only fun for so long. We might end up going full circle, back to the extended stay that I lived at for a couple of months before moving here so that's sort of... meh, not as interesting as I first thought it would be.