Sunday, February 24, 2013

 This week we continued working on electricity, plumbing, heating, took down wall and put up wall. We got a lot done.

All our new wiring.

Plumbing for the master bathroom vanity.

Lights and fan in the master bathroom.

Drain for the shower in the master bathroom. 

Master shower.

Framing in the door to the old den.

Framing what will be the new master bathroom.

The pocket door for the new master bathroom.

Remember the basement wall with bricks missing and the landing that felt like it was going to fall apart??

Well we took that wall down and rebuilt it. This is what is left of the wall.

This is what it looks like now . . . 

And we have a new landing!

We also put the last beam in the attach so we can take down the last wall between the old den and the master bedroom. I'll take better pictures of that tomorrow.

Monday February 18, 2013

There was a lot going on yesterday . . . framing, plumbing, electrician and the HVAC guy (or tinner as I recently learned he is called) were all dancing around each other.

Remember the floor in the upstairs bathroom that was patched in with play wood and glue? They ripped it out.

Upstairs guest bathroom without the floor

Looking into the upstairs guest bathroom from the kitchen below.

Then they put a new floor back in.

They also did a lot of plumbing work. They replaced portions of the old cast iron vent pipe.

Plumber, Jimmy, cutting the cast iron vent pipe.

Old vent pipe in kitchen before it was replaced.

New vent pipe in kitchen. Top half is PVC bottom half is still cast iron.

They took out all the old galvanized pipes and replaced it with new hosing.

Where there was copper piping the tied the new piping to the copper.

Friday and Saturday were all about structural engineering

For those nerds out there here are the structural plans. We are removing a wall between the kitchen and dining room as well as a wall between two of the bedrooms upstairs, which means we have to put a beam in the kitchen, a beam in the attack and a new footing in the basement. 

First we had to pour a new footing in the basement.

This is the trench they dug to creating a footing for the new posts we will add to carry the weight of the floors above.

Then we placed rebar in the trench ad filled it with conrete.

The guys mixing the concrete.

A picture of the rebar

Then it was all done.

Then we build a temporary wall in the kitchen in front of the present wall in the original wall.

Then added the posts in the basements on the new footing.

Then put a new beam in the kitchen and took down the temporary wall.

Next week we will add a beam in the attack and take down the wall in the two bedrooms upstairs.

After demo comes problems

We need a little bit of tuck pointing and wall repair.

No wonder the landing was a little squishy.

And lots of nob and tub wiring.

This next picture is looking up at the upstairs bathroom floor. Apparently someone cut out the original hard wood floor and replaced it with plywood that they then tacked to the old floor with some wood blocks and glue.

Then the HVAC guy was telling me need a new furnace and roof, seriously!!

The Plans

Let's look at the kitchen first. Here is an as-built of the back half of the house when we bought it, including the kitchen, dinning room and laundry/half bath in the addition.

The big debate was weather we should take down the wall between the kitchen and the dining room. After reviewing many options with the designer, we decided to take the whole wall down which means we have to do quite a bit of structural work, but I will leave that for another posting. Here is the final design for the kitchen and mudroom.

Now for the upstairs. This is what it looked like.

We were originally thinking of combining the back two bedrooms and making the bathroom bigger, but the designer came back and said that what we really need is two bathrooms on the second floor. We thought she was right. So we are adding a bathroom.

We made some minor changes to the kitchen layout. Here are the views of what it will actually look like.