Drywall starts tomorrow.... seriously

The drywall company should be here tomorrow at 8:30am, not a moment too soon. Luckily, some work did happen today. Our carpenter framed and cut the holes for our his/hers closets in the bedroom. Originally, we were going to make one big closet, but the plumbing stack is right behind the wall in the space between these two closets, and we weren't about to move that just for another foot of closet. So now it's his and hers closets- fitting for the master bedroom. They are each 3 feet wide, which means we still gained 4 feet of closet in the room, plus an additional linen closet (where the old 2 ft closet was). That's a lot of closet!

It is a little strange to be standing in the kitchen and seeing my bed...

Inspector approved!

Yesterday the building inspector was here and he approved the framing and new header. PHEW! Drywall can now commence! I'm not sure when exactly the drywall person is coming, but it should be the next day or two at most. Hopefully the next post will have pictures of new walls!!

New Header

The carpenter and plumber did a lot of work yesterday and we have our new header, 3- 2X 4 support beam and plumbing in place to satisfy the inspector. Due to the new plumbing that lays on the front of the header, and the fact that we can't drill through the new supports to thread plumbing through, our drywall on this wall has to come out about 2 inches into the room to house the pipes. Our contractor is going "back to the drawing board" on his fancy computer to recalculate our cabinets with the 2 inch loss. It's most likely just going to make the "blind corner" (one of our cabinet corners isn't going to house space underneath, while the other one has a Lazy Susan in it) smaller.

The electrician is coming today to rewire a little bit where they had to displace things yesterday, and add a plug for our jet tub :) If all goes well, we'll be putting up drywall on Monday.

WATER!

Ok, as I was posting that last entry, I hear a rush of water and my carpenter say "What the hell??" Naturally, I run out and see water rushing down the inside of the wall of the entryway and onto the kitchen floor. We scramble and thankfully when I said the water shut off to the house is in the furnace room, the carpenter knew what I'm talking about and even what a shut-off valve looks like, because I don't. The water was shut off in a matter of 30 seconds, but water was of course gushing out for that time. My carpenter wasn't even in the kitchen when this happened, he was hauling tools inside and was just in the door. He said "I thought you were running the tub" and I said "I thought you started a load of laundry". The old pipe, which was slightly displaced yesterday just to see what they were working with, decided to come unsaudered at a joint and fell off the wall. Literally. The day is off to a terrific start! I guess we were right, those pipes were not worth saving.

Code Overload

Well, the building inspector was here yesterday and did decide to make us fix the big entryway between the kitchen and family room. He didn't seem to appreciate the fact that we weren't the idiots who cut into a load baring wall without putting in a header, or that we have made it better with the new post and the wall won't fall on our heads now. Nope. The wall is open, so it has to be brought up to code. Of course there is also plumbing running right in front of where the header has to go. Our contractor, carpenter, and another associate were pow-wowing in the kitchen shortly after the inspector left about how exactly this process is going to happen. I am happy to report that by the end of the day yesterday, the carpenter had a new temporary support wall up, the plumber was scheduled and the engineered wood was ordered. I learned that engineered wood is stronger, and therefore you can have a smaller header, but the wood must have a stamp on it, visible to the inspector, that says it's certified engineered wood. The game plan for today, is to get the old wood of the non-existent header out, put the new one in, and get the plumber back to replumb along the wall. We've determined the old pipes won't handle a transplant, so we're putting in the new plastic pipes as we have in the rest of the remodel. If all goes well, the inspector will even come back by close of business today! Wish us luck!

Inspections... inspections

Not much to post because the last few business days have been taking up by waiting for permits and inspectors. Today should be the last inspector- the building inspector for the framing. Meanwhile, my carpenter is here today putting in some new insulation. Once the building inspector comes (and all is well), then the drywall should start going up tomorrow. Let's all think happy thoughts to make that happen!

Plumbing done

It's been a quiet couple days- yesterday no one was here because of a permit miscommunication, which I believe the contractor fixed today. The plumber was here Wed and today installing our new air jet tub and finishing up the new pipes for the tub. He also had to rework the plumbing behind the kitchhen sink area a bit to accomodate the dishwasher moving to the left of the sink. Now we need the plumbing inspector to come before we can put up the drywall!

Doors, walls and new pipes!

It's been a good couple of days. The plumber has been here and took out our big cast iron plumbing stack and replaced it (I believe with PVC or some such material). The bathroom is now all set for pipes and the inspector was here.

Our carpenter made the framing for the new linen closet (an extra bonus we got due to some "extra space" that needed to not be moved, as it's the reason we can open our bedroom door) and the new doorway for the bathroom. Then today we got doors! And walls! Yeay! The picture is from the hallway, the first door is the bathroom and the second in the distance is the new linen closet. It's exciting to actually have something put IN instead of demolished.

Tomorrow our new tub comes- which was upgraded to air jets (instead of water jets) by our resourceful contractor finding an "overstock" deal. Wohoo! Originially we weren't getting a jetted tub at all, we just wanted a 6 foot tub instead of 5 foot, but it turns out those don't exist except in special order, and because of a typo on a website, our poor contractor thought he had one all lined up for us! So he spent all day yesterday correcting the situation and we decided to go jetted, which I'm quite happy about.

Let there be lights and a post

Erik here. Lana is incapacitated by some stomach flu :(
Got some more exciting things in remodel land:

















We now have some lights in the kitchen. Very nice. The bathroom door is framed out, which makes the room start feeling very real. The post is installed at the end of the half wall and the half wall is now a few inches shorter and made nice and neat. Also we have the studs framed out for the medicine cabinets.


We have some more plumbing to do, and then we should be just about ready for drywall. How exciting :)

Who knew plumbing could be so pretty?

The plumber was here today running a new cold water line all the way to the kitchen(apparently the hot water line had been fixed previously, but the cold water was still "backwards"), and new hot and cold water from the kitchen to the bath (we had some rotting issues). Who knew plumbing came in such pretty colors these days. Our gas line is yellow, the cold water is blue, and the hot water, red. Much easier to decode that metal pipes when you're looking under your sink. The carpenter also put up new studs in the wall behind the tub because when he removed the tub he saw the old studs were all rotted... lovely! You can see where a window used to be in the picture of the new studs- that was the outside wall before the addition. He also put up braces to push up our sagging doorway between the kitchen and family room (whoever put this addition on was wacko), and once leveled out, we're putting in a post from the halfwall to keep it reinforced in the future. This was a cheaper and easier option than a joist in the wall above the opening, plus I think it will look nice.

"Tell me about it, Stud"

We have new walls framed! It's very exciting to see the new space lined out. The carpenter also jackhammered the floor to make space for moving the plumbing (slab ranches are fun, aren't they?). The plumber was here getting started, but it turns out the plumbing under our kitchen sink is a little wacky and certainly not going to hold up to new code, so it looks like a new water line is in our future, but we're hashing out the details (this wasn't in the original plan). The red rubber hose in the picture is what is currently giving us hot water in the working bathroom. We also found some lovely flatware mixed in with the plumbing- yard sale anyone?

Grout, grout and grout?

I went to buy grout today and did not expect to have nearly as many choices there as in the tile aisle! I actually found a really helpful sales person (shocking!) who had a handy little sample board to help me decide on colors- who knew I'd have a different color grout for each of the different tiles!
I realized I hadn't posted pictures of our bath tile yet. I tried to get the colors right, but it's really difficult. The bigger tile is the bath floor (it's a textured beige and grey tile) and the smaller is the tub surround (which is white with grey marbling that didn't really show in the pictures). We're going with a mostly white and grey theme in the bathroom, but we wanted to warm the tones up a bit with the floor tile, which brings in some warmer, soft beige. Hopefully it will all work together!

Weekend Update

We haven't had pics to post the last couple days because Thurs and Fri our carpenter was out sick with a stomach bug. Our contractor is going to double up on staff this week to get us back on schedule. Unfortunately, we had a couple little disturbances to our already disturbed way of living this week. One is that our "working" bathroom is still without power. It wasn't just that the circuit was off, it's that something got cut during demo and remains undone. The carpenter was unaware of this. I told our contractor, and the electrician is coming on Monday. Since last week, we've just had a floor lamp plugged in from the family room as our light. The other is that the dryer and stove were hooked up to the same gas line, and they had to shut off the gas to unhook the stove. Luckily, we were only without a dryer for one day, as they capped the line after it gets to the dryer. We were still perplexed for a while as to why the dryer wasn't getting hot, but Erik figured out the shut-off was still closed, and now it works!
The two days of "rest" at the end of last week helped me re-organize things after realizing I was going to lose my mind trying to live the way I started out at the beginning of the week. Maybe some of these ideas will help anyone else who is going to do home improvement with a toddler (brave souls).
First thing was dust control- the dust continues to settle all over the house after work days and I could not keep washing all Keagan's toys before I let him touch anything! So now, I have pared down his toys so that what is left fits into two Space Bags. That way, during the day, they are sealed up in the bags (cupboards aren't enough- the dust gets INSIDE) and then they are still clean at the end of the day. All non-essentials are out of the TV room and Family Room so that a simple Swiffering of the floor, and wiping down of surfaces will do at the end of the day. The living room got a thorough cleaning this weekend, but it is not one of the high priority rooms for us, so it's daily cleaning will be less necessary.
Second thing was napping Keagan during the day- I was going crazy packing up everything in his crib every morning and making sure I had everything I'd need to put him down somewhere else. I ended up leaving his lovey at two people's houses this week! I tried leaving everything at my parents' house, but they don't have a crib and he hates the pack n play, so that didn't work. Luckily, lots of my mommy friends here in Maynard have offered their cribs for us to use when their kids are in daycare (how does anyone survive without such a great network of loved ones?). So the new plan is this: I went out and bought doubles of everything I need during the day (crib toy, blankie, etc), which is all packed in a duffle bag in my car. That way, where ever we end up, I can put him down for a nap.
Hopefully this coming week will go a little more smoothly... There is one thing that is working out very well for us all, and that is Willow going to Doggie Daycare. It's helpful not to have to worry about him in the house with the noise and the dust, and he comes home tired and contented. At least the dog is getting a good deal out of this!

Studs down

Well, now the middle of my house is just a big hole. Our lead carpenter was here yesterday and took down the studs between the kitchen and bathroom, took down the ceiling and took out the toilet and vanity. There also used to be a door a little left of the current doorway to the bathroom... interesting. They found a wire that had a staple going through it and started sparking... fun! That circuit unfortunately also controls our WORKING bathroom and had to stay off last night. They will be fixing the sparking wire issue today so we can turn it back on. Erik came home last night and said "Wow, they did a lot today." and I said " 'They'? It was just Tom... by himself..." and Erik said "Oh... he's better at this than I am." That's a good thing, sweetie ;)