Lights, camera, 2 months until the kid arrives...

So here we are in the last week of January, and it's really starting to feel like things are coming together with the house. I have officially rewired the entire place with just the finishing touches left on a couple outlets. All of this is good since I'm so sick and tired of putting holes in surfaces and the dirt that is created. It's funny how you can get used to something like living in a dust bowl. There should be no reason that it's ever normal for you to automatically know to wear shoes when you walk around, or to not drag any bare feet on the floors lest you desire splinters or nails. I mean really...this renovation thing alters your brain.

I'm including a couple shots I took last weekend of my work in the last two rooms on the first floor (the dining room and the "pink" room). Mainly what you see is a trench I created in both ceilings to allow for pulling out the old knob and tube, and to then to reuse those holes in the joists for the new wire. Not rocket science, but it's still pulling down dirty plaster and lath above your head.

The pink room got two new cans (*snicker*) and that was that. The picture on the right shows the pink room and the top of what I've created as a door to the kitchen. There's a larger picture of that creation to the left. In all of the months of renovation the house, there is one place that dirt and construction debris is not acceptable. *drum roll*........yeah, the kitchen. Big climax to the post right?!?!?!?!?! If you decide to live through this, keep your bedroom debris free, one room to lounge in that is moderately free of crap, but the kitchen should be clean like you're not walking through it with dirty boots. That's one key to having your marriage survive at the end of this. End of debate.

I've also added a little picture of what my left arm looked like after just that little demo in the dining room ceiling. Please keep in mind that it was only a small trench where I broke the plaster with a wallbaord saw and pulled off the lath. Nothing even close to the demo of the entire third floor back in May. I'm totally becoming compulsive about pulling down anymore plaster. Ugh.....

At this point we feel confident enough about where we're at that we have our dude Jose the drywaller on call to start in the next week or so. He estimated that it'll take about 90 sheets of sheetrock, so this isn't some small job. But at the same time he thinks it'll take two days to hang it all and three more to tape and mud. Man, we hope so! Given the fact that Christina is something like 31 weeks pregnant at this point, we have to get the sheetrock up, all of it primed (two coats), the ceilings painted, and at least the kid's room painted with the trim in place. We also need to get the floors refinished on the first floor, but honestly, I'm not sure there's time. We'd like to get all of this done by March 1st to allow a max of one month before the kid arrives to get her room ready and some feeling of being situated.

But to this point what is being "situated" in this house?

If anyone in the Philly area wants to help out with the painting, I have all the pizza and beer you might require. For real. Just let me know when you all want to stop by!

Flipping the switch - My tribute to electricity and Young Frankenstein

So today I threw the switch, and got over the electrical hump (lolz).

The recessed lights that I hung on New Years day were wired up yesterday afternoon upon returning from our drive from Indianapolis. It was a long day....

Today I roughed in the 4 gang box for 2 of the switches, and went ahead and threw two switches (temporary of course) in there for the pods.

For me pulling wire and wiring up most things is calming. There is something so simple as leg 1 connects to leg 2 and then splits here and there, it just makes sense to my organized software developer mind. I think there is a possibility to me keeping my 2009 "zen resolution" as long as there are more electrical rewiring projects in the house. But just like oil and Mel Brooks films, it's finite. *sigh* What can you do.

I've included a couple pictures that Christina happened to catch of my celebrating when the lights actually worked. I decided to test the circuits and lights before the drywall was hung, because really who needs the headache of finding out one of them wasn't properly connected AFTER all of the drywall is up? I may be working on being more even keeled, but there would be sleepless nights in horror if I didn't hook it all up today.

So yeah, that's that. The last picture here is, again, Christina catching me doing my usual Igor (pronounced "Eye-gor"!!) face when I've finished one project and my master can give me treats.

We have a weird life together I think.

What is a "holiday" from house renovation?

So 2009 is here and didn't seem to care that we were totally unprepared for the harsh reality that this new year brings. But as any good soldier, we keep on marching.

With the baby scheduled to make her appearance the first week of April, my pace around here has been "brisk" to say the least. The fact is that when I come home from the office every night, I go right upstairs and throw on my jeans and clock in here. The pay is horrible, and the working conditions are cramped, but my boss is cool. So that's a plus I suppose. In fact, Christina's mom was out here for Christmas, and I decided to take that day off. By the end of the afternoon I had organized most of my tools, swept up the workshop/living room and was chomping at the bit to get cracking on the remainder of the electrical I had to pull.

Being me is complicated to say the least.

Oh before I forget, I want to mention my resolution for this year. I'm putting it on here so that the people in my daily life will hopefully hold me accountable for the inevitable lapses that will happen. 2009 is the year that I'm learning to just chill out and relax. What do I mean? Well, as my parents will comment about, I was born pretty high strung (bright red due to high hemoglobin, hair straight up, and screaming). Pretty bad. Since that November day in 1977, I've lived my life pretty tense about just about everything. Ever seen a guy freak out at the coffee shop because someone cut in line? Ever heard the neighbor screaming four letter words 150 decibels? How about if you've ever seen a grown man throw items down in disgust about something? Yeah, well that's me.

In fact that was me....today. I'm off to a really rough start in my resolution this year. Christina has taken up saying "Bryan, that's not very zen". Well, I'm thinking about this being a marathon, not a sprint. It's one day at a time. You have to learn from your lapses. Pick your favorite phrase, I'm TOTALLY OK WITH IT!!!!!!

Anyway, I need to work on this for the sanity of our new baby (who needs a kid being born with that kind of bad around), my coworkers at the office, and my wife. Maybe I need to take up bonsai trees or something?

This being a house blog, let's get to the blogging!

For about XXX months/weeks/days (I have no clue) we've noticed a sagging spot of plaster in our living room ceiling. So in preparation for our drywall contractor to stop over for a final walkthrough before the work hopefully starts in a month, I decided to investigate. Well sometimes you shouldn't poke around when you're not prepared to deal with what is hidden in the dark. The cause of the sag? A split joist.

DOH! If you look at the pic on the right you'll see the culprit. This is also one of the points in home repair when you realize that you have been at this before......and you don't mind making a mess and tearing holes in any surface.

Since our house is pretty old, the joists are mortise and tenon instead of any fancy-smancy space age joist hangers. Well this one split right at the tenon which was causing the sag. I had looked for any real sign of the joist failing or being really springy from the top, so I decided to pull back the plaster a bit and lag bolt the joist in three spots. I then added a joist hanger to the thing to help spread the load from the mortise and tenon to the hanger.

After cinching up the bolts the joist came back together and the bottom was lifted about an inch. Not too bad. To help it out I'd like to sister the thing for a few feet, but I'm not 100% sure how to do it in that spot versus like mid span, but that's what Google is for.

As Christina has mentioned before, I've been replacing all of the electrical wiring that was here when be bought the house. At this point I've added tons of new circuits with properly grounded and SAFE outlets as well as lighting throughout the house. On Tuesday we went to the Depot to buy some recessed housings for the living room ceiling. Christina and I went back and forth for a good two weeks on what housing size to use up there. 4 inches? 6 inches? It was pretty serious up in here for sure. The winning size? 5 inches. See what we did? We pulled switcheroo on you all.

Today (being a "holiday" for some people, but not those of us with a kid on the way) I went ahead and installed the lights. nothing is wired up yet, but the feeds have been pulled and are in place for a simple junction and then BAM! we'll have that roughed in.

As usual I had to cut into the plaster which as usual made a horrible mess. The worst part of any work with the plaster walls and ceilings is what is does to your sinuses and throat. That is some serious dust that just hangs in the air. Ugh....I really hope I'm about done with that.

Anyway, the layout of the lighting is that we're creating two "pods" or sets of 4 lights that are on either side of our fireplace. Each pod will be on its own dimmer to create that romantic feeling I guess. I'm just the labor guys.

So that's it for now. I'm about 90% done with the electrical right now. After roughing in the cans, I need to power up the ceilings in the other three first floor rooms, but that's it. Every other outlet, switch and feed has been replaced and is safe at this point. That's why you see all of the gopher holes in the ceiling from removing and pulling the new wiring. Not too shabby for a software developer who has a hankering for beer on occasions.

Cheers!

- Bryan

Christmas Lights

So normally this time of year I try to get out the festive garland, tree, ornaments, and most importantly the lights on the tree. This year due to our compressed time schedule and imminent baby deadline, Christmas lights have a taken a new turn. My mom coming to visit in 5 days has also made Bryan hurry a little bit more, since the guest bedroom and bath are currently without any power.

Bryan has been working diligently on some of the electrical work in the house. We have as part of the last few projects had the main line to the house upgraded, new 200 amp box, new outlets on the 1st floor, and all new electrical on the 3rd floor. So really a good portion of the work is complete. Just the second floor and the ceiling in the first floor remain as remnants of the old work. This nice pretty yellow wire, is how all the new stuff is supposed to look.

The picture to the right shows some of this old work. For those who haven't experienced the wonders of knob and tube wiring this may seem even stranger, but this is a weird combination. This is actually a junction between the old knob and tube, and conventional, but old, wiring that also existed in the house. We are pretty close to getting all of the old wiring out of the house, but when you do see some of this old stuff, it is still surprising that the lights have actually worked for the last 100 years, and that we haven't burned the place down yet.

So the last couple of weekends have focused on new lights, and new outlets. As with all projects sometimes they take an unexpected turn. This one is no exception. They do create some unexpected results, that can also be kind of funny in a sort of sad way. This next picture falls into this category. It is kind of hard to tell, but this is a look into our old bathroom, which for the last week hasn't had power to the lights. So there is an extension cord from another room with a table lamp on the toilet. I should say it does create a nice ambiance in the room at least. With Bryan's extreme diligence it does seem that this situation will be remedied by Thursday when my mom shows up. While we can deal with bizarre situations in the house, it isn't nice to subject guests to our chaos. I did tell her to bring slippers, and a thick robe, as there is no real way to clean most of the areas under construction, but in theory she won't have to trip over the saws-all and table lamp in the bathroom for Christmas!

Third floor walkthrough video

As an appendix to my "Epilogue" post, I'm attempting to upload a video tour I created this morning. We used some crappy digital recorder that Angie's List gave us for complaining a lot or something. The point is that the lighting is suspect and the volume might be low, so please forgive me.

Next time I'll create one in a Bollywood style or something. The video is like 3 mins, unedited and about 13MB. Enjoy.

Epilogue | Reveal | Pictures

It's kind of weird to type this, but as of last night (December 8th 2008 to be accurate) Christina and I slept in our third floor suite. Not only that, but the rooms are done* and life can move on to the other 3 months of projects waiting for us.

I won't use this post to rehash the months and months of events that have gone int creating our third floor suite**, that's what all of the links are for to the right. But I am going to post some pictures of the final product along with just a couple shots of what it was like back in late April when we started really getting down and dirty with this project. So right before the demo was done we had something like this on the right.

Which was promptly wrapped up to create one big space that had no more plaster walls, no dropped plaster ceilings, and no closet. Like the picture on the left.

So you get the point. These pics are from previous posts, but it's fun to look back at them from time to time to really remember what kind of rabbit hole we really decided to jump down.

I'm posting pictures of the finished spaces below without much commentary. I think over the past posts we've beat that horse so if you want to know what is what then by all means post a comment. Plus Christina LOVES COMMENTS! Again, sorry for the spotty lens...

Over the past 4 months we've had various paid "professionals" come and go along with me finding out that not only can I create software pretty well, but I think I prefer to create things with my hands even more. I have to say that being forced to learn on the fly various skill sets that you didn't know you could muster up was awesome and something that in the end I'm grateful for.

All of that reminds of Ferris Bueller's Day Off and the great exchange between Cameron and the parking garage attendant:
>You guys got nothing to worry about, I'm a professional.
>A professional what?

Of course there's another side to that coin, and that would be that when I took over most of the work, it meant more money in tools, days off of work, material (cause you know you need to learn how to make that mitre cut at least twice) and sanity. We also quickly realized that while Christina's day job as "Senior Designer" means that she's great at thinking up cool looking ideas, someone in the conversation needs to be the practical person saying "yeah, but how to you expect that to work?".

Also, on at least 3 occasions, we really screwed up the order of things which we'll never do again I hope.

A partial list of dont's when doing something like this:

• Don't paint before the hardwoods are in. Just resist. That's why drop cloths were invented, and touching up paint will never happen.
• Don't assume that anyone knows what they are doing. This sounds both cynical and obvious, but whatever. Just because you pay a "professional" to do something doesn't mean it's not a clusterf*$k when they leave. It ALWAYS will be. Check on the work before they "professional" leaves the house, and be straight if it's not up to par. It's your money.
• Don't install plumbing fixtures before you're truly ready. We installed the tub before the window trim was done as well as the baseboards and getting those in was a nightmare.
• Don't freak out if something isn't installing like you might see on TOH or similar tv show. This is the real world, and you have to be crafty A LOT.
• Don't make a trip to the ER part of your project. That sucked.
  

The list of dos are obvious, but the big ones that I'm going to use for every project:

• If you have to hire out and you're blessed (like we are now with our cement guy) to have that ONE contractor that is great and knows people...go with the guys he knows. We've saved a ton of money, time, and aggravation after we started talking to Joe's various trade guys. All of them have been great.
• Use Angie's list or something similar for reference only. They tended to be pricey for what we were wanting, but they were a good baseline for prices on that higher end.
• Get yourself a decent workshop space that you don't care how much mess is created. We just don't have a lot of room being in a rowhouse, but when I did create my shop space it was a lifesaver.
• If you're completely gun shy about doing something yourself, then don't press the issue. It's OK to hire out. Like I was terrified to refinish the floor I laid down, and instead spent $400 on a pro and it was great. The peace of mind was worth the money without a doubt.
• Right tool, for the right job. Period, end of story. If you are needing to do something that requires some special tool, or have to nail in hundreds of feet of trim, rent of buy what you need. Done.

So yeah, that's really it pretty much. In all the process was ridiculous, stressful, and tiring. But I'd do it again any day of the week. The pay off was incredible and in the end we have a space that Christina designed and that is ours.

I couldn't sleep last night at all, but I wasn't sure if it was because of the "moment" or if it was due to our new bedroom feeling foreign and like a hotel room at first. I mean new surroundings, new bed...even new sheets and duvet cover. It was a lot to process.

I'll say that I'm ready for at least one weekend away from house work. But then again, I'm addicted to the stuff and at this point I' don't know what to do with my time that isn't either at the Depot or working on the house. Is there anything else left in life!?!

Now for the disclaimers:
* The tub is going to require a "professional" (great) to get the feet fixed so I can hook it back up to the plumbing. The banister is obviously missing spindles still, but that is part of the first floor/second floor renovation slated to be completed by March 2009**.

** I don't call this a "Master Suite" and I won't. I find that term hearkening back to the plantation slave era and I'm not into that. I don't get how and why that term was ever popularized, but it's a pretty crap term if you ask me.

*** That March 2009 date is hard because well...we're having a baby (girl supposedly) on or near April 6th. Yeah us! I tried to find an ultrasound picture to Photoshop with a little tool belt and hard hat, but what we have look like Rorschach tests instead. What can you do.

We have to thank the following friends for their help with this project: Niko, Jen, Graham, Andrea (and Logan!), Cat, Anna (the roman shades and duvet are awesome!) and everyone else who gave an opinion or encouragement. Seriously, it meant a lot to us and we owe you all big time.

So yeah, I guess now we start the next chapter of our house. That's the wrap up of the ongoing electrical chapter, with a hopeful tale of fresh drywall in 75% of the remaining spaces, and even the introduction of a new character to the plot.

It's about to get VERY interesting around here for sure. Cheers!!!

- Bryan

Friday Night Fun

So you know that you have reach a ripe old age, when it suddenly becomes not a only a good idea, but fun to stay in and put together furniture. This first image is just one of the bags necessary to create an heirloom quality dresser from IKEA. The first dresser took us about an hour and a half, which was a bit discouraging......but we plodded along, and did the second one in half that time. I joked with Bryan that if the economy continues to go south, I would hire him out to all the other poor suckers in the IKEA parking lot, and send him home to put together their furniture for a nominal fee. He was not keen on this idea, and the fact that we still had a bed to get together I decided not to poke the bear too much!

The bed actually isn't from IKEA, and it has 2 drawers for off season storage underneath, which is great. Between the 2 dressers, the bed, and 5 closets, I am going to have to go shopping in order to actually fill all the space. There are worse things I suppose.

(sorry for the spotty camera lens, we're having technical difficulties)

Sorry to the avid readers, but going back to Indy for T-Day did dampen our speed a bit on getting this place together. As you can see from this last picture we did get pretty close last weekend to moving up there. The mirror finally got on the wall, another purchase from June. I think it has been in every room of the house on its journey upstairs. It even went upstairs and then back down in the same day at least 1 time. Now it is in its final home, and we are close to making this room look not so much like a construction site an more like a livable room. We promise to not go so long next time!