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A few things to wait on to finish the reno

Posted by Jeffrey on Jun 4, 2009

The stucco guys were here today to patch the area where the bricklayer filled in the windows. Tomorrow (I hope) they’ll be back to scratch coat the entire wall to even it out. Judging by the mess today just from the patch, the next coat will be messy…. Very messy.

But we are still waiting on a few things. The tile contractor has to take a look at the backsplash to give us an opinion on the job and the electrician has to come and put in the trims for the potlights and all the plates on the switches. And in the kitchen we couldn’t push the stove all the way back- it is just about ¾” out too far and it interferes slightly with the door mounted spice rack beside the stove. Maybe we can figure it out later.

Slide in stoves don’t always slide all the way.

We still are putting things back in the cupboards and deciding if they are in the right place. We never really thought of it before as we were so short of space that organization was an afterthought. In this case we can hopefully think of what makes sense in the way we work and organize accordingly. But I think we will just run out of patience and put stuff back and worry about it later. Anything to get rid of those boxes!

But the floor looks good.

On the weekend I finished painting the ceiling and the one area on the wall that’d been holding us up and we ripped off some of the kraft paper that was protecting the floor. I’d forgotten how good the floor looked! But it reminded me that we still have to get some carpet or runners done for the front hall and near the back door. So with that in mind, we went to a store to select a carpet sample and lo and behold within five minutes we found one we both agreed on.

Got the drapes up-finally.

So now it’s a case of finding someone that can do the custom work to cut around all the vents etc that are in the front hall.

I just finished painting the walls in the kitchen and just have the second coat to do near the stairs – almost done! When I said I would do the painting, I seem to have forgotten how much time it takes. At least the paint I’m using is good (Aura by Benjamin Moore) so it makes it a bit easier to cover the last of the yellow.

All quiet for the time being

Posted by Jeffrey on Apr 21, 2009

Its been a few days since we’ve had work on the house here. Last week Wednesday the flooring was finished and after some cleanup, the contractor came by Friday to put down some paper and masonite to protect the flooring.

It’s actually been a good break for us- a chance to catch our breath while we wait for the cabinets to arrive. I haven’t heard confirmation if they are on the truck, but I am crossing my fingers that they arrive towards the end of this week and they can start the work of installation.

I have a feeling that it may be a tricky install because in my last conversation with the contractor about the reframing of the back wall, he mentioned that the wall is about an inch out which will affect how the cabinets (especially the lowers) go in.

But we are really hoping that once the lowers go in we can get a temporary sink and faucet hookup and some plywood counters so at least we can start inhabiting the main floor of the house again. Its been a bit trying to prep food (well I haven’t really been too ambitious, mostly microwave reheating and toaster). It will be such a relief to get some things back into the cabinets and drawers. Here is what it looks like currently:

Wow! Where’d all this stuff come from? I’m so embarassed.

Compare that to how it looks when our stuff from the main floor isn’t all piled together.

Hmm.

And the baseboard arrived today from Central-Fairbank Lumber! I am installing it myself and the trim around the new window to save a bit of money. My neighbor told me that the profile of the original deep baseboard was still being produced and this saves me from having to get it custom milled. He even has a paint sprayer, so instead of priming and painting  with a brush, I will see if its possible to spray it on (outside) and save a ton of time. At least that’s the theory.

No break on weekend for me

Posted by Jeffrey on Apr 13, 2009

Even though the contractors were not here on the weekend, I was still here working to take advantage of the fact that the finished floor had yet to be installed.

Just to back up a bit, last week the mason and the installer were here on Thursday ripping out the old window to make a new opening for the new one I just picked up on Wednesday morning from Brock. I felt good that the old one is not going to the landfill but the contractor is taking it away for a shed he is building.

I am glad I was here to help with the questions as they sized the new opening and cut the brick. Man oh man what a mess! Since our house is double walled brick construction, they had to cut the exterior and interior brick with the quick cut saw. There was dust everywhere! So instead of going down to my mother-in-laws on Friday like we were going to, we just hightailed it out of here Thursday night instead after a short cleanup.

Even though they were here till about 8:30 they weren’t able to get the new window into the frame so they nailed up some plywood over the opening.

Plywood for a window? Seems hard to see through

The weather held out and we didn’t get any rain so things are looking good today for them to get the duct run above the window and the window installed.

New window opening with new brick.

The plumber put in the new copper on Thursday and the water pressure is fantastic in the bathroom. It improved in the rest of the house when we updated the water main from lead (ugh) to copper about 4 years ago, but because of the last bit of galvanized, we weren’t getting the benefit in the bathroom. Now just the ceiling needs to be patched.

Nice copper!

So why then was I here on the weekend? Well since the flooring is going down this week, I took the opportunity to finish patching some access holes the electrician put in so I could put a coat of paint on the ceiling. I know, I know, I will just  have to paint again after that hole gets repaired but it wont be as much work and I will only have to tarp a smaller area rather than the whole floor. I also painted (Aura by Benjamin Moore) the first coat on the walls and the new color (Feather Grey) looks great. I have to say that this is the best paint I’ve ever used. Goes on really quickly because it covers really well. So now have to do a second coat for the walls when I get a chance.

So today it seems like everyone showed up! The plumber was here to move the drain line in the basement so the HVAC guy could re route the duct into the main plenum. The installer is here to put in the window and frame and drywall the south wall. The electrician is re-wiring something (I don’t even know what exactly…) And on top of that the flooring guys showed up to repair and sand the upstairs hall, and start the finished flooring on the main floor. It’s quite a challenge to move around in here today and even work as the power is on and off. Good thing I’m using a laptop!

Color and creativity

Posted by Jeffrey on Feb 8, 2009

Interesting post on Discovery’s website about a study that shows color affects creativity. According to the authors, blue lends itself to more creativity while red tends to enable attention to detail. Something to think about when painting the home or office! (But what about purple? Detailed creativity?)

The color red boosts attention to detail in tasks such as memorization, while blue encourages creativity, according to a study published online in the journal Science.

The findings apply to advertising, warnings on medication, and especially environmental design for offices or classrooms, said Rui (Juliet) Zhu, who teaches marketing at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver.

Zhu, who wrote the study with Ph.D. student Ravi Mehta, recommends that marketers selling creative or innovative products use blue, and brainstorming sessions be held in blue rooms. Using red in advertising would prompt consumers to pay more attention to product details, she said.

Previously the effect of color on performance was a mystery because earlier studies, which did not match colors to different kinds of tasks, yielded conflicting results, said Zhu, who also studied psychology.

Zhu and Mehta ran six tests involving 600 university students working at computer monitors with a background set in blue, red or white for control groups.

Doors and locks

Posted by Jeffrey on Oct 31, 2007

A couple of weeks ago I had to install new locks/deadbolts on the house (don’t ask).
I was pleasantly surprised at how easy it was compared to the original ones I installed when we bought the place 4 years ago.
At that time, I really had to move / jiggle the locks around to get one to fit our pretty standard metal front door. We kept the low security passage set on the back door (just changed the actual lock) because we knew eventually we’d be replacing that door as it was original to the house and looked like it might fall apart at any time. It just took a lot longer to get a new one as we went through a few options before we settled on the full glass door that we (the Home Depot installer) put in.
Now that I’ve been thinking about doors and locks, I’m looking at the front door and starting to hate the way it looks. It was put in by the previous owners and while it is a pretty run-of-the-mill metal door, it doesn’t let in much light, which is at a premium in the house. We did our best to make it look better by painting it inside and out because at the time we bought the house it just had primer on it on both sides, so you can imagine how bad it looked when we got it.
I wonder if getting a new one would be worth it?

Kitchen’s done, at least this project

Posted by Jeffrey on Jun 27, 2007

Well, I finished the $100 kitchen reno and as you can see in this earlier post, we managed to stay under $100 even including some other items, like the mirror I put up and the ‘blackboard’ I created by painting the end of one of the cabinets (just out of view in the foreground).

The new counters and floors make the kitchen feel more included in the rest of the house.

Lets start with the floor: it took a lot longer than I thought (but of course you knew that by now!) I put the tiles on the diagonal for more interest and it also seems to make the space bigger. Even though it is way more graphic than the original, it seems less busy since the pattern is more simple.

It took a lot longer because of the diagonal the number of cuts required on the tiles sometimes 3 cuts per tile to get around all of the various angles in the room. Even though I included some waste in my calculations, I ended up with just one black and 7 white tiles left! (These tiles by the way, were really hard to come by. In fact I had to go to 4 Home Depots (no luck there) and 3 Ronas to finally find them and I think I got the last package of white tiles in the city.) There was a lot of selection for $2-3 per square foot, but I couldn’t do it for this budget.

Knobs were from Lee Valley, a package of 20 for $5.95 on close out sale! They are actually metal (not plastic) so hope they hold up better than the plastic that were originally on the door.

I think the countertop makes the most difference in the feel as it really brightens the room up and makes it appear less busy, although we have started to clean up the kitchen more!

The mirror came from IKEA and had a really thin frame which I built up with chair rail trim from the Depot which I cut on the mitre saw and glued up, before painting the whole frame to match the rest of the trim in the house.

So there we are and I hope it ties us over for the next few years as we save money and ideas for what we really want to do. It may end up being longer than that if past experience is any indication!

Just for a laugh, I dug up a picture of the original kitchen

The orignal color has the space looking like a hospital waiting room.

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The $100 Kitchen Reno (taxes not included)

Posted by Jeffrey on May 22, 2007

What do you think it takes to make a kitchen more livable? That’s what we’re trying to find out as the cost for really doing it right is quickly spiralling out of control.

By ‘right’ I mean that in addition to new cabinets, countertop, backsplash in the kitchen itself the floor needs to be leveled. Since this will make the rest of the floor look funny (and we can’t match the old worn out floors in the rest of the house) we want to carry new flooring front to back.

Now it is open concept, but a very small space as you can see in other pictures here, so it isn’t out of consideration, but kinda out of reach for now.

The current state of the kitchen. I have taken off the old plastic handles and started patching the holes, ready for paint touch ups.

So we are planning a bit of paint, some new knobs, maybe some cheap and cheerful tile and patching up some, ummm, holes left over from some wiring done at the same time as the basement. We’ll see how close we get to $100, but as always, I will be providing the “free” labour.

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Out with the old (door), in with the new

Posted by Jeffrey on Sep 26, 2006

As one of the things which has been on our to do list since we moved in 3 1/2 years ago, replacing the back door was pushed back for no other reason than I didn’t want to do it myself. I looked at what was needed and of course I could do the demolition as I have a Sawzall, but then putting everything back in was the tricky part.
Having never installed an entry door before, I wasn’t sure about what I could be possibly getting myself into. Given that this is a pretty old house, and the door had never been replaced, the original frame could be lacking (which it was) and could have to be rebuilt (which it did).

So thinking about the pitfalls of having no door for a while as I figured out what to do didn’t really appeal to us, so we went out in search of a solution. We drove out to the west end where there are a fairly large contingent of contractors and installers who have retail locations. The first one we stopped at was an Industrial Unit that looked ok from the outside but as we went in, looked somewhat in disarray. The reason for this became clear once we talked to the guy inside (who turned out to be the owner) and he was an abrasive older fellow who was looking at his cell phone in a somewhat perturbed manner. I think he was trying to figure out how to mute the thing and asked us if we could figure it out, which led to a bit of a tirade from him on cell phones, technology, the provider etc.

After this we started chatting abit about what we needed and he casually said that whatever we wanted he would be able to provide. Something about him was slightly irritating and I couldn’t figure out what it was. It became apparent when we told him the address of the house; when we gave him the closest intersection to the house he said, “You don’t live at XXY Avenue, do you?” I said, “Ummmm, actually yes that’s the house, how did you know?” He said, “I actually owned that house in the 70s, and renovated it.” My mouth nearly dropped open; this was the guy who did such a bad job renovating the place that everytime I do something, I have to fix the screw-ups and short cuts that were done before I can do anything. Did I want him coming back to the place to install a door? What would I have to fix after that?

So we said we’d be doing a bit of extra research before we confirmed and said that we’d be in touch and got out of there fast. As we were driving back, we passed by the Home Depot and decided to go in to see if they could provide a solution and to compare prices.

It seemed that the prices were pretty close and I knew that while it could be a bit of trouble to communicate with them (more on that later), they would be able to back up the job if anything went wrong. So we go them to do the install.

Seems that it would be a custom-sized door (of course) which would be more expensive and that once the installer came out for a measure, the entire frame would have to come out and be rebuilt. So I was right after all!

We ordered a half-window (because of the dog) with internal blinds and waited for the door to arrive. That was in May…

The door finally arrived sometime in late-June and after booking the install with the contractor waited for the day to finally get rid of the crappy old door we had put up with since we bought the place.

Turns out that when the installer removed the cardboard from the new door to prep for installation, there was a huge dent in the unit which prevented it from being installed. Needless to say we were annoyed, but at least the Depot ordered a new one pretty much right away so we wouldn’t have to wait that long before getting it in.

When the new door arrived, the installer made the appointment and wouldn’t you know it, it ended up being the hottest day of the year in late July. I really felt bad for him but he was in pretty good spirits and got it done in one day, including rebuilding the entire frame and caulking the exterior.

When I got home it looked pretty good from the inside (we intentionally left the trim off as we will be hopefully redoing the kitchen and will put in new trim throughout the main floor to match). When we looked at our invoice though, it appeared that they installed the whole glass window instead of the half glass, but we think it looks way better anyway, so no problem there!

The door from the inside looks good. You can raise and lower the blinds by a control on the right side of the door.

The only problem was from the outside as the sill sloped back in towards the house. Not good as water would likely eventually run back into the house, under the door.

So I proceeded to call the Depot and left many messages for the “Expediter” Mike, who I think is overworked, but doesn’t have voicemail. They rely on those little pink scraps of paper that get taken by the customer service desk and hopefully passed on to him. It took 3 weeks of calling, then him calling my voicemail before I could talk to him live and tell him what the problem was. The good part about it was that when he finally confirmed the problem, he gave the instructions to the contractor who came back (no, really!) and fixed the problem.

So now it looks great!

Looks great from the outside, much better than before (see some of the photos below for what the original door looked like.

All that’s left to do is prime and paint some of the new sections of the frame and paint the door. I wonder how long it will take me to get that done?

Paint, paint and more paint.

Posted by Jeffrey on May 29, 2005

The task for last weekend was to make sure I painted the entire room and bathroom on Saturday. After doing some final sanding near the stairs the area had to be primed and the beam painted with ceiling paint. While that was drying, I went around and cut in with the brush so that I could start on the other walls. I had put up the tape the previous few days so that I could make sure that the painting got done on Saturday.

I hope this is the last of the painting.

We got some help in choosing the paint color for the basement walls from Debra who is an Interior Designer. She really helped us in choosing the other colors that we painted the rest of the house. Again, it was a catch 22 situation as you are looking at colors and materials for a room. Do you start with the carpet and match the paint or vice versa? In this case, since it was a basement we didn’t want to go too dark but we still wanted to avoid the opposite effect of just white-bombing the entire room. Blah.
When I first put on the paint, I though “Well, it is pretty much yellow and it will match the walls in the main room of the house”, but I found that when it dried it had a more grassy green color than I had originally thought that really looked good so far, with the limited amount of lighting that is put out by the single clamp lamp I am moving around the room. Once I get the recessed halogen lights in (which is this week’s task) you will really get a sense of the color. [In fact the color looks much, much greener in these photos than what it actually looks like in real life, probably part of the effect of the flash on the camera.]
The west wall (which also goes up the side of the stairs)

It is hard to see but the post and the wall beyond are both painted the same color.

used to have awful stucco on the surface which was applied in the 70s. It was actually on every surface in the room, except the floor before I gutted the room. This wall was the last holdout. I was thinking about drywalling over the stucco, but more sanding and taping didn’t seem appealing. So I tried something else; I knocked down the surface of the stucco with a scraper to smooth it out somewhat. Then I applied a skim coat of drywall compound with a 7″ drywall knife which took rather a long time.
After all this dried I lightly sanded it to take off the high points and primed and painted it. It looks lightly textured, but not like those fussy ‘faux-finish’ treatments that can be kind of cheesy. All told it probably took less time than putting up new sheets of drywall on the wall and actually looks pretty good.
Now along with installing the lighting, I have to rip out all the ugly carpet on the stairs and get all the stuff out of the room so the carpet installers can come on Saturday and do the carpet. I bought about 75 feet of baseboard that has to be painted as well, but I might do that after in the back room if I can find some space back there.
[PS for those who can stand it I have put up a picture of the room after I ripped out all the old walls and primed the foundation wall.]

I have new respect for drywallers – Part 3

Posted by Jeffrey on May 23, 2005

So a lot has happened over the past few days. That’s what happens when you work for 3 days on something for about 12 hours a day. But the work needed to get done and now that the ceiling paint is on, you can get a real sense of what the final room will look like.

With the primer and ceiling painted it is starting to look like a room.

But just a bit of background; after the first coat of taping and mudding (which seemed to take forever) I went around with a scraper to take off the high points on the joints before sanding. Yes I did finally use that tool which attaches to the shop vac and it worked pretty well, but the simple $4.95 abrasive foam sanding pad actually seemed to work better. It is flexible so it can get into corners (and I tell you there are a lot of corners in this basement), where the pole sander is good for more of the straight runs. It does seem to suck up a lot of the dust, but by the time I was done, I was still covered in dust. I tell you, good thing I was using the mask.
It took a fiendish amount of time to go in and sand and then put on the second coat of drywall compound. I thought I could get by with a couple of the 7kg tubs in addition to the half empty 20kg pail leftover from an earlier job. No way. I kept going back to the Depot every couple of days or so to get a couple of additional tubs. Now I bet you’re thinking, “There’s no way you can use all that material.” Well yes you can. And you will. I went through over 50 kg of compound on this job and I tell you, it didn’t all end up as dust, although at times it did seem as if there was a fog bank in the basement. The fan in the window did a good job of exhausting the air and when the back window was open even got a fairly brisk cross breeze going.
After the sanding I realized that I should construct the door for the storage area under the stairs so I had to cut down the old opening with the sawzall and build a frame and set the hinges for the door. Then I had to cover over the old wood with drywall cut to the angle of the stairs.

The under-stair storage compartment door. I really should install that insulation instead of moving it around the room.

At the same time I also drywalled the post beside and put in corner bead and slapped more (!) drywall compound on it to set up overnight. Unfortunately it hadn’t set up properly to sand, so it will have to wait for the final sanding and priming.
Priming new drywall is important as the boards tend to suck up paint and also because of banding where the areas with joint compound will appear lighter than the surrounding wall if not properly primed. I used Para Primetech^TM which seems to work ok although it did require two coats to be effective. I say 2 coats because the “1 Coater” is the biggest lie in the paint industry. I have never found a paint / roller combo that can deliver this holy grail of paint nirvana. Maybe under ideal conditions when the sun is at the correct angle and the planets align but who has time to wait for that?
So after priming every surface which took a long time, I called it a night.
Then today was just doing a bit of light sanding on the storage area and the post and putting on the final coats of compound to ready for priming that later on. The main task was rolling the ceiling with this paint that comes out of the can pink and dries white. It is CIL Smart paint and it sure was pink. It was a bit disconcerting as I was putting it on but indeed it did dry up to a nice flat white. And it covered pretty well so that whole thing only took a few hours. Now the next task will be installing the recessed lighting so I can actually see what’s going on without having to move a clamp lamp around the room.

I have new respect for drywallers..

Posted by Jeffrey on May 1, 2005

I was putting up the drywall to cover the walls (5/8″ Type ‘X’ Drywall for those who care), and soon realized that the pros make it look way too easy. Even though they have probably better tools than what I have, they have years of experience so can figure out the best way to for example, hang drywall around a window rather than having to think about it for a while like I do. I guess if I was doing this day in and day out I’d get better too. Maybe I should get them to come to my office and see how they do with Powerpoint?

Got the drywall over the rigid insulation; I was getting tired at looking at pink walls.

Other than the walls, I hung the wallboard on the ceiling in the bathroom which was kind of challenging as there is not much room to move around in there, so I had to bring the pieces in to test the fit, then back out to trim, then back in to test… You get the idea.
Before I could finish the ceiling in there, I had to fish the wire for the light which went in the shower stall. I had the electricians leave enough so that I could fish it along the joist space over the shower stall to hook up to the fixture, but I had to leave off a sheet so I could get my hand in there to fish.
I also had to cut through the ceramic tile ceiling so I was at the Depot last week (see previous post) and bought a carbide tipped hole saw. I wasn’t sure it was going to work so I tested it out on a scrap piece of tile and it seemed to be doing an OK job. I then marked the ceiling and started cutting. Man, there was dust everywhere! After the tile was finished, I got through the drywall (2 layers!). I did a pretty good job but when I test fitted the fixture (good for the diameter), I found that the part of the fixture that extends out at a 90 degree angle (the part on the left in the photo),

The part that sticks out on the left prevented the rest of the can from fitting through the hole in the ceiling.

couldn’t fit through the hole since the thickness prevented pushing that part of the light up and through. Out came the sawzall to trim the thickness out just enough so I could slide it up and through. Attached the wires and siliconed it in place. Now I just have to wait until I power up the rest of the lights in the bathroom to see if it all works! Hopefully that will be soon.

Why is everything so messy?

Posted by Jeffrey on Apr 4, 2005

I was just looking at the pictures of the work I did on the weekend and it looks like a hurricane hit my basement. That’s probably part of the reason it seems to take a long time to do anything; I have to move something to do something else. Want to cut wood? Move the stack of lumber over to get the piece you want, then move the pile of boxes to get over to the saw, then measure, then cut… Next time I do this, everything is going into storage. Wait! That’s part of the reason we are doing this; to create more storage for all our crap.
Anyway, I framed in the space for the doorway

New framed opening to back of basement.

to the workshop and found out that the masonry bit that comes with the tapcon screws was incredibly dull; it wasn’t that we had super strength concrete in the slab. When I used another bit, things went a lot faster. Go figure.
Also, put in the supply duct for the room by installing a take-off from the existing main duct run. Had to go back to the Depot for the correct size though as the original one was about 1″ too big. It was not a wasted trip since we got the sale price for the carpet installation (and an additional 10% off), something I had been putting off for about a month, since it meant we had to start picking colors and the carpet type as well. There was something about picking colors that seemed like a catch-22: need to pick the carpet color, but have to know the wall color. Need to pick the wall color, but have to know the carpet color.

New supply duct and bulkhead.

Upstairs it was much easier. We have had so much help from Kim’s mother’s friend Deborah, it’s been fantastic! She helped us with the original color selection for all the rooms in the house and everything works so well together! She gave us a couple of suggestions and on the way over to the Depot, we picked up some chips from the paint store and matched some carpet.
After installing the duct I framed in the water meter and the rest of the duct and cleaned up for the electricians.
Unfortunately I just got a call from the electrician and the guy who was supposed to do the work in the basement is sick so nobody will be working today, maybe not tomorrow either. I was thinking that if this was a full renovation, with many trades working, this would be magnified since in every trade, there would be issues like this. No wonder these things tend to go over schedule.