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Finally, less crap, more light

Posted by Jeffrey on Jun 4, 2005

Finally, I moved all of the crap out of the main room so that the carpet installer could come on Saturday. As you can see, the room looks much bigger!

Now where did I hide all that junk?

I also installed all the recessed halogen lights this week which was a bit of a pain, but I wanted to do it before the carpet went in. I made a detailed drawing of where the lights should go in so that after the drywall went up, I would know where to put in the holes. I used a 3″ hole saw to cut out the holes and then wired up the lights to the 14/2 wire that the electricians fed.
The GU-10s look really good and they throw off a nice bright light. The one’s I got have a gimbaled head so that you can use them as wall washers as well or just to target the light. I haven’t really fiddled with that yet, I have just put in the last 2 Friday night so the next task is to put the two in the bathroom to complete the circuit for the one that is in the shower stall.

Oh yeah, all the junk is in the back room.

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 – Part 2

Posted by Jeffrey on May 15, 2005

The great thing about drywall is that when it goes up, it very quickly looks like you are making progress.

The first coat of taping and mudding.

All of the cluttered stuff that goes on behind the wall is quickly covered over and it makes you think that with just a few dabs of drywall compound, you will be ready to paint and then kick back with a few beers in celebration of the finished product.
Well, it’s really not that easy. Once again I have new respect for drywallers as putting up the mud is not as easy as it looks on TV. And in this case, I have lots of inside corners from all the bulkheads that I had to put in and the fact that I am pretty slow with the mudding and it adds up to a long time to apply the first coat.
I used a corner tool for the inside corners and that has helped a lot. I am hoping that if the first coat doesn’t have too many surface bumps and imperfections, that the next coats will go faster and there will be less sanding as a whole. I bought the tool for sanding that you attach to the shop vac, but I have yet to use it. All I know is that the dust from just scraping down the high points was enough. I will be taping off the stairs down to the basement with plastic sheeting and I have the window open with a fan to draw out the air which seems to be doing an OK job of moving the air through the space.
I have some more to do around the window and the whole (!) bathroom so I will be at it for a couple more days.

The first coat of taping and mudding.

I finally brought the radio down so I would have some tunes to help the time go by. I don’t know what I was thinking for the past few months; I didn’t want to bring it down there since I was worried about dust etc. gumming the thing up. When I do the sanding I will just keep it upstairs (behind the plastic sheeting, and turn up the volume!

How do you get 4′ x 8′ sheets of drywall into a Mazda 3?

Posted by Jeffrey on May 8, 2005

I took Friday night off working because the weather was pretty good and I didn’t want to spend the entire weekend in a dark room while the sun was shining; kinda like the past few weekends. Good thing for the most part, the weather has been crappy for the last couple of weekends. I didn’t feel like I was missing much.
So on Saturday, I got down to finishing up the wall adjoining the furnace room and other bits and pieces that needed drywalling.

Supply bulkhead is complete. Soon will start with the taping and mudding.

These are the things that take the longest. The big sheets go up fast: they give you a sense that things are progressing. That’s good because I needed to see that before tackling the smaller stuff such as the bulkheads in the bathroom and the ones that frame in the ductwork.
Unfortunately, I needed to go to the Depot Saturday night to get a couple more sheets. I realized that when I was driving there that if a couple of years ago, I someone had told me I would be standing over a flat cart in the middle of the Home Depot parking lot on a Saturday night cutting sheets of drywall in half so I could fit them in my car, I’d have told them they were crazy. But they did fit in there (thanks to the designers of the Mazda 3), so I was able to get them back home and down to the basement before I totally ran out of steam.
Sunday we were hosting Mother’s Day at our place so I had to get some stuff done before we had to start preparing for our family arriving around 3 or 4 pm. I got the bathroom finished. I got most of the furnace wall finished. I got the supply duct bulkhead finished.

Return air duct now enclosed.

I got the return bulkhead finished. Or was that Saturday? It’s all a blur now, but at least most of it is done. There are only a few pieces left to do and to frame an access door for the storage area under the stairs. Then on to putting up corner bead and taping the rest of the seams in preparation for joint compound and sanding. I am hoping that the device I bought for sanding (which you hook up to the shopvac) works well so we can keep the dust down in the rest of the house. We’ll see…

Some more drywall

Posted by Jeffrey on May 4, 2005

I got a chance to put up drywall on some other walls and got that up last night. Now I have to do the back wall of the bathroom and the wall for the furnace room.

Finally closed in the walls.

Looking at the rapidly shrinking stack of drywall (which is no longer mocking me, see earlier post); I am realizing that it is going to be quite tight on the number of sheets left to finish. I may have to get one or two more sheets to finish off all the bulkheads and other bits that tend to take the longest time. The problem is how to get them.
When I got all the materials from the Depot, I rented their van and my friend Chuck helped me unload the sheets into the basement. But for one or two sheets, I probably won’t go that route. Which leaves the car.
The car isn’t big enough to get a whole sheet in, so that leaves the roof or cutting them in half. I guess we’ll cross that bridge when we get there.

More drywall. Now you can start to see what the room will eventually look like.

So you may be asking yourself, what is that white rectangle thing in the middle of all the pictures? It is an inexpensive wardrobe for storing coats and things that we got because we have extremely limited closet space in the house. Eventually it will get replaced with something more permanent once the carpet goes down.

Hot and cold water stoppage

Posted by Jeffrey on May 3, 2005

On Sunday I had to also cap a hot and cold line that originally fed the sauna (even though it was a ‘dry sauna.’ I guess they used it to hose down the floor?) The original plan (about a month ago) was to shut off the water and cut the lines with the sawzall and solder the caps on. Should have taken about 45 minutes tops. What really happened was that since the two lines were actually the lowest lines in the house, (lower than the faucet in the adjoining bathroom), they would not drain and as a result, no matter how much I drained them, there was still a slight trickle of water dripping out. Which resulted in a problem for soldering: if there is any quantity of water in the line, the pipe will not get hot enough as the water is absorbing the heat from the torch.
To complicate matters, about 1″ away was an ABS pipe for the trap which runs parallel to the line, which I had to carefully protect when using the torch. After trying several times, I could never get the pipes hot enough. What to do next? I couldn’t leave the water in the house off for a few days. Off to the Home Depot as I had to temporarily buy some compression fittings to allow me to turn the water back on in the house and figure out possible solutions.
I asked the plumbing guys what the problem was and they explained the water thing and suggested I drain the pipes. When I told them that this was the lowest thing in the house they suggested I cut the supply, just after the meter (!) and install a drain valve from which I could bleed the lines. Seemed like a lot of work to cap two lines!
So my next step was to search the Internet for something that could help. After a bit of Googling, I found this product: Just for Copper. It is a liquid (non-toxic) which bonds copper to copper. So I ordered some and after a test, tried it out on the weekend.
You just have to sand both pieces of the joint and then apply to both surfaces, twist on and, it worked. So far so good.

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.

We have drywall!

Posted by Jeffrey on Apr 24, 2005

After looking at the pile of gypsum board leaning against the wall mocking me, I got the entire ceiling up today with the great help of my brother-in-law David; without his assistance, I would still be down there. Well, I actually still have a small piece to put up but we had to run out to the Depot before it closed today (more on that later).
The large sheets went up pretty quickly as I used the support I made (with a few modifications)

The large sheets went up fairly quickly.

so that we could support the sheets on one end while temporarily nailing them in on the other. This worked out well for the large sheets and the smaller ones basically could be held in place while I fastened them.
We had a few that had to have a couple of notches taken out, but nothing too tricky. I made a few measurements for where the recessed lighting will be located so I could set up for that this week (time permitting) and install those in the main room.
So we had mostly all the drywall up by lunch and after lunch David left and I secured the sheets with drywall screws. By the end of it my neck and arms were aching from working so much above my head. Boy, the pros sure make this look easy on TV!
Then by about 5:30 we had to go to the Depot to pay for the carpet and installation that will be pretty much the last thing to do, before the bookcases go in. So we show up and I have a plan: I got the Home Depot Credit Card which allows you to get 10% off the first purchase, so I load up with hopefully most of the stuff I will need for the rest of the job. Things like all the recessed lighting, some more lumber (just in case), bulbs etc.

Finally got drywall on the ceiling, with a bit of effort.

So we finish in the carpet section and get the printout to take to the cashier and after picking up the rest of the stuff, head for the front to severly damage the card. The cashier inputs everything and after she prints out the receipt, I ask about the 10% (it did not show up automatically on the bill). Then she has to call the head cashier, then she calls someone else. Nobody can figure out how to get the deduction. So someone else from the front desk comes over and I have to walk down there to watch him furiously punch numbers into the system.
Get this, they have to manually refund each and every stick of wood, then punch each and every item back in and only then can they give me the discount. So that whole adventure just added to my Depot experience, but at least they tried to figure out a way to make it happen. Good luck trying that at other stores…

Bulkhead overhead

Posted by Jeffrey on Apr 17, 2005

I finished the framing for the bulkhead and cut the largest sheet the other day. I installed about half of the sheets of plywood for the bulkhead so now you can start to see what the ceiling height will be like in that area. I have to cut all the sheets outside as there is not enough room in the basement to lay down a full sized sheet of ply.

Plywood on bulkhead. Yes, it will be primed and painted the same as the rest of the ceiling.

Besides, it really creates a dust storm and I want to keep the amount of dust to a minimum in the house. Except when I tape and sand the drywall, it will be very dusty anyway. I will likely tape off the basement and shut off the furnace.
I got this new sanding head which fits on the end of your shopvac so that, in theory, the dust gets contained there. We’ll see how well it works.
So I have to finish cutting the plywood for the rest of the duct bulkhead and also build the cabinet to enclose the electrical panel which will be challenging since there are several water supply pipes, the gas line and a tie-in to the vent stack (from the basement bathroom) to contend with. It also has to be a maximum of 35″ wide to fit the module of the built-ins which are being made and will be assembled after the carpet is installed.

Framing is a drag

Posted by Jeffrey on Apr 13, 2005

I have spent the past couple of days framing in the ductwork along the ceiling.

Roughed in bulkhead to contain main supply duct.

The original plan, last year was to relocate all the ducts to the side wall so we would have the full height ceiling but when I found out that the price tag on that event would be several thousand, that quickly dropped off the scope of work. So now I am enclosing with some G1S ply so that I can get a bit more height under the ducts and it is a bit more durable than drywall.
Of course as I was going along putting up the 2 x 2s I found the place where the former owners had hacked out a section of the main duct run, because, well, I guess because they could… Maybe it was the supply to the sauna which they later covered up because there were no registers in the sauna before I took it out. No matter, I had some sheet metal left over from the first patch job I did (which incidently increased the amount of heat we got in the Master bedroom), so I just bent it up and used some self tapping screws to fix it in place. Then I taped the seams with some of that metal duct tape. BTW, the traditional “duct tape” is good for everything but ducts. It dries out so that makes it useless for patching ducts. Who would have guessed?
The next task is to get the plywood cut and secured into place.

Roughed in bulkhead to contain main supply duct.

Sunny outside, who wants to be stuck in the basement

Posted by Jeffrey on Apr 11, 2005

So Sunday was beautiful outside so when I was given the choice about either working in the basement or going golfing, guess which one I chose?
Well, I still did work in the morning, setting up for putting in the bulkhead over the ductwork, but then found I didn’t have enough 2 x 2s so I had to make a trip to the Depot. It was surprisingly busy for a Sunday morning, but I guess everyone wanted to get a start on yardwork etc.

More ducts

Posted by Jeffrey on Apr 8, 2005

Well had to resume the work in the basement because there are a few more things to do before I can start drywalling.

Roughed in bulkhead to contain return air duct.

I had to frame in the stack anyway, so I figured I should combine this and the return air duct into one. The original plan suggested by the guy who did the home energy audit was to put the duct on the other side of the room, but I would have had a bump out in that wall and one on the other side, so it made more sense to combine the two.
I also have to build the bulkhead for the ductwork in the ceiling (which will probably take the better part of a week) and make sure all the inside corners for the walls have been taken care of so there is a surface for the edges of the drywall.

Framing corners.

I also want to finish the floor patching so this has time to cure. I think that it will look like I am making progress when the drywall goes up, although all the sanding etc does take a fair amount of time. I will need some re-inforcements to help me hang the ceiling since holding a 4 x 8 sheet of drywall on my head while I secure it to the ceiling sounds a bit difficult.
I can’t work on Saturday as this is when we have the ‘Class’ (pre-natal) all day.
I realized this week that I also have to do my taxes sometime. When will someone invent a more realistic tax form? Like this perhaps?

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.

More taping than you can shake a stick at

Posted by Jeffrey on Mar 30, 2005

Last night I finished the taping of all the insulation using Tuck Tape. Its turning into a real gaudy display of color down there with light yellow wood strapping, pink insulation, red and black tape, not to mention the grimy grey floor and dark wood joists. Very fashionable…
In fact the plywood stiffeners I laminated to the joists co-ordinate quite well with the dark wood existing joists

Existing joists with plywood laminated and blocking installed.

and the black and white wiring (which hopefully will be changed when the electricians come to do the rewire next week,) it seems almost a shame to cover this up. Maybe if I don’t drywall the ceiling people will think that it was intentional not that I ran out of time? Probably not.
I just took a look at the schedule and given the amount of time remaining, it will be close to get everything done on time, but I am keeping my fingers crossed.