Floors!

We just got home and got to see the first coat. It looks great! We found out that the flooring in the addition which was put done in 1980 is different from the floor in the original house. So there is a slight difference, but it is hard to tell. The addition is Red Oak and the original is White Oak. The only place you can tell is the dining room to kitchen transition. Let's see how it looks with the final coat tomorrow. With the dark stain it looks pretty good.

Somehow I deleted all of the before photos from yesterday with it all sanded. Here are some photos from today.

 

Erin inspecting the new floors.

 

 

This is the wall of the island. We'll have the counter overhang and turn down the side to the floor.

 

It is hard to tell in this photo, but here you can see the difference between the two types of wood. In the kitchen the new wood is Red Oak and the old house was White Oak.

 

Here where they toothed in the new wood you can't tell at all. The new wood matches the 1980 addition wood perfectly.

 

 

The fumes are a little strong tonight... We'll probably wake up with headaches. Since it is not that cold, we have the windows open. 

 

Floors start tomorrow

Not much new to report. They spent the last few days finishing the drywall and priming the walls. The red kitchen wall is finally gone. Tomorrow they start the floors. We had to decide tonight as to what color to stain the floors. Which one do you like?

The one of the far left looks better in this photo. I think we are going to go with the second from the left.

 

 

Some paint colors we are considering for the back room.

 

 

The house is now completely empty. Here are the floors before.

 

The floors turn up the wall under the island.

 

They did a great job with the drywall. I'm going to mount the TV on this wall. The mounting bracket I got online should arrive this week.

 

Let's see how these transitions look when they are finished.

 

 

Erin made a nice dinner on the dishwasher and BBQ again.

 

 

 

More drywall, a new old door and a problem

Not a whole lot of progress over the Thanksgiving break. On Wednesday before they were able to install the rest of the drywall along with the first and second coats of Spackle. It is good to finally see things coming back together. This week I think they are going to start all of the built in shelves. Thursday, Friday and Saturday the floors will be done.

Erin making a lovely dinner in our "kitchen".

Today (with a lot of help from Jason. Seriously. Thank you again Jason) we were able to salvage the old door from the pantry to use as the door to the powder room. We had to build custom casing and shave the door down a bit but it fits perfectly.

 

The door just needs some sanding and a new coat of paint.

Lastly, I noticed something pretty scary while walking to our current "kitchen". One of the anchor bolts supporting the addition floor from 1980 was loose. The contractors at the time did a pretty crappy job attaching the anchor bolts. This is not the first time I saw this. In another area I had added two more the correct way. When you see decks collapse in the news every once in a while it is usually because of the bad attachments to the house.

I pulled the bolt out and it had completely sheared off. That means there was a lot of weigh on this one bolt to cause it to break in half. It doesn't look like the floor dropped at all, but I can't figure out what is even holding the floor up. The next bolts are about 30" away in either direction. I added a temporary support below and I'm goinig to have the contractors look at it tomorrow.

Drywall and new structure

On Tuesday they started to put up the drywall around the powder room and pantry. They also finished the work putting the new beam in to reinforce the sagging floor. We found that some of the existing 75 year old floor joists were so cut up with pipe holes. Some were sagging and cracked. It probably was not going to get any worse, but we decided to spend the time and money to fix the worst one. Here are some shots of the new beam.

 

That ceiling is a mess. They had to cut out all of the pipes and some existing structure to get this new beam in.

 

 

We had them span the new beam all the way back to the bearing wall behind the refrigerator.

 

 

 

 

That is the new pantry closet with drywall. There will be a full height flush wood door.

 

When I get back from Thanksgiving I think all of the drywall will be installed. Next they are going to start the built in shelves in the pantry and above the counter tops. Later in the week they will start to refinish all of the floors.

Inspections and Progress

Today we had the first round of inspections. Now that all of the electrical and plumbing rough in work was completed we needed to have all of that inspected. They actually came early as I requested and there were only a few minor comments. He did not notice the cracked structure, but I'll get to that later. Despite not getting a comment from the inspector (to be honest I think the lights being on and in your face prevented him from seeing it) we are going to go ahead with a fix.

The past couple of days have been slow progress. Once the electrical went it we have been trying to deal with the existing structural issues.

All of the wood flooring, outlets, lights, switches are in. We have also finalized the cabinet order, confirmed the appliance delivery date, ordered the sink and today Erin picked up the tile. Here are a few shots.

 

This will be the wall of the island. We have the wood flooring turned up to clad the face.

 

This is where the flooring blends in with the existing. They did a great job blending the wood despite the level change.

 

 

There is a lot of crap that has to go into this pilaster. Hopefully we can compact a little. This will get clad in drywall.

 

Recess for the refrigerator. Built in cabinets will go above the refrigerator in front of that duct work. They also ran the water line for the refrigerator.

 

Drywall is here.

 

Blended the new wood at the pantry.

New floors and a temporay kitchen

Today they started to put the new wood floors in. They are doing a great job Toothing in the new wood. They have to do this at the bathroom and as you go from the dining room into the kitchen.

 

Several people have been asking what we are doing for a kitchen. Here you go. Yes I did put carpet tile down. It is a pretty sweet setup. Unfortunately we ran out of plug space.

 

So we plugged the hot plate in on top of the dryer. Erin made some great egg sandwiches.

 

New Beams and old beams

Once the wall came down the steel beam quickly went in. Towards the end of last week they took out the temporary support and the house is still standing. They did a great job cutting out the masonry and keeping a clean edge for the portions that will remain exposed.

 

Unfortunately once we took more of the ceiling down we found a "header" that was previously supported by the partition we took down and a cracked beam.

 

 

Here is the cracked floor joist.

 

We had to sister in a new joist. The double 2x in at the top of the photo is to pick up that header that used to sit on the wall we took down.

 

 

You can see that old double 2x which supports a few floor joists that was put there to make room for all of the plumbing above. They also had to rework some of this piping so that it will not stick out of the ceiling. Unfortunately all of this is going to add to the cost of the project.

 

 

Unfortunately now that the ceiling is all open you can see all of the holes in the old floor joists from the plumbing. When I did the bathroom I tried to patch them as best I could. The house had been like that for 75 years with no major issues. Unfortunately the inspector probably won't care about that. Trying to figure out what to do about that...