Before and During Pics. Plus a Little About Electric.

The laundry room is coming along. One of the major hold ups is me trying to figure out the electrical. I am just starting to grasp the overall concept of wiring in addition to re-wiring a whole house. I know that I am in the very beginning of my training here but oh the possibilities! Like more than one outlet per room! Exterior outlets!  Exterior Lighting! The list goes on and on! And my house not burning down due to bad wiring that is in it now. I have been content to live in my house without thinking too much about the electric until this renovation but now I can't ignore the obvious any longer. Here are some pictures from the past weekend:

Old light switches 

Hummmmm......... does this look safe?

Laundry room (Mudroom) before

Old exterior door and former basement steps go to the left

No more door or steps! And you can see the new linen closet in the back ground.

New windows and framed up exterior door. 

I REALLY LOVE PUTTING IN INSULATION! WOW!!! WAS THAT EVER FUN!

So as you can see, I haven't been just sitting around eating bon-bon's and watching soap operas. Hopefully I can get drywall up this weekend. What a glorious day that will be!

A Quandary in the Laundry

I am at the point where I get to start picking out some of the "fun" stuff for the house. You would think that I would excited be here but it has proven to be more challenging than I had expected. I have been out looking at interior doors and I was amazed at how many styles that there are to choose from! My decision was an easy one since I have a fondness for Mission (also called Shaker or Craftsman) style of furniture so I already planned on incorporating that in the style in the house as a whole. I had a few rules when it came to picking out doors.

1) NO HOLLOW DOORS! I didn't care if they were solid wood or a MDF product but NO HOLLOW DOORS. (you can insert an image of me with my fist clenched screaming to the heavens and NO HOLLOW DOORS like a scene from Mommy Dearest.

2) NO RAISED PANELS! I am pretty sure I hate raised panels as much at Joan Crawford hated wire hangers.

So here is the interior door that I am going to use through out the whole house:

And yes, I am having white doors and white trim in my house. I love these doors. Simple and stylish. You can find this door at all 3 of the big box stores and all are Made in the USA. Easy Peasey Lemon Squeezy. So I put a full linen closet in the laundry room or I should say that during the demo we "discovered" a closet behind the walls. I now need a door for that closet. I am also not a fan of bi-fold doors but I thought I should at least I should check into it. Sure enough they make a matching bi-fold door for the price of.........$450.00. Yes........ $450.00!!!  You have got to be kidding me! Un-Effing-Believable! That is a "custom" door from the millworks at all 3 big box stores. But then I get on the internet and find at The Big Orange store"

JELD-WEN 30 in. x 80 in. Molded Composite Prepaint Brilliant White 3-Panel Craftsman Smooth Interior Door Slab

Model # O85676

Internet # 203403287

$222.48 /EA-Each (+ $55.00 for Shipping for a total of $277.48) 

I believe that I could make this work. I am sure of it. It is an option. Not my favorite option. Then I was reading one of my favorite bloggers, Sandra, from Sawdust and Paper Scraps and see this:

Click on the picture to see the "how-to" on this door at the Accent Piece!

Hell Yes!!! This Rocks!!!

I LOVE THE BARN DOOR TRACK!!!

But this was a guest post on Sandra's Blog. You can the the creator of this beautiful door over at The Accent Piece. Suzy and her blog is now on my favorites list. Of course the door I would use would be a white Mission style door like pictured above.

Thanks to Sandra and Suzy for you inspiration!

Doing some serious sweating and not because of the heatwave.

The laundry room project is moving along like molasses in January. It has consumed my life. Not the laundry room specifically but the house renovation in general. I always thought I was handy but this has taken things to a whole different level. I was a "re-placer" I could replace anything that was pre-existing,  Like faucets, receptacles, switches and fixtures. But now I and the "originator" and it requires a pretty big learning curve. So here is my lesson in plumbing.

PLUMBING 101

The first thing I needed to do is get water from the basement up to the first floor. Lucky for me there is the internet. Thanks to YouTube I think I can do anything! So here is my first stab at sweating copper pipes.

1) You go out and but a handy dandy kit like this. It had a propane torch, solder, flux and ................

DIRECTIONS! See? 5 EASY STEPS TO SOLDER A COPPER FITTING! WOW!!!!

(Directions are merely somebody else's opinion on how to do the job)

2) You buy a shut off box like this and you mount it in your frame work. Still easy!

NOTE: GO SHUT THE MAIN OFF NOW BEFORE YOU GO ANY FURTHER!

3) Then you start putting it all together!!!

 4) A view from the basement. Here are the first 4 elbows I soldered. The joist you see is the one I caught momentarily on fire. On the left is the 10" sill joist that I was too lazy to drill through.

A nice long stretch....................................................................................................................

Going around another corner and down the wall.

Connecting in the main lines! I was feeling pretty good at this point!

Here is the drain and the water lines. Nice, huh?

Looky at my wire coat hanger used as a support. Classy.

Everything went pretty well except when I cut the lines they still had water in them. YOU CANNOT SOLDER COPPER WITH WATER IN THEM. So I used an old plumber trick- I got out as much water as I could and then I rolled up some white bread and shoved it down the lines. I am here to tell you that it really works! 

Then you go over to the main shut off.................close your eyes.........................hold your breath...............and turn on the water and pray like hell.

No leaks! Success! 

Putting the laundry room back together

Demo is just about done and I am starting to put laundry room put back together. It is an awesome feeling. I have to admit that I have had some apprehension because of my lack of knowledge along the way but that has not deterred me. Back when I was talking with the Gitter Done boys about renovation my house they were encouraging me to "just build a new house" I think I understand what they were talking about......NOW. So here is what has been happening in the last few weeks during our heat wave 2012:

New Sub Floor Where the Stairs Used To Be!

First of all I have to proclaim my love for Simpson Ties!!!!!!! I have used these to build my work bench that you can see HERE and putting in floor joists.  They are awesome, cheap and durable. A great combo.  You can see how I used them below.

Here is the floor joists and you can see the basement down below

Here is another angle. As you can see you walked down 2 steps to a landing and then went right to the outside. There was a door there but took it out and put in new foundation block and framed in the opening. You would go left to go to the basement but in this picture I have the steps removed. 

When putting in sub floor you got to put down some PL400! The stuff is da bomb! It eliminates squeaks and trust me, your sub floor will never come up. You will be laughing in your grave when the next people remodel your house. 

TA-DA!!!!! Subfloor is coming together!

Building a False Wall Because I am Lazy

On the north wall (which was original exterior wall of the porch that was enclosed)   there is a huge beam that runs the entire length of the house. It is something like 10"x10" and it is NOT what I want to be drilling through. I figured the electrical wouldn't be so bad but trying to drill a 2 1/2 drain would be another story. . Plus I didn't want to compromise the structure of the house.Then there is the issue of that being a planked wall and not studs So I decided to build a false wall to give me something to put the utilities in. I am not sure that this is the way a real contractor would do it but this is the way I seen as a solution to multiple problems.

Here is  a picture of the planked wall. It is an inch thick with that 10" beam directly below it. NOTICE: The wall on the left is a part of the oldest house. It is actually hand sawed I will try to get better pictures of this before I close it up. It is quite interesting. The newer house on the right is still hand sawed but it has a much smoother finish.

Here is the a picture of the false wall framed up in front of the former exterior planked wall. Please take note of the tape measure hanging from the top plate:

I was lining up the studs with the ceiling which has joists 16" on center. WOW! How easy is this going to be?    

Well I guess I should paid better attention because the ceiling joist's are ACTUAL 2x4's and I off some where and my last 4 studs were slanted. As you can see below. I am sure this falls under the "measure twice - cut once" rule. 

My mom was out visiting when I discovered the fiasco. Here is how that conversation went:

ME: Shit! These studs are off!!!

MOM: Oh just a little bit.(trying to be nice)

ME: A little bit? They are an inch off from the top to the bottom!!!!!

MOM: Well aren't you going to have drywall in front of the it? Nobody will be able to see it.And it is just a false wall and not a structural issue.

ME: Yeah, but I will know. (insert a lot of curse words here) How could I have messed up so (insert more curse words here) bad???  (((MORE CURSING))) I AM NOT REDOING THAT WALL!!! 

My mom left and I fixed the wall. After all......... I would know.

Here is my Great Pyrenees Merlin carving out a spot in the middle of the renovation. 

I REALLY HATE DEMO!!!

I have to apologize for the horrible pictures. I took them with my new fancy-schmancy cell phone and then I E-Mailed them to myself.  Well it is hard to make them bigger without pix-elating them. I never claimed to be a compute genius. 

So I decided early in this project that I was going to replace all of the 2-wire electrical with Romex that is actually grounded.  I guess that was an easy decision when all of the wire was BEHIND the walls and I couldn't see it but when I started tearing into stuff it became quite obvious that this was going to be a bigger challenge than I had first anticipated. This house had been rewired at some time and upgraded up from knob and tube. 

In order to do the laundry room I had to tear out the living room wall which was the point of origin that the wiring had come from. So her is what you get when you tear out:

1 layer of ceiling tile

1 layer of 1 by boards

1 layer of 3/8 drywall

1 layer of lathe and plaster.

Yes, you read that right, there was 4 layers of material. And a million pounds of dust! It was horrible! 

Then I did something that might now have been the best decision. I decided that we do NOT need a dumpster and we could bag it up and take it to my work and put it into two 2-yard dumpsters. What a dumbass move on my part. I am going to leave it at that. 

I had my buddy come out and run the electricity up to the new laundry room and I am finishing putting in the outlets and switches. I should be hanging drywall this weekend. There is a God. 

I had a little side project that I must show off!

The heat wave is starting to break here in the Midwest and I am still diligently working on the laundry room. Without being overly optimistic I think I actually have everything demo'ed out of that area and I am actually starting to put  things back together. I did do a small side project that I forgot to share!!!  


I do live in a farm house THAT HAS NO FRONT PORCH....... yet! But I am mildly obsessed with porch swings. Well.....more that mildly obsessed. But what is a girl to do who wants a porch swing that has no porch??? First you find this gem on Craigslist:

Crappy pic I know! This was one of those glider thingy's. The kind of one that had a frame that it sat in. So when I called the nice lady that lived in a less than desirable neighborhood about her swing (wood seat), she said that she would take $15.00 dollars for it. WHAT?? I WILL BE RIGHT THERE!! 


Normally I L-O-V-E me some Craigslist! Love, Love, Love Craigslist!!! But I hate when you pull up to a house and wonder if this is your last day on earth.  Yes Craigslist can take you to creepy places.


I get there and buy the swing seat thingy and tell the nice lady in the bad end of town that I am leaving all the frame that is suppose to go with it. She didn't seem to mind but she wanted to know what I was going to do with the seat without the glider. So I explained to her, while watching for random gunfire, that I was going to paint it and hang it up. She just stared at me and said, "To each there own." Snagged the money and went back in the house. The whole thing was very strange.

So here is my swing that Big L and his buddy Cody hung up for me in a walnut tree on the other side of the driveway. I sit here all the time. It faces across the road where there is no work to be done. It is shady. It is comfy. I love it






The break down in cost is: Swing $15.00 Paint $10.00, Chains rated at 800 pounds $60.00. Watching Big L and Cody climb 20 feet up in the tree to place the chains..............PRICELESS!

~~~~~Heat Wave~~~~~~ and back to home improvement.

I live in the Midwest. I have lived here most of my life with the exception of a couple of rebellious years of living in California straight out of high school. I live in the same town that my parents lived when I was born and I am the 5th generation to this town so I guess I can say that I am a true "Midwesterner"

If you are not from here, well let me tell you that we are in the middle of a heat wave and a drought. It is hot...it is dry.......it is unbearable at best. But Midwesterners are stoic. Nobody complains. You go somewhere and you hear, "Sure is hot out there" or "Is it hot enough for you?" and when you leave there is the obligatory, "Stay cool"

I try to be stoic and I think I do a pretty good job for the most part but I haven't been doing much home improvement because all I have been doing is demo and no improvement, I know you got to do demo to be able to put stuff back together, but I am sick of it. I feel like if I was going to blog I would just end up bitching about more demo so I  decided that I wasn't going to write anything until I had something positive to say.

Then the heat wave happened. A perfect excuse to not do anything outside on the farm. I decided I was going to work 1 hour a day on my project and I was NOT going to start anything else until I get the laundry room done. Magically things are actually getting done this way! Seriously. I start working on it after work and I tell myself that I just need to tear stuff apart for 1 hour. Well I am actually starting to put stuff back together and I should be hanging sheetrock this weekend. Hallelujah!

I might mention that I picked one of the hardest rooms to do first. I tore out and rebuilt an exterior wall, (never  framed before), I put in new windows (never done that before), Laid blocks for a foundation (never done that before) Put in new floor joists (Never done that before), Installed subfloor (Do I really need to say it?) I haven't even covered electrical or plumbing yet.

So I am I think I had a pretty big learning curve but thank God I rarely stop and think before I do anything or else I would haven't accomplished half of everything I have done with in my life.