Just a few more days of this. The backsplash goes in tomorrow, so the stove will follow shortly after that.
around the house
Moving In
Three, maybe three and a half weeks ago, we reached a point in our kitchen remodel project that everything more or less looked like a kitchen. The counters and tops were in, and while the floor wasn’t finished yet, it was installed and looked like a floor. And yet there was so much to do — trim around the windows and doors, baseboard trim, final plumbing (including fixing problems the sewer line in the front yard and with the newly-installed gas line), lights, and the like. So it looked like we were almost there, but we were still so far away. All the changes from that point on were so small in comparison to ripping out a window and door to rebuild the header.
Finally, we’ve reached a point that we’re almost to the point that we can say, “We’re almost done.” “Almost done” because the under-the-cabinet lighting installation has been put off for some time, as has the final venting of the microwave through the room (right now, it’s just popped into the attic). So even when the back splash gets completed next week, and we finally move in the stove — the final appliance — we still won’t be complete done. And then there’s the new dining room furniture we’ve ordered so that every little thing in the kitchen, except for the coffee maker and toaster oven, will be new.
So today we made the final little adjustments and started moving in. L and I filled all the trim nail holes with spackling while E and K cleaned all the windows. Then I set out with the caulk gun to caulk the trim before it gets a coat of paint.
K, in the meantime, prepared all the new shelves with liners and began running all our dishes through the new dishwasher. We quickly discovered the enormous difference between the old dishwasher and the new: the old sometimes cleaned; the new is so powerful that it knocked the finish off a couple of items that we’d put in the bottom.
Tomorrow, the table migrates back to the dining area, where it will stay for a few weeks until the new furniture arrives, and we begin moving food to the kitchen, reverting our basement to just that. We’ll tear down the field kitchen in the backyard, move the grill back onto the deck, and begin to forget the work of the summer and just live.
Working
It only stands to reason that, in renovating the kitchen, we should have to dig up the sewer line. Again. K decided she was not happy with the job the kids did (and I did afterward) filling in the trench, so she took matters into her own rake.
This Week
Tops
Cabinets
Breakfast
We’ve been living without a kitchen for about a month now, and we’ve gotten accustomed to it to a degree. Every day we cook on the grill (including baking biscuits this morning), so every day seems like we’re camping out. If you look at things from a certain perspective, that sense of camping is highlighted even more.
Details
The kids stayed home today because of the simple reason that we’re doing work that allows them to stay. We don’t have to head out to get anything; we don’t have to do any serious heavy work. Door molding and electrical finishing. So the kids today began playing with the leftovers of the hardwood floor. E had watched the whole process, so he, like the workers Tuesday, began laying out the floor and banging it together with a rubber mallet.
As for the work itself, the room looks like a room. The door molding is in, and we’ve got outlets almost done as well. The range arrived today for fitting the cabinets and counter top next week. Soon it will not just look like a room but like a kitchen.
New
The day began with a treat for the Boy: the flooring company installed our new hardwood, which has been sitting in the living room for close to a month, acclimating to our house’s moisture levels. E sat at the top of the basement stairs and watched as two men laid out the wood for the main part of the room while another worked on the small area in front of the basement door.
They took a smoke break after finishing the layout, then came back and finished the rest of the job in less than a couple of hours.
He of course chatted them up the entire time.
“Sorry about how shy my son is,” I laughed. The gentlemen found him generally amusing, though, and were very patient with his questions and own little explanations.
The afternoon, though, was all about the Girl: we bought her a new bike, a Trek FX, which is in fact a small adult bike. Lots of big changes for her: braking with her hands, shifting gears. Plus the size change — theoretically, this is a bike that can last her for ten years.
When K came home from work, she was happy to see the Girl’s bike (which we took out for an initial ride in the evening of 11 km), but was even more happy to see the floor.
It looks like a room again.
Morning Light and Evening Dark
Had I been able last night to imagine what our kitchen would look like, I would have probably had something like this in mind.
As it was, it was dark, and I in fact saw something like this. Sort of.
Dry Walls
Working
Hide and Seek
For two weeks, it’s been approaching: the moment when hours upon hours of work disappear under insulation and drywall. The LVL that serves as the header for both the window opening and door, the installation of which was a day-long extravaganza of sweating and straining, will be visible only in pictures.
The runs of 12-gauge and 14-gauge wires, all the pretty yellow and white lines snaking through the walls, will disappear, and the only evidence will be a working, properly grounded wiring system — what most folks take for granted in the developed world.
The gas line that pops up from the floor will be hidden behind our new stove, though the majority of it (along with the new floor-supporting beam) will always be invisible, hidden in the crawl space.
All these things were running through my head as I lazily prepared to install the insulation, thus hiding everything we’d spent so much time and money creating over the last two weeks. It was a job the Boy, who loves to help with everything, could have easily done — no heavy lifting, nothing dangerous edges — except for the fact that we had no protective gear for his eyes and lungs. And even if we had, I would be reticent to let him help with such a job. The least physically demanding yet the most dangerous in a way.
I put some music on — Led Zepplin’s 2012 Celebration Day live album — and got to covering up everything we’d done.
Job done, I tore down the plastic separating the kitchen from the rest of the house — we’ll need to protect the rest of the house throughout the process, but this particular piece of plastic was hung on a 2×4 that would make drywalling impossible — and thought how weird it was to have unrestricted access once again.
Home Runs
This was supposed to be last Tuesday.
Returning
You should always return borrowed items in better shape than you received them.
So the neighbor will receive his truck back a bit cleaner than he lent it and with a full tank of gas.
We’re done with the truck, which means we’ve hauled away the last of the old kitchen. Today we unloaded drywall, wood panelling, rotten subfloor, tired brick molding, and bits and pieces we’d accumulated. The kitchen is stripped and repaired, ready for the new starting Monday with electrical and plumbing. Out with the old. In with the mystery.
Sub
Two things got accomplished today: we got the window back in, which took most of the morning, and we got the subfloor fixed, which took most of the afternoon.
The evening was for family.
Crawling Space
The light was particularly beautiful this morning given the fact that I knew we would be spending the whole day in the crawl space.
It was a blessing and a curse, really. The heat outside was so oppressive that it was really almost pleasant in the crawl space, which made it a welcome change from yesterday. On the other hand, it’s the crawl space.
Out mission was simple: deal with a 3/4 inch sag in the dining room portion of the floor.
A seven-foot level showed the problem clearly. The idea behind the solution was simple: build two piers to hold a new support beam under the affected area. An easy idea with a back-breaking implementation.
But the beam is up, and the jacks are still temporarily in place. “The floor will need to settle a little before we make any definitive moves,” my mentor/guide explained.
For now, things look good.
Support
A header is meant to support the span of the door so that the weight of the house is not actually on the door but on the header above the door. What happens if you don’t build the header correctly? You’ll have weight bearing down on things that aren’t designed to take weight.
What happens if you don’t build the header correctly and the door is on the corner of the house? You get a door that’s almost impossible to open.
What happens if you put a lot more weight on a floor than it’s designed to handle and leave it there for a long time. You’ll get a lot of sag. Approximately 5/8 to 3/4 inch in our case.
See that “header” above the door? All the weight was on those 2×4’s nailed together, which in turn sit on two 2×4’s below them. That’s why the door wouldn’t open.
Apparently, the holding mess that was in the house a couple of owners ago was concentrated in the dining area, which is why the floor sags there.
These two “whichs” are why my mentor said, “Well, we’re putting off electrical for a few more days so we can fix the structural issues.”
So with the help of a third man, we built a temporary wall to support the structure while we knocked out the “header.” Then we jacked up the roof and installed two LVL beams to make a new header for the entire door/window section, making sure that the supports for the beams rested on the columns below in the crawl space.
And by then, it was time to quit. So we boarded up the gaping hole, hung plastic to protect it all from rainfall, cleaned up, and called it a day.
Well, the other two gentlemen called it a day (at least for this project). I continued by clearing the floor of any debris and marking the floor, with the help of a six-foot level, for the areas where it sags.
Tomorrow we get to do it all again, except in the crawl space, without the ridiculously heavy LVL beams.
I’d like to find out who the “contractor” is that put this together and send photos of this “work” to every building inspector in the county along with his name. “You might want to check his work carefully.”
More Invisible Progress
The plan was to begin working on the electrical today, laying out and planning everything, starting to pull wire in the afternoon. That would be blown, I knew, because I knew just how bad that leak in the winter had been, and I knew what the subfloor would look like.
Sure enough, that because evident Saturday during demolition day.
Another thing became evident: we would have to do something about the door to the deck. The header wasn’t much of a header. But when we chalked a line above the 2×8 that ran across the top of the windows, ostensibly supporting them, and saw a 3/8 inch difference between the middle edge and the corners, we realized we had more work to do.
So the subfloor work gets moved to Wednesday as we spend tomorrow fixing this huge issue.
And the electrical? Well, who knows?
On the upside, the cucumbers and blueberries are growing nicely, and the outdoor kitchen is functioning very well indeed.
Demolition Day
