More Progress!

One of the biggest challenges of the remodel has been figuring out how to do the required ceiling beam in the dining room, because the sewer pipe was where the beam and a support post needed to be. The solution was eight fittings that snaked around the post, and a special offset steel beam. The pipe snakes around the post on the side away from the dining room so that ‘hiding’ it is less of a problem (will probably lower the ceiling over the peninsula area, rather than in the dining room). The vertical pipe by the post was also changed from plastic to cast iron, to reduce the noise of flushing water, as it will be very close to people sitting at the new peninsula, and cast iron pipe is much quieter. Some sort of insulation will go around the plastic fittings at the top. All structural work is now done, and a structural inspection is scheduled for Monday.

This is our new crank-out casement window that will be in front of the kitchen sink. It’s hard to tell, because of the tar paper sticking out on all sides, but the window is pushed out from the wall a little. The spaces (boxed in areas) on both sides was the trick used to enable moving the window toward the dining room and not have to figure out how to patch the steel siding. The pushed out boxed area around the window will have Hardie Board siding that matches in appearance. Our architect came up with the idea.

Here’s the inside view of the new kitchen window and its related framing.

Our builder patched the kitchen floor where we discovered the wood was burned and weak. In the past a small fire happened below the floor, probably caused by plumbing work - using a torch to solder copper pipes to the water heater. It is not clear if it went out on its own or if someone discovered it and put it out, but the wood was left charred and burned.

The temporary walls are finally gone, so we now get a feel of the open space. The first picture is looking toward the living room; the second toward the garage (hint...you can see where the funny little angled hall was).

We are off through the plastic portal to the rest of the house. Good night!

Steel Beam

The project continues to be on schedule. Today Corry and two helpers threaded a steel bean into place across the new opening between the kitchen and dining room, where part of a load-bearing wall was removed. Now the temporary joists can be removed and the newly configured areas will begin to take their final shape. This beam corresponds with the new steel bean in the basement ceiling. Each piece serves to maintain the integrity and strength of the entire structure. In fact, they are supposed to help our house stay standing should there be an earthquake, or at least this area will remain intact.

Puzzle Pieces

Although we have been home owners for 40 years, we have never “decorated” a room until we undertook this project. We have chosen paint and floor coverings occasionally, and an individual piece of furniture once in a while. Together we have designed and built decks and bay windows, but when it comes to planning a space starting with a blank sheet of paper, we are novices. No wonder people use decorators! But we are getting a lot of satisfaction from putting all of the pieces of the puzzle together. Right, wrong or indifferent... the design will be OURS.

We visited our cabinet maker yesterday and defined most of the  details of what will probably be the biggest-ticket item for the project. Don loves quarter-sawn white oak. We decided on a simple Shaker-style. All of the new inside-the-cupboard options look very functional, and a far cry from the carpenter built-in-place drawers and shelves we had before, that were simply boxes sliding on wood.

When our old kitchen cupboards were removed we found this, the signature of the original cabinet builder, complete with the number and insignia of his union. Signed exactly 67 years ago today.

The first idea we had for kitchen tile and colors incountered a major snag when the artist began a cancer treatment which would take her away from work for weeks, perhaps months, so we turned for inspiration for the kitchen colors from a local tile maker, Pratt and Larson. Sami, with some input from Don, has designed a tile focal point for behind the range, using multi-colored bas-relief tiles featuring garden and animal themes. Earth colors from these tiles will be used throughout the kitchen.

Top right, white oak sample. The tiles are part of Pratt and Larson's "Watercolor" line.

This concept drawing does not show the depth and range of colors, or the background color, which would be the lightest tile in the photo above.

For the new main-floor bathroom Sami is envisioning a color pallet drawn from Simon our cat, creamy browns, grays with turquoise blue touches, although this is still “on the drawing board.” We do have a concrete plan for the all of the elements of that room including fixtures and their placement. This will help Corey in his framing effort in the next several days.

Should we use the beautiful blue of Simon's eyes as an accent color, or perhaps bring the rusty red in from the kitchen decor? Decisions, decisions.

We feel like many of the puzzle pieces are moving into place! Don had his fifth bone marrow biopsy today. The results will determine what his next stage of treatment will be. We’re hoping that the treatment will be moderate, and Don will be able to do all he has signed up for (all wood trim, kitchen and bath flooring, patching the oak flooring in the dining room and entry way, installing bathroom fixtures and all light fixtures, and a couple of specialty wood working projects). Whew!  All for now.

LOTS ACCOMPLISHED!

Since our last blog entry, we were able to complete the ‘sweat equity’ part of demolition and prep for our builder, Corey, before leaving on an 8-day trip (Sami’s 50th high school reunion and a stay at the Library Cottage in Manzanita). The ‘sweat equity’ work included completely stripping the kitchen and main floor bathroom of all cabinets, cupboards, appliances, sinks, toilet, and ceramic wall and floor tile, as well as selling, donating, or disposing of those things. It also included completely emptying Don’s Man-Cave (basement office) and removing the wall separating it from the rest of the basement, to enable footing and column work for a needed support beam. It should be noted that Carl and Angie helped demo the kitchen (a Father’s Day present).

Before departing on our trip, we boarded Simon and Daphne at the "Kitty Condos."  We endured a loud symphony of complaints on the drive there. We tried to tell them they would be better off at the condos than in a house with concrete sawing and jack hammer work.

While we were on our trip, Corey began the serious demolition work and put in the footing for the support column in the basement. He dutifully sent us several pictures at the end of each work day, so we could monitor the progress.  It was a little daunting to leave, knowing what was going to happen to our home. It helped to know that Corey was running the show—much better than someone doing this who we didn’t know or have confidence in. Here are a couple of his in-process pictures...

This is the hole cut in the basement floor where Don’s office wall was removed, for the footing for support columns to support a beam that will allow part of the load-bearing wall shared by the kitchen and dining room to go away.

The work area (kitchen, dining room, main floor bedroom) is sealed off with zippered plastic doors, to contain the dust and debris of the demo work.

Sometimes we would have to study Corey’s pictures a little, to understand what part of the house we were looking at.  Not to worry...

We returned from our trip late Friday, August 31st. We found that we had to think ahead about how to get to different parts of the house. The next morning we mastered how to handle showering, breakfast, etc., by going from the top floor down to the living room, outside the back living room door, around to the back door to the basement, and then inside to go downstairs to the basement for coffee and breakfast. Then we retrieved the cats from the Kitty Condos, and endured another LOUD symphony of complaints during the ride home. They have finally settled in and have conditionally forgiven us for their unfortunate incarceration.

Here are photos taken of progress since our return.

All wall and ceiling surfaces are now removed, exposing lots of wires and plumbing.  What may not be obvious are the two temporary walls on either side of the load-bearing wall that has been removed.  The temporary walls hold up the ceiling and the upstairs until the load beam for the ceiling is installed.

The ceiling has been removed in the kitchen.

Every project has one BIG challenge.  For this project, it is the sewer stack pipe, shown below.  It is causing problems far out of proportion to it’s innocent look.  The challenge is to reroute it so that the required ceiling beam on the main floor can be properly placed, and also not alter where we want the wall opened up.  Dan the plumber will show up on Tuesday and hopefully perform miracles.

 

The pictures below show the load beam installed in the basement ceiling, in Don’s office.  This beam supports the columns for the load beam that will be installed in the dining room ceiling.  To avoid having to put a column in the middle of the basement shower (meaning remodeling yet another bath room), and having a beam hang below the ceiling in Don’s office, a fabricated cantilevered steel beam was installed (cantilevered meaning one side extends beyond it’s column (over the top of the shower stall).

Here’s the new shower for the main floor bathroom.  It’s in three pieces, as there’s no way to get a one-piece stall in to the house.

We have made a lot of headway in a bunch of other areas too, but we'll save that for the next blog entry.