Summer Remodeling!

[Nerf]

It's that time of year again, and we've decided it's time to update the house.

First project - the computer room.  30 year old wallpaper and ugly carpet gets the boot, after we finish here it's on to the rest of the house! (hooray  )

I forgot to get a before picture of the computer room, but heres a closeup of the lovely wallpaper:



And the living room (next project) with all the shit from the computer room in it - don't mind the attack chihuahua at the bottom:


After about 2 hours - wallpaper is fully removed, taking off baseboard, getting ready to texture walls and paint before we lay down the laminate.



More pictures to come as the project goes on, we should be done with painting and have the laminate laid by monday.

[NiX]

God you're hairy. Don't get paint in it.

[Nerf]

Ha, thats not me, but I'll let the Yeti know.

[Merusk]

Yah, I figured it was his dad.  Looks too old to be Nerf, who I thought was mid/ late 20s.

[Nebu]

I just finished putting mohagony hardwood in a hallway and two rooms.  You have my sympathy with the remodel.   

[Nerf]

We're doing a stained veneer under the chair rail for the living room as part of the next project, so the computer room paint/floor is just easing into it.

Also, updates!

Computer room is primed and back wall is textured.  We'd be done with the whole thing if there hadn't been a layer of paper that we had to mud over, wait to see what starts peeling off, peel it off, then prime over, wait to see what starts coming off, and peel it.  Royal fucking pain in the ass, the next trip to home depot is to see if we just can go right over the top of the paper wallpaper to texture/paint instead of taking it off.



Side view of the texture:



Closeup-ish:



It's going to be painted sort of a two-tone, wall will be beige and then inside the grooves will be a shade or two darker.
For those concerned, no, I didn't pick out the colors.  Fuck you.

Should be finished painting tomorrow, pics as we go.

[NiX]

I don't like it. Start over you human wookie.

[Phildo]

I'm staying at my parents' house for a few weeks while looking for jobs that don't suck ass and they're having an addition put on.  I've never understood how people can build things by just hitting shit for 8 hours a day.  Today they showed up at 6:30 and woke me up an hour earlier than I was expecting to be woken up early.  I'm not a happy man right now.

[Signe]

You're staying at your parents house.  Right now you're not a man at all.  Get your mom to make all your favourite foods and enjoy it while it lasts!

[NiX]

Can I come stay with you and Righ?

[Sky]

I was just going to make a Home Improvement thread, so I'll just piggyback on yours. I don't have Jerry Garcia working on my rooms, though. I've done work all over the house, but here's a couple rooms. First the living room. I was going to put together better before/during/after shots, but the before/during shots are mostly on my home pc and I'm at work.

I forget if I related this story, so forgive me if I have: I had the living room prepped and ready to paint after tearing out the walls and insulating and drywalling it. Then I decided to remove a couple more pieces of trim so I could clean them up...and forgot to score the paint along the edge. And tore a huge sheet of paint off. There was so many layers of cheap paint it was like a sheet of vinyl.



Oops. Wish I had better before pictures, the thermostat is new, replacing ye olde circular mercury jobby from the 50s. Also wired in a new circuit and ran the cable through the roof. You can make out the old white cable line that just kinda came out of the basement and laid across the floor  So now it's in a nice new down-pointing fixture that was big enough for a splitter, all that shit is now hidden. I sanded the shit out of the wall, but there are still some defects visible (to me). Talking to the paint store guy, there is a product I could've used to fix those. Ah, well. Still need to get the trim cleaned and replaced and get a grill for the vent in the upper right.



The living room is pretty easy, the real work happened in the bathroom. I'll just let these images speak for themselves. (Apologies for not rotating the first one)

[Viin]

Lookin' good.

We just got a new deck, does that count?

[Nebu]

Nice transformation on that bathroom.  Very clean lines. 

[Chimpy]

That is one hell of a copper pipe.

That puppy is probably worth quite a nice chunk of change.

[Merusk]

No dobut.. sell that fucking pipe, Sky, and pay for the next few months mortgage!

So what's the brown in the first picture? I thought your walls were plaster but that looks like drywall. Please tell me you didn't rip the face of the drywall paper off. 

[Sky]

Yes. Unintentionally. I fucking bummed. I was ready to paint.

There is a product to cover the middle paper layers, but I didn't know. Sun rakes across that wall. The room came out so great, everyone loves it...all I can see are defects in that wall.

The copper is my retirement fund.

[MrHat]

So wait, how much are we talking here?  Copperwise?

[Merusk]

Yeah, that was my next question, "did you put an oil primer on first?"  The paper hasn't bubbled on you yet?  If so you got lucky and should just be glad at that, and any 'defects' are probably 100% better than most folks would have managed with just brown paper to sand down.  Just don't let the wall get wet.   No squirtgun fights!

So wait, how much are we talking here?  Copperwise?

Current price is listed about $3.84 per pound.  That looked to be about a 3 1/2" diameter pipe, and a pipe diameter is about 5.12 pounds per foot.  It's probably at least 15 feet long to get through the roof, possibly better than 20.  Sooo.. $294.91 to $393.21 for the pipe.   Yeah, it's not really a house payment.. but it's a damn impressive pipe.

http://www.metalprices.com/FreeSite/metals/cu/cu.asp - Metal Price
http://www.copper.org/publications/pub_list/pdf/copper_tube_handbook.pdf - Characteristics of copper pipe.

[Sky]

I ignorantly figured I'd just prime the shit out of it with the latex primer I already had. Most of the paper strips came off in sanding, the few left bubbles every time I put on a coat of primer. After that it was fine (for painting), it's just "textured". Actually a net gain because the old paint was so shitty and I was able to smooth over the drywall joints that had recessed because there was only a single coat on them (the original drywalling, not my installation!).

My walls came out pretty kick-ass. Hopefully I'll get some before/after of the living room like I did the bathroom.

Pipe wasn't vented through the roof. Ended in the attic crawlspace by the gable vent. So I ran out the last few feet in pvc to bring it up to code (in NYS at least one vent stack has to penetrate the roof). Still, it runs down into the basement, probably 13-15ft total.

[Nerf]

Paint is mostly done, just a few trim areas around the window to go.  Next we pull up the carpet and lay the laminate floor.

[Nerf]

Bye-bye nasty carpet!

[Samwise]

Going to Pergo the floor?

[Mrbloodworth]

Nice transformation on that bathroom.  Very clean lines. 

I agree, love the minimalist look and the stainless.

[Nerf]

Yeah, we picked up some of this:


We havn't decided if we're done for the day or not yet, its not quite 5 and we could get a fair amount of it laid, but we're tired.

Ookii: No hotlinky

[Signe]

Can I come stay with you and Righ?

Like forever?   Do you shed?

Geez.  You guys are very energetic.  When I get the urge to look for houses, I always look at ones that are all done.  I don't think I could go through Sky's level of major renovations.  It would kill me in hours.

[Selby]

We havn't decided if we're done for the day or not yet, its not quite 5 and we could get a fair amount of it laid, but we're tired.

My dad and I laid Pergo in a room about that size in about 4 hours, with neither of us having ever done it before.  It was fun times.  Sure beats the 12"x12" stickum tiles that were on the floor to begin with.

[Nerf]

Last summer we laid 1,000 sqft of laminate in the rental house before we sold it, did 500sqft of carpet and both bathrooms in vinyl, too.
I'm really glad we're doing it 1 room at a time this time around.

[Sky]

Signe, I can't afford houses that are 'done' :) Renovating is fairly easy and lots of fun, it's like a puzzle game. It just takes some time and money, but it's cheaper than buying someone else's work and you get to choose the materials and ensure the quality (or not, heh) of the work done. Just by doing those two rooms and replumbing the kitchen sink, and going by comps on the market in my neighborhood, I could sell the house and cover my entire mortgage, cost of all renovation (including tools I keep), cover all costs related to buying and selling, and still walk away with at least several grand, if not five figures.

I can definitely see how people got into flipping in the bubble, it's fun and lucrative and nice to see the potential in a shoddy property come out. Of course, I didn't have much in the way of structural issues, either, I bought it for it's good bones.

Mr BW, not sure what you mean by minimalist, but that's brushed nickel, not stainless steel.

[SnakeCharmer]

Cool thread.

Time for a major update to the house, so we're looking at:
Kitchen:  Paint, new cabinets and countertops
Front bathroom:  Paint, put in new vanity, sink, toilet, mirror, and shower/tub
Back bathroom:  Paint, new vanity, sink, mirror
Living Room:  Paint
Dining Room:  Paint
Master bath: Paint, new double vanity, sinks, mirrors, etc

In the last 2 years, we have replaced the heatpump (inside and out), gone with tankless water heaters, new flattop stove, overhead microwave, roof, had 18 trees cut down, laid sod (including all the prep work for that) and put up a 6' foot privacy fence in the backyard. 

If anyone is thinking about going tankless, it is soooo worth it.  I'd recommend it to anyone, regardless if your hot water heater is going out or not.  Dropped our power bill by 25 percent, and the instant heat is awesome.

[Signe]

I just look.  I never actually buy any.  But when we do, I'm not sure I could tolerate all that work.   We're thinking about buying but we don't know where, yet.  Not anywhere around here, that's for sure.  If we buy a house, it still doesn't mean Righ won't be having to travel and all that crap, and usually I go with.  Still, now that we have cats, I suppose I should settle down.  It's been nice these last two years that Righ has worked from the house and I've decided settling down will be nice.  But where?  He would probably want to buy and live in Scotland and I kind of don't.  Scotland is wonderful, I just wouldn't want to live there. 

I'm babbling again.  Sorry.  What all this means is that the stuff you guys are doing looks wonderful and I couldn't do it myself.  Righ probably could if he ever had time, but I would have to live somewhere else while it's being done.  I'm not handy or even handy-tolerant.

[Sky]

Arg, I hate when people cut trees! I'm trying to find some trees to plant, need to borrow my buddy's come-along to get some from a cliff near my mother's place. Couple nice birch for the front yard. Then I want to drop in some blue spruce along the fence line for privacy.

Also going to need new appliances, the stove and fridge that came with the house are cheap shit. The stove (electric) has only a single large burner, three small ones. Who the fuck makes a stove like that? I hate cheap shit. I'd love to put in a gas stove, but I'm wary of getting any more convoluted with the natural gas lines in the house, the kitchen is on a slab.

I'm digging my new throne, a class five Kohler Cimarron two-piece, pretty affordable imo. I was /very/ wary of the flush, because it's set to 1.24 gpf (canister valve). But I was looking at the diameter of different model's flush valves and most stuff was in the 2" range, the Cimarron has a 3-1/4", which gives a nice powerful flush. And because the canister only dumps about half the water from the tank per flush, you can hold down the lever to get a 'double flush' that dumps the whole tank. After years of cheap apartment thrones, it's so amazing to have a decent one, finally. Same goes for my new sink faucet, I've had to do dishes for so many years on cheap shit faucets, it's nice having something decent.

[SnakeCharmer]

3/4 of the trees we had cut down were 150' pines that were dead or dying, and were very much a hazard if the wind gets up a bit.  We routinely had big ass branches falling in the back yard - not exactly the kind of thing you want when you and your (almost) 2 year old are out playing.  They needed to be cut down - it's either that or have them fall on us or the house. 

That toilet sounds strong enough to suck your nuts down with it if you flush whilst sitting down.

What about getting a dishwasher instead of doing it by hand?  Lack of room?

[Polysorbate80]

Arg, I hate when people cut trees! I'm trying to find some trees to plant, need to borrow my buddy's come-along to get some from a cliff near my mother's place. Couple nice birch for the front yard. Then I want to drop in some blue spruce along the fence line for privacy.

Over the last few years I've pulled about 16 maples out of my back yard.  None of them were mature, though; they were just volunteers that grew up through (and threatened to kill off) the lilacs lining the yard.

I didn't do them all at once because it would have destroyed the shade; the lilacs are only now recovering to the point I think I could remove the last four or five maple trees.

[Sky]

Ok, ok. I was just reacting to all the people I've lived near that have clear cut old trees and turned neighborhoods into bare shells of themselves. The maple comment gets me because I've got a massive maple in front of my house that I'd love to chop down but won't because it's an awesome shade tree. But the fucking seeds....I took out about a hundred seedlings and a few maples about three to five years old where the last owner never kept up the yard. They breed like crazy and the seeds clogged the shit out of my gutters.

I hope to get the two birches on either side of the maple and then chop it down in ten years or so, when they start to provide some shade.

Dishwasher: I'll have to replumb a little bit, but it shouldn't be bad, need to figure out the supply line, they make a y piece for drain I know. It's mostly the space needed, that corner of the kitchen is tight.

[SnakeCharmer]

Nah, I agree with you on the clear cutting.  I hate the newer neighborhoods that are just barren wastelands of roofs.

I love my trees, just not dead ones :P  Planted a few new ones to replace what was cut down, plus it was part of an overall scheme for redoing the back yard.