# Full house renovation



## Jesse Blair (Oct 9, 2016)

I figured instead of filling up other threads with my stuff, I'd just make my own thread. I inherited the house from my father who passed away a few weeks ago, and I'm now trying to make it my own. It's the house I was born in, and was built by my father and grandfather just before I was born. It's basically as it was when it was built in 1986, which is outdated and run down, in much need of modernization and renovation. A few of the things that need to be done are structural, but most are just cosmetic. The front and back doors are rotted out, along with the masonite siding, from improper flashing on decks that were built ~20 years ago, and also not having gutters. Many of the wooden crank out casement windows are starting to rot from having not been painted recently, so those will have to be repaired and painted, until I can afford to replace them with more modern aluminum windows, and replace the siding to cover the gaps that will be left from going with different sized windows. Since I can't find a match to this old masonite siding anywhere, to repair the bottom 1' that is rotted around the sill/deck, I'll temporarily cut it out, replace the sheathing and custom build some 1x12 to recess and flash under the existing good condition siding.

The only other structural problems is a rotted subfloor and likely some stud damage where a water leak occurred at some point in the past, behind the drywall. That section will be removed anyway, since it's a hallway closet that only messes up the flow from the living room to the back bedroom and bathroom. So repairing that should be easy enough, and I can hopefully find an obvious source of the leak, which is likely the shower drain from the upstairs bathroom. The floor joists under the rotted section are in need of replacement or patching, which can be handled at that time too.

So far, over the last week or two, with the help of my mother, who is a pretty able decorator and DIY renovator, we have gutted the living room and kitchen down to bare subfloor and drywall. We also removed a wall that was put up ~20 years ago that blocked off what used to be a wide open kitchen and living room, with a bar. I have returned it to the original floor plan, just in a more attractive and modern look. Walls are almost complete, ceiling is getting a final coat of paint tomorrow, then all that is left in the two main rooms is flooring, crown molding and baseboards, along with new light fixtures, and new outlets and plates. Then I can start building cabinets, countertops, a bar top, and install the new (lightly used) appliances. Once these two rooms and finished and livable, I'll begin working on the new bathroom, which is one of the two downstairs bedrooms, as well as a laundry room (my fathers second wife began the conversion 20 years ago, but never got beyond framing in the walk in shower stall, and moving the washer and dryer in there). The old small bathroom will be turned into a walk in closet, accessible from the new bathroom.

I'll update with progress and pictures as I go, for anyone who might care to follow along. I wish I had gotten pictures of how it was before we removed the carpet and ripped out the wall, to really show how much in need the house was of an update.

Before










Now


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## sgibby88 (May 28, 2015)

Following to see the finished outcome. Best of luck


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## Pineknot_86 (Feb 19, 2016)

Good luck! You will be in for a lot of work with this one.


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## woodchux (Jul 6, 2014)

Renovation always creates many unusual issues, which is a great learning experience. Thanks for sharing, and post more pics of the progress. Be safe.


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## rcheli1 (May 20, 2017)

Looking forward to seeing the finished product!


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## Jesse Blair (Oct 9, 2016)

Thanks guys. I'm looking forward to seeing it finished too. Only 2 weeks in, and already I'm burned out of the hustle to get it done. I've now finished framing my second pantry, and peeling up the 25 year old vinyl tile floor. What a pain! The fridge will be located to another wall, flanked by the 2 matching pantries, so I have to get under the house and do some plumbing... not my favorite. It'll have to be done again when I start on the new bathroom, but it must be done. Tomorrow I'll probably throw some drywall on the pantry, mud and tape it, and hang the prehung door that will match the new door I got for the other pantry. I'll have my mother and an aunt helping tomorrow, and they both don't mind painting, whereas I despise painting with every fiber of my being... so they will paint the new bathroom and the bedroom, and maybe pull up the remaining carpet in the bedroom and short hallway. Starting to see light at the end of the tunnel. Hopefully I can have the downstairs finished enough to move down there in the next 2 weeks or so. Still need to run a 220v circuit for the new water heater (old one was gas, and I've done away with all of the gas appliances) and plumb the bathroom and kitchen, as well as remove the hallway closet and patch/repair the subfloor and joist rot. But other than that, the rest is cosmetic stuff that I can continue to work on once I'm moved in. When all of the first floor and the outside of the house is done, I'll slowly start chipping away at the upstairs in my free time. I need to get back to building furniture and get some income coming back in. I've taken some time off over the last month when my dad was in the hospital, and while doing this first labor intensive stage of the renovation.


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## sgibby88 (May 28, 2015)

What made you want to do away with gas? 


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## Jesse Blair (Oct 9, 2016)

I kind of regret the decision now, but the house only ever had 3 things on the gas, which was the gas range, the water heater and an old floor furnace. The furnace doesn't work anymore and will be removed, and the 30 year old range needed the be replaced, and I have someone giving me a pretty nice electric range for free... so that would only leave the water heater. I figured just to simplify paying the bills, I'd just swap over the water heater to electric and be done with it. They came out and removed the meter and capped off the line. Plus I've had a suspicion that there was a small gas leak somewhere, since during the winter, you could smell a little bit of a gas smell coming from the crawl space vents. It may have just been the inefficient old floor furnace exhausting some unburned gas under the house... not sure. Either way, it's gone now. If I ever do decide to get gas again, I'll start over from scratch and do all new lines under the house, so I know it's all in good shape.

I am however considering getting a gas range, or at least a gas cooktop one day in the near future, since I love to cook, and hate cooking on electric. If I do that, I'll just run a line to a point under the back deck and use a propane tank for fuel. Might cost a bit more than I was paying for gas, but not by much. I think the last gas bill was only like $22...


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## sgibby88 (May 28, 2015)

Got you. Since I have well when ever we have a power outage I'm glad we have gas. Less I have to worry about the generator trying to handle


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## Jesse Blair (Oct 9, 2016)

Yeah, that is one thing I will miss. It was nice still having heat and a way to cook food in the winter if the power went out. But, as I said, the furnace hasn't worked for a while and the range was old and crusty. If I can at least get back to cooking with gas, I'll survive. Our winters are mild, and we MIGHT get one day of snow each winter. If it gets really bad, I'll just have to pull out the portable generator and run some space heaters off of it...


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## sgibby88 (May 28, 2015)

I hear ya on that. The north east isn't exactly forgiving at times so I won't take the chance. We have been lucky the past two winters but we are due for a harsh winter soon. We have also had some real nasty storms the past few summers that have left us with no power for a few days at a time. I always told myself growing up that my house will always be fitted with gas since my moms place was electric and when the power would be out for more than a day we would go to my grandparents since they had gas. Needless to say when I moved out on my own I made sure the house was equipped with gas lol. This guy isn't beat


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## Jesse Blair (Oct 9, 2016)

Pretty productive day. I finished the trim work on the pillar, just need to throw one more final coat of paint on it, and it'll be done. Not bad looking for some 1x8's, a piece of baseboard and quarter round. Also have a partially hung light that will be above the bar. It's a pretty cool looking light, with an Edison style bulb. I found a really nice LED bulb to replace it, which has LED tubes in 6 filaments, and looks pretty authentic to vintage bulbs. First time I've seen them. Waiting to finish hanging it until I paint the last coat. Also finished framing the pantry, which I thought was done, but I found a few little things I needed to do before hanging drywall. Had to cut a hole to route a wire from an outlet on the shared wall in the foyer, over one stud to wire in an outlet for the fridge in its new location. The downstairs is now completely carpet free, and the bedroom will hopefully get painted tomorrow and be done. It was mostly just moving out and sorting through all of my dads old things. Found a lot of guns... didn't know he had so many.


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## Jesse Blair (Oct 9, 2016)

Been a few slowish days, but still making a little progress. It's been extremely wet and humid the last few days, and I didn't want to paint in those conditions, or really do much else, since it's been unbearably humid. The bedroom is all sanded, patched up and ready to prime and paint. Ceilings will get primed in the morning, going to pick up a new in the box really cool looking ceiling fan from a guy for $70, and I'll finish hanging drywall on the new pantry. Started on it tonight, but again, humid (and currently the a/c isn't working) and I was soaking wet and tired. I also decided on, and started making flooring for the living room and kitchen. I was a bit skeptical at first when my mom showed me the idea, but it's growing on me. It's 1/2" BC plywood, cut into strips/planks, stained, glued and nailed down, and floor poly applied. With other expenses, the only other option in my price range was roll vinyl floor, and I just couldn't bring myself to do it. Even the lower end LVP flooring I was looking at was going to end up being about $1400 for the two rooms downstairs. For about $500 I can have this plywood plank flooring completely done. Should be good enough, for now anyway. Pity me if and when I ever need to remove it, or get to the subfloor again...

Holes in the wall are access holes for routing an existing oulet in the foyer to power a new outlet for the fridge.










New kitchen light fixture. The existing ceiling fan has always looked out of place in there, and hangs too low and makes the ceilings seem lower than they are. Surface/flush mount seemed the way to go. Nice 17" round LED fixture.










Plywood flooring, first test piece. They are all going to be 7.5" wide, and will be cut into 3, 4, 5 and 8 foot lengths, for a little variation. They will be secured with brad nails and adhesive. Not exactly the color I wanted, but pine isn't exactly forgiving with stains.










Hope to have something of more substance in the next few days. Hopefully I'm only 2 or 3 weeks away from wrapping up the downstairs portion. Then comes outside work, installing new front and back doors, landscaping, new front and rear deck, and generally just making the place look a little better with paint. Upstairs will come last, and will be done at my leisure.


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## MT Stringer (Jul 21, 2009)

Dang Jesse, that workshop looks a lot like mine. All I can do is walk through it!

About your reno...are you doing any kitchen upgrades? Now would be a good time to add one or more 20amp circuits for the kitchen. Our house was built in 1983, and we have lived in it since 1987. For years, we would have trouble during holiday celebrations with circuit breakers blowing due to numerous crock pots, ovens, etc going all at once. We solved that when we renovated our kitchen. A separate 20 amp circuit was run, and our troubles have been solved. And my sweetie loves it.

Just sayin'.

Looking forward to seeing your progress.
Mike


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## Jesse Blair (Oct 9, 2016)

Haha. Thanks. Yeah, I haven't really done any work in the shop in over a month. I've just been using it to store junk in, and going out there to get tools and cut a piece of wood here and there. Luckily in the kitchen we already have two 15 amp circuits, one on each wall of outlets. I'm about to introduce a third when I branch off of a circuit in the foyer and run the fridge off of it. Never had any circuit issues in the house thus far. I will have to run a new circuit for the water heater though. Not looking forward to it, since it'll have to be in conduit under the house. Not very enjoyable working conditions under there. I'm very glad they went with a 200 amp service when the house was built. Plenty of headroom.

I have a new goal of keeping the overall renovation under $10,000. So far I'm only about $2000 in, and that's pretty much covered the first floor interior. I only lack about $800 to finish the bathroom, and probably another $1000 for molding for all of the rooms. The outside will probably get most of my budget, since it is a wild growing mess. Shrubs look more like trees now, virtually no grass, just weeds and clover, which doesn't bother me too much. No real landscaping to speak of. And both front and back decks need top be taken down and rebuilt. Along with new exterior lights, paint, fascia board, gutters, shutters, and eventually windows, but I won't include those in the budget, since they will probably be a ways down the road. I'll do those at the same time I do new siding, which will also involve removing the old masonite down to the sheathing. Easy time to frame new windows. Also, new a/c unit, unless the old one can be repaired and last me a little while longer. Eventually it'll have to be replaced though. It's a relic.

If it's looking like I'm going to be going over budget, I may have to do what I was trying to avoid and take out another small mortgage. In which case, I'll just borrow enough to get everything done at once and not have to worry about it again down the road. Would like to avoid that though. Just got myself out of debt a few years ago, and would like to not have that looming over my head for the next few decades...


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## Jesse Blair (Oct 9, 2016)

Finished the drywall on the pantry, framed the door, patched/replaced a large section of drywall in the kitchen that had too many smaller holes to patch one at a time, and finished prep and primed the bedroom.

I'm only bothered by one small detail. The new door frame trim is about 1/4" wider than trim on the existing pantry door. Not something most will notice, but I notice it... Sand it down and paint it tomorrow. You can see one of my test flooring planks in front of the pantry door. I was seeing how the contrast looked. A bit darker than I was aiming for, but for the low price of it, I'll live with it. Should look pretty good for what is only strips of plywood...

Also, how much meat do they leave around the edges on hollow mdf doors? The new one on the new pantry will need about 1/2" trimmed off the bottom, and the door going in the existing pantry will need about 1/4" trimmed off of one side, as it's a bit too wide.


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## MT Stringer (Jul 21, 2009)

Jessee, only you will know the difference in the trim width. No one else will.


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## Catpower (Jan 11, 2016)

Jessie, listen to Mike, only you will ever know it, I have spent hours fixing a screw up that nobody would have known there was one

This kind of reminds me of our first house, before we were married I had Jim Walters build the basic "in the dry" house, just framed roofed and sided everything else was our work. That was 31 years ago, and we never had one argument while we were building, if we tried that now I am quite sure blood would spill LOL

We just finished installing the cherry cabinets I built for our current house, when we had it built they wanted $1500 more to go with solid oak instead of melamine, I have kicked myself in the arse many times for being such a tight wad LOL I am so glad I am almost finished with them, and I will get them done in a week or two


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## Jesse Blair (Oct 9, 2016)

Yeah, I know nobody else will notice, but I will. I have mild OCD when it comes to certain things. Even when I'm making something where fasteners won't be seen, I still want even spacing and everything to be just so. If it's not it bothers me. :grin:

With the help of my mom and my aunt today, we got a good bit done. They tackled the bedroom, got it painted, and all of the windows and trim painted with the first 2 coats of white. They will need another coat, but that's a big step in the right direction. Also got the hallway area primed and ready for the final coat of color tomorrow, and painted the foyer entry door and all of the door frames. I finished up hanging light fixtures and ceiling fans, and finished up the trim work on the opening between the kitchen and living room. Need to slap one more coat of white on that tomorrow and that will be completely done, finally. I've been cursed with ceiling fans though. I returned a "new, open box" unit to a guy yesterday that we picked up for cheap, that didn't work because of what I expect was remote control/receiver issues. And now today I put up the one in the bedroom, and damned if that one didn't work either. I'm not an electrician by any means, but I know I'm not so useless that I can't hook white to white, black to black and ground to ground... I'll take it back down tomorrow and make sure everything is tight and in working order. If it doesn't work after that, I'll be lost... Have another new ceiling fan for the living room that I'll hook up tomorrow, and hope that the 3rd time is a charm. Tomorrow we will have a hired hand, a guy who regularly does demo to come in and gut the old bathroom for us. He is used to doing empty homes, and gutting them to the studs, so I'll have to keep an eye on him and at least turn off the water while he does that. Getting the old tub and toilet out of the way, along with all of the drywall from the walls and ceiling will be a huge help. That was I can inspect and replace anything rotted or damaged, which I know some will be needed.

Not long now. Hopefully at some point next week, we can have everything else wrapped up and I can tackle the final lower floor interior project, which will be the new massive bathroom. Need to put down tile on the floor, finish tiling the walk in shower that my dad started about 15 years ago, plumb and install a new toilet and sink. Luckily the shower is already plumbed and ready, minus the drain hook up. Should be able to tackle that room in about a weeks time.

That purple wall with the doors stacked on it is the one coming out, which will open up that "hallway" a lot. It's also the one with the rotted out floor, just behind the doors. The door on that wall is the water heater closet, and that door will be removed and patched over. It'll now be accessible from the other side, from the new bathroom closet.










Bedroom. I knew better, but was in a hurry... always check your paint color swatches in sunlight. It's not quite what I was seeing in the stores lighting, but it's good enough. The ugly crap around the top is wallpaper border that was apparently glued up with some alien technology adhesive, because we were ripping drywall up trying to remove it. So I told them to just leave it, and I'll put up some 1x10 around the top with a little routed detail around the bottom edge, and will then put the smaller crown molding over that. Will be a bit big for such a small room with low ceilings, but it's what seemed reasonable at the time...


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## Pineknot_86 (Feb 19, 2016)

Looking good. I can partly understand about your converting to electric. My father was an engineer in the appliance industry for over 40 years. Many times he compared costs of gas, LP gas, and electricity for customers and for efficiency studies. Electric was the most expensive. I have a 4 inch gas line in my front yard. However, it would cost about $4k to change over to gas.


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## Jesse Blair (Oct 9, 2016)

Gas is cheap and works all of the time, but in my case, it would only be to fuel the stove and water heater. Plus I was a bit nervous as to the state of the gas lines under the house.

Guys are still ripping the bathroom apart, and it seems like the worst case scenario is coming true, plus a little extra... I was expecting to maybe have to replace the subfloor, some of the studs, and new drywall. Turns out under where the tub was located, the floor joists are severely rotted, the exterior wall that the tub was against is also badly damaged, along with minor damage in the interior walls. For the time being, I'm just going to throw down some cheap subfloor to seal up the room, and block off the doorway like I was planning to do, and just leave the room completely inaccessible and closed off to the rest of the house for the near future, until I can afford to get new siding, and do some considerable structure work. No more than a few months, but I need to keep working elsewhere and finish what I can. It was only going to be a closet anyway, so it's not a huge loss. Shouldn't require TOO much work. Replace 2 or 3 joists under where the tub was, which also happens to be the same joists I was thinking were rotted from a water leak in the next room over, maybe 8' away. Then rip the back wall out after bracing it, and frame up a new wall, which is only as long as a bath tub. Then frame in the new interior walls and cover with drywall, and it should be fine. A friend of mine has been a really good contractor for 30+ years, so I'll get him to come over and evaluate the situation, and see if any steps need to be taken other than what i have planned.


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## Jesse Blair (Oct 9, 2016)

Picked up my flooring today. I had decided on the plywood, DIY flooring. But after giving it more thought, I really didn't want to do all of the work required. For just a little more money I got some cheap laminate plank flooring at $0.99/sq.ft. It's an oak type, with a light brown, slightly grey looking finish. Not my ideal color, but I can't be too picky on a low budget. I can replace it easily enough down the road when I can afford something I like more. I was also able to use my Lowe's card and save my cash for other things I need. I still need 6 or 7 more boxes, since they only had 19 boxes in stock.


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## Catpower (Jan 11, 2016)

Ain't that the reason they call them money pits LOL

Make sure the laminate you are putting down will stand up to any moisture that may get on it, if not by doors where people might come in with wet shoes you might want to put down some Lino to make the flooring last longer


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## Jesse Blair (Oct 9, 2016)

Yeah. It's definitely the bargain basement kind of stuff, an off brand. Probably won't do well with water, and probably won't be very abrasion resistant. But if I can make it last me for a few years, I'll be happy enough with it. My foyer will have tile in front of the door, maybe 2 or 3 feet out, sort of a mud area, and the rest is old real hardwood flooring that I'm going to sand and refinish. Should be fine for now.

It is an absolute wonder that this house hasn't burned down over the last 30 years. Who ever did the electrical needs a punch in the face (which may have partly been my grandfather...). Never noticed any real obvious problems, which knowing what I know now blows my mind. After my 3rd attempt at installing ceiling fans failed, I knew it wasn't just me. Pulled the switches out and found a nightmare. The living room switch is a double gang box with a switch for the kitchen and a switch for the living room fans/lights. Whoever wired it had wires all sorts of in the wrong place. Not sure how it even worked, but the living room fan/light had no neutral hooked to it, and they had a jumper between the constant side of the two switches, as well as a hot on each. The white conductor that should have been neutral was actually a hot... I guess maybe old electronics and appliances had a higher tolerance for bad circuits. I guess it was still completing the circuit somehow... Pretty much the same case in the bedroom where I couldn't make the fan work. The old one worked, put up the new one... no work. They had the neutral twisted into the grounds, and I can't recall the situation on the hots, but it was also a "hot mess" if you forgive the pun. So now I guess on top of everything else, I'm going to need to start pulling off covers and inspecting everything wiring related. I'm still blown away that the fan worked for 30 years with 2 hots running to it, and no neutral. I guess maybe voltage was trying to flow both ways on one or both conductors, which might explain why the lights always seemed to be dimmer than they should have been... This "project" is slowly growing to a larger and larger beast every damn day! I'll get it eventually...


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## Catpower (Jan 11, 2016)

I have run into some major wiring eff ups too

The ones I hated were the 480/277V systems where they used the conduit as the ground and neutral had a buddy get killed because of it, he was working on a VAV box for the HVAC, and the conduit had come apart, when he touched the VAV box his belly was touching the ceiling grid, and POW he was dead

But as far as the wire colors, if the conductor is connected to the right place, the color makes no difference, electricity is color blind


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## Jesse Blair (Oct 9, 2016)

Catpower said:


> I have run into some major wiring eff ups too
> 
> The ones I hated were the 480/277V systems where they used the conduit as the ground and neutral had a buddy get killed because of it, he was working on a VAV box for the HVAC, and the conduit had come apart, when he touched the VAV box his belly was touching the ceiling grid, and POW he was dead
> 
> But as far as the wire colors, if the conductor is connected to the right place, the color makes no difference, electricity is color blind


Damn, that sucks. I know of a few electricians who my dad knew that were killed on the job due to similar incorrectly wired systems. And yeah, I'm not worried about the colors, just the routing. But since everything is covered with drywall, it's troublesome trying to trace what is hooked to what. And they had wires together that shouldn't have been. If it were a full renovation down to studs, I would take the time to just rewire the whole house, but I'm not going that far.


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## Catpower (Jan 11, 2016)

Jesse Blair said:


> Damn, that sucks. I know of a few electricians who my dad knew that were killed on the job due to similar incorrectly wired systems. And yeah, I'm not worried about the colors, just the routing. But since everything is covered with drywall, it's troublesome trying to trace what is hooked to what. And they had wires together that shouldn't have been. If it were a full renovation down to studs, I would take the time to just rewire the whole house, but I'm not going that far.


If the switches that are wired weird are on each end of a hallway or room, they could be three way switches. They have special wiring to make them operate, so you can turn on or off a light or fan or what ever they have wired in from either end of the hall or room


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## Pineknot_86 (Feb 19, 2016)

Sounds like my house. One ceiling box in the shop looks like a plate of spaghetti with all the wires. I tried to add a light to a couple of lines- the light switch has a black wire on one terminal and a white wire on the other. The light works but can't add anything without two switches on the line. I added an outlet leading to another switch but plug anything in and you get nothing. I had a house built in LA- the accepted thing was to put the white and ground wires on the same block in the panel box.
Good luck on correcting the wiring.


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## Jesse Blair (Oct 9, 2016)

Catpower said:


> If the switches that are wired weird are on each end of a hallway or room, they could be three way switches. They have special wiring to make them operate, so you can turn on or off a light or fan or what ever they have wired in from either end of the hall or room


They aren't three way, just incorrectly wired.


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## Jesse Blair (Oct 9, 2016)

Pineknot_86 said:


> Sounds like my house. One ceiling box in the shop looks like a plate of spaghetti with all the wires. I tried to add a light to a couple of lines- the light switch has a black wire on one terminal and a white wire on the other. The light works but can't add anything without two switches on the line. I added an outlet leading to another switch but plug anything in and you get nothing. I had a house built in LA- the accepted thing was to put the white and ground wires on the same block in the panel box.
> Good luck on correcting the wiring.


Thanks. I'll fix what is obvious for now, and at some point later I'll do a more thorough check.


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## Jesse Blair (Oct 9, 2016)

Picked up my cabinets and countertops today. They are pretty cheaply made cabinets, but they will be painted white to match all of the trim, so It's not a huge deal. They should hold up well enough, they just don't look very pretty unfinished, even though they are oak. Tops are Hevea/Rubberwood, and will be stained sort of a medium walnut brown, something close to matching the flooring. Cabinets are shimmed and mounted, and I built a 45 degree piece of oak as a filler in the corner, and left it just a little proud to mimic the raised panels on the drawers. Caulked all of the cracks after a quick sanding, and I will start priming tonight. Tomorrow I'll cut the top to size, cut the hole for the sink, route a roundover detail on the edges and use a matching strip of Hevea as a 4" tall backer/backsplash. I'll also cut and mount a kick plate and adjust the drawer and door alignment and gaps.

Not much counter space or cabinet space, but it'll work fine for me. I'd rather have more open space anyway. Plus I have a new fairly large second pantry for storage of pots and pans, kitchen accessories and other random kitchen items. I'll also not have a dishwasher this time around. I'll be building a small rolling island with the same countertop, that will regularly live under the front kitchen window, as a 2 seater bar, and when needed can be rolled out to the middle of the kitchen as extra prep space.




















EDIT*

Also primed them tonight. Just doing the face frames, doors and drawer fronts. As well as the primer did, the paint should cover in one coat.


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## Jesse Blair (Oct 9, 2016)

Got 2 coats of paint on the cabinets, might need one more on the doors. Started installing the hardware, all bronze, to match my door knobs and hinges throughout the house. Also got the countertop cut, routed, sink hole cut out and some stain applied. I had to make a last second change to how I wanted the short piece of the L to mate to the long section of counter, but I think it'll look good enough. The transition from the roundover isn't perfect, but it's good enough for me. After the stain has had a few days to dry, I'll lightly hand sand it to remove a little of the color and bring some of the wood details back through, and to distress the edges before applying the top coat. Need to finish off with a kick plate, and a 4" backsplash to meet up with the cut out window trim. That window has also been forgotten about. The only one left with only one coat of paint applied.

For my first time installing cabinets and countertops, I'm pretty pleased with how it's coming out. Would prefer a slightly higher quality product, but I'm working with what I can afford right now. The false top drawers under the sink aren't aligned correctly and look really wonky, and it is really bothering me. Other than that, I'm okay with it.





























Also, I found out earlier than the gas company will be footing the bill for my crown molding... I got a refund check for $560, which I'm assuming is some kind of deposit refund from when the gas was installed 30 years ago. The paperwork wasn't very detailed, and I'm not about to call and bring it to their attention...


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## Jesse Blair (Oct 9, 2016)

Fairly slow day. Did some clean up, put some more hardware on the cabinets, made some plans, and put down some underlayment and the first few rows of laminate flooring. I'm really bummed out to see that this brand only supplies THREE different patterns... Makes it really hard to not notice repeating patterns in the flooring, which is going to bug me. I'm doing my best to keep a random stagger, and to not put two of the same patterns touching.


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## Jesse Blair (Oct 9, 2016)

Finished the flooring as far as I can go in the kitchen and living room. Had to leave 3 or 4 feet of the living room unfinished, since that back wall has to come down to repair the rot damage. Cut most of the baseboard to rough length, and have it almost ready to go in. Now I just lack thresholds on the pantry doors, and in front of the fridge, where I left the old vinyl flooring under it (won't be seen once the new fridge goes in and I close in the sides). Also need to finish trimming the bottom of the column, and build a small box off of it to house the outlet/box that used to be in the wall where the fridge used to sit. Working on my bar top now, that will go between the left wall and the column. Countertops are almost ready for poly. I'm probably 90% done with this part of the house now.

I'm also pretty surprised I was able to avoid any noticeable repeating patterns on the flooring, as there are only 3 different plank types/patterns. I made the overlaps as random as possible, which was basically using the end cut on one row as the starter on the next row. I only notice 2 rows out of about 15-20 that are close to being even with each other.


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## Jesse Blair (Oct 9, 2016)

My mom had an earlier before picture than I did. What a difference in just under a month of part time tinkering. I couldn't have imagined this much change from before.

Before










After










Almost done with the countertops, just another sanding and the final coat of top coat. Got more of the baseboard installed today, and started on the bar that will match the countertops. It'll be roughly 6' long and 32" wide. Just have to make the supports to hold it up. A little more paint work, a little more trim work, a little more this and that. Mostly just a bunch of little things to tie up the loose ends. Also going to get some iron pipe and fittings, and some 1x material to make open shelving above the cabinets, instead of standard upper cabinets. I'm pretty minimalist, and will only have one nice set of dishes and cups that I won't mind being out for display. Now to start getting some new furniture, and start rounding up appliances.


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## Toolman50 (Mar 22, 2015)

Following your house renovation. Lots of hard work, but it will be really nice when completed. You're very fortunate to (1) get the house and (2) have the ability to renovate the house. 
I'm sure someone without your ability would have walked away from the house. You will have a lot of sweat equity in the house when your finished. You are customizing it to meet your specific needs, so it will be a custom home when you're done. You're doing a very good job documenting your work.


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## Jesse Blair (Oct 9, 2016)

Thanks. Yeah, I'm definitely fortunate to have a house already paid for plopped into my lap, though it was a costly and hard way to receive it. Part of me wanted to just avoid the hassle and just sell it for probably 60% of market value, because of all of the work required. But I have so much history in the house, literally my entire time being on this earth, so I couldn't really bring myself to just let it go like that. But after all of the hard work, it'll be a really nice place to settle down and call my own, and if one day I decide to sell, I can actually get market value or above, now that it'll be fixed up nicely. Still a ways to go, though. Not even done with the entire first floor yet, and I still have to do the upstairs, the exterior, the yard, new front and rear decks, new privacy fence (mostly for a place where the dogs can run free and get some energy out) and some other little things. But once I get the main living area completed, I can chip away at the rest of it as I get the time and money to do so. It'll probably take me a year or more to get it all to my liking, but I doubt I'll ever be completely finished with it. One of those never ending projects... :grin:


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## Jesse Blair (Oct 9, 2016)

Short section of counter is finished, just have to put another coat on the long main section of counter, then I can install. I ended up sanding some of the stain back off to expose some of the flaws in the wood. I wanted it to look sort of rough and less refined, so I didn't take much care in my sanding. I just sanded enough to get the overall surface smooth, but left a lot of smaller scratches and small holes, as well as weird grain characteristics showing through. There is one larger chunk missing on the small section that I'm sure I'll probably regret having not filled, but I really couldn't be bothered at the time. If it ends up bothering me too much, I can always attempt a repair down the road. Only other thing I sort of wish I had done is sanded the edges a bit more, because you can still see the vertical machining marks, or roller marks pretty clearly. But again, I was going for rough looking, so it's fine with me. The kitchen will have a mix of a rustic and industrial look, so it shouldn't look out of place.


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## Jesse Blair (Oct 9, 2016)

Weather still not playing nice. I spent the day doing a bunch of little stuff inside. Finished up the last little bit of trim painting needed and finished up the countertops. I'll mount them tomorrow, along with trimming one of the pantry doors that is catching on the floor a little. Got bored a second ago and started stringing up my LED tape lighting behind the molding on both sides of the opening, above the kitchen and living room. In the picture it looks bright and harsh (bad cell phone camera), but in reality it's a nice soft and diffuse, low glow, in a neutral white. Still need to trim the excess off the end and hardwire it. Currently just have it hooked to a 2A power supply, plugged into an outlet. Should make a nice nightlight. Uses only ~18W for the lights on both sides, and gives off just enough light to be able to walk around without turning on big overhead lights.


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## Catpower (Jan 11, 2016)

Now watch your property taxes go up because you fixed it up so nice LOL


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## Jesse Blair (Oct 9, 2016)

Catpower said:


> Now watch your property taxes go up because you fixed it up so nice LOL


Wouldn't surprise me. The city I live in has recently gotten ridiculous, thinking the city is more "fancy" and wealthy than we are. We have several cities nearby that are very high wealth, and they seem to want to have that image, but we are still just a ******* town with 10k people... If I were going by the rules, I would have already paid probably more in permits, and wasted more time waiting on them, than I have spent in materials and time to do the work. They even want you to get a permit to paint a mailbox... My moms neighbor had to stop and go get a permit when the inspectors driving around saw him painting his mailbox... That makes my blood boil even thinking about it. I'm not paying the city a minimum of $30 to paint my own damn mailbox.

But luckily, I just got a property/home valuation in the mail a few weeks ago, so my taxes for the next few years will be based on that, which was just under $100k. That's one good thing about this area, is home values and the cost of living is pretty low compared to a lot of other parts of the country. Once I'm done fixing it up, I bet my value will be $20-30k more than that. I'm on about 1 acre, right next to the city park. Pretty good location.

Finished up wiring in the kitchen, cut out and painted the kick plates for under the cabinets, finished off the baseboards in the living room, and scribed out my bar top to fit around the trim to sit flush on the wall. Will start the poly on it tomorrow, and should have it installed by the end of the week, which will pretty much complete these two rooms, aside from crown molding, which will have to wait. Funds are starting to dry up, and I have to sell some more inherited assets before I start on the next stage of the renovation.


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## Catpower (Jan 11, 2016)

We have 45 acres we paid $888.88 per acre in 1995, it was just plain old dirt back then, no electricity, no water, no nothing. Since then we pulled in a single wide to live in until my fantasy farm could be built, since then we have built 17,000 sq ft in "shops" my woodworking shop is 1500 square ft, machine shop is 3000 sq ft my welding/whatever shop is 9000 sq ft and a 3500 sq ft shop for tractors and other stuff close to the 3200 sq ft house, we built on the banks of the 9 acre pond we had dug. That was dug by a D10, a D9 Caterpillars and 6 19 yard scrapers working from sun up to sun down for 26 days, they moved over 70,000cu yds of dirt

A couple months ago 60 acres sold across the road from us for $15,000 per acre, I am so glad for the ag exemption, and since I am a disabled vet they can't raise our taxes any more.

When we moved here we were way out in the sticks, but since then it seems like everybody wants to move out here, but the way it is situated, the closest neighbor is about 1/2 mile away, and that is our son in the single wide 

I am so glad I busted my a$$ when I was younger and could stand to do it, to make enough money to pay for all my toys, and being debt free also makes money stretch a lot farther


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## Jesse Blair (Oct 9, 2016)

Catpower said:


> We have 45 acres we paid $888.88 per acre in 1995, it was just plain old dirt back then, no electricity, no water, no nothing. Since then we pulled in a single wide to live in until my fantasy farm could be built, since then we have built 17,000 sq ft in "shops" my woodworking shop is 1500 square ft, machine shop is 3000 sq ft my welding/whatever shop is 9000 sq ft and a 3500 sq ft shop for tractors and other stuff close to the 3200 sq ft house, we built on the banks of the 9 acre pond we had dug. That was dug by a D10, a D9 Caterpillars and 6 19 yard scrapers working from sun up to sun down for 26 days, they moved over 70,000cu yds of dirt
> 
> A couple months ago 60 acres sold across the road from us for $15,000 per acre, I am so glad for the ag exemption, and since I am a disabled vet they can't raise our taxes any more.
> 
> ...


Dang, you got a great deal. I wish I had a sense that allowed me to see future growth. There are so many places around here that were completely undeveloped 20 years ago, that today is probably going for tens or hundreds of thousands per acre. The parents of a friend owned land in my town for decades, nothing around, and about 15 years ago they were bought out so they could build a WalMart, a Lowe's and a strip mall on it... needless to say, they are now quite wealthy.

I wish I had more land to play with. I'd love to have some heavy equipment to play with, like a big kids sandbox. I used to operate equipment out of high school, and I miss it.


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## Catpower (Jan 11, 2016)

Jesse Blair said:


> Dang, you got a great deal. I wish I had a sense that allowed me to see future growth. There are so many places around here that were completely undeveloped 20 years ago, that today is probably going for tens or hundreds of thousands per acre. The parents of a friend owned land in my town for decades, nothing around, and about 15 years ago they were bought out so they could build a WalMart, a Lowe's and a strip mall on it... needless to say, they are now quite wealthy.
> 
> I wish I had more land to play with. I'd love to have some heavy equipment to play with, like a big kids sandbox. I used to operate equipment out of high school, and I miss it.



In Texas they have a thing called the Veterans Land Board, you can borrow money from the state with 5% down and a little lower interest rate. Right before we started looking they raised the max from $20,000 to $40,000, the land we got was from two older sisters that had inherited it, and they wanted cash, so they could spend it while they were still able. They originally were asking $56,000, but had never gotten any offers, the real estate agent told us they would probably got for the $40,000, and they did luckily

When we started looking we wanted about 5-10 acres, we are so glad we went this route, but while doing it there were some real lean months as the expenditures were pretty high sometimes. Really the one thing I hated was the rock we had to have brought in for the roads, the nearest rock to us is about 100 miles in any direction, so a semi load was about $800-1000. Our drive way is over 1/2 mile long, I quit counting when we got to 40 semi loads LOL


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## Jesse Blair (Oct 9, 2016)

Weather is still slowing progress... Kitchen sink in, all hooked up and working. That's a HUGE step for me, since I've been without a large sink for washing up things for over a month. Counter tops secured, got a few other small things done today. Over the next few days, it's small things like making a backsplash for the counters, a light fixture for above where the stove will go, which I'll make out of wood and iron pipe. I'll also have iron pipe shelving above the counters. I like that industrial look. Pantry doors still need to be finished up and hung, and thresholds need to be put down. Lots of quick, easy jobs, if I could just focus and knock them out. When it gets to this point of any project, I start getting scatterbrained and can't concentrate, and just end up walking in circles...

Got the sink and faucet used on facebook for $20. Can't beat that. Moen faucet, and the sink only has a few minor blemishes.



















My mom couldn't help herself and went ahead and started hanging curtains, even though we aren't quite at that point yet. But she's helping, so she can knock herself out.


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## Catpower (Jan 11, 2016)

Looking very good, and I am sorry about the hijacking of your thread


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## Jesse Blair (Oct 9, 2016)

Not a problem. :smile3:

I don't think we will ever have a dry day here again... Another slow day. Got the bar framework finished last night, and primed it earlier. I'm at that point in the project where I'm losing enthusiasm and just want it to be done... so I already had some maple blanks already cut, jointed and planed for table legs... so I just stole them and routed an edge on them and threw them up there. I was going to do something more fancy and ornate...but nah. Just notched them out 2.5", and notched out the long center beam to rest in the notches on the side pieces. Sides are screwed in with two 2.5" screws, and 1 center 4" lag bolt, that's hidden under the long beam in the middle. I was hanging off of it to make sure it'll hold up to potentially 6 crazy drunks leaning and hanging off of it... it should be fine...

Top has the first coat of poly, but somehow I failed to notice how low I was on GF high performance, so now I get to make an hour and a half round trip tomorrow for the nearest store that carries it... probably in the rain.


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## Kenbo (Sep 16, 2008)

Loving this thread. Keep it coming. Great work so far.


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## Jesse Blair (Oct 9, 2016)

Kenbo said:


> Loving this thread. Keep it coming. Great work so far.


Thanks. This is something I've wanted to do for so long, and I'm enjoying the process so far. I had envisioned having more money to work with, and not trying to live in the house while I worked, but those are just challenges to overcome. I would have done it much sooner with another house, but because of some dumb financial decisions I made when I was a teenager, I've been living with my father since college (10+ years). Which was fine, he enjoyed the company, and we got along well enough. I helped out with bills where I could. If I had more money at the moment, I'd be doing things a bit differently, but this is what I can do for now, and it'll have to be good enough. It'll still be a great finished product, though. The big holdup right now is the damaged part of the house. I can't really finish the living room back wall, or flooring, or paint all of the ceiling until I repair and replace what needs to be done there. Once I do, I can finish the rest of the flooring, finish painting those walls, finish painting the back of the living room ceiling, finish the trim work, and move onto the bathroom. I'm really dreading seeing what the repairs are going to end up costing, and how much labor will be involved. I know I'll at least have to pull up all of the flooring, rip out interior walls and make necessary temporary braces, and remove a 6' wide section of exterior wall, then replace joists, rebuild walls, replace subfloor and drywall, and live with a gap in the siding in the back of the house... I can do most of the labor, I just need a little guidance from one of my dads good friends, who is a contractor. Pretty sure I know what needs to be done, but I'd like to at least have a second opinion before I tear into it.


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## Jesse Blair (Oct 9, 2016)

Got the bar top in. It has developed a little bit of a bow in it, but I can pull it down flat when I fasten it down to the frame. Also need to trim around the top where it meets the column. Good size bar though, it can easily seat 6, maybe 8 if people stuff themselves in at the corners.


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## Jesse Blair (Oct 9, 2016)

Slightly better shot of the top, at night lit by the overhead pendant light. Not sure about the light, though. It looks cool, but having an exposed bulb just above your line of sight with other people across the table is a bit blinding and distracting. I got the lowest power bulb I could get, but it's still a bit much. I could hang it a foot higher, and it would be better, but it would look slightly goofy only hanging on a 6" long cable...


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## Catpower (Jan 11, 2016)

This might be a dumb question but did you apply the same finish to the top and bottom? If not that can very well cause some bowing


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## Jesse Blair (Oct 9, 2016)

Catpower said:


> This might be a dumb question but did you apply the same finish to the top and bottom? If not that can very well cause some bowing


Even though I know better... I didn't. I did go back and put one coat on the bottom after the top had cured. It was already slightly bowed when I got it, but I'm sure I helped it along.


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## Catpower (Jan 11, 2016)

Jesse Blair said:


> Even though I know better... I didn't. I did go back and put one coat on the bottom after the top had cured. It was already slightly bowed when I got it, but I'm sure I helped it along.



I have made that mistake a time or two, it seems when you are on a roll and wanting to get the project finished, we over look what we know won't really be right.

But the good news is when the weather dries out it will be level then, kind of like a broken clock is right two times a day


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## Jesse Blair (Oct 9, 2016)

Yeah, I'm not too terribly worried about it. Sitting on the frame, the center is only lifted about 3/8" over the 36" wide span. When I fasten it down, it'll pull flat and hopefully won't be an issue. It already has some cracks and flaws in the surface anyway, so another crack or two won't matter, if the unthinkable happens... :grin:

And yeah, it was a case of wanting to get it done. Didn't want to go through the hassle and extra time of finishing both sides the same way. If it were a piece for someone else I would have absolutely done it right... but like usual, with my own pieces I sort of rush through and move on to something else.


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## Jesse Blair (Oct 9, 2016)

Slow progress this week. Trying to take care of other things. I did have the time to finish one set of my kitchen shelves today. Turned out well enough. I like the industrial look of the iron pipes, and I used gun blue to match the hardware. I did it sort of backwards from how I normally see them used, which is supporting from the bottom. Takes up a little storage space, but these will mostly be for glasses, and I don't have that many. I do have my best plastic and foam cups and cutlery up there for the time being...


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## Jesse Blair (Oct 9, 2016)

Finally have hot water again after more than a month... So nice! First hot shower is going down soon, to wash off all of the crawlspace grime. You never quite appreciate what you have, until you don't...


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## Jesse Blair (Oct 9, 2016)

Pending sale of one of my tractors, to allow me to finish up the first floor and exterior of the house, I'm trying to decide what route I want to go with new siding. I'm slightly worried to see what lies beneath the existing masonite panel siding, as it used to be somewhat common practice here in the SE at least, to install masonite without plywood/osb sheathing. So I will at least install new house wrap once I get the old siding off, which may also require installing sheathing to the whole house. If sheathing does exist there, that will save me a lot of time and money. I'm leaning towards going with masonite again, over vinyl, which to me just looks cheap. The masonite has held up reasonably well over the 30 years, despite having been neglected, and having not been painted nearly often enough. New masonite lap siding is priced about the same as decent quality vinyl, and while it does require a little more care, to me it looks better. I've also looked into going the route of new vertical masonite panels like the house already has, but the selection of those is very limited, and the look is sort of dated. But installation would be much easier, and faster, needing only install a few large panels instead of one run of 6-8" siding at a time. It's tough making these big and expensive decisions...


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## Catpower (Jan 11, 2016)

Have you looked into James Hardy Plank siding? We have it on our house it is a little over 13 years old and the cheap original paint still looks good

I hate Vinyl siding, after a few years it gets real brittle,at least the stuff i had seen does, a few times after working on the condensing unit beside a vinyl sided house i would push on the siding to give me a little help in standing up from an awkward position, and the siding would crush just by pushing on it


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## Jesse Blair (Oct 9, 2016)

Catpower said:


> Have you looked into James Hardy Plank siding? We have it on our house it is a little over 13 years old and the cheap original paint still looks good
> 
> I hate Vinyl siding, after a few years it gets real brittle,at least the stuff i had seen does, a few times after working on the condensing unit beside a vinyl sided house i would push on the siding to give me a little help in standing up from an awkward position, and the siding would crush just by pushing on it


Yeah, that's the product I was looking at. They have some that is ~10" wide, which I would prefer the look of, over the more standard 5-6" wide stuff. Install looks easy enough, too. No harder than vinyl, and maybe even easier.



woodholleghren said:


> looking forward to your best design ! its looking good right now . amazing progress


Thanks. Hopefully I'll get back into interesting stuff soon. Money ran out, and I've basically just been doing little things here and there. Bought a few pieces of furniture that I found with prices I couldn't turn down. Filling it, starting to make it feel like a home, and not just an empty shell.

Have 2 or 3 people looking at my tractor for sale in the next few days. I'm probably going to get a few thousand less than what it's worth, but I need the money pretty badly, so I'm willing to take a bit of a loss. If I didn't need the money so badly, I could take a few months to find the right buyer and get all it's worth. So hopefully as soon as it's sold, I can start buying what I need to finish it all off.


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## Catpower (Jan 11, 2016)

Jesse Blair said:


> Yeah, that's the product I was looking at. They have some that is ~10" wide, which I would prefer the look of, over the more standard 5-6" wide stuff. Install looks easy enough, too. No harder than vinyl, and maybe even easier.
> 
> 
> 
> ...


What kind of tractor are you selling?


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## Jesse Blair (Oct 9, 2016)

Catpower said:


> What kind of tractor are you selling?


It's a Kubota L4400, with 7 attachments. Just sold it actually, but got $2500 less than what I was initially asking for the whole package. Wish I didn't have to sell it, but I need money more than I need a tractor. Besides, I have 2 more tractors anyway... :grin: She only has 125 hours on her, so it's basically a brand new tractor, that this guy is getting for about 1/2 of what it would all be worth if bought new again.


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## Jesse Blair (Oct 9, 2016)

Got it gone, cash in hand... but I thought I was going to have to take an ambulance ride. Got the last piece of equipment loaded up and started feeling weird. Had to sit down. Within seconds I couldn't catch my breath, my heart was racing, my vision got dark and my hearing got very muted and muffled, and I could barely sit up straight. I was almost ready to tell him to keep an eye on me and call an ambulance if he saw me roll over and fall to the ground. Got back inside and sat for a minute after shedding my dripping wet clothes, and I feel better now, though my finger tips are tingling. Think it was just heat related. It's upper 80's and about 300% humidity, and I was exerting myself pretty heavily, helping him load up 7 pieces of tractor equipment... That was quite scary. I've been faint before, but not quite like that. I just don't handle heat well at all. Never did, and especially not as much, the older I get.


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## brokenknee (Sep 9, 2009)

Jesse Blair said:


> Got it gone, cash in hand... but I thought I was going to have to take an ambulance ride. Got the last piece of equipment loaded up and started feeling weird. Had to sit down. Within seconds I couldn't catch my breath, my heart was racing, my vision got dark and my hearing got very muted and muffled, and I could barely sit up straight. I was almost ready to tell him to keep an eye on me and call an ambulance if he saw me roll over and fall to the ground. Got back inside and sat for a minute after shedding my dripping wet clothes, and I feel better now, though my finger tips are tingling. Think it was just heat related. It's upper 80's and about 300% humidity, and I was exerting myself pretty heavily, helping him load up 7 pieces of tractor equipment... That was quite scary. I've been faint before, but not quite like that. I just don't handle heat well at all. Never did, and especially not as much, the older I get.


Make a doctor appointment, make sure it is not your heart. I just lost a good friend a month ago to a heart attack. His significant other said she had to run to the store, he told her he was going to take a shower before heading out to see the grand-kids. She was gone only about 1/2 hour only to return to find him dead. He was only 62 years old. My brother had his first heart attack at 53. You don't always have chest pain with heart attacks. 

Go in and get checked out.


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## Jesse Blair (Oct 9, 2016)

brokenknee said:


> Make a doctor appointment, make sure it is not your heart. I just lost a good friend a month ago to a heart attack. His significant other said she had to run to the store, he told her he was going to take a shower before heading out to see the grand-kids. She was gone only about 1/2 hour only to return to find him dead. He was only 62 years old. My brother had his first heart attack at 53. You don't always have chest pain with heart attacks.
> 
> Go in and get checked out.


Well, I'm only 31, and have good blood pressure and I'm in fairly good health, but I guess you never know. I'm almost certain it was just heat exhaustion though, along with having not eaten anything all day, except for a small slice of cake with my coffee earlier in the day. I probably lost a half gallon of water in the hour I was out there. Every piece of clothing was absolutely dripping wet. I just don't tolerate heat well. But I do need to visit the doctor one day, I have a lot of little issues I need to address, but it's hard to do when you don't make much money and don't have insurance. Don't make enough to afford to go, but make too much to get assistance... Sucks being in that working poor classification.


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## Catpower (Jan 11, 2016)

Jesse Blair said:


> Well, I'm only 31, and have good blood pressure and I'm in fairly good health, but I guess you never know. I'm almost certain it was just heat exhaustion though, along with having not eaten anything all day, except for a small slice of cake with my coffee earlier in the day. I probably lost a half gallon of water in the hour I was out there. Every piece of clothing was absolutely dripping wet. I just don't tolerate heat well. But I do need to visit the doctor one day, I have a lot of little issues I need to address, but it's hard to do when you don't make much money and don't have insurance. Don't make enough to afford to go, but make too much to get assistance... Sucks being in that working poor classification.



Yeah you need to keep up on your health. One thing I have to do is take massive amounts of potassium, they have checked everything and that is all they could come up with, and i am talking 4000 MG per day, you might want to start taking more K too, I did some research on it and some well known doctors say very few people get enough potassium


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## Jesse Blair (Oct 9, 2016)

Catpower said:


> Yeah you need to keep up on your health. One thing I have to do is take massive amounts of potassium, they have checked everything and that is all they could come up with, and i am talking 4000 MG per day, you might want to start taking more K too, I did some research on it and some well known doctors say very few people get enough potassium


Probably wouldn't hurt. I do get cramps quite often.


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## Catpower (Jan 11, 2016)

Jesse Blair said:


> Probably wouldn't hurt. I do get cramps quite often.


Those are probably from driving tractors that aren't green and yellow>

Just kidding,potassium pills are cheap try taking some they really do make a difference


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## Jesse Blair (Oct 9, 2016)

Might as well. I already have a home pharmacy worth of supplements and medications... What's one more.

Went and spent almost a grand on baseboard, crown molding, blinds and a few other things at Lowe's... I should be getting some kind of discount from as much as I've been spending there lately... Hopefully tomorrow I can knock out most of the remaining trim work, on walls that won't be disturbed by the repair of the rotted walls and floor. Should really make a huge difference.


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## Jesse Blair (Oct 9, 2016)

Still tinkering, preparing for the big push to knock out this rotted wall replacement, which is holding back progress. Since it's been fairly nice (and hot) for the last few days, we've been working a bit outside. Cut down all of the ancient shrubs, most of which now look more like trees, and did some cleaning around the yard. Also bleached and pressure washed the house to get some of the mold off of the siding. Started crown molding in the bedroom yesterday but got frustrated and quite before I made any more mistakes. Tomorrow I should get the crown molding in the kitchen and living room finished, and that will pretty much be it for the kitchen, and living room, except for the one wall that's coming down in the living room, and a little more paint on the ceiling, and the rest of the flooring. Hopefully I'll have something picture worthy done soon.

Something else I'm trying to figure out, is if there is a way I can keep the 90% of the siding that is still in good shape, and just replace the rotted out parts. All of the rot is in the bottom 1-2', mostly around the front and rear deck where water splashed on it for years without gutters, and from improper flashing between the deck and siding. I'm not sure if it would look right, but I'm trying to think of a way to use horizontal masonite planks in the bottom 2 or 3 feet, and keep the vertical masonite sheet siding that's above. The bottom 1-2' is painted concrete foundation block, so I'm not sure that having 2 seperate transitions between material and design would look right.

Existing siding is this stuff, same wood like pattern with 1" wide vertical gaps/lines between the "planks". Do any of you have any creative ideas as to how I could save the majority of the siding by just replacing the bottom few feet with something else, and not having it look goofy?


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## Catpower (Jan 11, 2016)

Maybe do it like a Wainscot on the our side wall, just cut it 2 feet up install new siding then cover the crack with a 1x4 or something else and seal it good ought to work for quite a while if done right


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## Jesse Blair (Oct 9, 2016)

Catpower said:


> Maybe do it like a Wainscot on the our side wall, just cut it 2 feet up install new siding then cover the crack with a 1x4 or something else and seal it good ought to work for quite a while if done right


Great minds think alike. I just had that thought after posting. Cut all the way around the house about 3 feet up, and replace the lower part with a flat, less textured piece, and use 1x to trim it out, like wainscoting. Probably do the new bottom portion white, to match the block foundation and trim, so it won't look too segmented. The back of the house will have to be completely redone though, since the portion around the bathroom needs to come down to replace studs and sheathing. I'd never find a matching product, so I can just do the whole back in the same new stuff I get to the along the bottom everywhere else. Doing it this way should save me a good $1500-$2000, and I'm all about saving money where I can, as long as it doesn't look too bad, or isn't safe/reliable/durable enough...


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## Toolman50 (Mar 22, 2015)

Jesse Blair said:


> Well, I'm only 31, and have good blood pressure and I'm in fairly good health, but I guess you never know. I'm almost certain it was just heat exhaustion though, along with having not eaten anything all day, except for a small slice of cake with my coffee earlier in the day. I probably lost a half gallon of water in the hour I was out there. Every piece of clothing was absolutely dripping wet. I just don't tolerate heat well. But I do need to visit the doctor one day, I have a lot of little issues I need to address, but it's hard to do when you don't make much money and don't have insurance. Don't make enough to afford to go, but make too much to get assistance... Sucks being in that working poor classification.


I've been told if you ever suffer a heat stroke you are less tolerant of heat from then on. I don't know if that is a fact or not. 
I've also been told that a heart attack can be brought on by cooling down too fast. Again, I don't know if that's a fact.


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## Jesse Blair (Oct 9, 2016)

Toolman50 said:


> I've been told if you ever suffer a heat stroke you are less tolerant of heat from then on. I don't know if that is a fact or not.
> I've also been told that a heart attack can be brought on by cooling down too fast. Again, I don't know if that's a fact.


Hmm, I hope not. I know I'm not in as good of shape as I used to be, but I didn't think I was that bad. Just up until a few years ago, I was working long and hard hours in the heat, and handled it just fine. I guess maybe the last 2 years of working from home and not getting as much exercise as I used to played some role in it. And I do think since that first incident a few days ago, any time I go out in the heat or exert myself very much, I start feeling a little... off. Hopefully I'm not permanently screwed up on being able to work in the heat. Not that I enjoy it, but it needs to be done from time to time.


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## Jesse Blair (Oct 9, 2016)

Well, demo has started on the damaged sections in need of repair. I started with a simple task of locating the leak that had rotted a hole in the subfloor under the hall closet wall. Didn't take long to find it. I was expecting it to be something leaking upstairs, dripping down the pipe, but it appears to be a leak level with the floor, where the pipe goes between two joists. Not sure if it was due to house movement/settling, or just corrosion in the copper pipe. It looks like it would have to leak for a long time to cause that much rot. The bottom plate is completely gone and the front wall of the closet is swinging in the breeze... I thought this fix was going to be a bit easier, but now it seems I'm going to have to pull up my big boy pants and go at this job hard. Decided instead of picking around at the issues one at a time, all in this central area of the house (bathroom, hall closet and water heater closet, between the living room and back bedroom), I'm just going to build a temporary brace wall, remove that whole chunk of the house, pull up the subfloors and start again. It shouldn't even need a brace wall, as it's only a ~14' span from the center line of the house to the exterior wall (its a simple square house with a boring, steep pitch gable roof, and there is a wall running almost the entire length down the center). Once those few short walls are out of the way, and I pull up the subfloor, that will make replacing the 2 or 3 damaged joists much easier. It will also allow me to reroute plumbing and hvac ducts closer to the exterior wall so I can open up the living room and hallway a bit more. Then I can put down the new subfloor in full sheets, rather than trying to fit it into existing walled spaces, which is far less than ideal. But before any of that can start, I have to take down the rear deck tomorrow. My chainsaw is fueled up and lubed, ready to go. Need it out of the way to gain access to the sill plate and rim joist that needs to be removed and replaced. Should be a fun week... Hopefully I'll have it back to new framing by the weekend, and then I can start on my least favorite of tasks, drywall and paint...


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## Jesse Blair (Oct 9, 2016)

Opened up 3 walls, exposed the full extent of the damage, stepped on a nail... It was a good day.


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## Catpower (Jan 11, 2016)

Looks like you are going to be having some fun LOL 

Now go get your tetanus shot


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## Jesse Blair (Oct 9, 2016)

It has been a pretty productive week. We've only been working 4 or 5 hours in the morning, because by noon, it's too hot and humid to function. But even with limited time, we got the back deck down, cut away the siding at the bottom and replaced the rim joist. I really lucked out, in that the sill plate is nowhere nearly as bad as I thought. I didn't even need to replace any of it, which is good because I was not looking forward to trying to jack the house up. There's about a 2' long section where the outer 1" is a bit soft, but the rest of the board supporting the joists feels and looks in good condition. The worst part of it is between two joists anyway, and only leaves a tiny 1/8" gap between the bottom edge of the rim joist and the sill. The original rim joist is what took the bulk of the damage. With exception to a few little spots that were still partially intact, most of it was rotted completely through, or at least looked like black swiss cheese... Most of it we raked out by hand. I had to replace about 20' of rim joist... So the joists in that span werent really tied together for many many years. Only two joists are rotted on the end, the rest are just a little damp just on the very bottom corner, with maybe very very minor rot. But not nearly enough to make me worry about it or want to spend the time and money patching it. Should be just fine. Just need to cut back and scab about 4' on one of them, and about 2' on the other. Then there is one in the middle of the span, the leaking pipes from the picture above, that is a double, and needs a 3' section cut and scabbed. Taking the weekend off, because this week has drained me, but first thing Monday, I'll start pulling up subfloor, and start capping off old plumbing and old electrical, then scab the joists that need it, and put down new subfloor. Then I should be ready to do some minor interior framing, and reframe the exterior wall in the old bathroom.


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## Jesse Blair (Oct 9, 2016)

I've got air conditioning again... Surprisingly. Had a guy come look at the 30 year old packaged ac/heater, and even though it hasn't been used in more than 5 years, all it needed was a R-22 topoff, and the contacts on the thermostat needed brushing. It came right on and seems to be running pretty well. It only needed a few pounds of R-22, but since it's being phased out and the price is 10x what it was 10 years ago, it cost $200 to recharge... But at least I have 62 degree air coming out of the vents now. I'm more excited to have dryer air, than cooler air. It's been so swampy downstairs during this whole process. As long as the unit lasts through these next few hottest months, I'll be happy. Hopefully I can come up with the money to get a new package unit installed before next summer, which he said he could do for in the $4-5k range. I'd have to get the gas hooked back up, which is no big deal I guess. He said he would handle that too, as part of the install. We shall see.


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## Jesse Blair (Oct 9, 2016)

Rim joist repair work. You can see there is some minor rot, but mostly just staining and mold on the bottom edges of the sheathing. You can also see the largest spot of sill rot under the left side of the door frame. The frame will have to be replaced, it's too far gone for me to waste time trying to patch the rotted spots.










The view from the living room, looking through the water heater closet, the bathroom, and into the back bedroom which will now be the bathroom. I'll have to replumb the copper on the left side of the wall, since that closet will be removed.










The rot and termite damage from those two copper pipes that feed the upstairs. The lower wall plate is completely gone, as well as about half of the width of the 2x10 joist under that section.










And now the nightmare that was found behind and under the bath tub. That whole exterior wall will be removed and reframed, minus the window, since it'll become a closet. It should have never gotten to that point, but all I can do now is fix it I guess...


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## Jesse Blair (Oct 9, 2016)

Very productive day of inside work. Got the plumbing that goes upstairs rerouted and all sweated and crimped up, as well as removing all of the old tub, toilet and bathroom sink plumbing from the equation. All new plumbing will be pex. So much easier to work with. No sweating of joints, except for where I don't want to use the push fittings, like inside of walls, when going from copper to pex. Got most of the walls down, that need to come down, and rerouted and deleted some electrical to work with the new wall layout. Tomorrow will begin the subfloor removal, which I'm feeling is going to be a total nightmare. Upon further looking, it's not a single sheet of 3/4, but 2 sheets of 1/2 plywood. The first/bottom layer is standard, all laid out prior to walls, but the second layer was cut out and placed around the existing walls... and I'm sure each was secured with it's own set of fun to pull nails. Got my hammer and cat paw ready to go.


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## Jesse Blair (Oct 9, 2016)

Still haven't gotten any pictures of progress, since I'm at that point where I just want it finished. All of the floor is up, got the one damaged living room joist patched up. Used a 7' piece of 2x10, overhanging ~3' on each side of the rot, which was just the top few inches, with 6 bolts on each side. The way the joists were laid out, it went from a single next to a double, to what is basically a 6x10 beam. The new joist is pretty much just to give the subfloor something flat to be nailed to. Got the first layer of 1/2" plywood down, and will finish the second layer tomorrow, and build the new hallway wall, which is only 3 or 4 feet long. Then all that is left is to pull up the little remaining bathroom subfloor, patch the 2 damaged joists, and put down new subfloor. I've decided to attempt to cut away the shreds of remaining studs on the inside of the bathroom exterior wall, to salvage the siding, until I can better afford to replace it. Hopefully I can run a long sawzall blade between the stud remains and the plywood sheathing to cut the nails, and surgically remove the studs, and reframe the wall and around the window without having to open a big hole in the side of the house. Then when the money is right, I can just reside the whole house at once. I'll have this all done by the weekend, and over the weekend I'll have help to finish the new bathroom, lay the new tile, install the new toilet and plumbing, and finish the tile in the new shower, which is already more than half completed from over 15 years ago. My dad started and never finished it.


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## Jesse Blair (Oct 9, 2016)

Hallway/living room mess is now official finished, with exception to drywall, paint and trim. Got the joists bandaged up, removed the floor furnace and patched the subfloor, framed in the new walls. Hallway is now ~18" wider, and now without a furnace grill to step on/over. Tomorrow I should be able to finish the bathroom joists and subfloor, and hopefully most of the exterior wall mess. Still nothing very interesting to look at, though to me, this makes me feel so good, having this step completed.


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## Jesse Blair (Oct 9, 2016)

Got a good start on the bathroom tile. My aunt gave me a few boxes of 18x18 tile that she had left over, and I made it go as far as I could, which worked out perfectly. Stopped them at the edge of the shower wall, and the remaining floor will have that darker 12" tile as a border around the 3 walls, and across the room where the 18" tiles end. Once that border is in, I found some more 12" tile that matches the larger tiles almost perfectly, and they will fill the rest of the field in the same diamond pattern as the 18" tiles. Sort of separates the large bathroom into a wet zone, where the shower and laundry is, and a dry side where the toilet and storage will be. Should look really nice when it's finished with sand color grout. I sort of don't like the white shower tiles now though, but they are already up, so I'll work with it. I'll use the same sand color grout to sort of tie the shower into the rest of the room. Have a nice free standing oak vanity to finish up and mount a counter and sink to, then I can run the supply lines and hook up the toilet drain and the bathroom will be pretty much finished. Hopefully by next weekend it'll be mostly finished.


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## Jesse Blair (Oct 9, 2016)

Almost done with the bathroom tile. Just a few of the edge and corner pieces need to be set, and I need to finish the spot under the water heater once we make the repairs on the old bathroom/new closet floors and relocate it. I'm actually glad I ran out of the 18" tiles. It would have been kind of boring with just those across the whole room. This breaks it up and adds some nice character, I think. Now to start grouting it the day after tomorrow, and finish the shower tile, then plumb and install the toilet and vanity, paint the walls, and finished...


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## Catpower (Jan 11, 2016)

Jesse Blair said:


> Almost done with the bathroom tile. Just a few of the edge and corner pieces need to be set, and I need to finish the spot under the water heater once we make the repairs on the old bathroom/new closet floors and relocate it. I'm actually glad I ran out of the 18" tiles. It would have been kind of boring with just those across the whole room. This breaks it up and adds some nice character, I think. Now to start grouting it the day after tomorrow, and finish the shower tile, then plumb and install the toilet and vanity, paint the walls, and finished...



We are getting 2500 sq ft of "carpet tile" delivered today, when you are finished with yours you can come here and hang out a few days and do ours >


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## Jesse Blair (Oct 9, 2016)

Catpower said:


> We are getting 2500 sq ft of "carpet tile" delivered today, when you are finished with yours you can come here and hang out a few days and do ours >


I feel like I'm coming down with something... I might be sick until you've finished with that install... :grin:


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## Jesse Blair (Oct 9, 2016)

Got the old bathroom/new closet joists repaired and new subfloor down. I also removed the majority of the rotten studs from the exterior wall. I decided to wait right until the end to do the final wall repair. Got the water heater moved to its new home in the new closet, got all of the holes drilled for the new bathroom plumbing, and got a few of the supply lines in place, and will work on roughing in the rest, along with the new branch of drains tomorrow. Will also hopefully have time to patch the ceiling in the hallway from the closet removal, finish the tile floor in the bathroom, finish the last coat of mud on the 4 new walls in the hallway and back living room wall, and put up the white beadboard panels on the outside of the shower stall. Decided to go that rough to break up the chocolate brown color of the rest of the walls. Should look nice when it's all finished. I'll try to get some pictures by the weekend of this weeks progress. Only other big thing we have left to do inside (sort of outside too) is framing in the new back door, so I can finish installing the flooring on the other half of the living room. The rest of what needs to be done inside is trim work, a little paint here and there, replacing old, dirty, ugly colored outlets and wallplates, finishing a little flooring... then moving furniture into the new spaces. Then I can finally start slowly chipping away at the outside here in a month or two when it finally starts to cool off and dry out a bit.


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## Jesse Blair (Oct 9, 2016)

Figured I'd share a rough floor plan, before and after, for those curious of the layout changes. Nothing that major, but definitely makes the space more functional and appealing. Mostly just that central area that has changed, other than the new second pantry and the opened wall where the bar now exists (as it did 30 years ago when the house was new. It was walled up about 20 years ago).

Before










After


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## Catpower (Jan 11, 2016)

I like it, one bedroom so you can't get too invaded LOL


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## Jesse Blair (Oct 9, 2016)

Catpower said:


> I like it, one bedroom so you can't get too invaded LOL


Thanks. Well, there are two more bedrooms and a full bath upstairs... so I could I guess. I'm actually toying with the idea of possibly down the road converting the upstairs into a rental. Convert one of the bedrooms into a living room / kitchen combo, and putting a locking door on the inside foyer door leading to my part of the house. An extra $700 a month for a part of the house I'll never use, would be helpful. Only issue is I don't know if I'd like having someone living above me. The junk room / new bathroom used to be a 4th bedroom. It was actually my nursery when I was a baby, which I somehow find a bit weird, that it's now a bathroom...


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## Catpower (Jan 11, 2016)

Yes renters can be a PITA, as we are finding our, our son who was medically retired from the Army and his family, wife and 5 boys live in the trailer we pulled in while we were building our place.

We thought it would be nice to have them closer so they could help out with chores around here, but they are soooo lazy (except for one) and if they do anything they think they should be paid journeyman's wages


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## sgibby88 (May 28, 2015)

Catpower said:


> Yes renters can be a PITA, as we are finding our, our son who was medically retired from the Army and his family, wife and 5 boys live in the trailer we pulled in while we were building our place.
> 
> We thought it would be nice to have them closer so they could help out with chores around here, but they are soooo lazy (except for one) and if they do anything they think they should be paid journeyman's wages




Which is why you don't hire/work with friends or family. Never pans out well


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk


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## Catpower (Jan 11, 2016)

sgibby88 said:


> Which is why you don't hire/work with friends or family. Never pans out well
> 
> 
> Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk



Really they aren't problems, is just wears on us watching them do the same stupid things over and over and expect a different result


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## sgibby88 (May 28, 2015)

Catpower said:


> Really they aren't problems, is just wears on us watching them do the same stupid things over and over and expect a different result




I hear you on that. Deal with that at work. I get dumb founded on how people don't learn from their mistakes


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk


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## Jesse Blair (Oct 9, 2016)

sgibby88 said:


> Which is why you don't hire/work with friends or family. Never pans out well


I know about that first hand. Worked with my best friend of almost 20 years, and ruined our relationship, mostly because of work I think. I've also worked with family 3 different times, and none of the times were all that enjoyable.

Painted some more today, did a little more plumbing, got the beadboard for the outside of the shower installed, fixed a leaking washer drain hose, and I'll finish the last few tiles on the bathroom floor after while, once I rest for a bit and make a trip to Lowe's. Getting so close.


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## Jesse Blair (Oct 9, 2016)

Finished grouting the bathroom floor, framed in and installed the closet door from the bathroom, removed the ancient wall mounted a/c that was under a window in the bathroom, and patched up the hole. Also cut my grass, my neighbors grass, and my aunts grass... because I'm such a good guy...


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## Catpower (Jan 11, 2016)

Still got the carpet tiles for you to install when you get time LOL


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## Jesse Blair (Oct 9, 2016)

Catpower said:


> Still got the carpet tiles for you to install when you get time LOL


While that's a generous offer... I must decline.

A little more progress in the bathroom. Got almost all of the shower stall trim up, and have the toilet installed. Did a little more painting on walls and door/window trim. Started painting the oak vanity, getting it ready for a top and sink basin.

I pretty much just started on the bathroom without a plan, and have just been winging it. But so far I think it's looking pretty good. I only wish I had planned the toilet supply location a little better. I just sort of guessed at it, expecting my toilet to be a little wider. Needed to be about 6 inches further inward, towards the toilet. Also, the bathroom is the only room that still has popcorn ceilings. They are still in very good shape, and I figured I'd leave them for now. It'll be easy enough to lay down some plastic at some point down the road and scrape and paint. Going to use smaller crown molding than the rest of the house.


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## Catpower (Jan 11, 2016)

Looking good

I like the commode right by the window, on our old house the MBR was the same, the sidewalk to the back door everybody used was right outside the window, I used to wait til our son came home after work and I would turn out the light, and wait until he was right beside the window and yell BOO or something

He would just about filled his britches LOL

But he was a slow learner, I would get him about every other night


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## Jesse Blair (Oct 9, 2016)

Catpower said:


> Looking good
> 
> I like the commode right by the window, on our old house the MBR was the same, the sidewalk to the back door everybody used was right outside the window, I used to wait til our son came home after work and I would turn out the light, and wait until he was right beside the window and yell BOO or something
> 
> ...


Haha. I enjoy scaring people. Only view I get out of the toilet window is my shop, and the carport/junk storage shed that will soon be a large 2 stall, covered dog kennel. Going to put down gravel, line the outer edges with blocks, and put up chain link from floor to ceiling. Dogs need somewhere secure to stay outside when I'm gone for more than a few hours. I don't trust them in the house for more than 4 or 5 hours, and I don't yet have a fenced in yard.


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## Jesse Blair (Oct 9, 2016)

Should be done with everything except for the bedroom by Friday afternoon. Bedroom will have to wait, money has dried up again. Trying to free up a little more money tied up elsewhere. Bathroom is done, except for a little more paint on the windows, finishing the vanity, and the shower. I'll continue to use the shower and bedroom upstairs until I can afford to finish those things, but at least I'll have a toilet and sink downstairs in the meantime. Tomorrow I'll try to get the back door framed in so I can finish putting down the flooring in the living room and hallway, and I'll finish the crown molding in the kitchen and living room. Then once the flooring is down, I can finish up the baseboards Friday, along with finishing up on the vanity. Still have to find a day to take all of the new doors outside and spray them all at one time ( all 6 of them), and hang a few more light fixtures. Ignoring the exterior wall that still needs to be repaired, I'm 95% finished with the downstairs.

A sort of neutral brown in the bathroom, trying to tie in the colors from the tiles and grout.










Toilet corner, with the last unpainted window in the house, and the new closet door.










Laundry corner of the bathroom. There used to be bifold doors there, but it makes it impossible to move the washer or dryer in or out without taking them down. I'll just put up some nice looking curtains.










Mostly finished vanity, and the mirror that will go along with it. In the future I'll install some sconce lights beside the mirror. Supply lines are inside the wall, just need to drill the holes and slip them through and hook up the shutoffs.










A view of the mostly finished living room from the back corner, by the bedroom and bathroom doors. Can't wait to move in my TV and surround sound system and start living down here.










Looking across the living room into the kitchen, from the back door area.










Wish I had my better camera. The phone camera lens isn't very wide and makes everything look small.


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## Jesse Blair (Oct 9, 2016)

Got the flooring finished, minus thresholds, and some more painting in the bathroom. Have some more before and after shots.

Hallway before...










And after... Notice the wider opening and lack of horrible floor furnace










Living room, mostly before










And mostly after, taken yesterday










Some other random shots










Here is another shot of the corner of the hallway, water and termite damage that was repaired.


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## Catpower (Jan 11, 2016)

AAAAAAH the good old floor furnaces, I never had seen one until I got to Texas, and for a while worked for the only company in Dallas that would work on them, glad i was too fat to fit under the floor LOL


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## Jesse Blair (Oct 9, 2016)

Catpower said:


> AAAAAAH the good old floor furnaces, I never had seen one until I got to Texas, and for a while worked for the only company in Dallas that would work on them, glad i was too fat to fit under the floor LOL


She was a grand old lady. Worked like a charm for almost 30 years. Kept the whole house warm for only cents per day. Granted, our winters are typically only in the 20's or 30's for lows, with maybe a few nights in the single digits. But for what it was, it worked great.


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## Jesse Blair (Oct 9, 2016)

Sooooo close. Ran out of trim. Lack 1 more piece of crown molding and one more piece of baseboard, and installing the two more pieces of corner trim in the hall, and I'll be done. Still have to go back and paint a coat or two on all of the trim, but that can be done in a day. Got the new a/c return grill installed, no more cruddy, 30 year old off white. New hallway light fixture, so now everything in the house is LED. One more little section of wall needs paint next to the back door where a hole had to be patched, and maybe one more coat on the living room ceiling above the foyer door.










My patch job of the ceiling was so shoddy, I decided to use some leftover beadboard and do something a little different. It divides the living room from the hall, and accentuates the short wall just inside the foyer door, which I was going to make an accent wall anyway, with wall sconce lighting, later. Looks bent in the picture, but that's just the camera.










Dogs are enjoying the new space...


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## Jesse Blair (Oct 9, 2016)

Been a pretty slow day, so I just tinkered around. My mom had 2 boxes of 4" Travertine tiles she picked up for cheap, that I thought would make a great vanity top, to save me some money. Just so happened they fit perfectly on my top without having to do any cuts, aside from around the sink opening. Already had some edge and corner pieces that matched well enough. So for a little of nothing, I have a pretty snazzy looking custom vanity top. I'll do a single tile backsplash in the darker border color tiles, straight onto concrete board attached to the wall, once these finish setting. The sink is a pretty basic white oval drop in, with a pretty classic looking chrome fixture, which matches the rest of the bathroom fixtures.


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## Toolman50 (Mar 22, 2015)

As you probably already know, Travertine is porous and will require sealing. 
I really like the look of travertine.


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## Jesse Blair (Oct 9, 2016)

Yeah, unfortunately. It looks so nice though. Worth the extra hassle, I think.


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## Catpower (Jan 11, 2016)

Man you are missing out on the carpeting party LOL

Got the son and grand kids hitting it right not, not real sure how it is going to turn out, but as long as I ain't doing it I will live with it LOL


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## Jesse Blair (Oct 9, 2016)

Catpower said:


> Man you are missing out on the carpeting party LOL
> 
> Got the son and grand kids hitting it right not, not real sure how it is going to turn out, but as long as I ain't doing it I will live with it LOL


Awww, shucks... :grin:


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## Pineknot_86 (Feb 19, 2016)

FWIW, I sold cabinets, countertops of various materials, lighting for 2-1/2 years. I priced our low end granite to a customer and a nice laminate. He said for the difference in price, he could replace the laminate every five years and still come out ahead. I had to agree. Look at Blackstar pattern (can't remember the brand name)- we had a display just inside the front door. People asked what kind of granite it was. Personally, I don't care for granite or any natural stone. Needs to be kept extra clean and sealed two or three times a year. If it gets chipped, you are outta luck for repairs. Corian or other synthetic materials can be repaired, and if done properly, repairs are invisible. There are synthetic materials that are stone dust in a synthetic base. Laminates now come in dozens of colors and textures that look like natural materials. Check them out before buying.


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## Jesse Blair (Oct 9, 2016)

Well, this stone was free to me. I think my mom only paid like $25 for 2 boxes, roughly 100 tiles. I'm single, with no kids, and I take care of my stuff, so the minimal maintenance needed isn't a big deal for me. Finished with the few last tiles that needed to be trimmed, grouted it and have wiped it mostly clean. Sink basin is just sitting in the hole for now, not going to put it down until I mount the vanity to the wall and do the backsplash to match. Turned out pretty well for a setup that only cost me maybe $100 in total. Got the bedroom cleaned up, and pretty much finished, except for flooring. I went ahead and moved in on the plywood floors for now. It's not a big deal to me, and I'll get around to it later. Started today on the last downstairs room that was untouched, which is the foyer. It only needs minimal work, mostly just paint and new trim to modernize it a bit. I do need to work on the hardwood floor in there, in the future. After 30 years, the finish is all kinds of scratched up and chipped in a few places. Thinking I may just sand it until I get the scratched mostly removed, then go back over it with a few coats of floor poly and call it a day. Rustic is kind of my thing, so if it still has some battle scars and mild discoloration, I won't be too bothered.

Grout is still wet and will lighten once it dries.


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## Catpower (Jan 11, 2016)

Looking good

Did you use any admix in the grout? If so make sure you do a real good job of wiping it all off while it is still wet, when it dries it is a booger to get off


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## Jesse Blair (Oct 9, 2016)

Catpower said:


> Looking good
> 
> Did you use any admix in the grout? If so make sure you do a real good job of wiping it all off while it is still wet, when it dries it is a booger to get off


It's just plain ole Mapei sanded grout. I could have done a better job of wiping it off the vanity and the last bit of floor I did yesterday, but I couldn't hold my head up by 4pm, and had to go take a nap and forgot about it until later that night and a lot of the muddy haze had already dried. I'll just have to do a little extra work after the fact.

Got the backsplash mortared, ready to grout tomorrow. Then I'll seal the tile, silicon the sink in and I'll move on to other fun things...


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## Pineknot_86 (Feb 19, 2016)

Jesse, nice job on the sink and tile top. I'm going to see if I can delete the photo so my wife doesn't see it. lol


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## Jesse Blair (Oct 9, 2016)

Thanks. :grin:

Got it cleaned up, and sealed it with 2 coats of 511 sealer. Also started on the trim. Couldn't really figure out what to do with it, since it was built up almost 1" out from the wall. A piece of trim I had to use on the stair skirtboard was the exact thickness when used upside down, so it got repurposed. The tile sticks out about 1/32" past the trim, and only has very minimal gaps. Not even enough for me to worry about sealing them. Since it ends abruptly on the sides, I'll just improvise and use chair rail molding just on that vanity wall, between the doors. Give it something to dead end into. Like most of what I've been doing, I'm just making it up as I go, and so far it's working out pretty well.


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## Catpower (Jan 11, 2016)

Jesse Blair said:


> Thanks. :grin:
> 
> Got it cleaned up, and sealed it with 2 coats of 511 sealer. Also started on the trim. Couldn't really figure out what to do with it, since it was built up almost 1" out from the wall. A piece of trim I had to use on the stair skirtboard was the exact thickness when used upside down, so it got repurposed. The tile sticks out about 1/32" past the trim, and only has very minimal gaps. Not even enough for me to worry about sealing them. Since it ends abruptly on the sides, I'll just improvise and use chair rail molding just on that vanity wall, between the doors. Give it something to dead end into. Like most of what I've been doing, I'm just making it up as I go, and so far it's working out pretty well.



You have got it looking good

And we still have the MBR to carpet so if you get here quick you can get in on that party LOL

But I sense the carpet laying party has come to a standstill, my wife paid the son in full LOL


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## Jesse Blair (Oct 9, 2016)

Uh oh, that's a sure way to end the work... :grin:


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## Jesse Blair (Oct 9, 2016)

A little more progress. Was an off day, I felt too lazy to do much. At least I cut the trim pieces and installed them. I ended up scribing the trim to fit around the shoe molding I put around the door frames, instead of running the molding to the frame and notching the shoe around it. More work, but it flows together better. A little loose in a few spots, but caulk will fill it nicely. Also started with the long process of cleaning the floor tiles, where I left too much of the grout.


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## Jesse Blair (Oct 9, 2016)

Worked on the foyer some more. Got it mostly painted, and almost all of the trim done. The walls are more of a light blue/green, not sure why it looks more blue grey in the pictures. Trimmed up the stair skirtboard to look a bit nicer. It was just a plain 1x10, stained brown to match all of the old brown trim in the house. Also got the chair rail molding done, and 95% of the baseboards. The old foyer was white above the chair rail, and a pretty horrible looking burgundy red below, and the white parts were stained up and looked really ratty. I'm going to hold off on refinishing the hardwood floors for now, at least until I get the back deck built and have another easily accessible entrance for the dogs and groceries. And the floor in front of the door, up to the edge of the stairs will be replaced with tile, since there is some rot damage around where the door was leaking.

I went with a lighter shade on the wall opposite to the stairs, and everything above the chair rail going up the stairs, and did the wall under the stairs, up to the corner where it meets the entry door to the rest of the house, in the same color, but 2 shades darker, to sort of accent the stairs and break up the monotone a bit.


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## Jesse Blair (Oct 9, 2016)

Did some more foyer trim and paint work over the last few days. Spent the day today under the house, finally hooking up bathroom plumbing. Nice being able to use the toilet down here now. No fun waking up in the middle of the night needing to pee, and having to make the trek all the way upstairs. By the time I get back to the bed, I'm wide awake.


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## Jesse Blair (Oct 9, 2016)

I've been lazy the last week or so. It's gotten hot again, and after almost 4 months of doing this, I'm really burned out on it. Not far to go though. Spent the last few days just tinkering here and there. Got the bathroom further along, and livable. Still have to finish shelving and doors on the vanity, and finish the inside of the shower, and paint the closet door, but otherwise it's finished. Got the mirror up, and the little accessories hung (towel hooks, towel loop and toilet paper holder). Also still have to do the fun process of cleaning grout haze off of the floor in there, and caulk a few more cracks in the trim. Pretty much all over the house, it's just really simple and quick jobs... it's just that there is about 500 of them and I run around in circles trying to figure out where to start and what to do next.

Tomorrow I'll start cleaning on the outside of the house since it will be moderately cooler tomorrow, but still hot. TSP and pressure washing time, along with cleaning up the replacement front door frame and door so I can paint it and install it. It's been clogging up the workshop for about 3 months now. The deck will have to be removed to gain access to the rim joist that has some rot, the same as by the back door. But the deck is small, and I'm replacing it with an even smaller one. Basically just 3 steps and a 6'x3' landing.


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## Toolman50 (Mar 22, 2015)

Looking really good. You've come a long way with this renovation.


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## Catpower (Jan 11, 2016)

Looking good, but keep going until it is done.

Our first house we built it our selves (newly married, wouldn't try iry now LOL) I did finish most of it after we moved in just small things like permanently mounting the mirrors in the bathrooms etc. We put it on the market after 7 years as I had to move for a new job, man it sucked having to finish something for somebody else LOL


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## Jesse Blair (Oct 9, 2016)

Thanks guys. Spent the day cleaning up, and pressure washing. Got the siding pretty well cleaned, and under the eves, and went ahead and cut down all of the badly maintained shrubs across the front of the house. Really improved the look, just getting rid of those. In doing so, I did find a strange hole. I noticed the other day when I was under the house running 220v for the new stove that the blocks of the foundation were wet on the front left wall of the house, and right in that area behind the shrubs I found a rather large hole against the foundation. Probably from animals, but maybe also from poor drainage and not having gutters. It appears to go all the way down to the base of the foundation. I guess I need to dump a bag of cement in the hole before I redo the beds and cover it all with landscaping fabric and mulch. All of the foundation was green and brown from all of the years of algae, mold and dirt splashing up on it, so it got a thorough cleaning. I'll recoat it all white with a sealer to make it look fresh again for the first time in probably 30 years. The siding on the front and both short sides of the house is pretty good, except for some softness around the seams (4x12 sheets of pressboard/hardboard siding, which I initially thought was masonite) which I will mend the best I can for the time being, before putting a coat of fresh paint on it. It's always been a light grey for as long as the house has existed, but I want to paint it a dark greyish green, with white trim and a red door and red matching shutters. In the near future, I'll take out a small loan against the house to finish up with the things I can't afford at the moment, like new siding, metal roof (31 year old asphalt shingles are definitely on their way out) and a new a/c unit to replace the original power hungry, undersized package unit. Probably also call out some tree removal guys to rid of a few of the ones closest to the house, like one of the 3 cedars over the driveway that make the cars a mess, and to trim some of the huge oak limbs hanging over the house. They are good shade, but they are also a risk, and a highway system for squirrels to get on the roof and chew on my fascia and eves.

The journey is still far from over, but I've certainly made a huge dent in the list. Maybe one day I'll be able to get back into the shop and continue my journey in woodworking, but for now it's all about the house.


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## Catpower (Jan 11, 2016)

If you have an algae problem,just put some bleach in a pump up sprayer and soak it down good the algae will be gone


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## Jesse Blair (Oct 9, 2016)

Catpower said:


> If you have an algae problem,just put some bleach in a pump up sprayer and soak it down good the algae will be gone


Yeah, that's what I did, along with the pressure washer to remove decades of grime and dirt. What is left of the old white paint is white again, but a lot of it flaked off, which is fine.


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## Jesse Blair (Oct 9, 2016)

Finished the last of the trim work today. Also have a color for the exterior picked out. Gone is the same boring light grey the house has been for its entire 30 years. Going with a sage green, with white trim, a red front door and black shutters. Should be a good look. Started tearing down the front porch earlier today, and tomorrow I'll finish that up, and inspect and begin repairs on whatever needs to be done with the rot situation around front. I'm assuming it'll just be replacing a 10-12' section of rim joist, which should be simple enough. Once that's replaced I install the new door/frame, and repair the siding, and start building the new front porch. Going to make it about half the size of the old one, which will be about 8' wide and about 4' deep, out from the house. I'm only going to use 2 posts, which will be 6x6's, high enough to build and integrated pergola over the porch, just below the roof line. I'm debating on whether or not to install railing, since it's only about 26" off the ground, and is such a small porch. Almost seems too easy to not do it though... I guess I'll see how I feel when the day arrives.


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## Catpower (Jan 11, 2016)

Jesse Blair said:


> Finished the last of the trim work today. Also have a color for the exterior picked out. Gone is the same boring light grey the house has been for its entire 30 years. Going with a sage green, with white trim, a red front door and black shutters. Should be a good look. Started tearing down the front porch earlier today, and tomorrow I'll finish that up, and inspect and begin repairs on whatever needs to be done with the rot situation around front. I'm assuming it'll just be replacing a 10-12' section of rim joist, which should be simple enough. Once that's replaced I install the new door/frame, and repair the siding, and start building the new front porch. Going to make it about half the size of the old one, which will be about 8' wide and about 4' deep, out from the house. I'm only going to use 2 posts, which will be 6x6's, high enough to build and integrated pergola over the porch, just below the roof line. I'm debating on whether or not to install railing, since it's only about 26" off the ground, and is such a small porch. Almost seems too easy to not do it though... I guess I'll see how I feel when the day arrives.



A red front door?


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## Jesse Blair (Oct 9, 2016)

:grin:

Just to show the mess I'm dealing with. The rim joist rot is obvious, but again, like the back of the house, the sill plate somehow is in perfect shape, aside from being damp. Not sure if they were treated with something that the rest of the wood wasn't, or what. So I cut the siding back until I hit solid wood, and tomorrow I'll replace the rim joist, and at least 1 of the joists tied into it has enough rot on the end that I'll probably scab on a few feet of extra wood to strengthen it. The door threshold literally just fell off once I removed the deck rim joist that was bolted to the house, and the rest of the bottom of the door frame is just floating. I found some small ants living in the wet backer board behind the siding, so I drenched it all with some strong pesticide to hopefully keep them away. I think, until I can afford to do new siding, I can get away with replacing the chunk of siding I cut out, with some plywood siding, to build it out flush, then I'll use a 1x12 or whatever it needs to cover any seams, and silicon it really well. Then I'll be sure to wrap the new door opening with some adhesive backed flashing membrane, along with aluminum flashing before I start with the new deck.

Old ugly, dry rotted shutters are gone, so I can clean under them before I paint the whole thing sometime over the weekend. Then I can install some nice new black ones, and I'll have the new door framed up and painted by then as well. I also need to do some dirt leveling around the front of the house. The lack of maintenance to the "flower beds" has allowed some of the dirt against the foundation to settle or wash away, so there is a slight slope towards the house. The dirt that was under the porch has also settled or washed away, so it's a bit low there too. Get it all raked out smooth and sloping away, build the new deck, cover the whole area between the house and the circle driveway with thick landscaping plastic and throw down a truck load of mulch, and I'm off to the races... The big landscaping work will have to wait until I can afford it.

Also... why must casement windows be so expensive!? You can see the left window in the picture has a hole through both layers of glass, thanks to a lawnmower incident a few years ago. After hours of trying to find the manufacturer of them, I found out that just a single replacement sash assembly is like $600... I think I can get by temporarily by removing the sash and taking it apart and rigging up a single thick pane of glass. When the time comes to replace the siding, I'm going to take the time and money to get all new aluminum windows all the way around. I'd like the kitchen window to be larger anyway, and the windows on the side of the house are just single versions of that short front window. Not much light coming in through them.


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## Jesse Blair (Oct 9, 2016)

This random image I found just happens to have the exact colors I'm going with...


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## Jesse Blair (Oct 9, 2016)

Ugh, what a day! Once I got started, I couldn't stop. Hurricane on the way, rain starting tomorrow afternoon. Ripped the old door frame down, removed the rotted rim joist, patched one rotted joist under the foyer floor, removed and replaced a chunk of subfloor, installed flashing around the new opening, which fortunately was almost the perfect size for the new frame. I only had to put in a piece of 1x4 on one side to make it fit snug. I did however apparently install the frame slightly out of square, or they had the frame installed out of square and had trimmed to door to fit it. The door was catching towards the bottom, so I had to wrestle it around on the table saw to trim 3/16" from the side. Ended up hitting a hidden nail and dulled my blade in the process... Great. Got it all in, and tomorrow I just have to seal the small cracks around the frame with expanding foam, and install the interior and exterior trim. Also have a slight issue with the frame, which I had forgotten about. The holes in the frame for the strike plates are all ripped apart and really ugly. I may have to try to find a large plate to install on the frame to fill the ugly mess, and to actually secure the strike plates to. Either that, or just fill it all in with epoxy and make new holes or something. Not very experienced, or good with installing locks... Either way, this is such a huge improvement. The frame is already coated with decent paint, just need one more coat of white, and the outside of the door needs the red paint, after I patch a small hole where a screw went through for a handle style lock, whereas I'm just using a standard single knob. I do now just have a square of subfloor in front of the door, which I had planned on tiling anyway. By the time I add the cement board and the thickness of the tile, it should be perfectly flush with the really thick hardwood. I was surprised to see that the hardwood was of pretty good quality. Nice tongue and groove, about 1" thick, oak. Saved as much of it as I could.


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## Catpower (Jan 11, 2016)

I hope you read this before you use the expanding foam,use caution not to use to much or actually any of it. I used ti one time and when it expanded I couldn't open the door no matter how hard i pulled it pushed the jamb tight against the door and I mean tight. I had to take a Sawzall and cut the foam down to get it to open and it was still tight for many years


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## Jesse Blair (Oct 9, 2016)

Yeah, I hate the stuff, but I already had a partial can of it, and it does a good job of getting every little crack. I only ran a single bead of it, and didn't fill the whole depth of the void around the frame. That stuff is a nightmare mess maker too. Don't get it on your skin, for sure. Only way I can get it off is with some kind of handle cleaner with grit in it, like Fast Orange, mixed with a splash of acetone... Nice cool refreshing, carcinogenic hand cleaner.

Got the inside trim up, put down an oak threshold, to be painted later, and installed the knob and deadbolt, along with a long one piece striker plate/reinforcement plate to cover the mangled frame. I'll have to go get a door sweep tomorrow to seal the 3/8" gap under the door, but otherwise it's all sealed up. Well, except for not having exterior trim on it yet. Still trying to figure out what I want to do with that. I'll wait till the hurricane has passed and work on it then.


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## Roybrew (Nov 2, 2016)

I hope you all weather through the hurricane unscathed. About door gap on bottom, I put a sweep on the inside of door so it would ride up on bottom plate a little and seal. Last fall when I got home from work at 7am, I opened the door and stepped on a baby rattle snake. I wear sandals home and leave work boots in my locker, the snake was laying as close to the crack under the door as possible for the warmth, I didn't look down when I opened the door,,,,, never had to before. A hoe made short work of his decapitation, a garden hoe not my wife by the way.

Sent from my SM-G900V using Tapatalk


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## Jesse Blair (Oct 9, 2016)

Roybrew said:


> I hope you all weather through the hurricane unscathed. About door gap on bottom, I put a sweep on the inside of door so it would ride up on bottom plate a little and seal. Last fall when I got home from work at 7am, I opened the door and stepped on a baby rattle snake. I wear sandals home and leave work boots in my locker, the snake was laying as close to the crack under the door as possible for the warmth, I didn't look down when I opened the door,,,,, never had to before. A hoe made short work of his decapitation, a garden hoe not my wife by the way.
> 
> Sent from my SM-G900V using Tapatalk


Haha! The hoe...

My area is only getting ~5" rain and 30-40mph winds. Shouldn't have any issues, but thanks. I had already bought one of the rubber strip style sweeps that mount on the inside, but I think I'm going to go back and get one that covers the whole bottom of the door. The half circle/tube type ones, whatever they are called.


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## Jesse Blair (Oct 9, 2016)

Summer doesn't seem to want to end. Me and my helpers are all tired of the heat, so we are taking off until early next week when the temps will FINALLY fall below 80 degrees. But in the meantime, I've tinkered. Worked a bit on the exterior door frame. Not doing anything too amazing for now, since siding and new windows are in the hopefully not too distant future. Just put up some pieces of 2x I had laying around, cut them down to width and length, routed the cut edge and screwed them into the frame and the jack studs. Need to finish off the outer edge with some kind of trim, caulk it all well, cover the screw holes, and paint it. Then hopefully next week I'll start with the flashing under the door, for the deck ledger board, and go ahead and install the ledger, and trim up the cut siding around where the deck will eventually go, which hopefully isn't too far away. Not having a porch is tough on my knees and back...

Also next week, with the cooler temps, we will start painting the outside of the house, and hang the new shutters. Also still need to take the door back off the hinges and trim the lock side edge to fit the opening better, and paint it up pretty.


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## Jesse Blair (Oct 9, 2016)

Unexpected rain last night sort of slowed me down today. Didn't get much done, but did get two sides of the house painted. Just need to go back and cut in against the trim, and actually paint the trim. Should look SO much better one the trim and brick is fleshly coated in white, the door is completely framed in and painted, and the new shutters are installed. Then to spruce up that "landscaping", which is just dirt, gravel and weeds at the moment. Also noticing the redish brown shed now sticks out like a sore thumb. Guess it'll have to get painted green to match the house too...


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## Jesse Blair (Oct 9, 2016)

Whoooo! That was a fun week. So about Monday, I started feeling under the weather... I spent Monday night through Saturday morning about as sick as I've ever been. Apparently something special is going around. I sat around on the couch pretty much the whole time, only getting up to use the bathroom, eat, or relocate to the bed, though I didn't get more than about 2 hours of "sleep" at a time. Mostly, sleep was just laying in a puddle of sweat, hallucinating and and feeling like I was losing my mind. Days all blurred together, I had no sleep schedule, what felt like several hours was in fact only 10 minutes when I looked at the clock... Finally started improving Saturday morning, and now I'm only dealing with a little leftover nasal congestion and coughing.

So now, I'll just count that week as lost, and pretend it never happened, and resume on the work Monday morning like I meant to do last week...

I just noticed an issue that has me a bit irritated, though it is somewhat my fault for putting faith in a big box store. I bought the green paint for the exterior in two separate trips, and apparently their mixing consistency is terrible. I can see everywhere that I painted over, or painted up to with the new gallon. The first gallon I got was almost a full shade on the swatch lighter than this last gallon. I thought it was looking a little darker than I wanted, darker than my little test patch I painted last week. So now, when I get another gallon to finish trimming around the windows and doors, will it match the last gallon, the first gallon, or be a whole new shade of green...? I know, I should have just bought 5 gallons, or at least got them all mixed at the same time. Lesson learned. I'll also probably start going straight to the Sherwin Williams source anyway.


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## Jesse Blair (Oct 9, 2016)

Makes that two weeks... Apparently it is something like walking pneumonia. Really hanging on...

Been spending my down time doing sketches and plans for the new front porch and landscaping layout, and back deck. Front porch will be small, maybe 12 or 14'x4', just large enough to put a chair on either side of the door, with the stairs being 6 or 8' wide. Supports will be 6x6 posts, with a slightly overhanging pergola. Got pictures, will upload later.


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## Jesse Blair (Oct 9, 2016)

I haven't died, just on hold until I find work. Hard to get work done when bills are backing up... :crying2: Anxious to get back to work on the house. It's so close, and it bothers me having it 95% complete, and seeing little things here and there that I could fix easily if I had the money for it.


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## Catpower (Jan 11, 2016)

Jesse Blair said:


> I haven't died, just on hold until I find work. Hard to get work done when bills are backing up... :crying2: Anxious to get back to work on the house. It's so close, and it bothers me having it 95% complete, and seeing little things here and there that I could fix easily if I had the money for it.


Kind of like the first two houses I built,lived in them for about 6-8 years each, and right before I sold them I had to finish the stuff I lived with for somebody else to use LOL


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## sonofasmith (Oct 22, 2017)

Love this thread, looking forward to your porch build.

I too am renovating my house, thinking of doing a thread like this.

Sent from my SM-G920V using Tapatalk


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## Jesse Blair (Oct 9, 2016)

I forgot about this thread. Not much progress has been made since my last post roughly 1.5 years ago, but I'll share what I've done. I'm currently mostly done with the inside, except for figuring out what I'm going to do with the shower. I have a fiberglass tub that I could frame up, but I still kind of want a walk in shower stall with tile... One day I'll figure it out. Recently I've been working on the outside mostly. Recently had some guys come in and paint all of the trim, eaves, fascia and siding on the gable ends. The front is painted with a slightly lighter shade than what I originally thought I wanted. The side is still in the darker color, and the other side and back and still both in the old grey color.

I started on the front porch and some of the landscaping/cleanup. Still much to be done, but it's a start. Summer just hit, so I've slowed down on the outside work. I work in the heat all day, and the last thing I want to do is come home after work, or work on the weekends in the soupy heat. Porch still needs the last of the railings and the actual deck boards. I just have some scrap 2x10's up there now to walk on.



















Compared to how it looked just after removing the rotted porch and starting on the paint (other dark color)


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## Catpower (Jan 11, 2016)

Looking good Jesse


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## Jesse Blair (Oct 9, 2016)

I will hopefully have a/c again for the first time since last August, which is very much required for Alabama summers. I ordered a 1.5 ton Pioneer ductless unit (only for the downstairs, upstairs doesn't get used and is blocked off pretty much) on Amazon about 5 weeks ago, and after the absolute worst purchase hassle I've ever experienced, I'm hopeful I'll have it going over the weekend. Initially things seemed to be going smoothly, had R&L scheduled to deliver on a day where I took half a day off. The truck broke down and it never showed. I finally got it 3 days later, unboxed it and inspected it, all looked good. The following weekend I started installing it, got the new 20A circuit ran to a disconnect, wired it all up, ran the line set and had it ready to be vacuumed and started up. The next weekend I had a guy I know come out to vacuum it for me, and the time came to finally get this things going after 3 weeks from ordering, and 2 weeks into a 90 degree + heatwave... Inside unit was working fine, blowing air, but the outside unit was DOA, no compressor, no fan running. Took 3 days to get in touch with their customer support, and after half a day of back and forth, and me taking apart most of the unit, running voltage tests on a bunch of parts (which is crazy to do on a new unit... shouldn't be necessary) they said they would send a replacement outside unit main PCB. Never got a shipping confirmation, so I called them back 2 days later and they knew nothing about it. Finally got Amazon involved and after another 3 or 4 days I finally got an actual tracking info email, and the package arrived yesterday. The 3rd party seller on Amazon was trying to keep everything off the books, contacting me through cell phone calls and texts instead of official emails. I would highly NOT recommend HighSeer on Amazon for any purchases. If for some reason this replacement PCB doesn't fix this thing I'm going to have a come apart. Wish me luck. :|


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## MLP (Nov 25, 2010)

Fascinating thread, Jesse!
You've done some great work...I got tired just following your efforts!
Best of luck!


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## Jesse Blair (Oct 9, 2016)

Thanks guys. So, FINALLY I have the a/c sorted after 6-7 weeks of the most incredible hassle. After swapping both the inside unit and outside unit main boards, checking voltages all over the system, spending hours on the phone and through email with both Amazon and the 3rd party seller/tech support... It was a "bad" wire. Not bad connection, or bad end connectors, but a bad conductor. One of the 3 wires in the line between the inside and outside units, the one I chose to be the signal/comm wire was apparently faulty. Ran a piece of THHN between the two ports, and she fired right up. Ran that new wire, and now I'm all set. I guess from being a mechanic before, I should have known to check the simple things first, but it never occurred to me that it could be something that simple and easy to fix. Ice cold air is finally here. Seems to be keeping up with the downstairs very well for only being a single air handler, and a 1.5 ton system.


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## Catpower (Jan 11, 2016)

Glad to hear you got the A/C running, miserable without it.


I did HVAC/R for about 40 years, sometimes the small things can bite you. In the 90's we had a bad rash of thermostat wire, it was like yours looked normal but no resistance when checked


You would need to use a dealer but Daiken is some real good equipment and it is the last big name still making their equipment in the USA, most everybody else moved to messico


Kind of odd, Daiken bought out Goodman, and it was Goodman the caused the destruction of the HVAC trade with the dirt cheap Janitrol units in the 80's, everybody used to use compressor protection to get more life out of the unit, Janitrol used none but was always the low bid, so all the other companies had to get in the dirt with them (or so they thought) and build junk


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## Jesse Blair (Oct 9, 2016)

So is Goodman decent today, since being bought by Daikin? I was eyeballing a Goodman before I went the mini split route.

I have to say, in spite of the massive headache getting it going, since it's been operating, I'm extremely happy with the performance. I was sort of expecting it to be underwhelming, since it's fairly undersized at only 1.5 tons, but it is more than keeping up with the ~1000-1200 sq ft of downstairs space. Even in this humid mid 90's weather, it's whispering right along, and using MUCH less power than the old dinosaur package unit that was original to the house, or just after being built a little over 30 years ago. Comparing my power bill and daily usage using my providers website, last year with similar temps, I was at around $7-$9 per day, and recently with the temporary portable unit I was using while figuring this thing out was around the same. Since getting this new unit going, I'm at a dead steady $3.25-$3.50 per day. Weekends it goes up a dollar or so... For me, and this area, that is incredible. 

I know my daily cost not running any a/c or heating is around $2.50-$2.75, so it is barely sipping any power. I guess there is something to be said for the efficiency of these little DC powered heat pumps. I guess some credit is also due to my grandfather and father who built a pretty solid house with rockwool insulation and pretty tight construction. That's been one of my big objectives through this whole remodel process has been to better seal and insulate the house. Eventually, before doing new siding, I'll be adding rigid foam exterior insulation, and at the same time to save hassle, I'll replace all of the windows with new, far more efficient ones. These 33 year old all wood casement windows are NOT up to the task of sealing well.


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## Catpower (Jan 11, 2016)

Goodman has been pretty good for quite a while, it just is still a thorn in old farts side that they pretty much single handedly ruined the HVAC trade


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## Jesse Blair (Oct 9, 2016)

Ouch..... so, I got one good week out of the new a/c. The second week that I've been using it, it has slowly been less and less effective, and the last few days it had started frosting and freezing up on the inside unit. I was correct in assuming the refrigerant had been leaking out. Had some a/c guys come out again, to confirm what I thought. He said it was basically empty, 3lbs of A410 lost in just under 2 weeks. Three of the four flares were leaking... I never claimed to be an a/c guy, so apparently I didn't tighten them enough, or failed to do something right. I did use good flare sealant on the fitting and threads, but that wasn't nearly enough. They gave me a complimentary free charge on the unit to get me by till Monday when they will come back out and fix my screwed up flares, using some actual flare crush washer things on them, assure that it's leak free this time, re-vacuum the system and recharge. And, it'll only cost me... another $750. :| Fine, take my money, I didn't want it anyway. At least they will guarantee the work for a year. I could probably tighten the flares and fiddle with it myself and possibly make it work for less money, but I'd rather pay someone who actually knows about HVAC to do it right and put my mind at ease. So after this, my total will be right at $2000, for a unit that only cost me $950. My screw up this time, but oh well. You live and learn. Sometimes the education is painful and expensive. I can typically do almost anything myself, but sometimes it's cheaper to pay a professional.


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## Jesse Blair (Oct 9, 2016)

A/C still kicking. It has been the hottest summer in my lifetime here in Alabama, and so far the new unit has kept the whole downstairs perfectly cool, even on the hottest days.

Current project is my downstairs shower, which was started by my father ~20 years ago and never finished. The stall was framed, cement board hung, pan poured and some of the tile started, but the tile was ugly, the pan was incorrect, so I had to rip it back to studs and start over. I have all of my tile piled up, waiting for me to get off my butt and actually start on the new pan. Going with grey colors, a darker stone mixed size pattern mosaic on the floor, light grey subway tiles on the walls, with a strip of vertical thin glass mosaic tiles running floor to ceiling in the center on the short walls, where the shower head and knob will be, and opposite wall. It's a good size 3'X6' shower, with a partial wall on two sides. I'll be sure to post some progress pictures once I actually begin.

The shower color is actually making me want to redo the rest of the bathroom floor, as I used free tiles donated to me, and the beige/tan color will not match well with the shower, and it'll bug me. That might be something for another day...


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## Jesse Blair (Oct 9, 2016)

I've been horribly inactive on the home projects as of lately, but I've had a lot else going on. Only thing recent, is I've finally (almost) finished my front porch. I only lack finishing one long and one short section of railing, maybe an hour or two of work as well as a few little decorative pieces I will add around the posts and rails. And the two short sections of top rail next to the stairs were apparently terrible pieces of wood and have already gone grey and ugly, so I'll replace them before I'm officially done, but not a big deal. I'm pleased that my planning in laying out the deck frame worked pretty much exactly as planned and all of my deck boards lined up with the posts, and I didn't have to do any weird notch cuts. I used 16' boards to avoid joints, so it's seamless, and I won't have to worry about the boards warping over time and having lips at every seam. I'm worried a bit about the low quality of the Lowe's lumber I used on the frame, as I've seen a lot of people complaining about very early rot from their treated wood. I went with Home Depot stuff for the 2x6 deck boards, as I've heard less bad things about it. And since I took so many breaks in the build process, bits and pieces of the deck have aged different colors, but it'll all look fine once I stain and seal it. Might go with a very light transparent stain, something on the cedar end of the scale.





















Side note, I will hopefully have some funds for a few other major projects in the next few weeks, in which case the first two major things will be a new roof, and getting the back yard fenced for the dogs. 350' of wood privacy fence is going to hurt my wallet, but it'll be worth it, and it's something I've wanted for a long time. Added security for my shop is a plus too. Aside from those two things, I need to have a few trees trimmed or removed, and need to finish residing the back of the house, which has been a combination of bare sheathing and hacked up siding for almost 3 years now. Then I'll start of the back deck and patio area. Maybe I'll have that finished in 5 years, based on the speed with which I tackled the small front one...


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## Jesse Blair (Oct 9, 2016)

Again, more or less done. I see a few spots I want to hit with a sander, and whenever I get a few minutes here or there, a few pieces of trim I want to add, as well as eventually lattice to close in the bottom. I did have to take down my stair handrails, as I didn't originally plan to put a gate on it, and they got in the way. May plan for something else, or may just leave them off. Overall, turned out better than I expected. And now the dogs have a spot to relax outside for the first time since I've had either of them. Hopefully in a few weeks they will have a whole back yard to run around it.


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## phaelax (Dec 24, 2018)

Looking good. I bought my first house about the same time you started this thread and it was a fixer-upper. The previous owner decided to "fix" the house himself and took every shortcut imaginable. He did just enough to make it look habitable, until you pull the wood sheathing off the wall he camouflaged as drywall to discover the framing has disintegrated from water damage! My dining room ceiling was vinyl siding and even though the walls in that room were all 1" tongue and groove solid wood he painted them all purple! It killed me to throw it all away, but I wasn't going to sand them all down. Sometimes I think my renovation would've been easier had he not touched the house at all. House is from 1941, so I replaced every single electrical wire in the home and added a whole home surge protector. Ended up removing all the old copper piping and replaced with pex. Every time I fixed the copper, water would leak elsewhere so I just scraped it entirely.

It's been 2 years and all I have left is some trim that I procrastinate about. I understand your struggle doing it all yourself, especially if you're living there while you're doing it.



> 350' of wood privacy fence is going to hurt my wallet


That's why I've stuck with the chainlink for now.


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## Jesse Blair (Oct 9, 2016)

Thanks. Yeah, it's always worse trying to fix someone else's "fix". I install counter tops for a living, and I always dread hearing that a customer did anything themselves. I get there and have to do an hours worth of extra work repairing what they thought they were helping with, or fixing. 

Got a quote for the fence today... ouch. It'll be worth it though. They are booked until around Christmas, but I'm going to go ahead and schedule it. They do a lot of high end homes, and use good quality lumber, and guarantee their work for 5 years, which for today's garbage treated lumber, that's pretty good.


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## georgex (Nov 21, 2019)

Best of luck!
Two years ago I decided to renovate my grandmother's house, I wanted to keep the original floor. I found a company that respected my decision, some of the photos of my floors are on their gallery page, (spam link removed)
The entire renovation process could be stressful but it is worth waiting for the final result.


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## Jesse Blair (Oct 9, 2016)

I got my fence a few weeks ago, dogs have been loving it. They haven't had a place to run free in their entire 3 years alive, outside of occasional dog park trips. They did an excellent job, arrow straight, tight to the ground, good and plumb, with one standard man gate at the back, one oversize 5' man gate in the front for frequent use, and one 10' double swing vehicle gate on the side. I started on the back porch 2 weeks ago. Weather hasn't cooperated much, but I'm most of the way there. It's 40" wide stairs, 4 steps down to a 12'x16' deck ~16" off the ground. Stairs are complete, deck is started, posts concreted and notched and rim joists in place. Just have to hang the joists and lay the deck boards. The deck is about 4' off the house, and leaves about a 20' wide area between the deck and my workshop. That area between will get pavers and a nice little built in fire pit. Will post pictures when I'm done.

Roof is coming soon, but the old guy who owns the business fell off of a roof a few weeks ago, so I'm not rushing him. Afterwards, the back of the house will get some siding repairs. Not entirely sure to what extent, since eventually the whole house will get new siding, so I may just cut off the rot at the bottom and do a clean patch job to get me by for a year or two.


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## Jesse Blair (Oct 9, 2016)

Deck pretty much finished. Only put a few screws in each board, just to get them in place and confirm my layout was correct. Gaps need fine tuning, and one or two spots might need a shim to level. Have a whole 5lb box of screws and a 6 pack ready to go for deck board screw down party. Should have just gone with 16' 2x6's, but for whatever reason I went with 8' boards, and divided it down the middle, and did a picture frame boarder on both sides. Final size is roughly 16'x12'




























Between that and my shop will get a layer of road pack, then a decent size area with pavers and built in round fire pit. Anything off of the porch is still a mud mess, as grass doesn't like growing back there.


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## Jesse Blair (Oct 9, 2016)

Got the new roof on today. Turned out pretty well. I was hoping for a metal roof, but I don't have the extra 8-10 grand it was going to cost to make that upgrade. The guy who did it said he hasn't done this color in 3 or 4 years, but I like it. A bit unconventional, but the lighter color should make the upstairs a lot cooler on the summer compared to the old dark, almost black roof that was on there. They added a ridge vent, to help with that a little too, along with fixing my rotting sheathing under where the weatherhead/service entry was being pulled loose from tight cables to the house. Needs a few days of hot weather, which we won't get soon, to make some of the shingle lie flat. Pretty cool week here.

With the rest of my money, I need to finish the landscaping and get new gravel on the driveway, since it's been 15 years, and it's pretty much a mudhole. Then the next and one of the final big purchases will be new windows. I'll probably do one side of the house at a time, as the money becomes available, like I've done thus far. I wish I could salvage the original casement windows. They have such good visibility and open fully for good nice weather airflow through the house. But they are just too damaged, and repairing them would cost more than new windows...


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## Jesse Blair (Oct 9, 2016)

Kitchen remodel, 2.1 . Was tired of the white cabinets and dark tops. Got it mostly finished, but obviously still need to do more painting, some trim work, grey subway tile backsplash, the cabinet above the stove and a vent hood, along with some new lighting. Big difference. I left the tops loose for now, going to let them sit for a week and settle to the cabinets. Cabinets aren't as flat as I'd like, but I think it'll even out. Got new appliances, and a dishwasher, finally. And that new sink is enormous...

Before:










After:




























Picked up those Birch tops raw for a decent price, and spent the last 2 weeks prepping and finishing them. Still have to do the bar section, but it's not critical. The old bar was separate from the counter tops, but now it'll be seamed to them, and look like one large wrap around U shape kitchen.


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## Jesse Blair (Oct 9, 2016)

Almost there. Still lacking that cabinet above the stove, vent hood, and doing the tile back splash, and I'm redoing the shelves I used to have on the wall, but using the sink hole cut out piece so it'll all match. They will go back on the left side of the sink. Probably going to get a different overhead light, as well as some kind of lighting above the sink. That back corner between the windows gets a little dark.


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## Jesse Blair (Oct 9, 2016)

A bit further...


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## Jesse Blair (Oct 9, 2016)

Another update no one cares about... :smile2:

Been working on the downstairs shower over my isolation, out of work. Just have to seal the grout, and get under the house to hook up the plumbing, and she's ready to use. Not the ideal tile, but it was the cheaper options.


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## Jesse Blair (Oct 9, 2016)

Another little update. Showers been done for a while now, never posted any finished pictures. Turned out fine. I'm a little disappointed with the grout, the color varies too much from section to section. I guess I mixed too many small batches, inconsistently. But it holds water, no signs of leaks yet, no weird mold growth, so I'd say it's a win. Though I will say I made a pretty massive booboo by not quite getting my pan slope just right. There is a small area about where I stand that is about 1/8" lower than the drain. Thought I at least did that part right, but I missed it somehow. So when I'm done showering, I just use my foot to sort of push the small puddle into the drain. Not the end of the world.










Also went back to work on the kitchen. Finished the cabinets, got the uppers above the range, along with a range hood. Also got a new fridge to match, and boxed it in. It sits in a gap between the two pantries. There was too much space around it, so I just framed it in with some wood I had in the shop, along with some various trim I had left over from previous projects. Turned out well enough. Was going to do a shelf above the fridge, but I have plenty of storage now, so I just took the easy route and closed it off with some beadboard. Still need to do a little sanding in a few spots, and paint it.


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## _Ogre (Feb 1, 2013)

Jesse Blair said:


> Another update no one cares about... :smile2:


not that no one cares, you have mostly woodworkers here, some not all remodel. even then you've received 14,686 thread views, lot o lookers, just no chatty kathys.

i have to admit when you started out 3 years ago, i didn't think you had the skill to do this. looking at your recent posts; the kitchen and bathroom turned out great. like the counter tops in the kitchen with the tile back splash. shower tile turned out very well, small variations are pretty much expected with grout

looks good from here :thumbsup:


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## Jesse Blair (Oct 9, 2016)

I appreciate that. Because it's been so long since I've started, I have changed my mind of so many things, and kind of don't like some of my choices anymore. Though a lot of my early choices were based more on them being cheap and easy to complete, not so much on what I REALLY wanted, so I may end up going back and redoing some things now that I can better afford them now. It's been an adventure. Some of the projects were learning experiences, some were things I knew I could do, but either way they had to get done. I'm not scared to tackle things. I mean, what's the worst that could happen? You break something? Things can be fixed (usually). I run into so many people who are scared to mess with things they don't know about, and will never learn. I wish people wanted to be more hands on and try things for themselves. Most of this stuff really isn't that hard, so long as you do some research. But I guess I can understand wanting to pay people who know what they are doing, instead of doing it yourself. Though many of those "professionals", aren't pros either.


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## phaelax (Dec 24, 2018)

What's behind the fridge on the other side of the wall, anything? I'm curious about the space above the fridge, why you didn't have a cabinet there. But I like your kitchen.

It's been almost 3 years now since I bought my house and renovated the whole thing. There's always a compromise over what you want versus what you want to spend. Finished design almost never matched my original intention. I only hired professionals for a few things, one being refinishing the floors. One mistake with that floor sander and I could completely ruin them beyond repair! It all worked out for me, I finalize the sale of the house in a few days and stand to make $30-40k over my total investment.


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## Jesse Blair (Oct 9, 2016)

phaelax said:


> What's behind the fridge on the other side of the wall, anything? I'm curious about the space above the fridge, why you didn't have a cabinet there. But I like your kitchen.
> 
> It's been almost 3 years now since I bought my house and renovated the whole thing. There's always a compromise over what you want versus what you want to spend. Finished design almost never matched my original intention. I only hired professionals for a few things, one being refinishing the floors. One mistake with that floor sander and I could completely ruin them beyond repair! It all worked out for me, I finalize the sale of the house in a few days and stand to make $30-40k over my total investment.


Well done, congrats on the sale. I'm still torn on either selling and moving, or staying put for a while. Sometimes hiring someone is the only reasonable option. I hired people to replace the shingles, because there is no way on that pitch, with that much footage that I'd try to do it by myself. Same with the fence. I don't have the patience to handle 350' of fence by myself.

Behind the wall that the fridge is backed up to? Just the foyer. I was going to frame in an open shelf above the fridge, but I already have two decently sized pantries and enough cabinet storage space, so I just boxed it in because it was quick and easy. I can easily go back later and knock out that beadboard panel and put a shelf in there.


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## David Nickell (Jul 6, 2020)

My house was built in the 1830s and has been in my family ever since. I can tell (warn) you, that renovation never ends. Entropy is a bitch. 

I did just have solar panels installed, and now I have a new roof leak. It's a rear guard action keeping up a house.


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