Adventures in Renovation

A couple weeks ago I got a chance to take a look at a completly renovated house down the street from me. It looks good. Looks pretty suburban though because it's all new, straight from Home Depot stuff. But they're asking something like $260,000 for it. That's almost 4 times what I paid for my house. And the guy selling it said they're only going to break even on this house.

The one thing I took away form it though was the inspiration to redo my closets. Putting new doors in the old framing was turning out to be really complicated so I decided to just turn the two, weird little closets into one normal sized closet. The only weird thing is it's not connected to the bedroom but whatever. I finished it Friday and it's way more straightforward and easy than the old crap. Check it out.

Posted by at 12:55 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

So Sunday turned out to be quite an ordeal. It all started when I met my Dad at my house Sunday morning bright and early. He just happened to drive up the a traffic light behind me as I was going to the gas station. So he followed me there and I gave him a key to my house and went to get some coffee and meet him there.

We started off by running the telephone and cable wire through the walls upstairs so I can get to hanging drywall. But half way through we ran out of telephone wire, of course. So just as we're about to run out of the door to run to the only hardware store open on Sunday in the city, Vicki walks in with Kathy because Kathy wanted to see my house. I said, "go ahead an look around" and dashed out the door. But when we got back we realized we locked the key inside because my Dad left his keys inside with my key and Vicki locked up on the way out. "No problem" I thought, "Bryan has a key." So we went around the corner, but Bryan had left my key back at Michelle's in his jacket. Okay, so we drove up the street to Kathy's hoping to catch Vicki and get her spare key. But they weren't home and I left my cell phone in my house which has her cell phone number so I couldn't call her.

Bored of this story yet? well it's not over. So I realized I had a spare key at Vicki's house on my desk. So I went to Vicki's and grabbed the key that said on the key chain "Al's spare key." Drove back to my house. Key didn't work. I'm not sure why I have a key that says "Al's spare key" that isn't actually my spare key. Okay, so maybe one of the other three keys laying on the desk at Vicki's will work. Drove back to Vicki's and got the key. I then had enough sense to get Vicki's cell phone number off the phone list there just in case. Drove back to my house. None of the keys work. Went to Bryan's to use his cell phone to call Vicki. But now Bryan wasn't home.

so...

Then we drove back to Vicki's to use the phone. Called Vicki but by now she was downtown at the gallery working her shift. Called Bryan. Luckily he was at Michelle's and found my key. So when he finally met us back in at my house, it was two and a half hours later and it was so late my Dad had to leave to meet someone for dinner back in Northern Virginia. And at this point I was so frustrated I just went home and took a nap.

Eventually, I went back with some energy and worked on the plumbing for a while. It was good, but all in all, very little was accomplished this weekend.

Posted by at 11:50 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Not much to update lately. I worked overtime on a video project last week for work so didn't work on the house at all till last weekend. The good news is that, I think I've solved most of the problems so everything should just fall into place.

The biggest news is that I'm redoing all the plumbing. I think I've finally solved all the weirdness. I had to take out all the old PVC drain pipes that Camillo put in and go with smaller 3" pipes for the toilet (sorry Camillo). It's not his fault tho... my house is weird. The the floor joists are only 6.5 inches tall. Normally today houses have beams that are 7.5" or 9.5" or larger. That made it hard to run the toilet to where I wanted because I had to make a hole in a small joist and I had to find a bend to connect to the toilet flange that was shallow enough.

I ended up going with a toilet flange I found at Lowes. It's a 45 degree angle flange that is meant to be like an offset flange with more flexibility. But when you connect it to another 45 bend, you have a 90 angle that's shallower by almost an inch. perfect!

You'd assume Home Depot and Lowes would carry just about the same stuff with different names on it maybe. But I've found completely different stuff at each. Lowe's has a much better selection of PVC plumbing stuff. Home Depot has a better selection of steel connectors. Basically, I have to run all over town looking for something that will work.

Also I'm going to have to attach another stud to a couple of floor joists to make them stronger since there are so many notches cut in them. I found out that this is called "sistering" in a plumbing book.

But here is the biggest moral of the story:

If you're going to run plumbing in a wall, make the wall at out of 2x6's at least!

I've been loosing a lot of flexibility because my bathroom walls studs aren't thick enough. If I knew then what I know now...

Posted by at 5:38 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)