Adventures in Renovation

Well, I worked on the house for a while Saturday and all I did was hurt my back. Nothing much got done at all. And again I've had to hold out on working on anything that even involves much bending over. I feel like I'm treading water now and it's incredibly frustrating. But treading water is better than drowning, right? Well whatever the metaphor, the more time that passes without any progress, the more depressed I get about it.

All I do is draw more and more diagrams. I had to draw a diagram on the computer no less to figure out where I could fit my slanted joist hangers in my complicated slanted ceiling plan. This whole thing is way too complicated. Vicki asked me why don't I just make it not slanted? Well, if I wanted the flat ceiling I should have left the one that was ALREADY THERE! But no, I tore all the walls and ceiling out and now it would be just as complicated to do a flat ceiling as a slanted one pretty much. Doh!

Also, today I checked the wiring in the track light and everything seems to be in the right place. If I'm understanding how the switch works, the problem is probably a short in the 3-wire cable between the switches. Maybe a wire staple damaged a wire... I'm still not sure. I'm afraid the only way to fix that is put big holes in my new walls. I've got to get a volt meter.

Posted by at 5:19 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Remember when I took that photo of my head and the bag of nails... that was great, huh? Or the time-lapse movie of building walls? Good times. But where did the fun go? When did the magic disappear?

This week I've been doing nothing and it's frustrating. I screwed up my back somehow and so I've been laying in bed and taking it easy. I'm not really sure how I hurt my back, tho. I didn't even lift much of anything heavy. Last week my back kinda hurt all week. I couldn't really tell if it was from shoveling snow or sleeping wrong or something. Just kinda stiff.

But monday I just walked down some stairs and suddenly my back popped like and overwound spring. I've had an old man's back ever since.

I'm feeling a lot better now, tho. I can actually move around again. I'm not sure how long I should stay off the work, but I think I'll be good for the weekend. I'm just gonna take it slow.

Posted by at 12:56 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

I need some feats of engineering.

Last night I watched a couple hours of History Channel shows called Secret Superpower Aircraft. Over and over they talked about the engineering marvels of the times like developing VTOL aircraft (vertical take off and landing). If they can build supersonic long-range bombers that can land in the ocean and be refueled and re-armed by submarines, then surely I can figure out how to frame my wacky laundry room.

Just when I think I'm getting good at stuff something throws me for a loop. Framing the kitchen walls for instance, I've been rockin' the house. I got my cheapo table saw working better with a new blade and adjusting the rip fence. I riped down some 2x6's and built up the counter for my bar height counter that's going in the window between the kitchen and the living room. Even all the crazy old crooked lumber couldn't stop me.

But the laundry room is a total brain teaser. Everything is so out of whack and against stuff you read in books, it's really hard to know what to do. If you were doing this house the RIGHT way, you would tear the whole thing off and start over.

I've been drawing diagrams and researching special steel connectors to try and come up with the smart way of doing this. I'm looking for some feats of engineering. But no one has the answers for this stuff because it's not the way you do it to begin with.

It's so complicated, I don't even want to go into it on the blog. It's THAT complicated.
I've bored a couple people with the details so far, and now I'm done talking about it. I just have to go ahead and do something good enough and not worry that it won't last 100 years. And at some point someone will probably tear the whole thing off. Oh well. Maybe they'll make a fun home makeover show about it.

Posted by at 12:32 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

So my track lights are out in the office. Kaput. But when I tested the electricity at the light, it's still getting power. Did my cheapo Ikea light die after a few months? It's pretty annoying not to have that light in the office. I'm working on the computer in the dark now.

The weird thing is that when one of the three-way switches seems to still be giving power even when it's off. I get a dim glow from my neon current tester (and a bright glow when the switch is on). I hope Jerry didn't screw up the wiring somehow and it blew out the transformer on the light. I'm almost afraid to put a new light in until I figure out that mystery glow.

Posted by at 5:42 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I finished building the kitchen wall yesterday. I threw up 8 more 2x6's at lunch and voila!

There's definitely plenty of room to work inside of this wall for all my plumbing and HVAC pipes. I finally ended up making this wall flush with the furnace chimney. The other option was to make the stud wall only three inches deeper than the chimney. I'd save 3 inches of floor space but this way i don't have to mess with an uneven wall when I hang my cabinets. I'm still worried it's going to make the kitchen too small, tho. It's so hard to visualize.

Now I just need to frame the wall with the window, fur out the ceiling with my steel channels, frame the chase, and frame the ceiling and all of the walls for the laundry room. Get to work.

Posted by at 12:17 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Not much going on house-wise last week either. Between Vicki's birthday and the blizzard of '06, I was in full-on lazy mode. Played some pool. Did some shots. Made a snowman. No regrets.

But now it's time to get rockin. Tonight I started building the wall in the kitchen.

I got a guy coming to look at my brick problem in the laundry room. Hopefully it won't be too serious. Cross your fingers.

Electrician wise tho, I'm still having a hard time finding good help. I'm pretty close to giving up on contractors and doing it myself. I really don't want to, tho. I know I'll spend way too much time thinking about it and reading books on how to do it. I just want to hire a guy to come in and get it done in a day. But the last quote I got was for $1500. Ugh.

Posted by at 8:56 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Every time you try to do something kinda crazy or different, it's gonna be way harder than you think. That's why no one does it to begin with.

Well leaving the brick wall exposed in the laundry room presents some interesting challenges. Mostly because you can't encase the door and window openings in wood trim like I had thought initially because the casing will have to end suddenly at the top where the arches are. Also, the doorway which used to be a window has roughly broken brick at the bottom where they extended it to the floor. The original window casing is still there which is nice, but I would have plane and router wood to try to match it.

And the door that I want to make a closet (or at least shelves) has one side of it's brick broken up unevenly. I'm not sure why someone did that. It almost seems like they started to do it and realized that was a stupid idea.

I think I'll try to call a masonry guy about it and see how much it would cost to fix. But I have a feeling it'll be more than I want to pay.

Posted by at 1:08 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The official 2005 Adventures in Renovation Christmas Ornament. Made with actual nails from my house. It's may seem a little late for Christmas ornaments but this was actually over a year in the making. Since my funds were so low last Christmas '04, I joked that everyone was getting nails for Christmas. Which led to this idea of making an ornament with the piles of nails from my house. I went through several version of this an never got it made in time for Christmas (twice). But here it is finally.

Posted by at 1:04 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Friday Vicki set up a surprise party for my birthday. With Bryan and Michelle's clever aid, they got me good. Really, really good. Last year I got pink eye in both eyes for my birthday. This year I was shocked by seeing every one of my friends in Baltimore packed into a room at once. I was blown away. Thanks to everyone who came out and made it the best birthday ever.

What does this have to do with the house? Well as a result of such intense birthday celebration, I did nothing on the house all weekend. And it was so good.

Posted by at 4:09 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

I am tired. I was up till 3 in the morning yesterday working on the house. Not tearing out drywall or framing walls tho. Just sitting on my butt in front of the computer trying to figure out the kitchen cabinets. I've been working on the kitchen for a while now with the IKEA kitchen planner. Some of the worst software ever made. I was so close last night too but that damn software just wouldn't let me do what I knew I needed to do. I couldn't change the color of one cabinet for some reason. I couldn't move the built-ing microwave to somewhere other than sitting on the counter or the floor. Couldn't change the size of the appliances. I couldn't even access some models of items I knew IKEA made and were on their website! Ugh!

I finally got it hammered out with a little good old math and my sketch book. And I made the elevation in only a few minutes with Illustrator. The scale plans I've made with Illustrator have turned out pretty accurate too. Now it's time to sleep.

Posted by at 9:52 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)