Scary Cabin

With the kitchen and bath cabinets in place, we schedule the counter top install. The installer came out with his son and they did a fantastic job installing the counter tops. Now the challenge will be to keep them clean.

Also, with the cabinets out of the living room, we pick up the pace on the demolition. Larry and Ben take great satisfaction ripping out the old carpet (from the 70’s?) and peeling the paneling off the walls. With all the debris out, it looks like we’re making progress.

The tub tile surround in the bathroom is finished, except for the grouting. It has taken 3 weekends. This is something that didn’t seem like it would be that time consuming, but all the back and forth measuring and cutting tiles take time as does stopping to mix up more thinset. After this, every project estimation will be multiplied by 3.

August was a busy month. We were able to make it up every weekend and made great progress.

We learned how to spray texture on the walls and ceiling. Our test location was the kitchen since a lot of the walls in there get covered up by cabinets. Once you get the consistency of the texture correct, the real key seems to be the wait time before trying to knock it down. Waiting a bit longer is better than not long enough. Overall, it turned out pretty good. We were able to texture the kitchen, the hallway, the pantry and the bathroom. Once textured, we primed and painted the walls and ceiling.

The kitchen got a nice face lift. With the walls and ceiling done we installed the can lights and the cabinets.

With the cabinets out of the living room, we were able to start work there. Ben took a sledgehammer to the rock hearth. It was one well built hearth! The rock was held with lots of mortar that was strengthened further with chicken wire. Ben did let me take a few swings to relieve some of the stress from the bathroom tiling work. Thanks Ben!

Speaking of the bathroom … with the walls textured and painted we could start on the tub surround. The walls around the tub have plastic, cement board, and tile. Dealing with cement board was frustrating. On-line reports made it sound like you could score and snap it the same way you do sheetrock. Well, sort of. The score needs to be much deeper and you have to use a special tool. For large pieces it mostly worked. For small pieces, not so much. We did try power tools and dulled a circular saw blade after cutting about 6 inches. Same for a sawzall blade. Later we did find special (expensive) blades for circular saws for cutting cement board. We’ll be getting one of those before working with any more cement board.

With the cement board up, we worked on the tile. This was our first time working with tile so it was quite the learning experience. Cutting and fitting the tiles takes longer than expected. Square and plumb walls would be nice too. We did have to remove and re-do part of one wall because we didn’t get the tiles lined up right with the other wall.

Sandie found a new pass-time when a squirrel scampered up on the deck by the screen door and sat there. They had a bit of a stare down before the squirrel wisely scampered off.

July 13th & 14th 2013

The kitchen was demolished. Well, all the cabinets were pulled and moved to the shed. We have grand plans of re-using the cabinets in the garage one day. These aren’t individual units like you get with pre-built type systems today, they’re one complete upper for each wall and similar large assemblies for the lowers. They appear to be made of maple and the construction looks pretty good. But, they don’t match our vision so out they go.

With the cabinetry gone, all the paneling was removed too. A lot of work scraping off old glue and sealing all the areas where the sheetrock paper was pulled off with the glue. Then a lot of joint compound to smooth out all the areas where the glue was scraped off. We’re making a couple of changes/improvements to the electrical now. Adding an outlet for the microwave, adding an outlet and switch for a garbage disposal. In addition to the garbage disposal switch, we’ll add another switch for under cabinet lighting. The kitchen lighting needs an update too. We pull out the old florescent tube lighting fixtures in the kitchen. The ceiling sheetrock was cut out for the fixture so instead of just a couple of small holes for wire, we had nice 3 ft. by 8 inch holes in the ceiling that need to be patched. In their place we cut holes for can lights. We’ll be using LED can lights.

Work continues on the bathroom. A vapor barrier was added to the floor, just in case we ever have a leak. The tub is now placed. After the rough plumbing is done, sheetrock is added. We use mold resistant sheetrock here.
[edit: If doing this over, we’d have put in sound insulation in the walls while they open just to isolate the bathroom a bit]

Barbara worked on the back bedroom, removing the “wainscoting” and pulling staples from the floor getting this room cleaned up.

Currently there’s a 3/8” particle board subfloor. Our plan is to replace that in the bathroom with 3/4” plywood and then add 1/4” plywood on top of the particle board everywhere else. This should provide a fairly even floor and give us the chance to screw things down.

Kent, the plumber, does our rough plumbing in the bath and kitchen. We also have him add a new valve for a fridge ice-maker. For everything he has to touch, he replaces the old cast iron pipe with either Pex or copper.

We have the hot water heater out so that we can work on the pantry. Kent installs new Pex lines for the hot water heater and leaves us with shark bite connectors so we can easily hook it back up once the pantry is finished. Speaking of the pantry. We fix up the sheetrock in there and add a disconnect for the hot water heater.

We’re finding that there are a lot of little details that we need to keep track of and be aware of as we work to rebuild the various rooms. If we forget something now, it will be much harder to do later in the process. An example is the light switch in the hall (for the hall light). The only kitchen light switch is over by the door that leads outside. It seemed like we needed another one and by expanding the hall switch box to a double gang box, a Insteon remote switch could be used to provide a second kitchen light switch. Doing this now while the bathroom sheetrock is out is easy, doing later after all the sheetrock is done would be difficult.

We have a rough plan for the remodel — gut it and rebuild it all. Simple.

Ok, not so simple when you go down to the next level of detail. The though process went something like this … Remodel downstairs first leaving the upstairs alone. Start with the bathroom and kitchen, once we finish those, it
becomes easier to spend nights in the cabin. Also, the bath and kitchen should be the most time-consuming and difficult so get them finished first.

The bathroom has been gutted. It’s taking at least 3 times longer than first estimated but otherwise it is progressing well. What have we learned so far?

1) We don’t know enough to know what we need when. We get stuck either because we need to buy tools/supplies or we don’t have the tools we need with us.

2) Tasks take longer than expected. I think this is because we’re taking the time to think things out as we go. So now we’re trying to plan out the tasks for each trip with more detail.

We’re starting to put the bathroom back together. A new fan/light has been installed, most of the electrical is done. A new plywood underlayment is going in. Soon we’ll be calling in a plumber and then it’s sheet rock time.

Closing was delayed by a week because of issues getting documentation from the HOA but all was resolved and the Scary Cabin in the Woods is now ours.

We’ve been stockpiling things that we need to take up there which consist mostly of tools at this point. We did take a risk and ordered cabinets and counter tops before it actually closed mainly because of the good sales and lead times. Our first trip as owners will take place soon. It will mostly be an exploratory trip. We can now open things up and really start to understand what needs to be done.