Sunday, November 29, 2015

Thanksgiving

We give thanks to our wonderful family and friends for all the help we’ve had during this remodel!

With the goal to spend Christmas at the cabin looming large in our minds, we managed to spend a couple of days of the 4 day weekend checking a couple more things off the list. We also did some major shopping. A new mattress set was purchased for our main home, freeing up the existing mattress set for the cabin. It was about time for a new mattress anyway so this works out well. We also purchased a new refrigerator because the free one (Thanks Kevin!) is starting to make very bad sounds when the compressor starts up. The bed, refrigerator, and the upstairs doors will make the trip up next weekend.

As soon as we got to Clipper Mills, there was some snow on the side of the road. As we entered Merry Mountain Village, there was even more. Everything at the cabin was covered in a light dusting of snow. This is really the first time we’ve seen it like this. It was cold enough for the whole time we were there that it never melted.

Checked off the task list was the upstairs laminate. The last few rows in each bedroom were placed and the closet was finished. Then it was all about the stairs. To prep the stairs for laminate, any bullnose overhang on the steps needs to be removed. We need a nice square edge on each step. A few of them had enough of a lip that most of it could be cut off with the jig saw. But for most of the steps the best method seemed to be a hand plane. After many hours of planing, the steps were ready. Then trim pieces needed to be added to the sides both to finish off the steps and to make a nice clean transition for the laminate. These were made from 1 x 12 pine boards cut to fit over the stairs. Getting those cut and fitted took most of a day. But they’re primed, ready for paint and installation.

The grout did not arrive on time (one day late) so the bathroom floor will wait until next weekend.

Where are we now?
weekend n+0 - drywall prep (October 17/18th did some, not as much as planned)
weekend n+1 - finish drywall prep for texture (October 23/24/25 - texturing started)
weekend n+2 - texture & prime (October 31st / November 1st - prepping for texture)
weekend n+3 - paint & start bathroom floor tile & finish bathroom electrical (textured and prime)
weekend n+4 - finish bathroom tile & re-install vanity & toilet (paint, tile, and electrical finished)
weekend n+5 - install doors & start knee wall framing (laminate installed (most)
weekend n+6 - install laminate (laminate finished and stair trim)
weekend n+7 - finish laminate (baseboard & casing?)
weekend n+8 - knee wall work
weekend n+9 - knee wall work
weekend n+10 - knee wall work

Monday, November 23, 2015

Laminate floor - 1, us - 0

Schedules need to be flexible right? The original plan for the weekend was to start off grouting the bathroom floor. Then the toilet and vanity could be installed and we’d again have a working bathroom upstairs. And more importantly, the toilet and vanity would be out of the way when doing the flooring. Well, we manged to pick a grout from a manufacturer that Lowes doesn’t want to stock anymore. At least not the Lowes in our area. This particular grout is also not available via Amazon Prime. If there are no issues with the shipping, we should have it for the next trip up so a little schedule re-arranging was needed.

Instead of grout, we installed most of the laminate floor upstairs and moved things around so we could install the floor. But mostly the laminate kicked our butts this weekend. This is not our first time installing this stuff, we did the whole downstairs living area and downstairs bedroom with the same flooring. But this time it decided to bring it’s A game and really provided a challenge.

First, we thought it would look better if the planks flowed lengthwise through the small hallway between the bedrooms. To make this work, it means installing the floor in the front bedroom until it starts flowing down the hall. Then move to the back bed and install it until it aligns with the planks flowing through the hall. We measured it all out and surprisingly, it actually worked. Everything mostly aligned and we had a nice continuous flow of flooring between the bedrooms. The hallway presented a couple of challenges because of all the cuts to go around the door frames and because it was hard to support it while clicking and taping it together. But by the end of day 1 we had a couple of rows spanning the two bedrooms.

Day 2 is where things started to go wrong. We were almost done with the long runs through the hallway and one piece would not snap in. Usually, it it’s a bit stubborn, a couple of taps with the hammer will click it into place. Well not this time. Two pieces of flooring were destroying from hitting them too hard with the hammer without them clicking in to place. So something had to be wrong. Feeling underneath the board that was already in place, something didn’t feel right. Of course to remove that board meant removing almost all the boards in that row (i.e. the row that spans both bedrooms and hallway). And yes, something was wrong with that piece. There’s supposed to be grove that the next board clicks into, this piece had no grove. Once replaced with a good board, things snapped in place as they should, util we got a little farther and encountered the same thing again. So rip up the same row again and replace another board. I think we did that one row 3 times. We also noticed that a number of boards from that box were defective and started setting those aside. We finish the rows that span the hallway and move into the back bedroom and go until we’re blocked by the toilet sitting in the way (see above). Our next step is to clear out the other half of the front bedroom (the one we’re using as a work area with the saw and other misc. stuff) and start working on that. Well, what’s the first thing we encounter? We had used another of those defective boards at the start of the last row that spans the hallway. Now to pull everything part to get this one out would mean undoing all the work we just did in the back bedroom. We really, *really* didn’t want to do that. Since it was the end piece, there was just enough space to wiggle it out and get a new board in. After that, thins went pretty smooth until the boxes of remaining flooring were in the way. We’re about two rows from finished each bedroom so that should go pretty quick once we get everything out of the way.

We bought all the flooring in one large batch but it seems like we encountered a lot more “bad” boards while working on the upstairs. We had the defective, non-grooved boards, boards with scratches, one board with a bubble or finish blob, a couple of boards where the foam backing was not attached and many boards that have what appears to be melted foam backing stuck to the finished side of the plank. Our pile of “bad” boards is quite large.

The back bedroom had a couple of built-in drawer units that fit nicely in the eave area. We had kept these with the idea that maybe we could freshen up the face frame/drawer faces and re-use them. But then Genny said she wanted the built-in drawers to be wider than these. Since they’re made of particle board, there’s not really any way to widen them, I guess we won’t be using them. So the two custom built build in drawer units were disassembled and hauled down. In some ways, this is a bit sad as they were well made. Someone had put a bit of time and effort into making those.

Where are we now?
weekend n+0 - drywall prep (October 17/18th did some, not as much as planned)
weekend n+1 - finish drywall prep for texture (October 23/24/25 - texturing started)
weekend n+2 - texture & prime (October 31st / November 1st - prepping for texture)
weekend n+3 - paint & start bathroom floor tile & finish bathroom electrical (textured and prime)
weekend n+4 - finish bathroom tile & re-install vanity & toilet (paint, tile, and electrical finished)
weekend n+5 - install doors & start knee wall framing (November 21-22nd Installing laminate)
weekend n+6 - install laminate
weekend n+7 - finish laminate (baseboard & casing?)
weekend n+8 - knee wall work
weekend n+9 - knee wall work
weekend n+10 - knee wall work

Monday, November 16, 2015

Snow?

Snow! we saw some snow finally. It was only some flurries and nothing stuck on the ground, but it was real snowflakes falling from the sky. Maybe we’ll get to experience a white Christmas this year. The colder temperatures (Sunday’s high was in the upper 30’s) were a good test of the fireplace. It takes a while for the cabin to warm up but once it does, it stays pretty comfortable.

Good progress this weekend. Barbara and Larry showed up for the first time in a couple of month. I think the last time they saw the upstairs was during demolition. Larry jumped in and finished up all the painting in the bedrooms, hall and stairway. He also unmasked and cleaned up the back bedroom. We pretty much stuck to the plan. Iced Latte on all the walls. Genny has been rigorously inspecting the paint work and has found many spots that need touch up, a majority of the work is done. We even painted the dog/equipment cubby downstairs.

The electrical work was finished. Basically, this means all the new electrical for the bathroom (and a couple of outlets in the bedrooms) was hooked up and the outlets/switches installed. The bathroom light fixture was installed and hooked up so we have actual light in there now and that made the next task a lot easier.

The bathroom tile is down. After verifying that we had enough of the large 18” tiles left to fill the room, we started dry fitting them. Genny wanted them on a 45 instead of square so more cuts on the tile saw, but it does look better this way. I think it only took about 5 hours to tile the 4ft. x 5ft. bathroom.

Once we were done with the tile saw we took down all the plastic and masking in the front bedroom Having everything covered was beneficial to catch all the flying tile shards and spraying water.

Where are we now?
weekend n+0 - drywall prep (October 17/18th did some, not as much as planned)
weekend n+1 - finish drywall prep for texture (October 23/24/25 - texturing started)
weekend n+2 - texture & prime (October 31st / November 1st - prepping for texture)
weekend n+3 - paint & start bathroom floor tile & finish bathroom electrical (textured and prime)
weekend n+4 - finish bathroom tile & re-install vanity & toilet (paint, tile, and electrical finished)
weekend n+5 - install doors & start knee wall framing
weekend n+6 - install laminate
weekend n+7 - finish laminate (baseboard & casing?)
weekend n+8 - knee wall work
weekend n+9 - knee wall work
weekend n+10 - knee wall work

So still about a week behind, but it’s been pretty consistent since the septic issue.

Tuesday, November 10, 2015

White walls

So for once, things pretty much went as planned for the weekend. Saturday morning we finished up masking the front bedroom and laid down the floor coverings. Then in the afternoon we sprayed texture on everything. The only real challenge was having to spray from the ladder to hit the peaks. Getting the mix consistency rightish is key and this time it was pretty good so we have a pretty consistent texture.

It was a bit chilly upstairs which helped keep us cool while working and I guess it was just warm enough that the texture was dry by Sunday morning. Sunday morning was spent sanding texture. The stairway needed the most work as that mix wasn’t right and it was rough and blobby (yes, blobby) and it needed a lot of sanding to make it look like knocked down texture. The bedrooms just needed a light pass to knock off a few random blobs and that went pretty quick. Then we started with the primer. The bedrooms, stairway, hallway, bathroom and closet were all primed. We finished up the closet with the last drops from the 5th (and last) can of primer.

Painting in the bathroom is a bit of challenge. Since we bumped the wall out, it now sits about 5 inches away from the beam. It takes a stubby paint brush to paint up in that 5 inch gap. We didn’t have one so I hacked the handle off a cheap 1” brush that we had and used that. It worked, but it’s still hard to see what been painted and what hasn’t when looking up into that 5 inch gap. I think we’ll start with that area next week just to get the hard part out of the way first.

It’s quite a transformation. The walls go from multi-colored with all the different drywall (original, new regular, new mold resistant) and all the joint compound spots to a nice even white primer color. After what seems like months of prep work, it’s really satisfying to see them like this.

And that’s all folks. We finished priming, cleaned up and left.

Where are we now?
weekend n+0 - drywall prep (October 17/18th did some, not as much as planned)
weekend n+1 - finish drywall prep for texture (October 23/24/25 - texturing started)
weekend n+2 - texture & prime (October 31st / November 1st - prepping for texture)
weekend n+3 - paint & start bathroom floor tile & finish bathroom electrical (textured and prime)
weekend n+4 - finish bathroom tile & re-install vanity & toilet
weekend n+5 - install doors & start knee wall framing
weekend n+6 - install laminate
weekend n+7 - finish laminate (baseboard & casing?)
weekend n+8 - knee wall work
weekend n+9 - knee wall work
weekend n+10 - knee wall work

Almost exactly 1 week behind this schedule. With the holidays rapidly approaching we’re going to see more slips.

Monday, November 2, 2015

Trick or treat!

We didn’t arrive at the cabin until early afternoon on Saturday, which is a bit atypical, but somethings are more important (haircuts) than digging out septic drain lines. Yes, we’re dealing with the drainage problem and spent all of Saturday afternoon digging out the drain pipe. When we got to the end (where it enters the septic tank) we think we found the root of the problem. The main drain pipe is connected to the pipe that enters the septic tank with a rubber coupling. It looks like the roots were able to find a way in around and maybe through the rubber. We haven’t pulled this off yet and will need to expose more of the pipe so that it can be flexed enough to replace the coupling.

Saturday was Halloween. Once we got cleaned up from all the digging and started dinner, we turned on the front porch light and waited. We were actually surprised to get two small kids looking for some treats. Surprised because the cabin sits at the back of the lot, quite a ways from the street and blocked by some trees. So it’s not real visible from the street. Then about an hour later, another group of kids showed up! Maybe next year we should light the driveway with pumpkins, that might get us a few more victims kids.

Sunday it rained, rain is good, we need more of that, but it also meant that we didn’t get to do any more digging (oh darn!). So instead we hung plastic on the ceiling upstairs in preparation for texturing. Now you might think that covering the ceiling with plastic would be a fairly quick task. Ha! The ceiling is vaulted and really goes from peak to floor. The total length from peak to floor is about 14 ft. so we need about four 9 x 12 sheets of plastic. We’re trying to avoid having to pull staples out of the ceiling an beams so the current method of attaching it is tape. First we run a tape edge on the ceiling next to the wall, then we tape the plastic to the tape edge. Most of this work is done while standing on a ladder, which means a lot of up ‘n down the ladder to get it in the right position. The back bedroom is all wrapped up and that took between 4 and 5 hours. We also did most of the closet and a hung a couple of sheets in the front bedroom. Texturing will commence next weekend.

Where are we now?
weekend n+0 - drywall prep (October 17/18th did some, not as much as planned)
weekend n+1 - finish drywall prep for texture (October 23/24/25 - texturing started)
weekend n+2 - texture & prime (October 31st / November 1st - prepping for texture)
weekend n+3 - paint & start bathroom floor tile & finish bathroom electrical
weekend n+4 - finish bathroom tile & re-install vanity & toilet
weekend n+5 - install doors & start knee wall framing
weekend n+6 - install laminate
weekend n+7 - finish laminate (baseboard & casing?)
weekend n+8 - knee wall work
weekend n+9 - knee wall work
weekend n+10 - knee wall work

So we’re easily one week behind as we should have been texturing and priming. If all goes well, we’ll be doing that next weekend. However, since the drainage issues are fixed, we’re going to have to spend some more time on that at some point.