Painting is all we have left...

Thank goodness.

Pics

Okay, okay. Here are pics of various stages.

Glory!

At last, the drywall downstairs is DONE! Jen will be painting on the primer coat today, and if we are lucky, maybe a coat of color before bedtime. Last night I sanded down the final mud coat, and installed some corner moulding in the corners, and caulked them up.

The roofers are pretty much done with the shingles. Now it's time for them to install the rain gutters, new soffit venting, and the replacement skylights. The new roof sure looks good!

Day 3 of drywall

Oh, it felt good to put on that last coat of mud! Had a few splats here and there, Jen ran out of the room screaming (see previous post about "Carrie"). Tonight when I am off work, I will sand down the walls for the last time, then Jen will lovingly give them a sponge bath to remove the dust. Then, tomorrow she can apply the primer and we can start painting. I can also put away my drywall tools until another day (not far off, unfortunately).

The roofers are Roofin' in the Rain. No water in the house, they are good. Jen spent a lot of time cleaning the upstairs area, it looks a lot better.

Moulding

I now know why moulding exists. It's to cover imperfections in drywall work. It's cheap because it is sold in large quantity.

I'm just sayin...

Day 2 of Drywall

Having the right tools is such a blessing. For sanding, I have a random orbital sander hooked up to my massive dust collector. So I was able to sand down the Day 1 mudding pow! Jen and I worked as a well-oiled machine applying the second layer of mud. Tomorrow night we'll sand again. It's actually looking really good!

I also spent about 4 hours cleaning up. With the framing, drywall, and electrical work I did, I had made an insane, insane mess of the basement. Put away all my tools, cleared off the workbench, and got rid of the debris. Now there is room to move around.

Still looking at that ridiculously heavy front door, trying to decide if it's worth $300 to get someone else to install it for me. Leaning towards yes.

I'm So Lucky

I am lucky to be married to Jen for a variety of reasons. But today I especially feel lucky, because she can mud and tape! The last time I tried mudding and taping, it looked like the final scene from "Carrie", except with drywall compound. Jen's work is precise, neat and tidy, and we are going to have gorgeous walls. If she ever decides to give up massage (no!!!!) she can go and do drywall work for a living.

Prioritizations: Front Door trumped by Carpet

Front door arrived today. It's the right size, and that makes me happy. It weighs about 10,000 pounds, and that makes me weary. Think I am going to need to recruit some more muscle. After all the door needs to squeeze into an opening that is only 1/8" larger than the door. This should be interesting.

Of course, I am not going to even start on this project until the house is ready for carpet install. We have about one more room upstairs to paint, and then mudding/taping/painting downstairs. Once that work is done, then we can return to such exciting topics as front doors, lighting fixtures and whatnot.

This weekend is going to be an easier weekend labor-wise for us. We apply the mud, wait 24 hours. Sand. Apply mud. Wait 24 hours. That means lots of time being... ??... human beings!! We will go do some fun stuff with the kids.

And that is a good thing, because we are pretty much run ragged. We have been over at the house every single day working on it since we bought it a month ago. Yes, it's been a month.

Drywall to Wetwall

At last! The drywall panels are installed. That is crazy, I have so much respect for drywallers. Now it is time to mud and tape. Jen is taking the lead on this, as I have proven in past endeavors that I suck at mudding and taping. Once we get M&T done, we are onto painting, and painting is the only thing left before carpet. Woot!

Roof / Power / Home Theater

Jorve Roofing showed up en masse on Thursday. There are roofers all over my roof! I have a roof full of roofers who are roofing at a roofalicious rate! Now you may ask "Dave, isn't it raining up in Seattle?". Or maybe "Dave, what's with the alliteration?"

It rains in Seattle. Roofing companies know how to roof in the rain without getting water in the house. It involves a copious amount of tarps. Plus, I think they doubled the amount of roofers to get each section done faster. I swear there's at least a dozen roofers.

We wont have to dig up the road to get the power line buried. That is awesome. The excavator will do a "road push" where they use technology to push a couple conduits underground from the house to the power pole across the street. One conduit is for the power, the other is for other utilities such as INTERNET. A house is totally useless without that. And don't go talking smack about using Clearwire for internet. Slow and they block video chats. I am going to go for either comcast's xfinity or verizon fios, whichever is faster (or available, I know comcast is).

Drywall work is almost done. The home theater is 3 sheets of drywall away from being closed up. Then I will need to go buy another sheet of plywood and button up the remaining sections of the platform for the back couch row. Gonna use the spiral saw to cut out the openings for the hvac system. Man, I love that tool.

Once that's done, we will start mudding and taping. I expect this blog to become R-Rated, as I will be ranting.

All Drywall, All the Time

Title sums it up. Still drywalling. Spiral Saw is quite possibly the best tool ever invented.

Are you reading this?

If you are, please add a comment to this post. I would like to see how many people are following.

Spiral Saw

So after putting up drywall today, I decided that there *must* be an easier way. There is. It's called a spiral saw, and it's essentially a wimpy router with a bit that looks more like a drill bit. You place the fresh sheet of drywall against the elecrical boxes, and you just trace around the boxes with the bit, which routs out a perfect fitting hole. Ryobi has one for 40 bucks, you can guess what I am buying tomorrow! I may have a post a "I love hanging drywall" post. Rrrrright. No chance of that.

Drywall

Wow, I hate doing drywall. But the outside walls of the home theatre have the drywall hung, now it is tie to do the inside walls. We have a friend who has lots of experience with mudding and taping coming this upcoming weekend, so he gets to do that part. I am just getting the boards on the walls.

Busy Saturday!

So much got done today. I finished up the wiring in the home theatre, installed the rafters for the suspended ceiling people to mount the grid to, and built the platform for the stadium seating tier. Lots and lots of hammering nails, my shoulder is tired. Tomorrow Jen's dad John and I will start hanging drywall, exciting!

Jen and her parents painted more today, they have moved to the next room where they are getting the ceiling looking swell and having a lively discussion about paint colors.

And the concrete people came in to polish the floor. Our old, tired concrete floor has been reborn! It is sooooo smoth and looks so good.

Home Theatre

Wow, lots of wire. Still wiring. More to go. Thank goodness for Fry's they have neat stuff.

Tomorrow the concrete people come to transmogrify my floor into something spectacular.

Various and a delay

I signed a contract to have geothermal heating put in. For those who don't understand how it works, look here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geothermal_heat_pump

The net result is that we can get rid of the oil burning furnace. We will still use electrcity for the heat pump, but very little. Warm floors in the winter, cool floors in the summer. Joy!

Electrician got home theatre room wired up and City of Bellevue inspected. I spent the evening pulling speaker wire. I bought 200 feet and I need 205 feet. D'oh! So I have 6 of the 7 speaker channels wired, and still need to get the subwoofer in and the hdmi in wall in.

Jen did not paint! Instead, she pulled off baseboard everywhere that the concrete grinder people will be working so they dont have to worry about it. She also helped me unload a pile of drywall from the truck.

I removed the last of the parquet floor tiles from the wood subfloor. Really chewed up the subfloor, so I am having an expert come in to repair it before we get ready to lay down tile in the kitchen.

The home theatre is behind schedule. I need to do more framing, a fan needs to be installed, and I need to wrap up the wiring. Drywall will probably get put up on sunday, but mudding and taping will have to wait until next weeked. This means I had to move the carpet and suspended ceiling installations a week, so move-in is now a week later.

Sunday is a day of rest...

... for someone. Not us.

At 10am I was back at Eastside rentals to rent a machine for pulling up the parquet floor. They had this device that looked like a lawnmover except the business end was a flat blade that vibrated. You dig this blade under the flooring it it pops up like magic.

Now, actually, it does work pretty good, but it is not easy. You are essentially holding the reigns of a wild bull that wants to get away from you and remove more than the floor. It also vibrates the user with a vigor usually reserved for subwoofer cones. I spent 6 hours with this beast of a machine, and even thought I was wearing gloves, I still have blisters on my hands, my muscles ache, and the parquet floor is... gone. Well, almost. There is a small part of the floor that is on plywood subfloor instead of concrete. The machine ate the subfloor like candy, so I had to stop and will hand chisel those peices. Thankfully, it is only about 10 square feet, so I should be able to get it done in an evening.

Once that floor is off, I am essentially DONE with demolition for the initial phase of the remodel. I will still need to remove the front door when the new one comes in, but that is tiny.

Jen, as usual, spent the entire day painting. It's a big house.

The Race is On

T-15 days until the carpet comes in. We need to:

1. Put up drywall, mud and tape, and paint the downstairs area, since carpet goes in there. This is dependant on the electrical getting done, which is supposed to be by thus thursday. I see myself drywalling this upcoming weekend, then painting the next week.
2. Making sure #1 is done!
3. Pulling up all the parquet flooring upstairs. The child labor has run out, as their spring break is over. There is a section where the tiles are glued down with Atlas Brand Super Indestructable Glue, so I am renting a machine today to remove those tiles. This needs to be done by next weekend, as the concrete polishers are coming in.
4. Removing the front door. Needs to be done by next weekend for floor polishers. Will leave it a hole, and once they are done, will install the new door, which is supposed to arrive just in time.
5. Painting upstairs needs to be finished, although Jen is a master painter to the point where I trust her to paint after the carpet is installed.

That's the must-do list. Here are some of the other, wanna-do's:

1. Remove the cabinets above the kitchen island.
2. Install the new cooktop. Dependant on #1 first so I don't accidentally break the cooktop, and also dependant on it ariving.
3. Installing the double ovens. This is dependant on the electircal work upstais being done, and the electrical work in the garage being done so I have my woodworking equipment ready. Pretty skeptical on this.

That is a LOT of work. I think the first list is probably going to take up all the time.

Moving The Shop

Getting Ready for the Big Move (not what you think)

Tomorrow morning at 8am, my friends Greg and Adrian are showing up at my old house to help me move my woodshop machines to the new house. For those who don't know, I take my woodwork seriously. My planer weighs almost 2000 pounds alone. I rented a tool called a "reach fork" which is a forklift that can move the tangs up and down AND forwards and backwards. So it can reach into the old house, lift the planer, and then take it up the nastly hill to the front yard and lovingly put it in the back of my truck for the 2 block ride to my new house where I will reverse the process. I have 6 machines total that are too heavy to move without machines: Planer, Jointer, Tablesaw, Shaper, Drum Sander, and Bandsaw. We are hoping it will take 4 hours or less.

In addition, my kids are actively helping in removing the parquet flooring in preparation for the concrete polishing.

Jen is still painting. There is a lot of wall to paint, and it ALL needed painting. Many coats. Trim galore. Tali's bedroom door had a doorknob that was smarter than me, and I could not remove it. Finally, I realized we have to cut the door down 1/2 and inch anyways for the carpet, and the door was one of those crappy hollow doors. So I bought a solid door slab, and got the nifty kit to bore the holes. She's priming the wood and will be painting it up.

Flooring, electrical update, Wall

Goodbye hardwood floors. They were going to be way expensive, and we thought we should look into what we could do with the existing concrete floors. After all, this bunker of a house is made of concrete, why not celebrate it? So the picture you see is a floor done by the company we picked to polish and color the floor (Thompson Floors). The bid to do the living room, entry way, and dining room was about 1/5th of a hardwood floor price. We will make sure to soften the rooms down with area rugs, plants, and other soft things.

The electrician bid came in, and it was $5K less than I thought. Phew. After adding the ridiculous amount to move the power cable underground, I think this one will come in fairly close to budget.

Put up the third wall of the home theatre. Framing a wall against a cinderblock wall is kinda tricky.

Wood Paneling

So we decided that the entryway and the wall that runs from the entryway to the newly-made arch needs to be exquisitely done wood paneling with moulding and the works, floor to ceiling. So now I only need to drywall the ceiling in the entryway, and the arch I created on the big wall removal. Downstairs the drywall work is all for square easy walls, so....

...I am going to be an idiot and do it myself.

Carpet and Move-In

Carpet has been chosen, install on April 26 and 27. The race is on to get everything done. Move-in day is going to be April 30!

Shocking!

Today I met with the electrician to discuss wiring. There are lots of things to be done:

* Fix the wiring in the entryway where we ripped out the ceiling.
* Add power to the kitchen for the double ovens
* Fix the lighting in the living room which I destroyed in the initial demolition
* Fix the lighting in the basement which I destroyed in the demolition
* Add power and lighting to the home theatre room
* Add industrial power and lighting to the garage as it will be my woodshop
* Run power to a junction box outside for future hot tub (some day, probably in 2034)

Unfortunately, I will need to run the wire from the power pole into the house to a new location (called the "strike"). There is a long explanation for that, which I will will condense into two words "Fire Code". The only way to do this is to bury the wire. So I have to run a wire down the power pole, go under ground, and attach to the house. The nice thing is that this will remove all wires running to the house. The bad news is that it is stinking expensive.

The overall bid is going to run $12-15K over. Blurg. Looks like the hardwood floors and geothermal heat will have to wait a couple years unless you, my loyal reader, give me a present.

Walls and Doors

Framed up the other wall for the home theatre tonight. Hung a door. Pre-hung doors are awesome as long as you do it right. Jen painted like crazy. My friend Adrian helped with demolition. Tired.

Tomorrow morning we meet the electrician at 7:30am to discuss getting power to my woodshop and theatre room as well as fixing the wiring I ruined when I cleaned up the living room wall fiasco. Tomorrow night we have Empire Today coming to bid on the carpets.

Front Door

This is what it will look like.

Ups and Downs

Down went more drywall as I planned. Need to expose all the wiring that needs repair. Also, since the front door is getting replaced, we need to expose all the beams around it so we can remove the old door gracefully.

Up went a wall! Yay! I put up most of the first wall for the home theater. The footers for the second wall need to be glued down to the floor so I can't build up that wall until next chance I get.

We did order the front door. It's a solid cherry door with a very Frank Lloyd Wright looking stained glass insert, along with a sidelight that matches. It will be here in a couple weeks, so that determines quite a bit for our schedule.

Jen spent the entire day painting. There is so much to paint. Tali's room is even better, now the baseboard trim is done. All that's left is touch up and the door. The hallway baseboard is done, as are the ceilings and walls. Now on to the window moudlings, which is a lot.

We are thinking of leaving a part of the wall between the living room and dining room open, as a pass-through style window. We could put plants on the ledge.

I also ordered the double oven. It's the LDW3081ST from LG. We were looking at a Wolf oven that was $6300 that we really liked. The LG was $3199 at Home Depot. Plus, Wolf is such a high-end boutique appliance I have a feeling it will break in a couple years. Then I went online and found the LG for $2501, no tax, free shipping. So if you factor in tax, I save over $900 from Home Depot, and GOBS over the Wolf. And the LG looks swell. Of course, I will order a spare computer module so when the existing one dies in 10 years I am not hosed.

The range will be a Dacor 5 burner gass cooktop. It's the same one my ex and my friend Lara have, it's been a great cooktop. And I will get the Miele dishwasher because it's silent and I like the silverware rack.

Pictures later, that requires I get up, and I am too tired.

Tomorrow

Tomorrow we plan on:

1. Measuring up and ordering the front door
2. Measuring up and laying out the footers for the home theatre room, and gluing them down to the cement floor
3. Removing all the drywall from the entryway so I can fix the wiring and get ready for the front door
4. (Maybe) Removing the kitchen cabinets above the island (there are more than enough cabinets, and the ones above the island make the kitchen feel smaller)

Shelves for the woodshop

I am a woodworker. I have a really nice woodshop with some killer tools, and I am going to be doing a lot of cabinet and furniture building soon. Step 1: Build shelves for my tools, and set up the chopsaw table. Here it is. Once I am all settled, I will unpack the tools from the boxes. I still need to move the big machines in, and that will hopefully happen next week!

Paint

Jen and her parents John and Mary Sue have been painting. I dont really have a wide angle lens, but here is a peek at Tali's room!

Glass Wall

Jen and her mom Mary Sue removed an ugly glass tile wall. Lots of duct tape, prybars, and the loving careful touch only a woman can provide got these panels off with minimal breakage. If I had done it, well, there'd be shards of glass in the next zip code!