Remodel - Week 5

Monday was chimney demo day - Jason and crew began on the roof removing the brick chimney, continuing through the attic down to the 2nd story floor. Leaving the all-important chase through which all things mechanical can be run. In the pix below, the existing hallway is to the left; on the right of the chimney chase is the top of the pot light which is in the 1st floor brick arch between kitchen and family room. The hvac duct in upper right hand corner leads to the existing bathroom:

Monday night into Tuesday was another snow storm so work moved inside. Steve finished the demo on the hall linen closet and removed the plaster in the hall for the new washer/dryer closet:

The little corner closet in the old bedroom had its plaster removed as well to allow for the new 36 inch wide arched doorway. When this entryway is squared off, this little nook of closet space will be lost. Perhaps Steve can inset a narrow built-in book case there - will have to wait to see what it looks like framed:

Pix below: View through the soon-to-be arched opening (center vertical board is temporary brace).

Jason also finished framing the wall between the bathroom and the new hallway:

The hallway demo complete:

The closet and linen closet are framed in the new bedroom:

Remodel - Week 4

Week 4 of the Remodel Project was a week of demo and consultations - Steve doing the demo and Jason having multiple conferences with the plumbing and HVAC sub-contractors. This week's crisis was the location of the existing HVAC vent in what will be the new bathroom (seen in pix below in the wall to the left of the existing door):



Directly in front of this vent is where the toilet was to have been placed - which would mean that the HVAC and plumbing would be fighting over that real estate between the floor joists. This week's elegant solution resulted in flipping the toilet and the shower locations. That will allow us to have heating and a/c in the new bath and bedroom - always a plus! These relocations will also result in the shower becoming a rectangle, rather than having a diagonal shower door opening. The pix above also shows the framing on the floor for the pocket door between the bathroom and the hallway.

The pix above shows the entrance into the new bedroom. Another change this week was moving the transition step from the hallway to the entrance of the bedroom - saving beaucoup de $$ by not having to raise the floor in the new hallway and bath.

The above pix shows where the arched entrance from the existing hallway will be. Steve will do that demo tomorrow (in between snow removal - weatherman is predicting 8-10 inches).

(Above) - Our intrepid demo-man working on removing the plaster from the closet; Jason hopes to demo the chimney this week, freeing up space for the washer/dryer as well as a chase for pipes, etc.

On Friday, Steve and I packed a picnic lunch and headed for points west and south looking for subway tile and possibly a vanity (which begs the question: Why is EVERYTHING ALWAYS so far away?) We visited 2 tile stores - the first one was very high end - we got some good ideas but amazingly they didn't have the basketweave stone floor tile that we wanted. But we were able to find EVERYTHING we wanted (floor tile, subway tile, decorative frieze tile and top molding) at store number 2 (which is the tile showroom for company that supplies Home Depot et al). What luck as these tiles are MUCH cheaper. My favorite kind of design - champagne looks at Diet Coke prices!

Then we headed down by the airport to the 2 Hobo stores - what a gold mine! We found a furniture style vanity (above) with granite top and faucets for $899.00!!! When Jason saw it today he said that it would have cost at least $3K+ to get something custom-built like this. We don't like the faucets that came with the vanity - they are a dark bronze. But we can easily pick up faucets at Home Depot later and will sell the bronze ones on Craig's List. So we were really pleased with the results of our Friday outing! We had originally planned on having only one sink, but we think that having two will be terrific:

Remodel - Week 3

As with the other 49 out of 50 states, Wisconsin had significant snow during this third week of the project. On Monday, Jason and crew installed the double window on west facade and decreased the window opening on south side to accommodate a single window rather than a double; a piece of plywood is covering this opening until the double window can be separated. He also made the 2nd floor weather-tight because the snow storm was barreling our way.

It snowed all day Tuesday and continued through the night until Wednesday morning - we got a little over a foot of snow. Wednesday was dedicated to snow-removal (lucky Steve) with final clean-up on Thursday. Jason worked on other jobs and returned on Friday to open up the wall between old and new on the 2nd floor. He framed the new doorway opening and installed a temporary door where the window and wall had been to keep the cold out.

On Saturday, Steve and I spoke with the door guy to see if new doors could be made that replicated as much as possible our existing 1930's era doors. We cannot reuse any of the doors because the sizes of the old ones no longer meet code. Sigh.

This pix and the next one were taken Tuesday after work, about mid-way through the snowstorm.

Steve, Jason and I also had discussions about the west facade cat slide roof which does not have eaves - a fact that we didn't catch on the drawing when we approved the final plans. We had told the architect that we wanted our cat slide to be like the one on the house of our neighbors-on-the-corner. They have a Tudor of the same vintage and added a wonderfully appropriate addition several years ago. Because of the rubber membrane roof on the flat roof of the our addition, we don't have a lot of play to extend the cat slide. Jason will do a mock-up for us of what it would look like to extend the cat-slide roof line 3 or 4 inches in order to have a step-back reveal. So once again, Jason has come up with an excellent solution to an unexpected problem.

Remodel - Week 2

"Raise High the Roofbeam Carpenter" or
"What a difference a day makes"


With apologies to the late JD Salinger AND Dinah Washington, the end of remodel week 2 has truly certainly wrought many changes. I didn't get home on Monday until after dark and had to be at work early the next morning (dark again), so came from work home early on Tuesday afternoon to take some pixs. It was snowing lightly but that did not deter Jason & Company. The neatest piece of work on Monday was his careful threading of the scaffolding between the branches of the large tulip magnolia in the kitchen garden - not a branch was harmed! Wayne-across-the-alley told Steve that it looked as though we were building a bird house - hah! The birds should be so lucky! Steve and I both thought that, at this point, the addition looked a wee bit barn-like:




Took the next 2 pictures Thursday morning - the cat slide roof line on the west elevation is installed - this is the feature that truly marries this new addition to our Tudor gem...so that, finally, the original flat roof on the west elevation is no longer such an eyesore.




This pix was taken from my car in the alley Thursday morning:





The rest of these pixs were taken Saturday. What a difference the Tyvek makes - one can begin to see what the final structure will look like:










Some views of the inside - taken through the window in the existing study (to be removed as soon as addition is airtight).



Steve and I continued to have conversations about this south double window - which matches the double window on the west elevaction. It simply looked too big for that wall - so on Thursday we asked Jason if the window could be returned to Pella for a restocking charge and we could then order a single double-hung window to put in the eastside of that opening. This would make everything more proportionate as well as giving us some wall space to put furniture.




Alas, the window was custom, so no returns allowed. But, once again, Jason comes to the rescue! He thinks he can separate out the double windows so we can use just one of them.