Building the new kitchen wall

We were back at the Woodbury house yesterday. First I needed to tear down the 3 foot sections on either side of where the new wall will be. I had to be careful doing this so as not to disturb the plaster walls next to it.

I used a circular saw to make the cuts. I cut the chair rail and picture rail at 45 degrees since the corners will need to be mitered to meet the new wall. For the very top and bottom I used a sawzall being as careful as I could. I still knocked a little bit of plaster off one area though but it should be pretty easy to patch up.

Here's my chalk line for the first cut:


I cut along the line with the circular saw then removed the plaster and lathe from the wall:


Then I did the same for the other wall:


With that done we spent the next few hours cleaning up the plaster on the floor. We also got rid of a bunch of old appliances in the house by giving them away.

Then we got to work on building the wall:


The studs are a standard 16" on center configuration.




Today We'll be heading back out there and I'll install the header above the door, the door casing, then the wainscoting and the chair rail.

Kitchen wall removal

Yesterday we were out at the Woodbury house taking the wall down. This turned out to be a much longer process than I had anticipated.

First I had to take the plaster and lathe down on the walls next to the wall that is being removed because the boards extended into each of the walls:



These walls will be coming down anyways, I'll be gutting the entire kitchen and putting up greenboard.

Next I took down the boards on the wall, I had to do this carefully as I want to save them for use in the sunroom. The boards are also 15' long so it was tough to get them off by myself:

Once that was done I removed the chair rail, trim, door casings, shoe molding, one row of flooring, and finally the wainscoting from the dining room wall. We were also able to remove the wallpaper without tearing it, we will be reusing the paper:

Then all that was left was to remove the plaster and lathe:

The studs were only toe-nailed into the ceiling, most didn't even touch the floor. It's a wonder the ceiling didn't sag from having a wall hanging from it for a hundred years.

That's as far as we got yesterday. Next up is to try to remove the plaster and lathe from 3'4" of the side walls that will now be part of the kitchen without damaging the plaster next to it that will remain in the dining room.

I'll be using a circular saw for that as a sawzall will vibrate the lathe and destroy the plaster. Once that is down I can build the new wall.

Kitchen Demo

We've finally decided to take the plunge and begin the real work at the Woodbury house. We're going to get a construction loan to get everything done as soon as possible.

Today we started on the kitchen. In it's present state the kitchen measures 10'5"x14'10". Ten feet is just too small. We tried a hundred different cabinet configurations over a weeks time on the CAD program but nothing really worked.

What we have decided to do is move the wall between the kitchen and dining room. The dining room is currently 14'6"x14'10". We're going to move the wall 3'4". This will make the kitchen 13'9"x14'10" and the dining room 11'2"x14'10". Here is the wall in question from the Dining room side:


I hate to lose the original plaster on the dining room side and I'm going to have to remove the wainscoting very carefully so as not to damage it, but at least now I'll have close to 7' of spare wainscoting and a lot of spare oak flooring.

I guess I should describe what this kitchen will be like. In the Oxford-Boynton house we did a country style kitchen with white, slatted door cabinets that I made. We really like our kitchen and spend a lot of time in it but this time around we're going high end.

I'm starting with a slate floor with 12"x12" slate. The cabinets will be either cherry or Italian Hickory. The countertops will be granite. The backsplash will be tumbled marble. And of course the appliances will be high end stainless.

We spent the morning finalizing the cabinet layout and finally came up with this:


We will be going with a Farmhouse sink, side by side fridge, double wall ovens, and an electric cooktop with a wood and stainless hood vent.


Even going with a complete gut and rebuild we still have to work around some of those old house issues. Just beyond the fridge on the left is an original window, it is over 7' tall. I want to preserve this window. Because of this we cant do a U shaped kitchen. The window over the sink was shortened a long time ago so it's ok to put the new sink there.

Unfortunately we're going to lose our pantry, it's behind the fridge in the plans above. It's not original to the house though and I'll be able to reuse the wood and trim from it.


The shot above just shows the basic cabinets, we'll be adding crown, a valance above the sink, fluted casing on either end of the wall oven cabinet and the fridge cabinet, and the sink will have turned legs on either end.

That was the fun part... this afternoon we went out to the house to begin the demo. Here is the kitchen before we started the demo:


Isn't that lovely? Time to go bye-bye...





That's as far as we got today. We'll be out there first thing in the morning to get the wall down and moved.

RIP Sailor

Well, Sailor died in recovery after surgery today. She went into cardiac arrest and did not respond to any of the emergency procedures they tried on her.

She will be greatly missed.

Please help save Sailor!

I haven't gotten any work done on the house lately because we've had a bit of an emergency here. We foster dogs for our local humane society. Last week we got in a very weak and emaciated American Bulldog from the animal shelter. she had been left tied to a pole outside the shelter.


We took her in and began her rehabilitation. Things were going great at first but soon she began throwing her food back up and started getting lethargic. Christmas morning she didn't even raise her head to greet us and we knew then that something was seriously wrong.

We spent the day at the emergency animal hospital. it turns out that she has an intestinal blockage that requires emergency surgery. The vet has agreed to perform the surgery but the Humane Society does not have the amount of money required to pay for it.

We have decided to setup an online fundraiser for Sailor to try to raise the money ourselves. Here is the link to the site:

http://www.fundable.com/groupactions/groupaction.2008-12-25.6311233069

If anyone can help out it would be greatly appreciated! It only takes a few seconds to donate and even $10 will help out greatly. If you know anyone else that can help please forward the link to them.

Thanks in advance for everyone that can help, Sailor thanks you!

We have power!!

The power is finally on! We went out to Woodbury House yesterday to try to get some things accomplished and found this!



I spent the afternoon running more circuits under the house, installing new outlet boxes, and installing outlets. I ran 4 circuits to different junction boxes with an outlet to each. We now have power to the Kitchen, Dining room, Parlor, and Study.

Now that we have power we can work later and use power tools. Hopefully things will start moving faster from here.

A wasted day...

Yesterday was a total waste of time. The power was supposed to be turned on at the Woodbury house yesterday so we went out there hoping to get some work done, but when I called Georgia Power they said that they never received the inspection paperwork from the county. I called the county but the inspector that we met was out in the field. The man I talked to said he would e-mail the information to Ga. Power shortly but it still wasn't there after 2 hours.

In the mean time I was double checking all my wiring to make sure everything was ok. I was checking the torque on the lugs in the meter socket when this happened:


Crap! The plastic bracket holding the bottom right lug snapped! I ended up having to once again make a 40 mile round trip to pick up a new bracket from the closest Ga. Power office.

In the end we just left with nothing at all accomplished. I don't know if the power was ever connected after we left but I seriously doubt it. I'll be calling Ga. Power later to find out.

I got a picture of the wall between the Living Room and the Sun room from the Living room side. you can see the outline of the old doorway that I mentioned in the previous post. This is the doorway that we will be opening back up.

Electrical Inspection

We passed our electrical inspection today!

I went out to the house a few hours before I was supposed to meet the inspector so I could finish up on a few last minute things. When I got there I realized that I forgot to get a grounding rod and copper ground wire so it was off on a 40 mile round trip to Home Depot to get it.

I had enough time when I got back to clean up all the old, moldy drywall up off the floor in the sun room, run the copper wire from the panel to outside just under the meter socket, and hammer the grounding rod about halfway in before he got there.

He was actually a very nice guy, we talked about the house for a long time (he's an old house owner also) and he gave me a lot of helpful tips.

Here's the picture of our meter socket with the county's inspection sticker on it:



By the way, it's no fun hammering an 8' ground rod in with nothing but a hammer. It took close to an hour:


We're hoping to get the power on by the end of the week, then the real work begins!

Sun room demo

First I just wanted to say thanks to Mike over at the L. Norris Hall house for all the electrical help!

The room that I put the main electrical panel in is an addition that appears to have been built in the 50's. It's a shed roof design that runs along the kitchen/dining room addition. Here is a picture of it:

Can you see the rot on the sill? This was taken last year, it is in worse shape now.

The addition is at the top left in the above floor plan. It is divided into 2 rooms but it is actually one structure. It was built very poorly and is literally falling apart. Water pours into the room when it rains and there is rot and mold everywhere.

Our original plans were to tear the back half down and replace it with a deck and keep the front part as a sun room. Unfortunately the rot extends through both rooms so it will all have to be torn down. Today the plan was to just get a tarp up on the roof so that the electrical panel wouldn't get wet.

Here is the roof:


As you can see the PO had already nailed a tarp down years ago. The furring strips they used blocked the water from draining and made the problem worse. The roof is very soft all over but there is a big hole right above the furring strips in the corner:


I removed all the leaves and nailed plastic sheeting down with roofing nails:


I only put plastic sheeting down over the sun room side because that's all I care about for now since that's the room the panel is in. Once we have the electric on we are going to tear the entire thing down and rebuild just the sun room. Luckily the panel is on what was originally the outside wall of the dining room so it wont be disturbed but we'll have to work quickly to tear the room down and rebuild it during a period of no rain.

Once that was done I started gutting the sun room. There was a water heater, a shower, a closet and some shelves. I didn't get to finish the last 2, but got the rest out of there as well as most of the old, moldy drywall that was on all the walls.


That is thick mold growing on the walls. The wood walls are rotted out in a few places also. I should be able to salvage some of it though.


The above picture shows the entryway to the room and the main hall beyond. Just to the right of the door is a plumbing chase that is falling apart. I'm not sure yet if I'm going to keep the plumbing there or move it to another location.

When I removed the drywall on the opposite wall I found an old doorway into the back of the original house that goes into the study. I knew this would be there as I had seen the outline of the doorway on the wall of the study. From the size of it, it looks like it used to hold 2 small french doors, probably about 2 feet each. this would have been a doorway out on to the back porch originally. we plan on opening this doorway back up.


You can see the doorway in the above picture. The wall covering it on the right is the small closet that was for a washer and dryer. They will be coming down the next time we go out there.

New meter socket

We've been out at the Woodbury house for the past two days trying to get the electrical to a point where we can turn it on.

The meter socket needed to be replaced since the old one was a dual socket. It looks like the upstairs was an apartment at one time and had separate electrical service.


I picked up a new meter socket from Georgia Power and had them come out to disconnect the service drop from the house. Then I removed the old socket:


Then I installed the new socket. I used PVC conduit for the exposed electrical line and capped it off with a new service head.



I have a question for all you electricians out there. The service drop is 3-wire, 2 lines and a ground, (black & red). The line I ran from the meter socket to the panel is 4-wire, 3 wires and a ground (black, red & white). Where is the neutral (white) wire supposed to connect in the meter socket? I attached it to the ground in the socket (see pic below), is this the proper way? Georgia Power will be inspecting it before they turn it on but I'd like to have it done right the first time.



Also, the electrical panel had a bridge connecting the neutral to the ground. I removed it but which way do I need to have it when the neutral is connected to ground at the socket?

We also brought over a stove for the kitchen. We got it free off Freecycle. This will be temporary until we can sell the other house and begin the full remodel.


Not bad for free :) It was disgusting when we got it. This pic is after hours with bleach, a scrub pad, bristle brush, and a scraper. One of the elements was burned out so I'll be replacing all of them as well as the drip trays.