Kitchen floor & bathroom demo part 2

Yesterday was a pretty good day for progress. The HVAC/Plumbers were out on the job for the first time. They installed the plumbing in the kitchen walls so I can now go ahead and put the insulation and sheetrock up. I'll be doing that this weekend. I was also able to get the sub floor finished in the kitchen.

I also began demoing the main bathroom. A nice surprise was finding the original wainscoting behind the ugly tile.


I'm demoing this wall because it will be used to run the plumbing upstairs. I also tore out the dropped ceiling.


I found a couple interesting things on the walls, they appear to be stickers.



Some of our appliances were delivered yesterday also.



The dumpster was delivered the day before. When I opened the door to begin loading trash in it I found that it wasn't quite empty.


I called the dumpster company and talked to the guy who delivered it but he seemed to think that there wasn't enough debris left in it for him to have had to get up in there with a shovel to knock it loose. I told him that if I fill the dumpster up and run out of room because of that then we're going to have a problem. The pile is over 2 feet high and covers the back 1/3 of the dumpster.

This afternoon will be more demo work and hauling trash out to the dumpster.

Kitchen subfloor & bathroom demo

On Sunday I started working on the kitchen subfloor. There were a lot of holes in the floor from moving the wall and it wasn't level. I had to remove most of the oak flooring that used to be part of the dining room as it was too high.


Then I had to add plywood of differing thicknesses to the area to build it up level.


Then I added plywood to the other low area to level it off.


With the floor now level I will be adding 1/2" plywood over the entire floor then putting the backer board on top of that.

We went back out on Monday to work on the upstairs bathroom. It needed to be demoed so the plumbers can rough in the new plumbing. Here is a before shot.


Here is after removing all the paneling that covered the walls and ceiling.



With the old paneling removed I was able to see that there was originally a closet that was smaller in size here. The green paint would have been the hallway and the unpainted boards were in the closet. It looks like in 1937 (the date on the tub, toilet, and sink) the closet wall was moved out a few feet to add the bathroom.

I also found lots of remnants of the original wallpaper that was in the hallway.



In the first picture you can see the cheesecloth that they hung the wallpaper on.

Yesterday we found a really good deal on a refrigerator. It was originally close to $3000 but was marked down to $1999. I told the manager that I would be paying cash and asked if he would take $1400 and he did! Here is a pic of the fridge, I found these pics online.


Tomorrow I will be picking up our new double ovens, I'm getting a really good deal on it too. It was originally listed at over $3000 but I'm getting it for $1199. Both appliances are completely new in the box.


Today I spent the afternoon underneath the house removing all the old cast iron plumbing and the old metal radiator piping in preparation for the plumbers, they will be starting on Thursday. I wasn't able to get all of it removed but I got a lot of it done.

Our 40 yd dumpster should be on site tomorrow so I can start filling it with all the trash that has accumulated so far.

Travertine flooring and backsplash

On Saturday we went and picked up the travertine. We bought a crate of 16x16 tiles. There are 160 tiles per crate. This should be enough for our kitchen and hopefully both baths. We also bought 10 boxes of 4x4 travertine backsplash. The floor tiles were $1.49 sq. ft. and the backsplash was $0.25 each!





We also went and looked at some appliances but the store was out of the ones we wanted so we'll have to find something else.

The work on the kitchen flooring should begin this weekend.

Grounds upkeep

We were back out at the house over the weekend but it was so nice out that we decided to work outside. We did a lot of yard work last January and February but it got really overgrown over the summer again.

I forgot to take a before picture, this one is after I had already begun working.

Here are a few after shots:



We're far from done.

Shopping for kitchen flooring

We've been shopping for kitchen flooring for the past few days. We were going to use slate but have since decided to go with travertine. Here is the style we've settled on, it's called antique sienna:


Once it's sealed it will look like the bottom half of the tile, I squirted some water on it to get an idea of what it will look like. Best of all it's only $1.49 a sq ft!

Here is the backsplash that we're looking at:

We also started looking for some ideas for our bathroom. The upstairs bathroom is very small and we weren't sure what do do about it. We saw this display below for a travertine shower and think it will work perfectly:


We're waiting on the appraisal for our construction loan right now, as soon as it's done we should have our loan within a week then we can get to work.

Kitchen electrical almost done

I was out at the house again on Saturday for more electrical work but I haven't had a chance to post since then. I'm almost done with the electrical in the kitchen. Most of what's left will have to wait until the cabinets are in for me to finish.


Above is a picture of the back door that leads into the kitchen. The room beyond is the one that will be demo'd soon and then replaced with a deck.

I know it looks like the light switches are on the wrong side but I'm going to be reversing the swing on this door. There is some heavy damage where the cheap door knob is now, it appears that someone kicked it in at one point. I will be filling this in and installing a door knob and lock on the right side of the door so it swings the other way. I wired up the two 3-way light switches on Saturday, the right one will control the recessed lighting and the left one will control the chandelier. The empty spot on the far left is for the porch light I will be installing outside the door once the other room is torn down.


The above picture shows the other two 3-way switches, this is at the entrance to the kitchen from the dining room.


These are the junction boxes in the attic, I still have more wiring to do here.


As you can see, I finally got a light installed in the attic space above the dining room and kitchen. I will be opening up a door into this space from one of the bedrooms and putting down a sub floor in at least half this area for storage.

Well, that's about it for now. I cant wait until this part is over so I can finally post some less boring pictures!

More electrical work

We didn't get to spend a lot of time out at the house today but I did get some things accomplished. I worked on installing the second circuit to the kitchen. The second circuit will run the fridge, dish washer, garbage disposal, and attic light. There will also be a third circuit run, it will control the chandelier, the recessed lighting, and the under counter lights.

I ran the circuits down from the attic space above the kitchen. Why I didn't think to do this for the first circuit I don't know. It would have saved me a lot of crawling around in the dirt under the house...

I'm running the wiring through the holes that the knob & tube wiring ran through.




The last picture above is the wiring for the attic light.

I found an old Bulldog friction tape box in the attic, it was used to tape up the knob & tube wiring.



We hope to get back out there some time this weekend to finish up the wiring.

Kitchen electrical

I was back at the Woodbury house today. I finally got around to starting the electrical work. I wired up 5 outlets and installed boxes for the microwave, light switches, and garbage disposal.


The box up near the top of the pic is for the microwave, I haven't run the line for it yet because it will be on it's own circuit. The double gang box on the far left next to the window will be for a garbage disposal and under counter lighting switches. All the other outlets are positioned so they will be 2" above the countertop.



I still have one more outlet to run (for the fridge), the line for the dishwasher, the line for the microwave, and the line for the under counter lights. Then I'm going to run a line up into the attic space to a junction box for the lighting.

Toothbrushes

When I was at the Woodbury house yesterday I took some time to clean up the toothbrushes I had found in the kitchen wall last week. I had noticed that there was some writing on one of them when I was looking at a picture of it.

When I cleaned it up I found that it said "Buster Brown's Perfect Brush". It has the Buster Brown logo at the end of it. On the neck it says France and has some numbers. Just below that is some type of logo, possibly the company logo. I can just barely make out "co." at the end of it. Google didn't return any hits for a Buster Brown Toothbrush.


The other brush says "Mammas Darlings" which is an old childrens book from 1869. It also says France on it. The writing is very faint though so I couldn't get a good picture of it.

If anyone has any info on either of these toothbrushes please post it here. I'd love to know more about them.

Final kitchen demo

Once again I didn't have enough time to do the electrical today. I spent the day finishing up the demo and framing.

First thing I did was to pick up all the plaster and put them into contractor bags. Once that was done I started removing the boards on the wall next to the pantry.

I carefully removed the door frame so it can be reused then removed the rest of the boards.

Then I removed the shelves from the pantry. Unfortunately we're not going to be able to use the pantry since our fridge has to go in this location. It wasn't original to the house but it would have been nice to have.

I put the original studs back in place with 2x4 supports on either side, they are not load bearing so it's ok to do it like that.


Once the drywall is up I'll tear the pantry down and use some of the siding to cover the hole.

I started measuring the new wall so I would know where to install the outlets when I discovered that I was 2 1/2" short on the wall! I didn't notice it when I was laying out the kitchen in CAD because I chose a 27" wall oven cabinet by accident, we'll be getting a 30" oven cabinet.

I cut a small piece of 2x4 to 2 1/2" and screwed it to the floor next to the wall then moved the stud over on top of it. For the other side of the doorway I moved the stud in and cut the footer down 2 1/2".


With that done I went ahead and framed out the doorway between the kitchen and dining room.


Tomorrow we will be back out there to hopefully get the electrical done...

Finishing up the kitchen demo

We went back out to the Woodbury house today for a few hours. I had intended to begin on the kitchen electrical, there are a lot of outlets to install, but ended up tearing plaster and lathe off the walls instead.




Sorry for the fuzzy images but there was still a lot of plaster dust in the air when I took them. The little bit of yellow on the wall in the pics is more tongue & groove boards.

I'll be back out tomorrow to remove the boards, clean up the plaster, vacuum, then begin on the electrical.

Designing the kitchen cabinets

We've spent the last few weeks designing our perfect kitchen. Today I used a CAD program to layout the kitchen. I wanted to see exactly how everything is going to tie in together.

The program is not perfect but it's very good. I was able to use similar cabinets and stain, the ones we are getting are nicer and more detailed but this works to really give us a view of how it will turn out.

Here are a few shots of what the kitchen will look like:



Some of the things that are not correct in the pictures; The wall oven will be even with the cabinet next to it. The floor tile is too small, it's 12x12, I'm thinking we're going to need 16x16 or 18x18, the color Isn't right either, it's going to be a dark slate with maybe a hint of green in it. There will also be a valance above the sink that I couldn't get the program to add. I also couldn't add the backsplash, it's going to be travertine tumbled stone.

The cabinets on the far left in the last pic above are one's we're thinking of installing at a later date, the base cabinets will only be 12" deep as will the uppers. Here is another shot of it:


Here is a showroom display of the actual cabinets we will be getting:

The uppers in the pic are only 30", we'll be getting 42". With 11' ceilings we're going to need them.

Dining room wall

Yesterday I worked on the dining room side of the wall. The first thing I did was install pieces of 2x4 in between studs for the wainscoting.


With that done I began working on the wainscoting. I picked out the 37 best pieces and removed all the nails from them. then I had to cut an inch off of each board. I had to do this because the floors, as it turns out, are not original, they were laid over the original floors so because of this I lost an inch of height over the wainscoting on the other walls.

With the wainscoting installed I installed the chair rail above it and the trim piece that goes just below the chair rail.



I know it looks like the wainscoting slants up towards the camera, it does this for a few reasons, one is that the floor slopes down towards the back wall, the other is that the support 2x4's I installed are level while the wainscoting follows the floor so it makes it look worse than it is. Once the drywall is up it shouldn't be noticeable at all.

This last picture is a few of the things I have found in the walls so far:

The bottom 2 items are toothbrushes that look very old, they appear to be made of bone or ivory. I just noticed some writing on one of them in the picture but I don't have them here, they are back at the Woodbury house. I will try to see what they say the next time I'm there.

The top item is a turned wooden spindle. These are the kind you normally see in a hallway or entryway as elaborate fretwork. We dont have any fretwork in the house, I have no clue how it got into an outside wall in the dining room.