We were doing so well with our library header makeover.  Things were progressing smoothly.  The header was installed, sheetrocked, mudded, sanded, primed, painted and even crown-molded (crown-moldified? crown-moldicated?  you get the idea). Check it out…

Then the railing threw a spanner in the works (spanner.  hehe. DIY humor. so funny.  not).  The stair posts and middle support line up nicely below the new header:

Do you see that faint blue chalk line between the stair rail and middle support? That’s where the new wrought iron spindles will go when the tread is in place.  For maximum support, the spindles need to go in the middle of the tread. With me so far?  Ummmkay. So here’s our stumbling block…

Almost every single piece of stair tread we have found is only 5 1/4 inches deep.  So, the edge of the stair tread is exactly where we need our spindles to go.  In fact, if you look at our measurements, we need our tread to be about 10 inches deep.  Plus, if we want one long continuous piece of tread from the stairs to the other side of the railing, we need a 16 footer. 

Have I mentioned that stair tread doesn’t seem to be sold in these proportions.  Any. Where.  Believe me, we’ve looked. So, we’ve being trying to come up with solutions for our problem.

The best fix we’ve thought of so far is getting a 16 foot long 2″x10″ piece of lumber, and use a router bit to give it a nice bull-nose edge.

It will require a bit of intricate work, not only to get the bull-nose edge looking good, but also to get the DIY-tread to sit properly on the subfloor.  We’ll have to notch out a section on the underside so that the bullnose edge can jut out over the sheetrock, like so…

Have any of you come across this issue before?  Do you have any suggestions for better solutions for dealing with this treadful problem?

We’ve been making really good progress this week on our library header.  On Monday, I posted this video showing the crucial moment we removed the supporting 2×4 beams, thus revealing our new header.  Where once there was a wall, there is now space glorious space.

What I didn’t mention in detail in the video is the steps we took to make sure that the 20 feet expanse of wall was properly supported.  We installed a double header to fully ensure the attic floor boards above (which in turn support the roof) were being held in check.  Each header was made by sandwiching 2×8′s with wafer board. Both headers were joined together using these 1/2″ x 6″ hex bolts, secured with 1/2″ washers and nuts.

One of our future renovation plans is to convert the attic space into a guest suite (bedroom + bathroom).  So we wanted to be 200% sure that both spaces would be properly supported. When we performed the “stress test”, i.e. Rick and I both vigorously jumping up and down on the attic floor, there was a slight bit of movement on the library header.  After much discussion, we decided it would be better for the long term structural safety of the library and future attic-conversion that the long 20 foot expanse was a bit more supported.  So, we installed a support post… 

Next up was sheetrocking all the wood.  It didn’t take all that long to measure and cut the sheetrock and attach it to the walls with screws (we find screws better than nails as they are less likely to pop back out and damage the sheetrock). The sheetrock was mudded, left to set for a day or so…

and then sanded.  Hehe…

No, Rick doesn’t have a psoriasis problem, nor a cocaine habit.  He is also not trying out for the part of “Ghost of Christmas Past” in the local adaption of Dickens’ “A Christmas Carol”.  Don’t you just love getting down and dirty.  For the sake of DIY, I mean .

On Friday night, we took the supporting 2×4′s down and revealed our new library header. Check out this short video I took at the crucial moment. I can’t believe how English I sound on camera. Waaaaall….

I’m tellin’ ya. I should be on HGTV.

Not.

Back at the turn of twenty-ten, I set out our  renovation goals for the coming year.  Three months later, let’s take a look at how we’re progressing.  We have seven spaces on the to-do list this year: foyer, downstairs bathroom, dining room, office, garage, yard and library.  Some projects are smaller whilst others are more time (and budget) consuming. Let’s break it down one by one.

Goal 1: Foyer

• Finish drywall on headers – put up sheetrock, then mud, sand, dust, mud, sand, dust [ad infinitum]
• Prime and paint drywall
• Paint other walls 2^nd coat
• Install narrow shelving units in wall cavity

Progress: PARTIAL

We have started putting up sheetrock and mudding in some areas, like the header in the left-side living room.  We’ve still got to finish putting up the sheetrock on the right-side header, then mud+sand til our hearts’ discontent.

When we removed the the foyer walls and replaced them with headers to open up the space, we were left with two small partial walls either side of the entryway.  These are helpful in visually delineating the two living spaces without taking up too much room.  But we’re going to be adding more functionality to these puppies in the form of shelving.  In each cavity, we’re installing tall, narrow bookshelves for a built-in cabinetry look.  The shelves are built and have been placed in the space:

Now we have to sheetrock them in, then eventually trim around the outside for the custom built-in look. Once all the sheetrock has been mudded and sanded, we can prime and paint … well, everything. 

Goal 2: Downstairs bathroom

• Finish grouting, molding and decorating

Progress: COMPLETE!

Another one down (ok, the first one down), the first one bites the dust! Sing it, Freddie!  Tiling, grouting and molding have all been finished.  The decor has been … well … decorated.  This transformation is so jaw dropping that it needs a separate post.  Ok, maybe its more like I took way too many pictures to post here. So, watch this space, the big reveal is coming soon! But for now, here is a teaser photo…

Goal 3: Dining room

• Install trim boxes and chair rail
• Paint walls 2^nd coat, paint ceiling

Progress: PARTIAL

Twenty three boxes have been measured, cut and nailed to the wall. That’s 167 feet of trim, and approximately 980 brads nailed in and filled with putty.

Next up?  We’ll caulk around the boxes and paint the trim to make them seamlessly blend in with the wall.  We’ll paint another coat of the charcoal grey on the upper walls and then finally remove all the painter’s tape (as long as it has been up, it feels like a design feature).  The last step will be to put up the chair rail running around the room.  Add a few finishing touches (artwork, decorative knick-knacks … oh yeah, floors and replacement windows) and this room will be finished!

Goal 4: Office

• Finish painting walls
• Get  new office furniture to make office space more efficient (and less ugly)
• Move living room furniture to front living spaces

Progress: ALMOST COMPLETE!

This room has had a total makeover.  The walls have been painted (thanks Alyssa!), gone is the makeshift desk, the book cases have been replaced, and all the junk necessary office items seen in the picture above have been organized and housed in more efficient and appealing furniture.  The big reveal is coming soon, but for now here’s a teaser pic…

Goal 5: Garage

• Replace door, rails and opener on remaining two garage doors
• Tidy up and organize garage

Progress: NOT STARTED

This is one of two projects we haven’t made a start on yet.  With all the renovation projects going on in the house, the garage serves mainly as our storage space/work area and unfortunately will probably be one the last spaces to receive attention.

Goal 6: Yard

• Clear brush from back section
• Fence in rest of yard

Progress: PARTIAL

Rick has made some progress clearing out that dense brush area at the back of the yard.  He has cut down several small trees and piled the wood into neat piles:

We still need to work on clearing some of the bigger trees before we can clear out the smaller greenery and brush.  But we’re getting there!

Goal 7: Bedroom-turned-library

• Finish header – install last supports, remove studs
• Finish drywall – put up sheetrock, then mud, sand, dust, mud, sand, dust [ad infinitum]
• Prime and paint drywall
• Paint other walls 2^nd coat
• Remove existing railing – replace with new wrought iron railing

Progress: NOT STARTED

This is the second project that we are yet to start working on. We really need to finish the sheetrocking of the foyer walls below before we can install the new railing.  With our pack of dogs running around, we need to have some kind of partial boundary in place (whether it is the current stud wall or the new railing) to prevent them from going ker-splat over the edge.  So, for now, this project is on the back burner whilst we finish downstairs.

All in all, I think we are making good progress with our renovation goals for 2010.  Two projects are complete – the bathroom and office reveals will be posted soon.  Three projects are in the works – the foyer, dining room and yard will hopefully be finished shortly.  Only two out of the original seven projects are yet to be started, which I think is normal given that our priorities are elsewhere in the house for now.  How are you coming along with your resolutions?  Are you making good progress or have the goals bit the dust?

… it pours. Literally.  Inside our house.

In the middle of the night last night, I woke up to the storm raging outside. But beyond the howling wind and the rain lashing against the windows, there was an odd noise.  It sounded like someone peeing in the toilet, but from a great height.  You know, instead of a great flood, it was more of a continuous tinkling.  This might not have been odd had it been for the fact that Rick was sleeping soundly beside me.  That left two options.  1 – we had an intruder who had to stop midway through burglarizing the house to use the facilities.  Or 2, we had a leak.   In case it was option 1, I prodded Rick awake to see if he could hear the noise.  The trickle of water had turned to a continuous drip.  When there was no flush of the toilet, we ruled out the intruder option.  So Rick went on a scavenger hunt to find the source of our early morning disruption.  He didn’t have to go far. 

On the walkway that connects the master bedroom to the library we found this….

Water was dripping down from the attic above. My immediate thought was that we had another issue with the air handler – a water leak that caused damage to three floors in our house.  However, the air handler was on the other side of the house, not to mention hadn’t been on recently and so could not feasibly be the cause of the leak here.  Rick investigated in the attic and found that water was coming through the window sills, running down the wall and into the ceiling below.  To soak up the water we laid down a bunch of towels whilst we diagnosed the problem further and formulated a solution.

The culprit appears to be the rotten window sills on the attic windows.   The previous owner had puttied over rotten areas of the window sills and now the putty has begun to crack, allowing water to seep through.  The permanent solution to this problem would be to replace the windows. We’ve looked into getting our windows professionally replaced, but at the moment upgrading 37 windows is not really in our budget. So, we needed to come up with a temporary solution to keep the water at bay…

A quick trip to the DIY store yielded these repair tools: a 50ft roll of 10″ aluminum flashing, a pair of tin snips, some clear caulking and some self-pierceing sheeter tan screws with rubber washers.  The caulking gun and drill were tools we already had on-hand.

Rick measured the width of the window sill and cut the aluminum flashing to that length.  Using the tin snips, he also trimmed the flashing to fit all the angles of the window sill. He used the self-piercing sheeter tan screws to secure the flashing in place.  Self-piercing screws are handy because they create the holes, so you don’t have to use a drill bit first. Rubber washers are necessary for sealing the holes in order to keep water from penetrating the flashing under the screw head.

Once the flashing was securely attached to the top pane of the window sill, Rick bent the flashing over the edge of the sill and attached with the same sheeter screws.

Once the flashing was all in place, clear caulk was applied all around the edges.  This will keep water from running in under the edge of the flashing and seeping into the wood. 

So, here’s our temporary solution to sealing and preventing further water damage on the window sills.

This fix should hold up during the Spring time showers that are coming our way in the next few months.  Well, and the snow that is forecast for this weekend.  So that’s two water leaks in the house that have been fixed.  Hopefully, these things don’t come in threes…

I’m not a big fan of New Year’s resolutions.  Don’t get me wrong – the ideas and motivations behind resolutions are good. After all, no-one plans to gain more weight, smoke more cigarettes or be a crappy friend in the upcoming year.  I dislike resolutions simply because if I don’t follow through with them, I feel like a failure the rest of the year.  Usually, that’s about 11 months. I guess I am not alone in this – research shows that anywhere between 78% to 97% of New Year’s resolutions are broken. 

According to this psychological study, you will be more successful at keeping your New Year’s resolutions if you do these three things:

1) tell someone about your goals
2) focus on the benefits of success
3) keep a diary of your progress. 

So, my blog friends, I want to share with you our goals for completing renovation projects around the house in 2010.  Sharing of goals - check.  Outlining our resolutions is a good way to help plan projects for the upcoming year.  And come the end of twenty-ten, we will be able to look back and evaluate how well we’ve done in tackling the projects.  Optimism – check. And of course my dear blog readers (all three of you), I will keep you updated of  every step of the way. Progress documented – check. 

So here’s how our DIY resolutions for 2010 stack up.

The majority of our projects will be done on the first floor; namely in the foyer, the bathroom, the dining room, the office, the garage and finally, the yard. We only have one main project in the works to be tackled upstairs, and that’s in the bedroom-turned-library.

Let’s break it down in more detail.

1. Foyer

When we moved into the house last year, one of the first projects we tackled is taking down the walls between the two front rooms and the foyer.  The walls came down, the headers went up …. but we never really finished putting the drywall back.

One of our goals this year is to finish off the drywall and get those studs covered up and painted. After all, the stud look is sooooo 2009.

2. Downstairs Bathroom

It’s taken a while but we’ve almost finished the downstairs bathroom renovation.  Almost.  The bathroom started off looking like this:

Since then, we’ve tiled, grouted, painted and made-over the vanity.  What’s left?  We have just a tiny amount of grouting to do and the crown moulding to finish.  Then we can make the big reveal!

3. Dining room

We swapped the inherited deep-red paint for a more sophisticated, modern color palette:

To finish things off in the dining room, we are planning on installing chair rail and trim boxes on the lower part of the wall. Flooring would be a nice touch, but I’m not sure we’ll be able to get to that this year – let’s keep our fingers crossed.

4. Office

The office / living room is where we have spent most of our time in 2009.  On the first day we moved in, we set up all the essentials in this room – you know, the TV, the computer and some comfy chairs. And that is pretty much where they have stayed as we renovate the rest of the house.  We’ve accumulated more and more junk necessary items over the year, piling them on top of each other, so that the office now looks something like this:

Don’t judge. Something drastic needs to be done in this space for 2010.  Notice the half painted wall?  Another “let’s try and see what this paint color looks like” moment, waiting to be finished.  So, the plans for this space is to finish painting the walls and ceiling, and make this space more functional as an office.  That will mean moving our living room furniture into one of the front rooms.

5. Garage

The immediate plan for this space is quite straightforward: get the garage doors working!

Rick has already spent sometime taking down one of the dilapidated garage doors and replacing the rails and opener.  One down, two more to go.

6. Yard

The very first project we tackled in the first week of moving in was to fence in a small portion of the back yard so that the dogs had a safe, contained space to play in and do …well, what it is dogs do in yards.  At some point this year, we’d like to get the rest of the yard fenced in:

We also plan on clearing out that dense brush between the trees before summertime kicks in.

7. Bedroom-turned-library

The last thing on our 2010 to-do list is to finish off the headers and railing in our bedroom-turned-library project upstairs.

 

Most of the studs have come down, the header is in place – we just need to remove the remaining studs.  Then we plan on installing a new rail along that wall to meet up with the handrail going to the bedroom.  Eventually, all the wooden spindles will be replaced with wrought iron ones, and the wood will be stained a darker brown. Oh, and finishing painting the walls might also be a good idea

So, that’s our renovation goals for 2010.  I’m not sure how many of these projects will get done, but here’s hoping it will be a productive year. At the very least, at the end of the year, we can look back at this post and laugh at how optimistically ambitious we were at the start of 2010.

When we installed our contemporary chandelier in the dining room …

we had to decide what to do with the original chandelier…

I didn’t particularly hate the shape of this light. What did offend me was the tacky gold/brass skeleton overlaid in plastic. And, although you can’t quite see it in the picture, there were millions of these miniature plastic flowers tied on with gold wire to keep the plastic covers on the chandelier arms. Nice.

We were originally planning on giving the chandelier away. But after my first successful attempt at spray painting some parts for our dining room light extension, I thought it might be worthwhile trying to fix this Dynasty throwback.

So I took that sucker apart and spray painted everything chrome. And I mean everything. Even the little connection wires between each of the squillions of crystals. After a few days letting the paint cure, we began putting the light back together (minus the plastic coverings and flowers). A few cute spherical bulbs gave the light a bit more of a contemporary feel, and voila! we had a madeover light (picture updated!).

It’s new location is going to be in our bedroom-turned-loft library. How luxe will it be to relax in a comfortable chair with a cuppa ho-cho, surrounded by a plethora of books, reading under the sophisticated, sparkly chandelier?

What do think? Do you think the chrome makes or breaks this chandelier?

Ever have one of those days where you seem to be working all the time and not getting anything accomplished?  That’s how it’s been here for the past few weeks. We seem to be working around the house every spare minute we get (when we’re not working for our regular jobs, both in the day time and in the evenings).  However, we still really haven’t finished many projects around the house just recently.  We’ve got several on the go.  For instance, Rick has been working in the garage, trying to organize some of the boxes of stuff we still have left over from moving.  He’s also been working hard replacing the garage door opener (and fixing the banged up garage doors), so that when Winter rolls in, we might actually be able to put the cars in the garage.  The previous owners only installed one garage opener, despite having three working doors, so eventually Rick will be installing two other openers so we can use the full extent of the three-car garage. 

Back in the house, we’ve also been working on getting a few rooms finished.  When Rick first installed the dining room chandelier, it was obvious that it needed lowering over the dining room table.  The light didn’t come with any extension rods, so we’ve been coming up with some creative ways to lower that sucker (more details coming soon).  I’ve also been playing around with paint ideas for changing the Gothic red to something more airy and contemporary.  The wall going into the kitchen (opposite our one replaced window) is currently decorated with about 7 different color patches as we try several different looks for the room.

We’re still working on hanging the header in our upstairs bedroom-turned-library.  The header is up, but we still need to make a few adjustments to some supports before we remove the middle studs.  And lastly, we’re thisclose to finishing (and revealing) our downstairs bathroom makeover.  All that’s left is a few finishing touches – some caulking, some crown moulding, hanging some pictures and so forth.

Maybe it would be easier to focus in one project, rather than tackle several at one time.  I keep telling myself that we are saving time by multi-tasking – every time we go to the DIY store, we can get items for several projects rather than make many trips for individual projects.  That’s the theory anyway.  Do you guys multitask and work on several projects at once, or do you prefer to work on one thing at a time?  Do tell.

I have a good feeling that we will get at least one these projects finished this week.  Stay tuned for details!

This weekend, we decided to tackle one of the outstanding projects left on our downstairs bathroom renovation. Above the vanity, we are planning on hanging a large silver mirror, topped off by a satin nickel vanity light.  When finished, (probably in the year 2012 at the rate we’re going!), it should look something like this artistic rendition.

In order to install the new light, we need to run electric wires to it,  either creating a separate switch, or splicing the vanity light into the existing wiring for the ceiling light.  We needed to figure out a way to run the wires without making gaping holes in the walls and ceiling.  We needed to think outside of the bathroom box. Literally.

The floor of the library upstairs runs directly over the bathroom. If we pull up the subfloor in the library, we will be able to access the ceiling light wiring and splice the new fixture. From our previous demos in the library, you may remember that the sheetrock walls and flooring have been removed, leaving only studs and subflooring – here’s a reminder pic of what we’ve been living with these past few months.  So it is really not much more of an eyesore/inconvenience/mess maker to temporarily remove the subfloor too. 

Now, in order to get to the subfloor, we first needed to remove the stud framing and the old door way. The wall that runs down the hallway is not a supporting wall, so could be removed with no worries. 

The wall that is adjacent to the foyer is a load-bearing wall, and so cannot be completely removed until a header is put in its place (much like we did with the two foyer walls downstairs here and here). To keep the subfloor sheet in tact, we did need to remove just a couple of the studs on the supporting wall.

Once the walls were out of the way, Rick was able to pry up one of the subfloor sheets. We did find an electrical box for a ceiling fixture, but unfortunately, it was for the wrong light! The hallway ceiling light sits just outside of the bathroom, so at least we knew we were close.  Another subfloor section coming up! 

By the time we sussed out where the bathroom ceiling lighting is, we were quickly losing light (generally not the best idea to be splicing electrics in the waning day light).  Just in case we hadn’t had enough fun for the day, before we laid the flooring back down, we got the fright of our lives. Earlier, I had been cautioning Rick be careful walking on the floor joists – one slip and he would fall right through the ceiling sheetrock into the hard tile floor below. No, Rick didn’t fall through, but one of the dogs almost did! As we had been working upstairs most of the day, the dogs would, from time to time, come and visit us and see what all the noise was about.  They would run up the stairs to the library, inevitably see that there was no flooring, and stop midstep at the top of the stairs.  But not our little T-Rex (who is either really brave, or really stupid…). He ran up the stairs oblivious to the missing floor and plopped straight into the cavity. My heart froze as I hoped the sheetrock would hold … which it did.  Luckily, Rex quickly realized the situation he was in (as judged by his ultra-wide eye balls) and jump out toute-suite. No harm done, just a few skipped heartbeats! So, with dogs rescued from impending doom, we layed the subfloor back down. We’ll deal with the electrics another day.  Stay tuned…

I’m loving this photo frame that wraps around the corner of any wall. In the age of the  digital picture frame, this is a unique take on the traditional way to display photos of your loved ones and things (not saying that your beloved is a thing …)

It can hold anywhere betwen 7 – 12 photos in its espresso stained and lacquered frame. You may notice that some of the photos are split down the middle for a “folding” effect.

At 80 bucks, it’s a little on the pricey side (for that money, you might expect the frames to be digital). But I can’t help but admire the multidimensional angles and sophisticated elegance that frame this brings to any home.  It’s on my Amazon wish list, for sure…