Installing the kitchen walls

I wanted to post about the beadboard walls in the bathroom but I'd rather wait until it's completed. I had hoped to get it finished off last night but I still have a little bit of trim to finish off and then I have to stain it. I havent decided which stain I'm going to use on it yet either. I want it to be really rich looking. I was thinking Red Mahogany. If anyone has any suggestions on what stain to use that would go with the floors in the previous post I'd love to hear from you.


Ok, on to the kitchen walls. Two of the walls were in really bad shape, the plaster was cracked and falling off so I removed all the plaster from them, One wall needs a lot of touching up of the plaster and the last plaster wall is in decent shape.

We decided to use reclaimed T&G 4" pine boards for the walls that the plaster had been removed from. The wood came off the walls of an early 1900's farmhouse that was being demolished.


This is the before shot of one of the walls:


Here is how far I've gotten:


It's coming along nicely. Like the colors? :) The outlet high up on the wall is for the microwave, it will be installed above the stove.

I'm hoping to get back in here and finish the walls sometime next week. I'll be out of town again this weekend so I wont get any work done, then I have to finish off the main bathroom so we can finally get our tub in there. I'm tired of making the trek to my moms house just to take showers...

Downstairs bathroom floors -9-15-06

When we got the house the main downstairs bathroom floor looked pretty good. We thought it would just need to be refinished. Half of the floor was covered by linoleum. I pulled the linoleum up and found this:


Damn. It's a wonder the tub and toilet didnt go crashing into the crawlspace...

I pulled up the floor (being very careful to salvage what boards I could) and discovered another floor underneath it:



It's nice wide-plank heartpine but unfortunately it's in really bad shape.

I went ahead and pulled it up also and found this:



All three of the joists are rotted, not only that but they are notch-cut so they are splitting too. I decided to remove them instead of sistering them because I'm not a big fan of notch-cutting floor joists.

I pulled them out and replaced them with pressure-treated 2x8's and metal joist hangers.


As you can see the plumbers have replaced all the old cast iron pluming with new PVC / CPVC.

Next I laid a sub-floor of 3/8 plywood. I should have gone with 5/8 in hindsight but it's too late now:


I made sure to mark off where the joists are so it's easier to nail the new flooring in.

Then it was time for the new flooring. We have a bunch of 5 1/8" Southern yellow pine T&G flooring that we got for $1.50 sq/ft. Cant beat that price though I really wanted heart pine.

I laid the new flooring in, this was my first time ever laying flooring and I think it came out great considering. The first board took forever to get just right but the rest went pretty quickly.




I called the floor guys in to finish the floor so we could get a working bathroom in the house ASAP. It's no fun having to run up to Burger King every time nature calls...

They came out and showed me a bunch of samples but none looked just right. Most of the rest of the house is heart pine, I wanted something that either would match that or compliment it. The morning they came out to stain I ran to home depot and found Red Chestnut stain by Minwax. I bought it and came home to try it out on a scrap piece of flooring. It looked pretty good so I told them to use that.

Here are the results:



I'm amazed at how much it looks like heart pine! the floor guys were really amazed too. the floor looks really glossy in the pics because it was still wet. We decided to go with a satin finish to keep with the period.

Well that's it for the floors. Next was to install the beadboard. I'll post that next.

Kitchen wiring and insulation - 9-9-06

I've rewired the entire kitchen since the walls are down. I'm also adding 2 RG-6 coaxle jacks and an RJ-45 network jack. The network jack and one of the cable jacks are in the breakfast nook, the other cable jack is next to the counter to the right of the sink. I've installed a media panel for all the media connections. It's in the closet in the study. I'll post more on that later.

Kitchen Appliances

The look we're going for in our kitchen is sort of a primitave farmhouse look. We're going to be reusing the cabinets that were in the old kitchen, they are good solid plywood cabinets. I'll be building beadboard doors for them though. 2 walls will be plaster and the other 2 will be T&G wood.

For the appliances we decided to go with stainless, everything is Frigidaire with the exception of the dishwasher, it's a Kitchenaid. I know stainless is not primative but I've gotta have nice appliances.

Sorry about the terrible picture quality...

The fence - 8-19-06

I'm installing a 6' privacy fence all the way around the back yard. It's roughly 463' of fencing. The neighbors to the left of us had been using our driveway as a drivethrough, I got tired of seeing cars pulling through my driveway at all hours of the day and night so I decided to make the fence a priority.

To date I've only gotten the first 6 sections of fence up but it was enough to blcok their path through my driveway. The problem is the soil, Georgia clay is some hard ass stuff. I dug the 6 post holes by hand, 2' deep, and had some serious blisters. I'm going to rent a hand auger as soon as I have a free weekend.

The back of the back yard is a jungle, I had to hack a trail all the way around the yard for the fence.


Here's a sample of what I had to hack through.



Here's the fence so far. I'm hoping to finish it either this weekend or next.

We're also going to install a picket fence in the front yard but that will probably be a month or two off.