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.

The kitchen demo - 8-14-06

At one point someone dropped the ceiling a foot in this room. First I ripped down the drywall, they used cedar 2x4's for the framing. That will come in handy for scrap pieces around the house. Under the dropped ceiling was the original lathe, the plaster was long gone. I tore out all the lathe also. We have some reclaimed 6" and 8" heartpine paneling that we plan on using for the ceiling.


Here's the pine panaling that we'll be using for the ceiling, it's behind the other wood that's in the foreground.





What a mess!


once the ceiling was out it was time for the old bathroom and closet walls to come down:




Well that's all I'm going to post for now or I wont get up in the morning. I'll be updating more either tomorrow or the next day.

Old kitchen demo - outside stairs demo - 8-7-06

The old kitchen for apartment #1 is becoming our breakfast room so everything has to come out. First I took out the stove, washing machine and bottom cabinets:


The cabinets came out next, I dont recomend taking a 12' long cabinet down by yourself. After seeing the flooring under that carpeting I'm surprised it didnt go right through it...

The 2 doors that were behind the cabinets had been closed off since 1955, it was pretty cool to be the first to open them since then. They still have the original stain on them too, awesome!


The door on the left goes to the laundry room, the one on the right goes to the bathroom.

I want to stop and appologize right now if it seems like I'm rushing these posts... because I am. I have 2 months of work to catch up on! If I dont hurry I'll never get them caught up...

Ok, the next project that needed my attention was the hideous outside stairs. They had to go. they were installed for the upstairs apartment.




The little addition in the background coming off the side of the house is going to be our breakfast nook.



I was reading the DevilQueen blog the other day when I saw a picture of John's shin with a big bruise on it. I just had to laugh (not at him of course) when I saw it because it reminded me of my little "mishap" while demoing the stairs. If you're real squemish you may not want to scroll down to see it...








This is what happens when you miss what you're aiming at with a framing hammer. Actually it didnt hurt near as bad as is looks...

Demo work begins - The bathrooms - 8-6-06

On the 6th of August I kicked it into high gear. I began by demoing both bathrooms upstairs. It was pretty nasty work, especially the guest bathroom that had been a kitchen. I swear that the people that lived here must have cooked fried chicken EVERY night. Everything was coated with years of grease. I tore out all the cabinets and about 4 layers of linoleum. the wood floors are nice wide plank pine, I'd really like to be able to keep them but I dont think it will be possible. there is a slight slope to the floor that I'll need to shim up first. I'm afraid that the floor boards will shatter when I try to take them up



Next came the master bathroom demo. first I removed the closet that was added at one point. Then came the linoleum. There were about 6 layers of linoleum on the floor. You can actually tell the decade from the design, the first layer was 80's, then 50's, 30's then some that were indistinguishable.


Once all the linoleum was out it was pretty obvious that the flooring was shot, so it had to come out.

Then I tore out all the old cast iron plumbing in preperation for the new cpvc that the plumbers put in.

I then moved downstairs to the bathroom in what will become our kitchen. I dont know about you but a bathroom in a kitchen doesnt sound too appetizing to me... so it's coming out. the inside walls will be removed and the remaining space will become a breakfast nook.

closing/work begins... - 8-2-06

We closed on the house on August 2nd. After the closing we came straight over to the house and pulled up that ratty gold shag carpet in the parlor.



The house had been abandoned for a couple years so there was a lot of mold in the house. I would get a severe headache in the house after just a few minutes it was so bad. the first thing I bought from Home Depot was a respirator, a great investment.





Here's the girlfriend removing the 3 million staples that held the padding down.




Looks a lot better already...

We then set the parlor up as our temporary bedroom:



Our dumpster arrived on the 5th and it was time to get to work...


The first thing I did was tear the old carpeting out of what will become our kitchen:



The carpet padding was totally rotted and stuck to the floor. You might notice in the picture that there is a section of the floor in the middle of the room that's not painted. The entire house is like this, it appears that they would just lift up the edges of the rug to paint the floor.

Nursery / Guest Bedroom 2

Here is what will become the nursery:





and here is the second guest bedroom:

Guest Bedroom 1 / Bathroom

Ok, let's get this tour over with so I can start showing you some progress...

Here is the guest bedroom:



The entrance to the guest bathroom is in this room. this would actually be the master bedroom because of that, and the double window but it's smaller than the one across the hall.

and the bathroom:




The guest bathroom was a kitchen for the apartment upstairs, there was an awesome 1938 Magic Chef stove in perfect condition in here.