An Update at Long Last

We've moved very slowly this winter, but we did get a new furnace; we wired, insulated and drywalled our living room and hallway; and just last weekend, we ripped out our kitchen cabinets. We'll take out the drywall and tile floor this weekend.

before after

So the kitchen isn't quite to the looking better stage yet, but it will be soon hopefully.

I was really hoping to find some old photographs or stashes of cold hard cash while we ripped out the cabinets, but we found something cool anyway. On the floor under the cabinets was a brochure from the builder of the home. It has yellowed and suffered a little bit of termite damage from the termite infestation years of long ago, but it's still mostly readable and very enjoyable as it advertises a "magazine cover home designed by Cliff May" built by Stanley Cowherd Company and "plastic topped mahogany cabinets" (I think ours got skimped on that part -- it was pretty ordinary masonite and plywood).

So it's 5 degrees outside and our furnace broke!! You have to admit, that's pretty amazing timing on it's part.

We could get it fixed for more than we want to spend on an old bottom-of-the line furnace, but we thought it would be money better spent on getting a more efficient model. We'd really love a heat pump, but that just may be too pricey. Any ideas?

Oh, Wait! Our Living Room Ceiling is Gone!

So I just created this post to tell the world that my husband had a good idea. Now, our living room ceiling is gone and we certainly didn't rip it out without thinking how on earth we were going to replace it. We were prepared to install drywall but we were afraid that with ceilings like we have that are so visible and get lots of light bouncing off of them that if we didn't do the drywall just right, it would be so obvious that we didn't know what we were doing. Since we're completely redoing the living room/kitchen this year, we can't really afford to hire it out. So, that's when my husband mentioned that we could cover the rafters in simple tongue and groove wood paneling and just paint it. Well, we're pros at woodworking and surprisingly, we've found that it's cheaper than hiring out the drywall work. I thought this was a very good solution. So many Cliff Mays have the exposed rafters and decking. We obviously can't have that as it isn't the way our house was designed, but this is the next best thing really. We plan to do it for all of our ceilings when the time comes.

Half of our living room ceiling is gone!!

We tore down the drywall and Kimsul insulation in half of our living room this weekend! I can't express how refreshing it is to know it's out of the house and won't ever come back!! That insulation reeked and because it disintegrated as it fell to the ground, it transformed into a dust storm which overtook our house so the smell still lingers (as does the other half of the ceiling).

The tearing down was most definitely the easy part. It's the picking up the dusty trash and the vacuuming and the dragging of the contractor bags to the garage that kills. The insulating goes quickly too.

Laundry

Who would have thought a laundry room would be so difficult? Considering that all of our return air runs around the space, the electrical panel is in there, the entire floor had to be replaced, the plumbing had to be done, the gas lines had to be removed from the old dryer, the furnace vent stack is in the corner and had to be replaced and framed around and all the ethernet was run from the bedrooms to the laundry room for us to put our hub in there and it has all new electrical, I'd say I'm pretty proud we got it done in 9 months. I can't believe it's been that long!! It's still not quite done, but will be in the next couple of days. We need to finish installing the base and need to create a dryer vent. We found out that there was none before, it was just vented with a flexible pipe to the crawlspace. Thankfully, I've got just the spot for the new vent. But as soon as that's done, we're in the laundry business!! When the final touches are done, we'll be 1/4 or 1/3 of the way through our remodel. Living room and kitchen are next!!

Progress photos

I have all of the photos of our house before we bought it and what we've done since - through last week on Flikr. Please check it out. http://flickr.com/photos/19011594@N02/

Condensation

So we have a problem. A huge problem. The 7 1/4" of space above our ceilings is wet, wet, wet and no amount of ventilation can fix it. I'm thinking we're going to have to rip down the wet, moldy drywall and have it filled with foam insulation. This is something unexpected. We originally thought a ridge vent would do it, but there's just not enough air movement, especially once we add any sort of insulation and I don't think it'll work. Otherwise, we demolished our kitchen island. I will post pictures soon.