Whole house renovation - Converting a Ranch into a Prairie Style

2009-01-24T08:14:00.002-06:00

Since I have been laid off, I have been owrking on 3 things simultaneously: 1) Looking for work, 2) Looking for consulting work, and 3) working on the house.

Margaret thought it would be a good idea for me to have an office, so we changed priorities and I started on one of the guest rooms downstairs.

This room had been partially disassembled in order to put in structural support for the new level, and we had water damage against the outside wall near the window.

I re-drywalled the opened up areas and worked on the exterior wall. Dad came over and we had to frame around a gas pipe.

We looked at the infrared images that we had of that room and looked for leaks. There was significant heat loss in the ceiling area. Eventhough I had insulated the area above the ceiling near the outside wall, I did not seal it, and prevent the air from coming in.

Dad and I took down part of the ceiling near the outside wall, to gain access to this location. We discovered that some of the insulation was there was moldy and the back of the drywall was moldy. We sealed with foam around those areas to prevent the ait from coming in, and we replaced the insulation.

We then replaced the drywall and instead of trying to match the popcorn texture on the ceiling to scrape it off.

This was very messy, but it did work well. We used water in spray can and a 4" putty knife. There is a trick to getting the right moisture level on the popcorn. To dry, and it flakes off, too wet and you can gouge the drywall, or take off joint compound. If you get it right, it comes off like a thin sheet with no damage to the wall.

I decided to replace the crappy closet bi-folds with a 6' french door that was supposed to go into Margaret's office, but it was so large, we decided against it. This is a solid core cherry 6 - panel door that is 6 feet wide. We had to widen the closet raise the rough opening in the closet.

We had to disassemble the door and the frame to get it downstairs, but we did, and after some work, we finally got the doors hung and they look pretty good.

The ceiling turned out nicely. We patched everything up and I sanded. When I vacummed up the drywall dust, I failed to inspect the shop vac. It spewed out the dust as fast as I could vaccuum it up. The furnace was on, and the drywall dust got into the ventilation system. The entire house is covered in a fine white dust. NICE!

After 2 coats of primer, I went to the local transfer station. Did you know you can get free household chemicals and paint there? I picked up a nice rich chocolate for the lower walls and a full gallon of a greenish yellow for the ceiling and upper walls. I decided to do a stripe and a chair-rail.

I painted the upper walls and ceiling and ran out of pain on the 2nd coat. I went to Lowes to get a matching paint. I started on the wall and ceiling joint with the new paint and it did not match. Now I had to re-paint the walls and the ceilign because I started on the joint. Don't make that mistake. I repainted both and ran out - again. I went back to Lowes and told them that the paint they matched did not match, and they gave me another gallon. This time I started only on the ceiling.

Now earlier, I decided to do the ceiling and the upper walls the same color in order to A) save time in masking and B) make poor joints by the previous drywaller not be so obvious.

So, this gallon of paint does not match either. The color is right, but the sheen is wrong. So, I had to mask the walls and paint just the ceiling. 2 more coats. I had some left over so I painted the closet, then I ran out.

I then painted the lower wall in 2 coats.

Dad borrowed a flooring stapler and we then laid the floor in. We of course had to replace the underlayment with real plywood. I ripped out all the pressboard and slowly threw it out with my weekly trash. When I got down to the subfloor, I was able to strengthen the weak spots where necessary. The 1/2 underlayment went down nicely, followed by tar paper. I could have used rosin paper, but went with roofing felt since below this room is the wet crawlspace. I thoug hthe the roofing felt would better protect the underside of the floor from moisture, plus I had it on hand.

When Dad and I started the floor, we discovered that the flooring that we had purchased is basically 3 different widths. This is why we had such issues before with gaps. We found that if we sorted by width, and used a single width on a run from wall to wall, the fit was much better.

When I went to lay out the trim, I found 3 problem areas, 2 by the window and 1 by the clost doors. The trim is the left over from Sydney's room, so it is very thin, about 2.5 inches high. Where we widened the closet, I did not paint enough of the drywall. Recall that I ran out of paint. So, I painted the closet wall the lower wall color, and raised the level of the color stripe to the top of the closet. The window had drywall that stood proud of the window frame everywhere. I used some left over select pine from the trim in Margaret's office and manufactured some window jamb extenders. This is basically an outside right angle peice that fits over the existing jamb and comes flush to the drywall. The other issue is that in one corner of the the window, the drywall was pushed way out. I bashed this in with a hammer and then filled the hole with spackle. Trim was going to cover most of it, so I used some of the dark lower wall paint to paint over it.

Parts of the jamb extenders were already stained cherry, so I needed to cahnge the window stain. I sanded the entire window 3 times. I started with a detail sander and 40 grit. Note this is too aggressive and I would not use it again. There were too many scraches that I struggled to remove. Also note, move a detail sander slowly, let the vibration do the sanding, not you becasue if you move it, the grit will scratch. After the 40 grit, I then sanded with 100 grit and then a third time with 150.

I then used a pre-stain conditioner on the window, as this is recommended with soft woods, like pine. I then put 2 coats of stain on it, followed by a coat of polyurethane, a rubbing down with 000 steel wool and another coat and a final rubbing with 0000. I am not all that pleased with how it turned out. I don't think that I was able to get all of the original varnish off. If I do this again, I would try a stripper first.

Meanwhile I stained about 200 linear feet of the thin trim and I manufactured 2 wider cherry boards to go over the window and the closet. I found a great deal on cherry on craigslist.

I found a free ceiling light on craigslist and I painted the gold trim with some oil rubbed bronze spray paint. I also painted the floor heat register, the return air duct and all the outlet covers and switch plate. I will paint the window screen frames and the window hardware too.

I installed all the trim and filled all the nail holes, sanded stained and sealed the doors.

This whole process took about 2 months.

I will add pictures later.

2008-10-02T17:20:00.002-05:00

I got laid off from Nielsen today. The layoffs are supposedly about 15% of the workforce in North America. I guess that I will have more time to update this blog and work on the house now.

2008-07-30T10:25:00.005-05:00

Our remodel efforts were highlighted on Fox News in the Twin Cities for a story on bartering.

Since the story was aired, I have made some more contacts that might help in getting the work done.

2008-07-14T09:21:00.004-05:00

We hired a roofing company to fix the leaky roof. While we were speaking with the roofing comapnies, we determined that there was an error made in construction. Where that error was made is in question.

The roof over the atrium end flush with the exterior wall. This being flush is not shown in the blueprints from Eric Belo. In fact, hae has a drawing specifically for this and it shows an overhang.

That being said, when the roof trusses were installed, the ended up flush. So, the error lies in the roof trusses being too short, allowing for no overhang. This was caused by a combination of: Menards (whom we bought the trusses from), the truss company, who Menards contracted with, or Rob Norton whose crew installed the trusses.

In order to fix this, we had the roofing comapny rip off about 50% of the shingles, take out the lower vents that may have been causing the leaks and the OSB. They then cistered out the roof trusses and installed new OSB, lais Ice and Water dam from the roof edge to the peak, and installed new shingles. Then they finished off the new overhang with siding, trim and soffit.

We have had 2 rainstorms and no leaks. I have some pictures that I will post soon.

In order to get our money back for this work and the re-insulation that had to be done, I think we have to sue Rob and Menards.

2008-02-20T14:55:00.001-06:00

I would like to think about Kerdi for the shower and bath.

http://ths.gardenweb.com/forums/load/bath/msg111135518894.html

2008-02-19T21:01:00.001-06:00

Documentation of exterior work.
House%20Remodel%20tasks.xls

2008-02-18T23:11:00.000-06:00

We continued to work in the attic. On Saturday I sprayed a product called Sporcidin in the attic space, trying to cover the entire roof area. I am hopeful that this will kill the mold that is growing.

After that dried, I then shoved some batting up against the wind wash in order to hold in the future blown-in insulation. I got about 40% done before Dad showed up on Sunday.

He helped me finish that task, and then we laid out and re-installed the batting that was in good shape. I made sure that the batts were layhing flat on the drywall and skipped any area that had obstacles.

That afternoon, we went to Lowes and purchased a new Owens Corning product for blown in fiberglass called Atticcat. The machine was free with a 10 bag purchase. We were the first customers to use this particular machine.

We tried that afternoon with moderate success, but found some issues that we were able to resolve:

The machine came with 2 lengths of 50' hose with a joint between them. The joint kept coming loose. We fixed this by reefing down on the hose clamp and then using electrical tape and really stretching it tight to keep the joint closed.
We found that you cannot have too many twists and turns in the hose. If you lay it out and have very few bends it works bettter. Otherwise the hose gets clogged and you cannot get any insulation out.
The connection from the machine to the hose vibrates itself loose. Use a large pliers to tighten it - do not trust that hand tight will keep it screwed on.
There is a knife that slices the bags open as you feed them. This knife dulls quickly and can get jammed up with plastic from the bags. It needs to be cleared after every 1/2 bag.
The remote control does not always work on the first try. If you use it, push it off before you think you need it turned off.

The fiberglass did not itch and after we found the solutions above everything went pretty well. We did use walkie talkies to communicate on/off status, which worked well. Also, we pushed this stuff up 2 stories.

Current status is that for about 50% of the house, we have:

Removed wet insulation
Sealed all bypasses
Sprayed for mold
Filled the area near the windwash with batting so that blown insulation would not go out onto the soffits (yes we have vent chutes)
Replaced batting that was in reasonable shape
Blown in R50 fiberglass insulation

Now time will tell if we have resolved the moisture issue.

2008-02-06T08:59:00.000-06:00

Over the holidays I did a little on the house including putting some primer on the walls and replacing some drywall tape that had become stained from the ongoing water problem.

Water.

The water issue that we have had since the remodel continues. I got on the roof and covered 2 sides of the louvered vents thinking that we still had snow and ice in them. I also put about a tube of roofing compound around each, but still the water comes in. There was a huge ice dam on the roof over the vaulted ceiling that I removed.

Now water has penetrated different areas of the house too, coming through can lights, down interior walls, etc, so I finally looked into the attic space.

Condensation. Everywhere. The nails are rusted, the underside of the slipsheets are dripping with water and the underside of the roof is iced over. So all the water has been running down the inside of the roof, and dropping off when it hits something, like a nail or a truss member. If it did not drop off, it went into the end of the insulation. This has caused icecicles to form from inside the soffits.

Upon more investigation I have found mold growing in the attic on the wood and in the insulation.

In doing research on this issue, it apppears that the condensation is caused by these factors coming together:

1) The warm air in the house has penetrated into the attic
2) The warm air was moist
3) It got really cold (-20 F)
4) The vents in the roof maybe undersized

1) Penetration

To determine how the warm air is getting into the attic I had an energy consultant take infrared images of the house. This can tell us where air is moving within the walls and ceilings.

This image shows the air leakage around can lights. Yes these lights are the "air tite" style. In addition to the 15 or so can lights in the top level, can lights, in which there is leakage around the top plates. The worst however, was coming from the rooms that still had no drywall on the ceiling: The master bath and closet.

So, to begin the process, Dad came over and he and I and a handyman that we are bartering with, Greg, did the following:

Pulled insulation out over the master bedroom, closet, bath and laundry room, drywalled the master bath ceiling and began the drying out and sealing process. I have placed 4 fans in the attic to dry out what moisture was remaining. We started throwing out the old insulation (which is costing a great deal to get rid of and I cannot find an insulation recycling center), and began sealing the bypasses in the attic. To do this, we have started foaming where drywall meets the top plate. We have to do this in every room, not just the outside walls as we need to seperate the attic air from the house air. We have made / purchased some boxes that are about 13" square to go over the can lights. These are made from insulation board that is covered in foil. Each is cut to fit over a can, and foam is sued to seal the box to the back of the dryall. The ply has to be removed to get a good seal.

Also, where we can, we are using acoustical caulk to seal the poly to the top plate before drywall. This adds a level of protection of air bypass.

As of this writing we are nearly done sealing up the area where insulation has been removed. I have 2 cans yet to do and a few more areas that need top plate sealing. My body is bruised all over, I am tired and itch.

When we get the one side done, we can re-insulate. I am going to use blown in this time as it gets in the corners better and there are no joints that can let air move around as there are in batts, then we move to the other side.

The good news is that Greg took a sheet of drywall off of a wall that had and found no mold behind it. What you see below is the wall in the atrium where the water has been the worst. You can see the foam insulation and the water damage on the left and below of the left window.

Additional sources of moisture. One of the sources of moisture in the house is the uncovered dirt in the crawlspace. The crawlsapce needs to be cleaned out, insulated and sealed with poly. I basically need to create a vapor barrier to keep the moisture from the crawl space from getting into the house.

Another source is the whole house humidifier. We turned this up this year. When we got the house to about 40% humidity, it got really really cold outside. Humidity % is relative to temperature, the colder it is, the less the humidity should be, so we went in the wrong direction in both temp and humidity. We have shut this off since we discovered the condensation.

2) Venting

To start with, Greg and I sealed up around all the existing vents to ensure that there was no water penetration around them.

The energy consultant and I determined that the roof is under vented and that we should add 3-5 more vents. I think that based upon what I learned about low-profile ridge vents that I should add more. the low-profile ridge vents can be completely shut off with 2" of snow.

So, I think that we are going to add 3 louvered vents over Sydney's side of the roof, and perhaps 2 turbine vents over the ridge area. The area over the master bedroom has 3 louvered vents already and that should be sufficient.

Then, I want to replace the low vents that are in the roof over the vaulted ceiling with something that has less potential to get snow in them.

In talking with other insulation experts, there are those that beleive that venting is a much smaller issue than the penetration of warm, moist air, so we will do these last.

Whose fault is it? How do we pay for this all? State Farm Insurance won't cover it.

2007-09-24T07:44:00.000-05:00

Happy Anniversary!

This week marks the 3rd year of when we tore the roof off of the house. In honor of that mark, I am taking the week off of work and will be working on the house.

There is still so much to do, it was hard to decide. We decided to focus on the living room and atrium.

The first order there was to finish the underlayment as discussed in the prior post. This I completed about a week ago.

Dad came over for the week and we worked on the following:

Install a light outlet in a coat closet near the main entryway.

Drywall the closet. This needed to be drywalled so tha a door could be installed before flooring goes down.

We installed a door for the closet - that took some time as the studs were bowed and twisted. We finally got it whe we decided to use a left over door jamb and get that straight.

Finally came the flooring. Dad was able to borrow a flooring stapler. This has been a help as the staples draw the boards tighter than the finish nailer that I used in Sydneys room.

pics to follow.

2007-08-13T14:11:00.000-05:00

I have started some work on the main level, in what will b the living room. I have applied 2 coats of primer on the walls and found some issues with the drywall finish. I also discovered that the 20 amp electrical wire sticking out of the wall where the fireplace will be was live. I did this in the very unscientific method of backing into it.

In order to install the hardwood flooring, I need to remove the underlayment which is made of pressboard and replace with BC rated plywood.

I had started this and Dad came over last weekend to help me some more.

While we had the underlayment cut out we thought that we could see if we could seal under the doors in the atrium which leak water. It was amazing how much space was under there. We used 4 tubs of caulk and a can of spray foam.

We then removed the subfloor (down to the joists) near the door and we could see how much damage the water did. We removed and replaces the insulation and sprayed mold down with Tilex. We replaced the subfloor where it was rotted too.

That was a lot of work, but it needed to be done.

2007-07-12T09:47:00.001-05:00

First post in a long time.

Margaret and I recently finished some of the work on the front porch.

We completed soffiting, fascia covers and placing trim around the deck.

Also completed is the wrapping of the posts with cedar. We re-used the cedar from the original siding after it was planed down.

Looks pretty nice now. We may put some more decorative trim around the posts.

2007-02-17T16:25:00.000-06:00

This is actually going pretty well. My room is done and I am moved in. The dust is still inbearable anywhere else in this house, but we are doing our best to keep it down. I am very happy with the outside.

We are now tying to decide what to do next. :-)

2007-01-01T01:00:00.000-06:00

Sydney's suite is finished. We wanted to have it done in 2006, but missed. Here are some photos:

Left: Ceiling fan and painted walls. The white sposts you see are clouds. In this image, the trim is not done around the windows.

Below: Tile pattern in the shower, White 4x$ tiles with a band of 2x2 in the middle:

Left: Study area with corner desk and 4 windows with cherry trim completed.

Below: Jetted tub and tiles shower to ceiling, rounded curtain rod, cherry cabinets and a solid surface 1 piece sink.

2006-06-20T16:46:00.000-05:00

This is what I, as the daughter of this family, feel like about the remodel. If you dare, read on!

I did not approve of this at first, but of course nobody asked me, the seven-year-old (or at least I think so) little, unimportant girl of the house. I am ten years old now, and the remodel is still going on, I still do not approve, and I am still mad at my parents for not even asking me. They just told me one day that we were remodeling the house, no questions please, and the next day, workers were standing in our house. My home was transformed into a disaster, and as I write this, I am still standing in it, our dusty, dirty, cluttered mess of a house which is more house than home.
Luckily, my new room is almost finished, all the painting done for good. We just have to finish tiling my bathroom and then we can put all the appliences in, such as the fan, sink, and toilet. The bathtub is in, and yes, it is a Jaccuzzi (a small one, of course).
Sometimes, I feel like screaming and destroying everything within my sight. But I know that that won't work. Other times I feel like waving a magic wand and everything will instantly be exactly as we want it (and it is for good: it doesn't disappear at midnight).

These are my feelings about the house. I hope you enjoyed them!

2006-01-17T09:03:00.000-06:00

All of Sydney's room is drywalled. I had forgot to run speaker wires for the whole house audio before I put up the ceiling. I had to putz around, but I got the wires run.

Dad came over last Saturday around 1pm and Martin came over for a coupe of hours. The 3 of us finished Sydney's closet and bathroom.

Dad and I got the Durock hung around her tub on Sunday and we tested the tub for leaks before enclosing it.

Dad left around noon on Sunday and I completed putting Durock on her floor.

We are ready for taping, mudding and sealing around the Durock.

Sydney is excited about picking out tile.

We have to buy the infloor heating mat in addition to tile and trim.

2006-01-06T16:13:00.000-06:00

I completed drywalling Sydney's bedroom ceiling last night at about 10 pm.

In her room, still have left: Closet & Bathroom ceiling & walls

Denny finished his plumbing, and we are out another $3k. I don't think that he installed the line for the instant water heater correctly though.

He did run a return line for the recirculation pump though.

2006-01-03T13:51:00.000-06:00

Denny came over today and began to finish the plumbing.

To stay out of his way, I decided to continue dry walling and moved to Sydney's bedroom ceiling.

I took most of the day to get 3/4 of the ceiling done. I had a hard time figuring out which way to run the drywall to minimize butt joints. This was especially hard since the room is a U shape and 3 of the corners have hip roof trusses, which means that they run at right angles to one another.

5/8" drywall for the ceiling is really heavy. Margaret helped me, and the lift was a lifesaver. For the holiday's I received 2 of these 3rd hands. I used both, especially on longer sheets.

2006-01-02T13:49:00.000-06:00

Dad went home and I decided to start drywalling the new laundry room. Of course I ran into problems with the walls not being straight.

I finished all of the walls except the one that Denny has to work on.

2005-12-30T13:43:00.000-06:00

We re-financed the second mortgage and was able to hire Denny the plumber to finish some of the work.

He needed the master Jacuzzi tub put into place to finish the plumbing. Dad and I looked at the tub surround as it was built and decided to rip it out and start over.

Margaret informed us that we had to install a piece of platic tub trim around the outside of the tub. Apparently code requires this if your tub is tight against the wall. This is essentially flashing that prevents water dripping behind the tub.

Dad and I spent most of one day re-installing the tub and installing the trim.

2005-12-22T20:54:00.000-06:00

Completed the bathroom today - well except for the door knob.

It was a long process, and is documented here, but without dates.

First, the floor was really uneven, so I had to use a floor leveling compound. Never did that before now. I thought that the compound might get a little runny and run down the vent, around the drain or even between the cracks in the subfloor. To prevent this I taped everything with window tape called Protecto wrap.

Ok, so I may have gotten carried away - hey but it worked!

I then screwed durock onto the floor and went to work on the walls. John Eddington helped me do some of the drywalling. Of course, we had to do some re-framing to get a reasonably flat wall. I did a lot of the mudding and Dad painted the primer. Margaret painted the walls and the ceiling. Finally, we got to the tile. We decided to go with 2 sizes of tile. Since the room is small and narrow, we thought it would help. We layed it out like 3 times and took digital photos. We wanted to start in the middle, but getting the first piece in the right place, parallel to the walls was a challenge.

We borrowed the neighbors tile saw (Thanks Chip) and it went pretty well.

Next I grouted and then we sealed with a spray grout sealer. Sydney did most of that work.

We then started on the plumbing. First order was to install shut off valves. No problems sweating one on for the toilet, but the sink was another matter. I had 3/4" clearence from the back of the pipe to the wall. I thought about it and made another trip to Home Depot (whom I still dislike) for compression shut off's. Those went in, and no leaks were found.

Then I looked at the sink. Hmmmm. Sink is a pedastal sink we bought ages ago at Menards. Water service is in the floor. Pedastal sinks are supposed to have water service in the wall, right? That way you don't see the ugly pipes coming out. Hmmmm. The wall where the sink goes shares with the garage. Techinically it's an outside wall. I suppose it was not plumbed in the outside wall for fear of freezing.

Margaret remembered a narrow cabinet base with sink at Home Depot (whom I still dislike) on closeout. We checked it out. Comes with sink, cabinet & mirror for $200. We got that. Of course, I had to cut out a chunk of the bottom of the cabinet for the water service to come up, but we finally got it in.

We had some issues with the drain - like having spray foam all over the pvc in the wall that I had to cement a fitting onto - but we resoved them with another 2 trips to Home Depot (whom I still dislike).

So, today was toilet day. I grabbed the toilet that we had slated for Sydney's bathroom and started with that. Of course the wax ring was too short, and the bolts that hold the tank onto the bowl leaked and the fill valve would not shut off - but hey - nothing that more trips to the store wouldn't fix.

Finally got it all in!

2005-12-13T14:48:00.000-06:00

We had an appraiser over today. The last appraisal was 2 years ago and pre-remodel. We hope to get a new number so we can move some money around. Cash is really tight, and we have some of those interest free purchases coming due in January.

I have been working inside for a while. I just finished tiling the bathroom floor on the main level bath. I will post pics soon.

The guest room on the lower level had all hte drywall on the outside wall removed. Margaret pulled it down when we had those water leaks. It was all moldy inside and the insulation was moldy. Well, it has been quite drafty in there since then.

Last weekend we re-insulated (had a crack between the subfloor and the outside bottom plate that was downright windy) with expanding foam & batts. We got that up & the vapor barrier and sheetrocked it. Have not taped it off yet. It is much warmer.

Also I went into the sub-basement and did some work. There was a duct that was disconnected when we poured the new wall. I re-connected that vent. I also properly sealed a hole in the trunk from an old vent that we took out of service. lastly, I used aluminum tape and taped all of the joints in the trunk.

2005-12-01T16:15:00.000-06:00

Lookey lookey what we gone and did.

For the first time in over a year we can get a car in the garage. Granted, I had to move some of the remaining exterior trim pieces to store them outdoors, but hey - a car in the garage.

What a concept!

2005-11-20T16:17:00.000-06:00

I have finished:

Trimming around the access door on the garage.
Trimming around the windows on the street side of the garage.
Trimming around the front door.

2005-10-30T09:46:00.000-06:00

Mom, Dad, Martin and Mariah came over today. 3 of us worked most of the day Saturday and about 5 hours on Sunday.

They helped get the dock out of the water in addition to helping on the house.
The list I posted earlier is a bit shorter.

Completed:

Sheet & trim by stairway
Sheeting by garage
Sheet & trim northside (under porch)
Trim southside deck
Porch light motion sensor
Installed more nails/bolts to the 2x4 ledger that holds up the back of the porch roof structure
Added 1 more can light to porch

We also started on the soffit & fascia for the porch.

2005-10-26T15:39:00.000-05:00

Our Porch roof structure passed inspection. We can now commence soffiting.

We have to install some more nails or bolts into the 2x4 ledger that supports the back of the roof structure though.

Margaret wants 1 more can light added as well.