Painting the workshop/storage area

Before I could paint the basement workshop/storage area, I had to prepare it. First, I knocked off the chunky pieces of concrete sticking out from around where an oil tank had been located. After I did that, I mixed up some concrete patch material and filled in these big holes and some smaller holes on the floor.

The holes in the floor were where a divot of concrete came out when a wall was removed (the concrete nails). You can see a line of holes across the room just in front of the little shopvac. I also patched the holes when we removed the partition wall.

Here I have primed the walls and am ready to prime the floor. It took several hours to prepare the floor. First I scraped the floor (I used an ice chopper), swept, scraped again in a perpendicular direction to the first, swept, scrubbed the floor with an abrasive deck brush, and then swept again.

This photo shows the water meter and drain cleanout. You can see the location of the wall of the original closet that was built around the cleanout and water meter.

Everything is now primed - walls and floor. I didn't prime the edge of the oil tank pedestal because I was planning on leaving it red, so it would be less of a trip hazard.

The walls have now been painted. There is going to be a small enclosure around the water meter, so I didn't bother with painting the walls behind the meter.

The paint can is the floor paint - Porch and Floor Enamel - I was just getting ready to do the floor when I took this photo.

Everything is now painted. I ended up painting the edge of oil tank pedestal because it looks pretty grungy next to the new paint. Hopefully it will work out even though I hadn't primed it.

I had previously purchased self-stick vinyl baseboard (like commercial baseboard) for the laundry room. I decided that I would put it down in here to dress up the edge of the floor/wall corner. Because the vinyl baseboard comes in a roll, you have to unroll it and let it relax for a day so it won't try to curl up again and become unglued from the wall.

Total effort: about 11 hours.

Basement update

So I've been working on the basement, and it is now almost ready for paint and then set up the storage shelving.

This photo is at the bottom of the stairs into the basement. You can see that I have removed the carpet and scraped off all the foam backing that was stuck onto the stairs. You can also see the splint that I had to put on one of the studs. It was bowed out severely, so I cut it almost completely through in two locations, pushed the stud in so it was in line with the other studs, and then fastened a cripple stud on one side to keep the newly straightened 2x4 in place.

This photo shows the basement "workshop" area. It is really a storage area, but it could be used for a workshop. I removed the old light fixture that was wired illegally and installed three pot lights with a switch that is at the top of the stairs - the pot lights are on the stairs, in front of the laundry room entrance, and half way in between (which happens to be in front of the entrance to the bathroom. The pot lights are marked with a ">" in the photo - they don't show up very well in the flash photos.

I also hooked up my workshop fluorescent light which you can see at the left middle of the photo.

Last panel work

So I had four more circuits to connect to the panel. I completed that today.

This is the before photo. There are two 20A circuits to connect - those are the yellow wires hanging down on the right side (in front of the breaker panel), and two 15A circuits - those are the white wires hanging down on the right side.

On the left side, you can see the coils of wire for the phone connections and the network connections. Yes, there is a lot of extra wire! The DSL modem and the wireless router is hanging down on the left too.

This is after the circuits were connected. Also, I tidied up the phone, internet and video cables on the left side. The modem and the router are plugged into the new plug (bottom left) which frees up the mandatory utility outlet which is just below the huge 100A on/off switch.

Also, note that there is now a light at the panel area, which is really nice to have.

This is what the panel looks like with the doors closed. Nice and tidy, isn't it?

What you can't see is that there is about a 1/2 inch gap at the bottom of the doors and a larger opening at the top, to promote airflow so there is no heat buildup in the cabinet.

My neck is really sore from all the looking up that I was doing today, so I am taking the evening off and trying to loosen up the tight muscles with a heating pad (Magic Bag which was a gift from my sister Mary, I believe).

And with this post, I am all caught up with my backlog of photos. :)

Shower and under-cabinet lighting (Mar 1st)

Finally, the long-awaited shower enclosure arrives. This is the shower being installed. We had to wait 24 hours before using it so the silicone sealant could cure properly.

We have three areas for the kitchen under-cabinet lighting. One was about 40", another about 30" and the third was only 6"! I purchased some fluorescent strips for the longer areas and a small LED light for the tiny area. This photo is of the label on the LED strip. What does "ludoor use only" mean?? Ludoor???

This photo shows the lights in action! The middle sized light is under the cabinet at the left of the photo, and the LED light is under the small cabinet at the right - between the range and the sink.

This photo shows how I had to install the LED lighting strip under the small cabinet. First, it was a plug-in type with a transformer so I couldn't hardwire the light. Instead of buying an ordinary utility box with a receptacle, I found this hardwire box that had two plugs on it (one on either end). Because of the tight space, I had to install that box at the back corner under the cabinet, and then mount the LED lighting strip on an angle.

The little LED strip had a switch on the wire so I just used a sticky pad and zip tied it to the bottom of the cabinet. I originally used double-sided tape but it was old and the switch fell down overnight. This will work better because it is mechanically fastened (with a screw).

Feb 24th - David's help

These are some photos I took when David was helping me.

This photo shows after we had taken down some of a partition wall. The oil tank was at the back left corner of this photo (where the wood shelving pieces are leaning), it was on an elevated concrete pedestal about 9 inches high. That concrete pedestal is still there - haha! In front of that, there was a partition wall (covered in paneling of course!) that was in several sections with angles. The piece at the center back of this photo (with the car stickers on the paneling) was about 4' from the outside wall - we took that down to add the space to this room. I put a line of dots in the photo to indicate the location of the wall between the back bit and the small piece on the right. The left side of the room was the same way.

It looks like this might have been a bedroom because it appears that a headboard was against the blue painted paneling. It would have been a very cold bedroom because there was absolutely no insulation on the basement walls.

This is another angle looking toward the laundry room. David and I extended the partition wall over to the outside wall of the basement. We took the blue-painted bit of wall down too, of course.

And this is after the partition wall was constructed and installed. After this, I had to do the electrical which was to install one plug on each side of the wall, and a switch which controls a plug in the ceiling of the workshop area of the basement - that is for workshop fluorescent lights.

Feb 23rd photos

This corner of the basement has the water meter and the cleanout for the main drain. Of course, that means it must be accessible in case the meter needs to be read manually or if the drain needs to get unplugged. We will build a small square cabinet here with a removable top.

Before, this was a really stupid waste of space area. There was a little closet that was accessed through a narrow opening covered by a type of horizontal blind. You had to step into that area - which was difficult because of the water meter and the drain cleanout -- in order to reach through the wall to access a couple of shelves. It was dark and awkward. Really dumb. We are going to have some shelving on the other side of this wall. Just taking out that dumb closet makes the whole room seem bigger.

Because the house is a split level, there is a half-wall of concrete that is visible. We are framing a wall in front of it, and I put 2" of styrofoam over the concrete (1/2" behind the studs, and then 1 1/2" in between the studs. This was recommended by the eco-energy audit guy.

Oh yes, before I could set up my computer I had to install an electrical outlet and the phone and network connections too. There was no plug on this wall (the longest wall, although it had the window), and the closest plug was switched so was useless. I had to do a lot of repairs to the drywall because the crazy painters didn't fix the drywall like they promised to do.... After I patched the drywall, I primed the patch and then painted the whole wall.

This is a photo of the electrical panel area after we installed some of the drywall. You can see the ceiling light socket that was installed at this point but not energized - I had to use the trouble light to give us light to work in this area.

Feb 19th - basement photos

These photos are from Feb 19th.

The basement walls are now insulated to R-25. First, there is 1" of styrofoam (R-5) glued to the concrete walls. It is taped on the vertical joints to keep moisture at bay. Then we built a wall inside that has R-20 of fiberglass (2x6, 24" oc). THen the vapour barrier and then the drywall.

This is the wall under the fireplace. The light in this picture is too close to the wall, so I had to move it a bit further away from the wall.

This is the electrical panel section before all of the drywall was installed. You can see the new furnace at the left side of the photo. One of the best things about the new furnace is that it is so much quieter than the old one!

Oh yes, this is our new tankless water heater. The best thing about this is that it doesn't take up any floor space.

Counter delivery - Feb 9th afternoon

Our granite counter tops were scheduled for delivery on the afternoon of Feb 9th. Of course, it was snowing!

Here's the first piece with the cutout for the kitchen sink.

The under-cabinet lighting wires are hanging down. The switch has tape on it so it doesn't accidentally get turned on.

Feb 9th photos

These are photos that were taken on the morning of Feb 9th.

This is our kitchen but without the countertops. It was really awful trying to live in this situation. We had to wash dishes in the tiny bathroom sink.

The living room was so crowded - and this was after we rented a portable storage unit and moved a lot of boxes into it. Still too crowded.

This was my surprise for Freda - a heated floor in the master ensuite bathroom. It feels soooo nice stepping out of the shower onto a warm floor!

This is our pantry in the kitchen, and the only food storage area until the lower level pantry is completed. The right most set of doors is a broom closet.

Final inspections complete

We had our final inspections on our bathroom renovations with no problems. The plumbing inspection was last Thursday and the final building inspection was on Monday.

Only a couple of small things left to do:
- main bath: hang medicine cabinet on the wall
- ensuite: finish vanity (just waiting for the doors to come so they can be installed) then install the baseboard on the wall beside the vanity, put a bead of caulk at the toekick of the vanity, in case any water spills it will prevent it from running down into the basement ceiling.


And I took the building permit off the wall - WOOHOO!!