It's a dog's life...

It's a dog's life... well, it would be nice to live a dog's life... a dog who is a pet, anyway...

Tawny, claiming ownership of the bed.

King Taz, ruling the world from the couch.

Cabinets are complete!!!

Heinz, our cabinet guy, came today and finished up the cabinets.

This is the dishwasher before, with the panel leaning against the sink cabinet.

This is after the panel was installed. Heinz installed a piece of wood for the toe kick, so it matches the rest of the cabinets (instead of the black plastic piece that came with the dishwasher.

This is the ensuite vanity after the doors were installed.

And this is the vanity after the knobs were installed. It looks really nice.

All I have left to do in the ensuite is install the shelf under the sink, install the baseboard (on the wall with the window - at right) - this will require a bit of caukling and painting to finish it up.

Monday - light snowfall

The snowbanks at the side of the driveway were no higher than 2 1/2 or 3 feet, but they were almost all gone. This light snowfall makes everything look pretty again, but frankly - everyone is ready for spring.

This is the back yard. There is some icy stuff underneath that fresh snow now s o it's a bit treacherous.

Boxing in the heating ductwork

This is the view from the stairs. As you can tell, all the boxes that were piled up here were taken down to the storage area so we can finish up this room. You can see the ductwork running the length of the room, and the framing around it so we can put the drywall on it.

We will be removing that load-bearing 2x4 wall in the middle of the room (it originally was part of a partition wall that enclosed a bedroom at the left rear). I have found a welder who will supply and install the properly sized posts, according to the structural engineer that we hired. I hope that he can come early this week.

This is the view from the stairs to the storage area. The room is very bright with the two big windows and quite spacious - about 21' square.

This is a view looking toward the pantry so you can see the framing around the ductwork and also the shelf supports that I added yesterday.

Insulating overhang

One of the strongest recommendations from the energy audit guy was to properly seal the underside of the overhang to stop drafts. The floor at the front of the house on the bedroom level overhangs by about a foot. He recommended removing the plywood that covered the underneath to expose the joists, then add some rigid styrofoam that was properly caulked to seal the drafts and add a bit of insulation. Since there was an incredible draft coming into the basement from that area, I really wanted to do that. This is their story. (Apologies to Law & Order.)

This is the underside of the overhang after the plywood was removed. The black stuff there is called Black Joe - it is like pressed fiberboard (made from wood pulp) that is impregnated with some sort of black stuff, tar or something. If I installed the rigid insulation on top of the Black Joe, then the effectiveness of sealing against drafts would be dependent on how the Black Joe was sealed. Due to the age of the house, it was pretty clear that this was extremely unlikely.

This is what I saw after removing the Black Joe. You can see that the insulation doesn't extend all the way to the end of the joist space. Obviously I needed to add insulation before I put the rigid stuff up.

What a surprise! There was absolutely no insulation in the area under the front coat closet. You can see why that is in this photo - there is a piece of blocking across the joist space (at the back left of this photo). Not sure why the blocking was there as it totally prevented anyone from putting insulation in this area.

This photo shows the empty joist cavity was filled with insulation (Roxul). That's the equivalent of R-28 in this cavity now.

This photo shows the joist cavities were filled with Roxul (R-14 per layer, so it is R-28 for the two layers). Then a 1" thick piece of rigid styrofoam was added, on top of a bead of acoustic sealant - that's the black squiggly line on the rim joist at the left.

After the 1" piece was put in, another 1/2" thick piece was added. These two layers fitted above the top row of bricks. This photo shows the two layers of rigid styrofoam.

Looking down the side of the house. You can see it was so nice that we were wearing just t-shirts. Of course, it was a bit chilly if you were in the shade.

We added another 1/2" thick piece of rigid styrofoam under this, for a total of R-10 for the foam, so the total insulation added is R-38.

I had to rip the plywood narrower because (a) the edge got a bit chewed up when it was removed, and (b) the plywood could no longer fit on top of the brick because that space is now filled with styroam. This photo was taken after the plywood was installed - with screws, because it would compress the layers of foam together, helping eliminate any paths for air to take.

Oh, I had exactly enough Roxul to finish this! I only had a little piece about 4" x 5" left. Zowie!

Lower level pantry and closets complete

The drywall is now complete on the closets and the pantry for the lower level.

This photo shows that the complete far end of the room. Starting from the left is the book shelf nook, then the coat closet, then the stairs to the basement storage room and laundry, then the pantry, then the broom closet (around the corner from the pantry), and then the stairs to the upstairs. The pantry and broom closet have had three coats of mud and are now complete (except for a final sanding). The stairs to the basement, coat closet and book shelf nook still need to have the first coat of mud (except the stairwell) and the corner bead. I am using regular drywall mud for the first two coats because we are using the drywall sanding sponge which doesn't make a lot of dust. The third coat needs to be sanded, so for that I am using the low-dust drywall compound (the tubs with the purple lids in the center of the photo). I think the low-dust compound does the reduce the dust a bit, but it certainly does NOT eliminate it.

This is the view looking from the stairs towards the windows on the lower level. The floor at the center foreground is exposed for the first time in months -- it has been the location of a pile of drywall since sometime in December. Now all that is left there are scraps. The doors are not yet installed, you can see them leaning against the far wall.

Drywall update

Still working on the closets in the lower level, but shifted over to framing the bookshelves and the new coat closet, on the other side of the steps to the stoaragae area and the laundry room. After we did the framing, I started again on the mudding while Louis continued with cutting the drywall for the closet.

This is the corner at the stairs down from the kitchen. This corner was somewhat beaten up when the oil tank was removed, and I had to fill the end of the wall with quite a bit of mud. It's pretty good now, almost perfect.

This photo shows tne pantry and a little bit of the closet for the vacuum cleaner and dog food.

This annotated photo shows the layout of the rest of the other side of the lower level. I am putting some book shelves under the coat closet (by the front door), and then another coat closet beside the stairs. That coat closet is for storing winter coats in summer and summer coats in the winter.

Finishing the pantry and broom closet

After finishing the storage room, and moving stuff down there, I now had room to start finishing the lower level. First on the agenda was to frame and drywall the pantry and the broom closet - that is where we will put the vacuum cleaner and the big bags of dog food.

This photo shows the pantry after it was framed and drywalled. It is a bit of an odd shape because we had to work around all the house infrastructure - plumbing, heating ducts, stairs, etc. You can't see the broom closet in this photo - it is to the right, between the pantry and the stairs.

This is another view of the pantry. We are trying to make the most possible use of the space.

This is after the drywall taping and the first coat of mud.

There are a LOT of corners to tape and mud in this pantry!

Moving boxes

I finished the workshop/storage area, except for the part of the drywall immediately adjacent to the stairs, by installing the vinyl baseboard and putting the switch plates on (can be seen in this photo). Then I set up most of the shelving units. I made a couple of blocks to put under the legs of the vertical supports for the shelves that were on top of the old oil tank pedestal. This makes that pedestal disappear since you can't really see it (unless you look under the shelves).

The next task was to move boxes from the lower level onto the shelves and in this storage area. This is what it looks like when I was about half done.

I had to put a lot of stuff into the laundry room when I was preparing and painting the workshop/storage area. This photo shows that most of that stuff had been taken out and the laundry room is now usable once again.

The pantry and closet in the lower level were framed in, but I forgot to take photos of that so will save that for tomorrow. :)

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.