Living Room Renovation

Posted on December 31, 2015 by Chase

Another holiday break has rolled around which means it is time for me to get off of work and kick my own butt with some serious house renovations! This year, the living room. The before pictures make it look a little more like a dark dungeon than it really was, but not much more. Dark paint, dark flooring and light bulbs that were a little under powered.

The remainder of the vinyl flooring came up, and the paint came down. Originally in the house a roll on orange peel texture was added. I don’t know if it reached the end of its life, or wasn’t mixed well or what. It was turning to powder, and the paint would peel off in sheets if you looked at it wrong. I peeled it all off and sanded the texture right back down to the drywall.

Lots of hole patching, and a coat of primer later and the walls are starting to look a lot nicer. The previous owner had used a considerable number of drywall anchors for me to fill! I was able to finish a majority of the tile in a day which meant I couldn’t do anything else… Time to go see Star Wars!

With the tile able to be walked on I finished the painting, worked on trim, and eventually did the grout. Grout and baseboards really make the room feel like something.

There always ends up being a day of painting trim, touching up this, reinstalling covers on that and such. Worth all the little efforts.

Finally after a little over a week of solid work we were able to push the big soft couches back into our little space. I missed our comfortable evening hangout spot more than I thought I would.

This room feels a thousand times brighter. The light tile, bright walls and new phillips daylight LED bulbs make it feel like a million bucks. Not bad considering the material cost was only about 700 bucks. Now, by contrast, our kitchen looks even worse. Oh well, next year’s project!

New Gutter

Posted on December 2, 2015 by Chase

My house has a small front porch who’s roof is an extension from the rest of the house. During a good rain storm, which we get a lot of around here, it can produce quite a waterfall when coming into the house. I had a free Sunday, so why not try to fix it?

It turns out gutter materials are pretty cheap. I think this cost me under 50 dollars to do total, but I didn’t save the receipts, so that is a bit of a guess. There are a variety of anchor systems for these gutters. I went with these right angle brackets. They will hold the gutter at an angle, which isn’t ideal, but they are easy to install one a time. These made doing the project solo much easier. All the other attachment methods require the entire gutter be in place as you attach with a single screw into the joist.

I set the right clip as high as it would go while still allowing clearance under the drip flashing, then used a level to give each successive clip a little down bubble. It is hard to say exactly how much drop I gave it as the fascia isn’t level. Either way it has a gentle slope towards the drain. Now to rivet together the drain and gutter section.

Because no good project goes without a disaster, my old rivet gun had an accident. The back end had loosened up and popped off right in the middle of my first rivet. I recovered the internal parts and the spring. After 20 minutes I gave up on the back end nut.

So, another unexpected trip to lowes later and I had it all riveted and glued together. I was able to snake the drain section along the side of the support column instead of the front so it is less noticeable.

As usual it took more time and trips to the hardware store than I anticipated, but overall it was pretty easy and cheap. Should have done it years ago!

Now for the real reason to add gutters it makes for a highly convenient christmas light hanging surface.

Illuminated Wall

Posted on April 10, 2015 by Chase

The LED strip lights strike again! The reason I originally bought strip lighting and used them on my mill lighting project was because I wanted to add lighting to a partial wall in my great room.

I started by running solid core wire down the inside of the wall, and tying into an existing switch. The wire runs up and terminates into a single female receptacle (indicated in red in the picture below). The 12V supply lives up there and will need a small cover at some point. You can just see it peeking out on the left hand side.

With the wiring installed I just plugged in the 12V supply and started running strips down the length of the wall. It went quickly, and aside from a pile of dust was easy. The results are pretty good.

Before

After

The picture was taken around dusk with very similar camera settings. I adjusted exposure a little to help match what you actually see. The after still looks a little bright. It provides a nice mood lighting around the great room. The only issue I have is that the CFLs in the living room are a lot warmer than the light. I will probably slowly change out the other bulbs to match.

I love soft indirect lighting in my living spaces!

AC Creates Tiny Waterfall

Posted on March 6, 2015 by Chase

Sunday evenings are usually a time to finish up chores, cook a nice big dinner, and enjoy the last bit of relaxing time before the work week starts. Not this past Sunday. The phrase “I think something is leaking in the laundry room was uttered”. Something was leaking! There was practically a stream of water coming out of our indoor air handler. Some swearing happened lots of towels were pressed into service and eventually the stream was soaked up. I am not one of those types that sees a disaster and think “I ought to pull out my phone and take a picture”, imagine this with water pouring out.

The big hole on the left had the float alarm in it, that was removed by me. The square hole in-between that and the drain is my issue. It looks to have been manufactured that way. Not sure why. Not sure what plug or cap used to be there, or where it went. A quick trip to lowes and I was back with JB Weld’s WaterWeld. A two part putty epoxy. You cut and mix, and then hopefully it hardens and prevents another waterfall in my newly renovated laundry room.

Sure enough, that stuff is awesome. I dried and cleaned everything out as much as possible, mixed it up and pressed it in. After mixing I had a white residue left over on my fingers for over a day. I might wear gloves next time. An hour later it was hard enough that I had trouble marking it with a fingernail. I reattached the flow switch alarm pipe and poured a bunch of water through the next day. Dry as a bone!

Laundry Room Update

Posted on January 28, 2015 by Chase

After moving everything back into the new laundry room I felt I had neglected a few small things. The original light was a single bare bulb hanging from a fixture. It worked, but didn’t provide any amazing lighting. In comes the LEDs! I picked up a big round LED light with diffuser cover and installed it. Here is a before and after.

Before

After

Afterwards the lighting was a lot brighter. The top edges of the room didn’t get quite as much illumination, but walking in or working on laundry is much improved. I had to upgrade the motion sensor switch to a mechanical relay version. It was totally worth it the new one has a much better sensor than the old one, and you can set the leave-on time delay.

Lastly I think some zazz and sass were required. Peeking on etsy (dangerous sight) I found this…

Ah yes, NOW the laundry room is complete. It is a 40″ wide wall sticker and fits nicely over the washer/dryer. Also it fits nicely with our personality.

Laundry Room Renovation

Posted on December 28, 2014 by Chase

A little time off from work means a little time to spend on another home renovation. Lets hit the laundry room! First, the before. We pulled the doors off and all the contents out. There was no flooring in here when we bought the house.

Looking in from house

Looking in from garage

In removing the door to the garage I found an interesting discovery. There were two funny patched holes in the top of the door case. Removing all the case I found part of two broken off drill bits. In some distant past, the security system installers had a difficult day!

These were hidden in the door casing

Removed trophies from the house

With “demo” done I went to work prepping the floor and tiling. The first day was rough. I got delayed and didn’t do prep on the previous day as I had intended. Thankfully my wonderful wife emptied all the shelves before I got started. More bad luck struck when the bag of mortar ran out sooner than I thought it would. Not a great start, but at least I got most of the tiling done on day 1.

View from house

From inside

Day 2

Ok, day one had some snags, but day two should be more straight forward. I ran to pickup the mortar, and found out they were out of grout. I had half a bag left over from the font room, but not enough to finish. That will involve a long trip to an alternate lowes. Still, I was able to finish up the remaining tile at a reasonable hour.

The rest of the day I broke out all my doors and molding for a big paint off. Doing latex with an hvlp gun is a little touch and go. Every time I mix a new batch of paint, the settings change. I am really a hack at it, but the results are still a lot better and faster than rolling.

Door and baseboard molding

Garage door, and door into rest of the house

At least it would be faster if I hadn’t put too much down, and then had to deal with Florida’s wonderful 80% humidity winter. The metal door took hours to dry and ended up having a lot of runs. I stopped what I could with a brush and tried to even things out. In the end I had to bring it into the garage, hours later, still wet. I had to roller paint the casings after I installed them anyways, so it got a touchup with that job.

End of day 2 was not a complete disaster, but I spent a lot of time monkeying with wet paint and driving beachside to get grout.

Day 3

Go go go it is time to grout! I cleaned up the floor and mixed up a few batches of grout. It is a messy job, and you have to clean the tiles 100 times to get the haze off. Still though, I love grouting. In just a few swipes of the sponge you can making everything look right with the world. All the madness of renovation settles down into calm (mostly) even lines of beautiful grout.

Garage view

House view

While I waited for grout, there were a number of other things around the house that needed attention. Later in the day I braved some walking on the tile to install the two casings. It is kind of astonishing how twisted and out of square a house can be and still look ok to the casual observer. I guess that is why we have shims!

Day 4

The final count down. It is Christmas eve, and I HAVE to finish today. This is the last of my days allotted to home renovation. Let the molding begin!

I did a very basic baseboard molding around all the places you would normally see. No sense in buying another piece to install behind a dryer. There wasn’t anything before, so this adds a nice touch. Both the doors had their molding installed and everything got caulked and touched up. Getting molding to all fit right and have the nail holes filled properly is really tedious but worth the effort. I was done, stick a fork in me!!!

Day 5ish

After a brief foray to see family we had some time to put everything back together. Newly installed adjustable wire shelving offers more storage than before and makes it feel more open. The lighter flooring helps too. I could have painted it a brighter color, but the walls were mostly in good shape, and I kind of like the color it started as.

No renovation will change the fact that it is a small room in a house with not quite enough closet space. Still, I am really happy with the results. The soreness and smashed fingers will pass in days, but the laundry room will last for years.

Foyer/Dining/Front Room Renovation

Posted on September 17, 2014 by Chase

Labor day week was a week of serious labor. I renovated half of the great room in my house. It is composed of the foyer, the front room, and a dining room. The only surviving picture of the previous room shows the green walls. There were small grey boring tiles in the foyer, and poor quality faux wood vinyl flooring in the rest of the areas. The vinyl had been scratched by typical wear and the previous owner’s dogs. About half the walls had some kind of splotchy skip troweling done to them. It didn’t look good.

That is a lot of tile

Old picture of the walls before

Tiling in progress

Whole tile right up to the back door!

Better with grout

Transitions help break up the rooms and make tiling easier

New blinds and finished molding

Painted the dark wood a nice white

I re-mudded the walls with the texture issue and was able to get them flat enough for most people not to notice. Various other holes were patched in the process. Peeling up vinyl flooring is much easier when you rent a machine built for that purpose. The remaining glue was a mostly hands and knees kind of job. It took nearly a whole day to scrape it all clean. Tile and paint went down with out too many issues, just a lot of backbreaking labor. Last but not least I replaced the dog chewed blinds, all the baseboard, and repainted some of the existing dark wood trim to match the rest of the molding.

All in all it felt like an insane amount of work at the time, but in retrospect always seems worth the effort. Now I just need to muster the time and energy to tackle the living room and kitchen. The joys of home ownership!

-Chase

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