Archive for the ‘Home Projects’ Category

Finishing Up That Remodel… And Thinning The Herd…

April 29, 2010 by John No Comments »

As we continue to remodel our house in a sort of room-by-room fashion, we’ve been going through an interesting process of reduction. In order to make space for the demolition and reconstruction, we clear the room of everything. Then we strip away the floor, walls, ceiling, and sometimes the walls! Then we begin to rebuild. Once the room is finished we begin to put items back into it, and we usually wind up getting rid  of about half of what was formerly inside that room. Every time we do this I’m amazed at how much stuff we don’t put back… these items get donated to charity, given away, or jettisoned to recycling / trash. The result is a much cleaner and more streamlined room.

The room currently undergoing remodeling is my tiny music room. We’re in the home stretch, with just finish work remaining. It’s going to be nice to have that space completed and ready for use. The big question for me is… will I get rid of some “excess stuff” (tough to use that word when talking about musical gear!) as part of the process? The answer is yes. I’m going to make a list of all that extra equipment and put it up on Craigs List / eBay. Let the winnowing process begin…

 

Remodeling The Music Room

April 6, 2010 by John No Comments »

For the past few weekends we’ve been gutting and rebuilding the music room at home. This has been the most complete remodel we’ve done in any room in the house so far, and it’s been an interesting process. One annoying aspect of the music room was that the ceiling was so low; I could touch it standing flat footed… that’s a low ceiling! We removed the drywall from the walls and ceiling, which allowed us to completely reroute the plumbing and wiring, thus gaining over 2″ of headroom. Last weekend we finished installing the insulation, new lights, new window, ceiling drywall and about 1/2 of the walls. This weekend I’ll be able to get the last of the drywall hung and hopefully complete the custom-install of the built-in bookcase and desk. Then the taping and mudding, paint, floor, moulding, built-in cabinets, new door…

For such a small room, this has certainly been a big time consuming project. It’s a little difficult to build any momentum when we only get stuff done over the weekends, but we’re chipping away steadily at this one and should be finished by the end of April.

 

Remodeling Another Room

March 9, 2010 by John No Comments »

Last weekend I ramped up a remodel project in one room at home. Recently a friend helped me rip up the carpet, pad and tack strips. The real messy (and fun) stuff happened on Sunday when I tore out the drywall, insulation and some of the built-in storage areas. That afternoon I took one huge trip to the dump… over 1/2 ton of debris. The room is currently bare studs… a veritable blank slate waiting to be rebuilt. It also means I’m eagerly planning my new space and looking ahead to getting this space re-insulated, re-wired and put the walls back together. As satisfying as these remodeling projects can be, I sure like it when they’re done. With some luck I’ll be finished in two more weekends.

 

The Furnace Project

September 28, 2009 by john No Comments »

This week we’ll be replacing our furnace at home. The current unit is approaching 30 years old and has been giving us trouble each winter, resulting in an annual visit from the repairman. This year we decided it was time to replace the unit with a new 2 stage model, and correct some of the existing limitations with the duct routing and air handling. I spent most of yesterday in the attic installing plywood runways along the long axis of the house, and moved the insulation out of the way to make it easier for the installers to walk around up there. I also moved the smoke detector in the hallway to make space for the air return that will be mounted in the ceiling.

The actual installation project is scheduled to begin Wenesday morning and should be complete by mid-day Friday. I’m looking forward to having this project complete despite the price tag and messy inconvenience of having to do it.

 

House Infrastructure Update

August 19, 2009 by john No Comments »

In the past few years I’ve installed a fair amount of cable in our house. The current total is something like this:

  • Cat 5E : Over 1100 feet and counting. This is both for the internal data network (gigabit throughout the house) and the voice lines. Early in this project I completely removed all pre-existing phone lines from the house and pulled all new cable. This has greatly improved stability and allowed us to switch to digital voice. There are a few additional data drops to install, but we’re getting pretty close to having the data lines completed. Then again, I keep discovering places in need of a network port…
  • RG59 : Over 400 feet of new cable is now installed in the house. When Comcast digital cable was installed, the tech simply ran cable along the outside of the house, around the back, and through the wall behind our TV. I never liked having it on the outside and eventually removed it, pulling the line up into the attic and running inside the walls for a cleaner install. In the process of doing so I decided to pull additional feeds for the garage and upstairs.
  • Speaker wire: Over 500 feet of CL2/3 rated 12-gauge speaker wire is already in place. I’ll be installing more as we continue to expand the whole-house audio system. We’re enjoying great audio throughout the upstairs, in the garage, and on the deck.

And of course there will be more…

 

Plumb Wild

June 17, 2009 by john No Comments »

Well, it’s official: I’m going to re-pipe the house this weekend. My intention is to begin the project Friday and hopefully will have it done by the end of the weekend. I’ll have a relative help with the project, and I think between us we’ll be able to get it done successfully. We’re planning to use a flexible pipe called “Pex” which is becoming the solution of choice for retrofitting existing pipes. We’ll still need to do some surgery to put the supply lines into the walls, but at this point I am something of a drywall wiz. We’re going to spend the next couple of days planning our project and collecting supplies. I predict this is going to be an interesting and fun project!

 

A Project Loometh

June 16, 2009 by john No Comments »

pipesEver since we purchased our house in 2001 we’ve known we would eventually need to repipe. Our plumbing is old galvanized pipe, which is prone to corrosion and clogging. Our water pressure has been generally acceptable but in the past few weeks we’ve noticed some problems, particularly with hot water pressure in the shower. We had a quick inspection of our pipes and were given the wonderful news that it is now time to undertake that joyous project. We’ll need some professional guidance with this one. I’m already thinking this is a project that will require me to take a day off work in order to help with, and even then it’s likely to consume an unfortunate amount of time and money. I think we’ve decided to use a flexible plastic water pipe rather than copper; it will make the process of pulling the supply lines much easier, and will allow us to avoid the need for elbows / joints in the lines. It’s going to be a few days of messy work, but a good result.

 

Dueling Sawzalls

March 30, 2009 by john No Comments »

Wrecking BallYesterday the demolition tornado was in full effect at our house. We took down the entire wall dividing our living room from the office, including the removal of three built-in bookcases and a closet. Now the fireplace stands alone and naked. We’ll be rebuilding the wall this weekend with new bookcases. This is a big messy project, and a fun one.

 

The Great Remodel-A-Thon

February 9, 2009 by john No Comments »

This month we’ll be installing cabinets in the dining room and new interior doors for all rooms / closets in the upstairs portion of the house. It’s great to see this project coming together. We’ve been planning to do install cabinets in this area for some time and the additional storage space will be a big help. I’m going to be pulling new audio, power and network lines to this part of the house, so it seems like a perfect time to make holes in the walls.

At some point I hope we’ll take a few moments to actually enjoy our house…

 

A Classic Door Knocker Suddenly Seems Much Better…

February 2, 2009 by john 1 Comment »

Over the weekend we continued work on our latest house project. One of the subprojects was the doorbell chime which we decided to replace since the existing unit was (1) ugly (2) plastic and (3) mounted in a place were it was an eyesore. As long as we were replacing the chime I decided to simply reroute the wiring a better location. I looked into the stud space where the old unit was mounted and discovered a few pairs of low-voltage wiring that I assumed where related to the alarm system. Tracing the doorbell wires it was clear that I would not be able to access the wiring via the attic. It happens to be quite far toward to edge of the roofline which means there is zero clearance in the attic at that point. I spent a few hours scuttling around up there trying to find a way to do it. Eventually I had to simply cut a new access hole in the wall and pull the wires over, then drill up into the attic and feed the wires far enough that I could reach them. Back in the attic I finally got enough of the blown-in insulation (curse whoever invented that stuff) out of the way to confirm that those low-voltage wires were not actually connected to anything at all. I spent probably six hours just pulling the wires and patching holes related to the doorbell, and it’s not even hooked up yet! I still need to run the feed to the new transformer. Sheesh. When people push the doorbell and get a satisfying ding-dong, I hope they appreciate the amount of effort involved in wiring the accursed thing.