My Ongoing Remodel Thread or possibly "My Descent into a Hellish Nightmare"

Looking good. How is the blue bucket of joint compound working for you. I've been using the green bucket. Just curious if it is any easier to work with.

 

Update Time!



The tile has taken forever to get done but tonight I should have a "job completed” photo showing off our newly tiled master bathroom. Now that the tile is done my next step is painting the bathroom and installing the toilet and light fixtures, then the crown molding and baseboard can be installed, and finally the vanities and mirrors can go in and it will be done!
As far as the rest of the house goes, I have gone through and replaced every single light switch and outlet along with their wall plates. I have been waiting to do that forever; my wife didn’t think it needed to be done till the end but I hit a slow spot in the remodel and I jumped on the opportunity to start working on my outlets. I used standard wall outlets everywhere except highly used locations—in those places I went with the high quality outlets in the hope they will stay useable for a long time and not get loose. In the main hallway I went with a nicer wall plate just to set it off a bit—nothing fancy but nicer than just the standard 29 cent plate. I was also able to clean and reuse the dimmer switches for the lights in the bedrooms saving about $25 a pop, but I had to replace the dimmers for the fans in the master bedroom, living room, and dining room because they were original 1978 pieces that looked terrible (the other dimmers in the bedrooms had been replaced in the last 10 years so they had an adequately modern look to them). The house looks so much better and complete just by replacing all those switches and outlets which had been painted over with cheap paint by the previous owners and looked horrible…I mean really bad. Now they are new, clean, and shiny white.
Our next step is redoing the fireplace. I have decided to do it myself—I am confident in my drywalling skillz and I have a buddy who is handy with tile that will help me with the stacked stone portion of the fireplace. I will start on that this weekend and maybe it will be done in a couple weeks. Then we will have the floors finished and shoe mold installed and then….THE KITCHEN.
It will be an IKEA kitchen.
I did not make this decision lightly—I have scoured the web looking at reviews and they have been overwhelmingly positive and frankly it’s all we can afford. My wife and I also drove to the IKEA in Atlanta and spent 5 hours in the kitchen section pouring over the cabinets deciding what type we want (The are the ramsjo white fronts, solid birch.). I have built my kitchen out on paper and I was able to build one side perfectly with no filler panels and the other side is only off by 2 inches on a 13 foot long wall--2 one inch filler panels are unnoticeable. I am building an island also and it is going to look sweet. By going with IKEA cabinets we are able to go with granite countertops for a luxurious touch, and we will also have new stainless steel appliances thanks to the money we saved. That will probably be happening middle of February.
Long post, but a lot is happening. My wife and I are ready to be done and move in.

 

Here's the promised photos of our master bath; Also, I knocked out the stacked stone portion of our fireplace in 2 days---I'm BEAT.








Here's the in progress photos of the fireplace followed by the finished product.











Floors are being sanded and finished this week, carpet next week.

 

...26yrs old, ..your first house, that's one hell of a nice and spatious house! you guys must be pretty excited!

is that marble tile on the floor? if so, be sure to seal that up real good. good for going w/ diamond pattern, looks great - that's how i'd of done it

what happened w/ that wall w/ the pine paneling? i thought it looked great as-is... did you paint it?

 

Yep it's marble, we got sealant for it yesterday an I assume my wife will be sealing everything in the bathroom next week, we can't do it now because the floors are being sanded stained and sealed so we are evicted for a few days.

We whitewashed the wood panel wall, you can still see the grain and knots of the wood but it lightened the color and took away some of the "gloss" of the wood.

On the fireplace the edges of the surround will all be covered with wood from the mantle we are having built, do not fret about the uneven edges, they will be hidden.

 

cool! looks like you decided not to remove the tile on the fireplace surround? ...not worth the effort?

 

No we are not going to remove it, basically all the tile area will be drywalled over except for right around the fireplace, that will be a wooden mantle with legs. Here is a terrible drawing of what it will look like:


Who needs photoshop when paint works just as good?

 

the ms paint overlay gets the point across it'll look good! BTW, i wouldn't skimp on the mantle, i mean if you're covering over the tiled mantle then perhaps it will be even more spatious...

 

Floors are DONE! I will be taking photos tonight but they look incredible. We did not stain them, just 3 coats of polyeurethane to keep with the light and airy feel of the house. Even without the stain they darkened up quite a bit; and there is a huge difference in the individual boards and what color they became once they were sealed. I could see someone hating it if they wanted very uniform floors but I LOVE it.

Next on the to do list is drywalling the rest of the fireplace, painting the master bathroom and bedroom and installing carpet in the bedrooms. The first two will be done by Sunday evening by myself and the carpet install should be on Tuesday or Wednesday, my wife is ordering the carpet today.

We are moving in next weekend.

 

Looks excellent man! Nice work!

My next house is going to be a complete gut and remodel house for sure

...or maybe another new construction. Having a blank canvas is nice.

I love the fireplace. I want to do something similar with mine. I have your standard builder grade wood burning insert with standard black slate pieces. I want to replace it with stacked stone and caps like you did with a nice wood beam mantel.

 

That's a lot of good work and nice ass results. Don't recall, did you say you were building up the grade behind the house to deflect runoff? That would be a big priority in my mind to protect all of what you've done so far. Good stuff...knock it out, move on in, take a break and gear up for whatever outside stuff for spring that needs doing. Enjoy! It really will be worth it in the end doing it all out instead of just patching to get by.

 

Yeah I am going to do that in the next 6-8 weeks, My work in the crawlspace fixed the moisture enough to do all the work, the grading is just to seal the deal and keep all water out of the crawlspace.

 

looks great man...always enjoy seeing these threads, makes me look forward to homeownership more and more...yes its a lot of work, but it pays off in the end (especially if you do most of it yourself)

 

Finished floor pictures! We went with a satin finish, high gloss just isn't our style.



I also started drywalling the fireplace, it took me alot longer than i thought to drill into the tile to attach the wood backer, but once I figured it out it went pretty quick. I got three pieces up out of seven, I will get the rest up tommorrow and get one coat of mud on it.

 

Wow you do good quality work! Pride in a job well done is very uncommon nowadays. Keep it up- I am an electrician here in California, and will offer my help in that field if you have any questions!

 

dude your house is looking AMAZING!

 

I will probably take you up on that later, I am putting in about 20 recessed lights throughout the house and while I've wired lights before there may be a trick to making it easier when you wire a bunch in a row.

 

I just "daisy chained" mine together in my kitchen and took the existing wire coming from the switch to start the series. Since you're in a ranch and have attic access above, they will be cake. I have replaced almost all the builder grade lights in my house with recessed cans. They look so much better and add much more light. Just tack the wires to the ceiling joists as you go so they can't potentially come loose and get pulled out. I also used lawn flags and stuck them in the center of where I wanted the lights to be, then when you climb in the attic you can see the flags poking through the insulation, then just move it out of the way so you don't make a mess. Go down and cut your holes, then go back in the attic and mount and wire them, then come back down and install the bulbs and the trim.


Floors turned out great!

I can't wait to put in my floors.

I will be ripping out almost all the carpet in my house in a few weeks and putting down 1300 sq ft of laminate "hardwood". I'm going with a nice 12mm(~1/2") "brazilian cherry" single strip laminate, not the cheap shit. Since I have 3 dogs running around the house real hardwoods would get destroyed. The hardwood in my foyer looks awful and it's only 4 years old.

So why didn't you remove the tile from the fireplace?

 

The flag idea is brilliant. I will definitely be doing that.

We didn't pull the tile because only a small area of the mortar was finished on the fireplace, they floated it with more mortar and attached cement board to i and then tiled over that. If we had removed the tile we would have had to remove everything down to the brick of the fireplace and then chisel out the mortar between the bricks in order for the drywall to be flat. Or we could just drill into the tile and go on top. Saved probably a full day of work.

I will say we used 4 inch masonry screws, so we are actually into the brick, we are not just hanging drywall off of the tile itself, it's anchored really well.

 

Ohhhh gotcha. I guess I missed the part where the tile was put over the brick. Makes sense.

As for the flags, just bend the bottom 1" of it to make an "L" then roll the flag around the stick, stick it through the hole, then tape it to the ceiling.