Evil Monkey's Home Renovation

You have a beautiful home

 

evil monkey, where do you get the time, energy, and know-how?!!



i've been following your endeavor as well, ...it's amazing what you've been able to accomplish, working w/ the strengths of the house and personalizing it to more modern tastes!

...btw, after all this, imagine one could have nightmares about wallpaper!

 

The knowledge mostly comes from reading other people's renovations on here, DIY Network, youtube videos and books/videos on woodworking. Most of it is learn as I go but I usually research it well, before I tackle anything I don't know. Most of my reno stuff is my first time. My deck is the first one I ever did. The concrete countertops were the first time other than the class. Making the doors and drawers was a first. This house was my first drywall and wallpaper removal experience. About the only thing I did before this house was some tile on the walls, painting, baseboards, stripping cabinet doors and then restaining (from the condo). As for time, I do it when I'm off but usually not after a work day. Plus my wife helps a lot. She's not afraid to get dirty.

 

It looks awesome Robert!

 

God u must b tired!!! Anyways hell of a job on an awesome transformation! Total transformation so far.

 

Got the drywall up on the feature wall. Now we're laying plastic and taping for primer, texture and paint for the whole living room. The wife taped and mudded, and stained the wood panels that go inside the alcoves.



We also picked up our hardwood floors. We got a pretty good deal on engineered tongue-n-groove hardwood ($2.99/sq ft). We went out on President's Day and found it at a small dealer right next to a Lumber Liquidators. The planks are 6" wide and 5 feet long. We bought 1000 sq feet of it. It weighed about 1 ton. It's sitting in a bedroom. We won't get around to installing it for a couple of weeks.

 

Finished primering, texturing and painting the walls. Stained the wood ebony and put a coat of poly over it. I also made small hatches in the base of the alcove so it could be used for some storage. The paint looks blue but it's actually gray.




Added trim to the wall unit.




Wired up the 3" can lighting. I put it on a dimmer switch.

 

Getting Solar Panels installed this weekend. We did a prepaid lease 7KW system from Baker Electric Solar in Escondido. We have 26 270 Watt LG electronics panels and Enphase M250 micro-inverters. It should cover most of our electricity use.

 

Put up the stacked stone yesterday. I was one box short. Fortunately RCP in Escondido had a box in stock so I was able to finish this morning. I have to clean off some of the mortar drip and then mount the fireplace.

 

Is the cost worth it these days for solar? I know I looked into it about 10 years ago and it was so expensive and wasn't really cost effective.

This is a really awesome thread to see this house get upgraded. Thanks for sharing, awesome house!

 

It depends mostly on your electric company. SDG&E is pretty expensive. They work in tiers. Tier 1 is $0.17/kwh and tier 4 is $0.39/kwh. If your electricity is much cheaper, the payoff period will be much longer. For us it was cheaper and our break even will be in about 8 years. The system should cover our electric bill 100% on average.

My monthly electric bill averages $240. A couple of times in the summer, it hit $600. Total price for our 7kw system installed was $18K (buy and prepaid lease). We went with a prepaid lease. If we bought it, it would have been $25K and with a $7K tax credit that we wouldn't see until next year's taxes.

The prepaid lease is where you pay a lump sum up front with no payments for the rest of the 20 year period. It worked out to the same cost as buying including the rebate. So they'll maintain and warranty it for 20 years. If you do the lease or the prepaid, you'll want a company that is going to be around so we went with a local electrical company that's been in business for 75 years (Baker Solar Electric). They offer leases, prepaid leases and purchase. The lease they offer was a 7KW Sunpower system. They wanted $185/month for that lease. The for-purchase system is the same one we did for the prepaid lease. My wife has a friend who does his own installs and he said the price for the system was pretty good.

 

outstanding, ..i like the overhead accent lighting as well, ...that's going to be a nice cozy room when you get the fireplace in there..

 

The solar panels are on. Now we wait for SDG&E to give the okay to turn them on.

 

how durable are these things? debated installing them but worried about the quarter to baseball sized hail we see out here every spring.

 

http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=M6v2lDa8Hos

 

love that tundra test at the end! Nice Place! very inspirational.

 

WOW. Good work Brotha! We just sold and closed on our house last Monday. Plans from out Architect are complete (custom for us from the ground up), now we are off to the Structural Engineer, Find a good builder, Well, Septic, and run electricity to the site. Building on some family acreage on an 11 acre pond. This renovation is great that you did. I'm definitely going to use some of your ideas in our new home. I like the rock accents you did, turned out great man. You have a hell of a view from that deck you made too! Thank for sharing.

 

Pulled out the carpet from the living room, the entry way, the dining room and the hallway. We left the carpet in the closets. If I managed to order enough, we'll replace that as well. Got all the tack strips up and pulled some staples from the floor. Got everything done. Next we'll put down underlayment and the engineered hardwood floors. It'll be a floating floor.

 

Put up the fireplace. Started laying flooring. It's an engineered hardwood. 6" wide and assorted lengths from 2 ft to 5 ft.