SPRAY FOAM:
HVAC (HEATING, VENTILATION AND AIR CONDITIONING):
FRAMING AND DRYWALL:
Welcome to "Our Nest Egg" the blog featuring the transformation of our 1960's all original to our dream home. |
Falcon Blvd. was a very busy place to be last week! We had Jerry's Insulating in on Monday, Responsible Heating and Air Conditioning in on Tuesday, and the framing & drywall crew in the rest of the week. I must say, the transformation that has occurred in our home over the past week is truly remarkable. SPRAY FOAM: The best option for insulating the the roof on the main floor was closed cell spray foam. Besides beefing up the rafters to allow for R31 insulation we also had to cover up all the old attic vents. Unlike batting or blown in insulation which needs to breathe, in order for spray foam to work it is essential the space is air tight. I measured and then cut some plywood to the fit the old vent openings and secured them with a few screws. We will deal with the exterior portion of the roof vents when we re-shingle the roof in a couple of years. It took a full day to complete the spray foam, as to achieve the R31 value it takes several passes with the sprayer. The room actually looked pretty cool with a purple ceiling. We decided at the last minute to also spray the outside wall in the kitchen and have it re-drywalled. This will ensure the kitchen is nice and warm in the winter and that the area around the pipes is well insulated. HVAC (HEATING, VENTILATION AND AIR CONDITIONING): With the new open concept layout it was best to have all the existing vents on the main floor eliminated and all new vents run. We are able to cleverly hide the air return vents near the island and the rest of the air supplies are now positioned around the perimeter of the room. I sourced & purchased flush mount registers in Red Oak from Lumber Liquidators that I can stain to match our Red Oak hardwood. I am hoping they will camouflage fairly well in the hardwood. FRAMING AND DRYWALL: On Wednesday the framing and drywall crew started. The first thing they tackled was laying all new sub flooring on the main floor. Then they framed in the area to extend the kitchen wall and removed the old back hall door frame. They also framed in the new front hall closet And completed the framing for the new walls that were previously above ceiling height. Once the drywall started going up the space really transformed. Of course I've had a picture in my head the whole time about how the finished product will look, but seeing our vision come to life is surreal. Well we have reach the moment everyone warned me about, we are now officially BEHIND schedule. The framing and drywall is taking much, much longer than quoted. Somehow 4 days has turned in to 10+. At first I was hugely disappointed, but now that I've had the weekend to process, I've come to terms with it. What's one more week of eating reheated food in the make shift kitchen I've created in the garage and washing dishes in the laundry room sink?
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Since my post two weeks ago (Vaulted Ceilings Part 1) a considerable amount of work has been done to satisfy the structural component of this project and we have enclosed the collar ties with cladding. Last I left off we had all 6 collar ties installed, but had only sistered the rafters which held the collar ties. Last weekend we sistered the remaining 42 rafters. We glued the new rafter boards with PL Premium to seal them to the existing and then sunk a couple 3" screws into each end and the middle sections. We followed this up with a nail gun every 4 inches all the way along. This weekend additional structure was added to the sections holding collar ties. Ty used a torch to cut some angle iron and then welded the pieces together to create a brace. What, doesn't everyone's husband weld in their dining room/kitchen? This was actually a huge obstacle as Ty was counting on using his big welding machine that runs off it's own generator, but he (really his brother Ryan who is an awesome technician) couldn't get it running. We ended up buying a new smaller welding machine without a generator, but realized afterwards that it needed a special 40A plug. Ty thought we were going to have to buy a separate generator to run it ($$$), but after listening to so much electrical talk over the past couple of weeks I knew our stove receptacle was 40A, but of course it was not the same plug. After a quick call to our friend Mike, he swept in to save the day (yet again!!!). He met me at Home Depot to show me the right receptacle and then came right over to swap out the stove plug for the new plug and then came back Sunday evening to swap it back. This is what the brace system Ty fabricated looked like pre and post install. Finally the structural component was complete! I mentioned in my last post that the plan was to enclose the collar ties with nice wood and stain them to match the new caramel oak flooring we purchased. The vision was for them to look something like this, only thicker. (Picture from Pinterest) Late last week I started to get nervous that the dark boards would look to "cabiney/farmhousey", make the room look top heavy, or confuse the eye. With so much already going on in the space (kitchen with two colour cabinets, big granite patterns, dark hardwood, dining room and living room furniture, etc.) I was worried there would be just entirely too much going on. So we decided to clad them in wood, paint them white to match the ceiling and trim them in a very simple style moulding. I haven't seen it done before or found any pictures, but I can picture it in my head. It will be vaulted ceiling meets coffered ceiling. (This is a coffered ceiling for those who aren't familiar.) As it turns out we massively underestimated the length of time the projects we scheduled for this weekend. Ty was up until midnight welding on Saturday night and then him & I were up until 3 am installing the cladding last night. This needed to get done before the spray foamers arrived this morning at 8am. Not having this complete would have delayed the entire project at least 2-3 weeks as we would have had to reschedule the spray foamers, held up the framers, drywallers, flooring installer, kitchen installers... While I'm yawning at my desk today & on my third cup of coffee, I am so thrilled we were able to get this done last night. The end result is absolutely beautiful and I know the final product is going to look spectacular.
Back in June, Dulux had their annual Buy One, Get One sale on one gallon cans of paint. That included primer, ceiling paint and their super durable LifeMaster paint. I hadn't 100% decided on paint colours at that point and we were still over 2 months away from putting paint on any walls so I opted for taking the paint untinted and plan to bring the cans in as I needed them tinted and shaken. The store is on my way home from work so it doesn't cause any inconvenience. This is what $1,535 (pre discount) of paint looks like in the bed of an F150: Although it will still be a few weeks before we are ready for colour, I have finalized my paint choices for the main floor and part of the upstairs. Main Floor- CC-634: Herbes de Provence
Front Entry and Upstairs Hallway- HC-82: Bennington Gray Spare Room- HC-80: Bleeker Beige Master Bedroom- HC-172: Revere Pewter Gym Level- CC-490: Smoky Taupe For my post The Main Floor- The Plan (Part 2) I made up a couple quick renderings (not to scale) showing the current layout of the main floor. In case you missed it, here they are again. Before we get started, let's take another look at the "before" shots: The Friday night after moving day our wonderful friends Danielle & Mike came over to help with the kitchen demo. It was hard work but everyone had fun smashing stuff. It didn't take long at all to get everything down and cleared out of the kitchen. A few days later I went to town removing all the plaster from the walls that are coming down. Tyler and Ryan were busy working on the ceiling re-structure so I tackled this pretty much on my own. I have to admit, I do impress myself sometimes. By the following weekend the ceiling re-structure was complete so we could remove the framing. For more information on the ceiling re-structure, check out my post Vaulted Ceilings (Part 1) Well, the main floor is now officially open concept! A HUGE THANK YOU to our friends and family (Mike, Danielle, Mark, Ryan, Teddy, Jeff, Jay & Brandon) who have helped us so much thus far. We certainly wouldn't be anywhere close to where we are today without you guys, thanks & love you!!!
I will preface this post by saying two things:
While Ty & I were in full agreement on creating an open concept main floor, we had a serious difference of opinion when it came to the look. He thought it would look fine to take the walls down and leave bulkheads for structural support and to salvage the cove ceiling molding. Ty's idea of leaving bulkheads: This was NOT what I was thinking of when I thought open concept, one space, seamless transition... I thought we should make any structural requirements recessed in order to make the ceiling flush. Since Ty was the one with the structural background and the muscle behind the job it looked like I was in the losing position on this one, until our home inspection (who overheard our opposing views) came up with the greatest idea, vaulted ceilings! Apparently something about "full construction attic" and "knee walls" made this a great option for us. Instantly I was sold on the idea, but this was so far out of my comfort zone. Every time Ty got talking about his plans and what needed to be done I felt sick to my stomach! As it turns out it wasn't quite as daunting of a task as I originally thought. In two days we had all the ceiling plaster and insulation torn down in the living room, dinning room, kitchen and front hall. It was a very messy job, but we got better at it as we went along. It's a good thing I'm not a neat freak! Here are the guys enjoying a much deserved cold one! While Danielle & I were on clean up crew. Once the ceiling joists were all exposed it was time to get started on the structural re-build. There are 3 main objectives with the re-build: 1- support the weight of the roof (including the snow load) once the ceiling is vaulted 2- prevent the walls from spreading once the joists & knee wall are removed 3- create enough depth to have the ceiling spray foamed to a high enough R value The ways to conquer those objectives are: 1- double up the existing rafters, called "sistering" 2- install collar ties every third rafter 3- sister the existing 2x4 rafters with 2x8s to create added depth We started the project by creating a template for the new rafter boards and the collar ties. This took a substantial amount of time to get right, but once that was done we could use the templates throughout the project. My father-in-law & I pre-cut all the boards while the guys worked inside to hang them. For the vaulted ceiling spanning over the living room, dining room, kitchen area we required 6 collar ties in total. We started by cutting out the knee wall in the location of the first collar tie. Then we removed the joist in the same location. Next was sistering the rafters with a 2x8. Then came installing a collar tie on each side of the rafter and finishing with 2 through bolts. This sounds like a quick process but each section took between 2-3 hours to complete. My cousin Ted, brother-in-law Ryan, and husband Ty are work horses and slaved away 12+ hrs/day to get these done by the end of the long weekend. The picture below shows the sistered rafters and doubled collar ties: It's hard to get a decent picture but the image below shows 4 of the 6 collar ties. The remaining 42 rafters still need to get sistered which will be a long, repetitive processed of gluing & screwing, but you can start to picture the end result. Dry wall will be installed to the peak of the ceiling and the 2x10 collar ties will be boxed in with a nice wood, stained to match the floor. Here are a couple more images from my super relaxing long weekend... Just kidding, every muscle in my body is sore today!!! If you've done any home renovations or if you've watched any home renovation shows you will be familiar with the dreaded "A" word... Being that our home was built in the 1960's there was a very real concern that we were going to come across asbestos in some form during our renovation. We had AMC Environmental Group come out Wednesday evening at 6pm (that's right, exactly 2 hrs after we got possession of our house) to test for asbestos in the plaster walls, ceiling, and pipe/HVAC wrap. We paid for the quickest turn around possible since until we got our results, we could not start demolition on any of those areas. We have a serious weekend of demolition planned in order to stay on schedule and asbestos requiring abatement would throw the entire project off course (and off budget!).
Thursday afternoon we got the call. We are all clear, no asbestos! As Ty text me, "I'll take peace of mind for $400, Alex" |