Beginning to feel as if I am getting somewhere with this project. Chris, Ed and I hung (some) of the drywall on Saturday. Was pretty smooth except for a few odd spaces. Tonight DLB and I are going to hang drywall in the bathroom now that I was able to create a nice clean path for 3″ of ducting for the bathroom. I will still need to cut the outside of the aluminum siding this weekend and cut a 4″ hole for the vent cover. Looking forward to that. Here are some images of the progress. I still can not find time to shoot pics of us actually working, but this is at least what we have been up to. I also want to show the final concrete pour and the drainage for the bathroom. Its pretty impressive. I still sit back and amaze myself. This is the first house I ever lived in, so I have no idea where this energy and understanding comes from…

This is just a quick sketch I did of what we are thinking with respect to color and shape of the room as we get closer to completion.  The first image is what is there now. We removed a door that was built in the way of the upstairs landing. I have no idea why the home owner did this, but its the way it is. We were thinking of using clay tile and covering that up with a decorative “Established” date of some sort as tribute to the character of the house. I am looking for places where I can either fire my own tile or have someone make it.

Well I took a week off of work last week to get as much as I can get done. Monday was a wash since it was New Years Eve, Tuesday was NYD so couldn’t do anything then, but Wednesday was mad plumbers crack. I awoke around 7am, went to McDonalds to get some coffee and some crappy morning sandwhich.Why you ask? Well every construction site should have piles of empty McD’s coffee cups lying around. Came home around 9am after a hike over to Lowe’s to pick up some more copper fittings and went to work. I was able to rough in all the inlet pipes for the half bath. I tested it finally on Saturday and no leaks. There are some spots that a pro would know right away that I was not trained a pro, but I would like to think I have more skills than the average “handyman.”

I was able to take all our building materials to the dump and clean out the garage. I ripped out all the scratchy paneling. Scratchy because the previous homeowners had this great idea to take ceiling texture plaster kits and stucco the walls and try to cover up the paneling. When this hardened they realized that if you bumped your elbows, knuckles or knees up against it you would have a horrid open wound that would bleed for days. So that’s all gone now! This revelaed that there was some plaster on those walls and I will take it back to the original look of flat smooth walls.

On Saturday I removed all the excess electrical outlets and switches that were old and knob and tube from the kitchen wall adjacent to the bathroom and clean all that up. I am running new light switches and lights for the hallway tonight. I’ll be sure to take some picks there too.

Well I finally got around to backfilling the hole in the basement. I only had to fill it up just to cover the pipes with stones, then I will add the clay and mud that I tossed under my porch (he he). I will try and pour concrete this weekend, but I am not looking forward to buying 4 bags of 80lbs of dry mix concrete. Here are a few shots of me covering up the nice wye we put underground for the toilet and sink. Things like this take long, so next week you should see more work there.

Last night I spent a few hours wiring up the bathroom area. I had to use 12/2 NM wire because code says to in a bath. I added a GFI outlet, a fart fan (which I have to vent outside soon), a wall sconce, and a ceiling box for a pendant light. Two switches will allow me to operate the lights on one, and another switch will operate the exhaust fan. Once this is complete, I can move to the plumbing.

In order for us to be able to adhere to our kitchen design, we needed to bump up the two windows about 20 inches. This indeed reduces the light in that room a bit, but the view is not that great anyway, so this will act as a better use of space, be more energy efficient and get some nice air in that room. This was the hardest project I have ever done to date. I had to remove two windows and install new smaller ones. I had to build up a frame to support them. I made a slight mistake in that I should have purchased the new construction windows but instead bought the replacement style. I thought I was going to simply re use the lumber and move it up. Not likely as the wood was badly rotted. So we built a new frame on that wall and insulated it. Pictures are below.