Kitchen and Bathroom, Week 2

Week one of the project was mostly demo and rewiring, as I think I talked about last post. Week two has definitely been more interesting and hands-on. Here's an update with lots of pictures!

Last weekend, M, J, and K (who are all the BEST) helped with some prep work. We fixed up the framing where the old medicine cabinet was, built two temporary walls (one simple enough, one a total pain) to support the kitchen and dining room ceiling joists while we installed the new header, and did some cleaning and organizing in the garage and shed. I didn't take any pictures, unfortunately, but this was hugely helpful for getting our week off to a good start!

Monday we basically went to the hardware store repeatedly, but lots of different ones. Devon picked up the DensShield for the shower backer from a specialty building supply place (more on this material below) then together we went to the lumber yard for new headers, posts, and other assorted lumber. This is after we had the LVLs cut to a reasonable length - luckily it's not a long trip home:

After we picked my dad up from the airport, we showed him the project then went to a normal hardware store for lots more general stuff and our first load of drywall. 

Tuesday was a day of huge transformation for the kitchen. Here are a couple of before and afters:

Right after demo

After!

Right after demo, from inside the kitchen

After! 

The wall between the kitchen and the living room is a bearing wall, but only kind of. The ceiling joists switch direction at that point, so bearing on that wall are just the joists from the kitchen/dining side. It doesn't have an roof load or any load from the living room side. I tried my best to remember college structures class to figure out what we needed for the new header. What we installed (2 1-3/4" x 9-1/2" LVLs) is WAY overkill for current loads. We've talked about eventually adding a second floor, though, and we wanted to go ahead and design for actual live loads above. Anyway, we used LVLs (laminated veneer lumber, a type of engineered lumber) because I found them to actually be way easier to size than standard lumber. They're very predictable and the load tables are very readily available and reliable. Here's the sheet from our permit set where I showed the tributary area and load calculations:

The little elevation on the right shows what the whole deal will look like from the living room. 

The wall between the kitchen and dining room wasn't supposed to be a bearing wall (it runs the same direction as the joists), but we noticed a couple of struts from the roof bearing on it. We decided that we'd put in a header just to be safe. For that wall I did some really rough calcs and found that a single 2x6 would probably do the trick. So, naturally, we put in a double 2x8 header. More is more, right? For both headers, we used Simpson brackets wherever possible to help strengthen the connections and deal with lateral loads. Here's an ACE4 in place at the big header:

Jumping ahead a little, here'd the intersection of the two new headers. The strips under the LVLs are to deal with the electrical boxes for bar lighting. The 2x4s are just to bring the smaller header down to the height of the bigger one:

Anyway, do you believe that Dad and Devon did all of that framing in less than a day?! It was really fun to see such a huge impact from a day of work. M, J, and K will be pleased to know that the temp wall did the trick and the house did not fall down. 

Where was I? Wednesday? I don't remember what happened Wednesday, or with any specificity what happened on Thursday or Friday, for that matter! Devon smushed his phone screen in one of his many trips under the house, so we're a little lacking in documentation. Here are some pictures of some things that happened sometime! 

Dad and Devon working away - you can see half of the temp wall here.

I patched up some building paper and insulated the exterior wall in the bathroom.

Here's that fancy new utility sink and absurd faucet!

New tub! Connecting to the old drain pipe (not touched in the repipe) was
apparently not a good time. 

Left is where Devon had to take a sawzall to the old drain piping.

New drain piping from the tub

Oh, and in some unpleasant but not very visible work, Devon finished up installing some new foundation supports. Since we switched from a bearing wall that was in turn bearing on lots of floor joists to a header that's bearing on two points, we needed to support those points. We used prefab concrete footings and super heavy duty adjustable steel post jacks. 

That kind of brings us to today, which I do remember! Dad and Devon had the bathroom floor tile set and a lot of the tile backer and drywall in. They finished up the walls, I taped the tile backer joints and waterproofed the window, and we grouted the floor. 

A few shots of the floor tile:

Set in thinset - Dad and Devon did all of the measuring and fitting on Friday

Devon picking excess thinset from between the tiles. So detail oriented!

Grouted!

Here's the shower at the end of the day - DenShield installed, joints taped (fiberglass mesh tape and thinset, per the manufacturer's instructions), and window surround blocked out and waterproofed with RedGuard. By the way, we are no shower experts, but here's why we picked DenShield: For one, it's allowed by the residential building code in California (greenboard is not), it's easy to use (scores and snaps like drywall), and it doesn't require either a vapor barrier behind it or a full waterproofing layer over it. The only requirement is that you seal the seams. I'm  nervous about leaks at the window, so that waterproofing to seal up all of the joints and transitions at the window is extra. 

We did some kitchen work, too. I insulated the exterior wall with recycled denim insulation: (dusty, but not itchy and fiberglassy!)

Dad and Devon worked on some of the more finicky bits of drywall, like around the light boxes on the header: (they're having to put two layers of drywall in several places. We're not convinced the electrician used the best boxes for the job here, but it's too late now!)

Tomorrow the agenda is to mud and tape the bathroom drywall, put another coat of waterproofing around the window, then start setting tub surround tile. 

We're all tired, but it's great to see the progress we're making! 

Catching Up

Insert some stuff here about how I'm the worst at maintaining a blog. Moving on!

Our biggest house project yet is underway. We're completely remodeling the kitchen and bathroom, plus rewiring and repiping the whole house. Oh yeah, and it has to be done by the time our first baby arrives in mid-June. Nothing like a deadline!

We've been planning and drawing and hiring subs and spending all of our money for months now, but I'll give you the quick update.

First, the big stuff. Here's the intersection of the kitchen, dining room, and living room:

We decided we wanted to disappear both walls and just have an L-shaped bar where the baker's rack and hutch are above. Since the fridge is on that wall now, we're switching the current fridge and range locations. We did some fancy math and calculated what size new header we need for the wall. It's a bearing wall, but it's not carrying all that much load. We decided to use some big old LVLs. 

Okay, now more cosmetic stuff. Our kitchen looked like this:

Tile countertops are the worst. Very old plywood cabinets are also the worse. The floor was seriously, hyperbole aside, the actual worst. We wanted more cabinet space and more counter space, plus more usable versions of both. 

The plan is for basically new everything. After much anguish, we decided to go with a local cabinet maker (one of Devon's hockey teammates). I'm glad we did, because he had some great ideas and from what I've seen so far, the cabinets look awesome. They'll be white shaker style. We picked out an Ikea farmhouse sink, because it's cheap and because it goes all the way to the back splash thus simplifying the concrete countertops we're going to pour. The flooring will be cork and should be nice and warm and cozy to stand on. We also picked out crown molding, exactly how the drawers and doors work, a garbage disposal, a dishwasher, a range, a light, and about a thousand other things. Such decision fatigue! 

Okay, next the bathroom plan. Loyal readers may recall that we removed this horrific item a few years back:

We were still happy with the new vanity, medicine cabinet, light, and toilet we installed. Scope creep is REAL though, and when we started thinking about how to fix the tile issues in the shower that resulted from the window replacement, we ended up deciding that actually the floor tile was pretty bad too and to scrap the whole thing. We'll reinstall the toilet and the light, but we're mostly losing the vanity and medicine cabinet. Per code, we need 30" clear centered on the toilet. The vanity we put in was really really close to the toilet, so we can't put it back. We got a new cabinet and a new smaller vessel sink, then we'll cut down the wood counter top to reuse. The medicine cabinet we had was massive, and because of a vent stack in the wall, we can't reinstall it centered on the new vanity. It's way too deep to surface mount, so we'll get a new one. 

As a reminder, here are a couple of photos from the end of bathroom renovation the first:

Okay, enough about the plans - let's see some action. 

Here's the kitchen after we finished packing and removing the stuff we wanted to keep:

The big pile of wood is from the door between the living room and the dining room. We disassembled it so that we could move the fridge to the dining room for the time being. 

And here's that living/dining/kitchen corner:

Aaand the bathroom:

Millions of thanks to K and J who helped us move heavy things to prep for the demo! 

Shit got real last Monday, when some demo guys came in and ruined everything in less than a day:

We spent that evening wondering just what in the hell we were thinking. I cried. It was rough. 

For the most part, what we uncovered was what we expected to find without any horrible disasters. No rot, no mold, no termite damage. Yay! Though we did find this crime against carpentry:

If you aren't sure what a door header is supposed to look like, I'll wait while you google it. This is not it. 

After the demo deed was done, the electrician came and started the whole-house rewire. I'll have to grab some photos of the new panel and such when I go to the house next. He was there the rest of last week and we just stopped by to answer questions and feed the poor long suffering rabbits. Yesterday the plumber came, and true to the company name, did a one-day repipe. They were there late, but it all seems to be done! Now all of the old and problematic galvanized supply piping has been replaced with lovely shiny copper. We also have a super cool new utility sink. I'll take a picture next time I'm there! 

Yesterday my dad arrived and reconstruction started. I'm currently so tired I can barely function, so I'll catch up on the rest of the saga another day. I know you're excited.