January 8, 2017

A new year, an almost new upstairs

Happy New Year!
I was looking back at previous posts, and I did about ten the month I started the blog, three the following month, and only two in December.  At that rate, I should be in the negative this month . . . although I'm not sure how you'd do that.  The holiday's were a busy time for us, for a variety of reasons.  For more on those personal goings on you can check out Vanessa's blog

Things have continued to progress at the house. In my last post, I highlighted the installation of the furnace, and the propane tank.  At that point, I had not yet connected all of the ductwork together.  The pictures below show the ductwork all connected. I had an intrepid reporter stop out (ok it was actually me) to film turning on the furnace for the first time.  You can check out those thrilling moments here and here.




As you can see, I got more than my daily dose of fiber(glass) while up in the attic. . . (sorry, couldn't resist the pun)


Andrew Hurst Construction was also busy finishing siding the garage (it was too cold for me to take pictures of that), as well as rebuilding a wall that had been damaged with water.  There had been a window on the basement stairs, and we removed that, and installed a new one in the kitchen.  We love all of the additional light.  Before and after pictures are below.



Before

After

Upstairs, we opted to preserve the plaster, because of the ornate trim.  Keller Plastering did a phenomenal job finishing all of the walls. This is one of the last remaining dirty jobs before we enter the finishing phase of the upstairs.

 Stairwell

 Hallway

 CJ's room

 The School Room

The Girls Room

One of the remaining dirty jobs upstairs is getting the bathroom finished.  There is a significant amount of plumbing, electrical, and hanging plasterboard that has to happen before Keller's can finish plastering that room.  Once they are done with that, the only remaining dirty jobs are tiling the bathroom, and sanding the floors in CJ's room.  Then we paint and carpet!

A big part of the bathroom remodel was the installation of a new shower.  I spent about a week on YouTube watching guys build a shower base from scratch, so naturally I felt totally equipped.  It has actually worked out pretty well. I'm sure I'm way slower than a pro, but it was fun to do.  Pictures of the process are below.


The Tools- sand mix, water, bucket, drill.

 The help.  This poor guy was so tired from all of our Christmas activities he actually fell asleep when he sat down on the sand mix bags.

 Curbstop, sub-floor, drain, plastic, and wire mesh installed.  During the process of stapling the wire mesh to the subfloor, a staple jammed in the gun. I tried to yank the gun open, and whatever I did dislodged the jam, and managed to lodge the formerly jammed staple right into my side.  The staple was 1/2" deep, and went about halfway in.  Thank goodness for the love handles I've developed! It didn't hurt that bad, but I did get a DTAP immunization, just to be safe.  So far, the after effects of that shot have been much worse than the staple.

 First layer of cement (sand mix) installed. It slopes from the edges down to the drain.

 Plastic shower pan liner (what actually makes the shower waterproof) and plastic water barrier on the walls installed.
 Plumbing complete and tested for leaks, cement board installed on the walls.

 Screw holes and joints patched with a modified thinset.  Once the thinset was on, I poured another inch of sand mix (cement) on top of the plastic floor. I forgot to get a picture of the finished product.  Now that all of that has cured, I have to apply a waterproofing membrane to the walls, and once that is set, we are good to go for tile.

I am standing in the shower trying to show the ceiling plaster backer board installed.  In one afternoon, we got all of the in wall electrical and plumbing done, as well as the ceiling wallboard hung. 

That's it for now.

Chris