Construction - Month 20 - Kitchen Counters and Tile, Fireplace, Carpet, Master Bath Hardware, Hardwood Floors

Month 20 (Weeks 77-80)

This month, while we love walking around on subfloor, not having a working kitchen, not having a second bathroom of any kind, living out of boxes, we managed to make some important comfort improvements.. It couldn't come too soon. For example try these on for a couple of months..

• anytime we want to wash anything like a coffee cup or the coffee maker, we have to go upstairs to the master bath and wash it in the sink there.
• we are still walking around on subfloor with flipflops or shoes on everywhere we go even at night when watching tv
• our tv is sitting on a collapsible work table. our couch sits on subfloor in front of it.
• all meals are either eaten out or microwaved. no real ability to wash or have any dishes.
• living out of a handful of boxes and temporary clothes hangers. most clothes is in the basement and garage since there is no functional closet.
• No hardware in the bathroom.. can't open the drawers, can't hang towels, toilet paper sits on the floor.
• Anytime you set something down it's probably sitting on plywood.
• we want a dog but can't get one.. no place for it to live either
• most evenings and particularly weekends are spent doing projects on the house. starts to get old.. 

On the other hand, how much can you really complain about being in basically a brand new house of your own design? :D

Master Bath

I finally got around to installing the various hardware.. a grab bar and towel holders for the shower, towel holders for the sinks, and all the pulls for the drawers. It finally feels like we have a finished and functional bathroom..

It sure is a pain to drill through porcelain tile. I didn't want to crack it so I bought an overpriced diamond drill bit which apparently only lasts for 10 holes or so and spend the better part of a day drilling 11 holes in various spots in the tile. It's extremely slow going.. You get tired pushing on the drill. The bit wanders like mad when you're first starting which puts at risk any of your holes being aligned properly. Needless to say it was more difficult then the photos look. Putting the pulls on the vanity drawers was easy in comparison although very nerve wracking since I couldn't afford to make a single mistake (custom vanity and drawers!).. Thankfully it worked out and the old rule of measuring twice and taking it slow worked.

And i can't even begin to tell you how nice it is to have towel holders, toilet paper holders, and functional vanity drawers that we can open and close!

note towel holders inside shower.. nice!

Kitchen

Well we didn't manage to get our kitchen entirely up and running before my sister and brother-in-law visited for several days (and stayed in our spare bedroom). So they had to share our master bath and dealt with the same issues around food and coffee :(.. Close! Because the plumbing got done right after they left.. Sorry!

We did manage to get the tiling and countertops done though in the kitchen which was a big appearance improvement. Also some of the deco panels started to get installed..

countertops before backsplash

countertops with backsplash

Fireplace

The countertop folks installed the fireplace hearth (a leftover piece of our island stone) and the tiler also completed the fireplace tiling..

some of my drawings showing the hearth dimensions and routed edge

trying to figure out the hearth's size with blue tape

the stone installed (hearth and tile)

Carpet

With the painter done on the stairs, the carpets also got installed. This was a big comfort item since it encompasses our entire 2nd story and staircase. In particular the master bedroom and bathroom and guest bedroom areas. Did i mention how nice it is to be able to walk around upstairs without shoes or flipflops on? At least until we have to go downstairs for something..

Windows

We spent a fair amount of time removing all the stickers from the windows and cleaning the gunk off of them. It turns out that the stickers (window protective stickers from the manufacturer) get harder to pull off cleanly the longer you leave them on there - mostly the exterior ones facing the sun. So I had to buy gunk remover and after a lot of elbow grease, get it all off.

But hey, at least we can finally see outside! No more feeling like we live in a winter home.. Oh and all the neighbors can see us too now.. like we live in a big fishbowl :(

See some of the below hardwood floor photos to see how we can see outside now..

Hardwood Floors

Talk about another comfort item.. Remember walking on subfloors? Yech..

I ordered our chosen Hallmark Monterrey Collection hardwood in Caballero Maple for downstairs. After reading the installation and warranty instructions and talking to the guys who sold me the product, I purchased a Powernail Model 50P 18GA nailer, a bunch of nails, and some Aquabar B from home depot and I was ready to go. I figured I could sell the nailer and get most of my money back when I was done (since it's one of the best nailers on the market) rather then going out and renting something used.

My brother in law and I started by doing the dining room. Pretty interesting experience in all.. When nailing to a subfloor like in my case, you have to start from one end of the house and work your way to the other side. This also means that you need a really good chalk line to fit everything to otherwise things will not line up. In my case i had a great line between the subfloor panels that i verified was straight going right down the center hallway of my house that i used as my reference line.

From there i dryfit the boards off that line to figure out where my starting board needed to be in each of the rooms or areas. This is all critical because once you start nailing down boards, they need to meet up in the center hallway and not be off. They also need to be straight down the center of the house or it'll be rather obvious when looking down the long hallway if they aren't. At least that was the plan..

all of the hardwood still in boxes

new toy

starting in the dining room

dry fitting off my reference line to figure out where and which starter board to start with

figuring out which of the three board sizes (6, 8, 10") to start off the wall first and where exactly

similar problem here in the powder room which has to come out and meet up in the hallway with the other boards perfectly

one of my more tricky spots.. cutting a board tight around this staircase post without leaving a seam

one of our board sorting working areas.. random width and length boards make for more planning

kitchen is done at this point.. started working towards the front of the house

here is the staircase post later when i made my cuts to go up tight against the post and stairs. Turned out nice!

my backyard working area and scrap pile

the front of the house entry area done

front of house leading towards office

I like this shot because you an see our coach/entertainment/dining setup for the evenings while we were still working the floors

you can see our makeshift entertainment system

almost done!

done!

Another area i was unsure of was what to do with my hearth stone and how the floor should tie into it. This is some of my detail work around the fireplace hearth. Had to rip and miter some boards to tie the other boards into the hearth.

Plumbing

The plumber came out and installed our kitchen and powder room plumbing including sinks and the toilet. Also I had him install a water softener since our water is hard where I live (~150 mg/L) which I had tested via National Testing Laboratories for about $110 after experiencing a lot of calcium buildup on the old house to get the system sized right..

Fleck 5600SXT Meter water softener 32,000 grain capacity

In the end the softener + installation cost me about $1000 installed and was worth every penny. No more build up on shower glass, fixtures, dishes, appliances, etc. Soap is much more foamy so you can use less of it. And the cost of salt is really low.. The two of us are probably only going through a $3-5 bag every 2 months.

Construction - Month 19 - Kitchen Peninsula, Subtops, Sink, Stair Staining, Interior Painting, Laundry Appliances,

Month 19 (Weeks 73-76)

This month, some significant progress was made in a few areas..

Paint..

The interior walls were repainted by the painting company after there was a lot of overspray due to their painting the trim. They made a mistake painting one wall in gloss when the whole house has matte walls however they corrected it once we pointed it out.

Also they made quite a bit of progress painting and staining the stairs. We've had a lot of issues with the look of the stain.. It's very dense wood and wasn't taking the stain well. There was a lot of inconsistency in the stain being darker and lighter here and there. Also runs in the stain which looked a lot like wet stain dripped down along the wood and created darker areas. Then the gloss finish also was pretty coarse looking like it needed sanding. But we've been working with the guy and things continuously look better as they work no and rework on the stairs.



Kitchen..

The kitchen sink needed to get installed which meant cutting out the front face of the base cabinet after creating a template from the sink itself. I ended up cutting it out with a jigsaw after carefully tracing where i wanted to make the cuts and putting some painter's tape along it to provide a guide.

I also needed to build a platform within the base cabinet to support the sink and up to 400lbs of weight (what it weights when full of water). So I constructed a platform out of 2x4's carefully measuring them to set the height of the sink to where i needed it and then laying a piece of plywood on top.

With the countertop installers coming to template, I had to shift into gear to get the kitchen prepped for it. I focused on building out the peninsula by getting the cabinets connected and plumb. Also i had to create a 30" space in the end for the under counter fridge which also involved running the electrical there. To give the peninsula more support towards the end, I decided to tie it all together with a sheet of plywood along the backside and screwing it all together. It looks pretty solid now.

Lastly, I needed to get the plywood subtops on which got a little tricky on the peninsula where we're going for a 14" overhang for some bar stools. To provide more support, not only did I go with a thicker plywood (21/32) but I also elected to route the top and place steel into it rather then putting corbels below. I hate corbels because you always wack your knees on them. After getting it all routed, in went the steel which will end up getting sandwiched between the plywood and stone counter for more support.

laying out the steel support to be routed into the plywood

routing channels into the top for the steel.. messy work

Laundry..

We finally got a working laundry room by moving our appliances in thankfully without dinging any walls. It's soo nice to be able to do laundry again! 

Next we should be making significant progress on the kitchen (hopefully finishing most of it), get going on flooring, get the master bath hardware installed, and get our master closet ordered.

Construction - Month 18 - Interior Paint (Walls), Stairs, Crown

Month 18 (Weeks 69-72)

This month, we moved in! It was probably a dumb idea but when you're bleeding rent money every month that could be going into the house, there is a lot of motivation to put an end to it!

To give you an idea of how dumb, we don't have a working kitchen, the floors are all subfloor, there is dust/dirt everywhere, the painters are painting like mad, our closet has no built ins, and the master bath still lacks towel racks, a toilet paper holder, and there is no hardware on the vanity so we can't open any drawers. Stress increase x3! Well that's one way to motivate yourself to finish up some core systems!

The home really doesn't look much better then the photos you see in the last couple of months other then the painting plastic being put away and the interior doors being hung.. Our bed sits directly on plywood subfloor and the only working plumbing is in the master bathroom. But at least we can sleep and shower..

We eat out pretty much every night and the only way that we can have coffee in the morning is to clean up after ourselves in the bathroom. Meanwhile we have to wear flipflops or shoes everywhere for fear of getting a splinter or worse. Looking out of the windows looks like it's winter with the white paint sprayed on them. 

Crown..

I tried starting the crown myself but the pieces were just too heavy and unwieldy. Plus i didn't care for climbing up high in some cases and i realized there was a good learning curve to making it look great. So I figured what the heck - lets get some quotes to see how much it'd be to have a pro do it.

We really lucked out using Home Advisor to located someone to install the crown. I've never used the site before but the one subcontract that replied to us is possibly the best contractor that i've dealt with. His price was very competitive, he communicated regularly, did quality work, showed up on time, and worked very fast. When we were unhappy with our crown selection and changed course after a few rooms, he ripped it down and redid it without complaint (of course he got another day's work out of it). That's how you get a five star review from me on a variety of sites :)..

Stairs..

The staircase finished being built and the stair company did a terrific job. I really enjoyed working with them as well. It's so nice when you get a professional contractor who charges a fair price, works fast and does a great job. It just goes to show how many don't that you appreciate this so much.. Checking reviews online can certainly avoid some pain. The staircase looks beautiful and exactly what we were looking for!

what our custom posts turned out like

Paint..

Painting moved on from door and window trim to working on the staircase, prepping the crown, and painting the walls (lots of over-spray from spraying the trim). Getting the stain sample the way we wanted for the stained portions of the staircase has been a pain. Ultimately, the gel walnut color seemed to do the trick however the staircase wood is incredibly dense and won't absorb the stain very well (Thus moving to a gel which has worked better).

trying to match the stains to the flooring

final result

Our carpet installation is continuously being rescheduled until the painter finishes since I don't want to risk any paint or stain whatsoever getting on it. This of course makes living there miserable.. uhg subfloor :(. 

We finalized our kitchen countertop and backsplash selections. We're going with a Quartzite Taj Mahal stone for the island and a Quartz for the rest of the counter tops. We'll also extend the Quartzite to the family room fireplace hearth if there is enough material. The Quartzite is incredibly expensive. I guess it's pretty popular and expensive to quarry but it does look terrific and we think it'll stand out on the island.

island Quartzite Taj Mahal color (slab)

Quartz countertop color with backsplash