Kitchen progress

I'm trying to get this blog caught up to the point we are actually at on the house. However, working on the house still leaves little time to make posts. At this point in the photos you can see the Ikea kitchen coming together. I think I might elaborate on my thoughts about Ikea kitchens in another post, but for now I just wanted to put in a quick update.

Painted living room. It felt really nice to pull the plastic off the furniture and actually see how the things we already had are going to look in the space.

You can see in this photo the detail we did for storage in the living room. Instead of using corner cabinets in the kitchen, we took those two corners and turned the cabinets to face the living room. We figured that there would be enough storage in the kitchen with all the other cabinets and pantry cabinets that we wouldn't need corner units. Plus, a corner unit would have probably lost us space and made the layout in the kitchen more difficult. So, this way we have two storage cabinets that we can use for extra blankets and DVD's and such for the living room.

First coat of paint

The first coat of paint is complete. Man, what a change that makes. We've been using Sherwin Williams Harmony line of paint. It has their "greensure" seal and is a no-VOC paint. We had used it in our previous house and were very happy with the results. I was working in the house the whole time it was being painted and never once noticed any smell. I guess it wouldn't be very friendly to those people who are prone to brushing up to wet paint as you'd have no idea the whole house was being painted.

The plan

Here's what we're going for. You can look back at previous posts to see where we're coming/starting from, and now you can see where we are heading. Some things have changed from these renderings that I did, the the basic ideas are in here.

taking shape

It felt really great to finally pull up all the paper protecting the floors and pull off the plastic covering the furniture. We can finally see the transformation that took place in just about 2 weeks worth of work. It hasn't been easy that much I can say.
The work never ends though. These photos were taken on a Wednesday morning, after I had spent most the night cleaning up the paper and plastic and vacuuming the drywall dust off the floors. That involved multiple passes with the shop-vac. If you ever plan on something similar, let me recommend getting the appropriate filter for your shop-vac. I had the general use filter and had to clean out the filter multiple times. The fine dust of the gypsum board would quickly clog the filter and I'd lose suction quickly.
I was up so late cleaning because we had our flooring guy coming back to do some touch-up work on the floor (filling gaps, cracks, nail holes, cleaning off glue), as well as our painter coming. Like I said, the work never ends. I have to hand it to my wife though, keeping things on track and making sure that there is minimal time lost between trades. Again, it hasn't been easy.
I can't really recommend others trying this amount of work when: you are living in the place that is being worked on, you have another full-time job and don't hire a general contractor to keep things in order, you have a new 4 month old baby, you have a significant other who is short on patience and just wants house that they can live in without construction debris everywhere everyday.
If you do try this under those circumstances, I hope you have a strong foundation to your relationship.

More mudding

I don't think that the ratio of mess and dust equals the amount of work completed. The dust gets everywhere. Many people warned me, but I don't think you can fully understand until you experience it. Pretty much from the driveway, up the stairs, on the deck, and the whole upstairs is covered in dust. We've tried to seal off the downstairs with some plastic and paper, which helps.
The "zip-strip" detail that we did forced us to do the floor first, before the drywall. That meant we needed to cover the floors for some protection. I opted to go with a building rosin paper. First it's cheaper than going with plastic. Second, it's easier to put down. Third, it's not slippery to walk on. On the downside, it tears and absorbs some water. Don't expect your drywallers to go the extra mile and repair the tears if you put the paper down, which I did. I assume that if you were paying them to do that prep work they would fix it, but I don't know. I didn't have the time each night or morning to repair it all, plus it was hard to get anything to stick with all the dust. Just know that there will be some serious clean-up if you ever do something like this.

mudding it up

Anyone who's been around to the place knows that we're further along than this. Quite a bit further along actually. However, getting to be where we're at in the process has left little time to keep up to date on the blog. At this point in the progress that these photos were taken you can see how much of a mess drywall is. I know there are better products out there and maybe at some point I'll get around to showing some of those. Right now though, focus is just on getting the place done.

"Zip-Strip" detail

"Zip-Strip" with one laye of plaster.

been busy

At this point in the process the drywall has all be hung and is awaiting tape and mud, cornerbead, and "zip-strip". Zip-strip is just another profile for drywall edges that gives you a super clean straight line at the bottom and top of your drywall panel. It also allows the mudder to mud down to the bottom of the drywall and blend the zip strip into the wall. It has this little removable piece that you "zip" off when it's all done and gives you a clean line at the floor. I image that it's a detail the people over at grassrootsmodern.com would go for.
Here's the detail...with other images coming later

Energy film

The majority of our windows in the house are single pane glass. And with the windows being about 4'wx7'h, that's a lot of glass that is not that energy efficient. While the trees on our site protect most of the house from sun throughout the day, the low evening light does come through below the branches. We get amazing light in the house at those times of the day, but also some heat gain. I don't know what the winter condition is like yet, but I imagine the engery efficiency is pretty poor. Now with all the renovation that we've done, we are also pretty poor and can not afford to put in new windows at the moment. So I came across this product, energy-film.com.
Here is what they claim:
Energy Film is made of a spectrally selective material that blocks 70% of thermal solar energy in summer and reduces heat loss through windows in winter. It blocks 97% of UV light while still allowing 77% of natural light into the room. Energy film also has excellent visual clarity.

"An estimated $30 billion or more of Energy is lost per year through single pane windows"

"An average Home Loses 25% of Energy Through Windows"

I'm interested in trying this product out until we can afford new windows in the house. Anybody out there familiar with this product? How easy is it to install, does it work, do you notice the film?

end of day three/start day four

Laid some more flooring...

laying floor end of day two/start of day three

Start of day 2

Since the house is two levels and we are going to be living here while MODifications are going on we will be leaving the lower level untouched while we work on the main level.
After we gained access to the house on Sunday and I immediately began tearing out the carpet. On Monday, with a lot of help from friends (who I will be in their debt for a long time) we demolished the kitchen cabinets, took off the wall panels on one wall, took out the pellet stove, and continued to get the floors ready for flooring. All this while movers were bringing in our stuff from the old house.
Tuesday we started laying the new hard wood floors. I used SW Quality Floors & More to help do the flooring. He supplied the tools and expertise, while I helped supply some of the labor to help offset some of the costs.
These images show the work made up to Tuesday morning. You can see the demo that was done in order to be ready to start laying down the hardwood floors.
We wanted to use a dark stained bamboo flooring, but they were out of stock. Due to our short timeline for moving in and renovations we had to chose from what they had in stock as anything else would have set us back a month for floor install. We were able to find a great deal on some beautiful Brazillian Koa (aka "Tigerwood".) While it's probably not the most sustainable flooring we could have used, it was a great deal, and at least we understand the significance of using rainforest wood, Right?. We'll just have to try making up for it with some other materials and energy choices like our energy efficient appliances.