Instead of taking the time to write out a big, probably not so entertaining post on what we have accomplished, I have taken the lazy way out. Please check out the video walkthrough of the current state of the house. You will be amazed at the progress. https://youtu.be/h-HPo6QMJcw
Moooovin!
In right around a week and a half we have completed the framing of the second floor. We can now move our operation down to the first floor. And on that first floor, other than the firring of the outside walls there’s not a lot to do.
There were a lot of hiccups in the ceiling of the front, South section of the second floor. There were odd splices, and large gaps and lifted boards from the settling of the eaves. These have all been repaired.
We are also ready to begin setting electrical boxes and stringing the wire on the second floor. I think we will meet our goal of 180 days for initial inspection. But that will also hinge on our contractor’s timeline for the demolition and rebuilding of the bay wall. We are very excited about that process.
Other than the framing overview video above we have uploaded a few other shorts to give you all an idea of what we are dealing with and the progress we have made.
When the “remodel” part of this job comes into play.
Up until this point this job has been a breeze. We were planning on completing the framing for the whole second floor. However in the original section of the house there is a bit of separation where the roof has been putting tons of pressure on the eaves and that has caused the ceiling rafters of Rider’s proposed room to lift. We spent most of the day devising a plan that would amend the lifting as well as secure the eaves. By the time we did this, because we are in Utah and it’s a Sunday, all of the stores were closed and we were no longer able to purchase the boards we needed to complete the job. And we were so close! This is the first hiccup we have had because of the old building’s sagging body. Sometimes the fun of remodeling is the problem solving. Sometimes the headache of remodeling is the problem solving.
You can see in this picture how much the boards lifted above the wall in this room.
We were able to do the last of the interior demo today. In Ryu’s proposed room there was a bit of wall and ceiling left that was lathe and plaster on strange, inadequate framing. Granger pulled all that down (see video) and we cleaned the space up. Granger is really sad that we have to put the wall back up in order for it to be Ryu’s bedroom because it looks great opened up to the stairwell.
(Pay close attention to that window on the right that Keisha busted out with a ladder)
(Oh, and this window pane, the very same window just the upper pane that Derek broke out with a board. What a pair we are…lol.)
We have been in the house now for just over a week and have made really great progress. We purchased this large stack of lumber and look how much of it we used already. And this was after we had used up our huge stack that we reclaimed from the demo.
I’m confident that barring any major burnouts or divorce we should finish on my timeline. We have many update videos available. Follow this video on our YouTube channel and check out all the others while you are there.
One of the main things we are trying to accomplish with this remodel is completing the project with no mortgage whatsoever. We were able to pay cash for the house, we also had much left over from selling our last remodel that we have been able to use toward some of the big purchases such as the dual pack heating/cooling unit and the bundles and bundles of lumber. We will also be selling our current home in Helper and should turn a great profit so that that money can go toward the completion. I think that with good management, hard work and being very careful to stick to our timelines we should come in on budget. Another big plus toward this goal is the fact that we have a few buyers for our Helper home just waiting in the wings and Helper is BOOMING! I’m confident this is our time.
One of the things I love about this home is our wonderful neighbor Faye. He takes such wonderful care of his home and yard and I just love looking out the windows of our proposed master suite and seeing how big beautiful roses and tranquil landscape. I’m very grateful, and I hope after all the racket we are making now is done we will be able to offer him the same.
Warrick the Vampire Slayer
He looks up to Buffy, wants to be Angel, secretly envies Petyr and has a mission all his own. Our little Taika Waititi fan has been scheming his vampire attacks. This kid has been feverishly sharpening his stakes and strategically placing them throughout the renovation so that he’s ready for every Viago, Vladislav, Deacon and Nick. He practices impaling and slashing and even defensive rolls. Many people told us this house was haunted, but little did we know we needed to prepare for a vampiric infestation. Thank goodness we have a 5 year old that will save the day.
A slow start.
We don’t have much of the supplies at the house yet in order to get moving, but I decided to grab the boys and do some work in the yard since Derek is currently indisposed. We stopped at the IFA that is about a block from the house, grabbed a couple new spade shovels, gloves and a hand tool. We dug up the awful noxious succulents, myrtle spurge, along with the sweet pea. We then decided to dig up the horrible railroad tie border.
After pulling out the giant pile of sweet pea I found the old downspout 90 that fell off. I was cleaning it out with my, thankfully gloved hand, when I spotted a mommy black widow and her giant egg sack. We found her a quiet spot off to the side of the house, nowhere near a window (I’m not sure that really matters). It’s not that i felt i needed to spare her life more than it’s about not having to hear that “pop” when you squash one. It gives me the chills just thinking about it.
We will just have to learn how to cohabitate, because I’m not going to kill her and hopefully she feels the same. We are invading her space after all.
We posted a short little video about cleaning up the front yard and finding our friend.
After finishing the front yard we started clearing out the space behind the garage. I bet I removed over 100 fiberglass tent poles. Who collects tent poles? Seriously. Anyway, we were able to get it spiffied up and ready for stacking the wood that we will need in our two wood stoves during the winters. We stacked a little of the wood we recently received from our lovely friends’ home, but there is much more to get to fill that space including the wood from my grandparents home. I can’t let a single thing my grandfather did go to waste. He will keep us warm for at least one winter.
Derek was able to come by later in the day after working his other two jobs. He finished pulling up oak flooring upstairs and finished the tedious job of removing all the nails as well. He will be saving the oak to line the walls of his music studio.
All in all it was a very successful day. We will be getting to the real renovation next week after Derek is done working on his clients’ homes.
Best birthday present EVER!
For my birthday this year we finally were able to obtain our permits from Price City. What a chore that was! Now we can finally start working and spending every penny giving Bertha the beautiful facelift she has been longing for.
Today however, Derek is working feverishly to button up some other jobs renovating another house and business for some of his clients. And I decided that we needed to do some cheap advertising for the blog so I went down and painted the front window.
Hopefully this will bring some more traffic to the page. I will be going back with the boys after a quick lunch to get rid of those noxious weeds in the front yard and clear out the back yard. Keep your eyes peeled for another post tonight or tomorrow.
Seeing this permit in the front door window warms my heart more than you know! It’s one step closer to getting us out of our small Helper home.
While you are here don’t forget to sign up for notifications so you don’t miss a single step of this arduous process.
Could have been worse
Today brought us our first mishap.
We were all outside in the garage checking out the sweet piano Derek got me. I will get to renovate it as soon as we finish the house. Meanwhile, Granger was inside cutting out an unnecessary board when we heard a crash and he yelled like something was really wrong. We thought he was severely injured. Nope. The vent pipe that was used in the original master bath became dislodged from the roof and fell through both floors through to the basement. That wasn’t too terrible, but it was definitely a Funny Farm kinda moment. Now we have a skylight. We are covering those floor boards with underlayment anyway, so it’s not like it was an added expense.
Long time no see
It’s been a long time since we had an update for you all on our renovation of turning this convent into our family home. We FINALLY found an engineer that was willing to work with us. Not just willing, but also very excited about our project. He was very happy to see how sound the building is despite it’s run down looks.
We also have a great plan for hvac. We are going to have Bob Rojas install a roof mounted 5 ton dual pack unit that will handle our cooling needs and will also add a boost to the heating if we should need it. We will also have staple up radiant floor heat throughout the house that will do the bulk of the heating. We are going to be able to afford the solar unit for our radiant heat. We will have a wood stove on each floor as well. We are accustomed to that wonderful blast of warm you get from a wood stove. As you can tell by this overkill I HATE being cold!
We have now begun reframing and the demolition of the walls we do not want. During this process we have found a few solutions to our previous problems and have also made a few changes in what will go where. I think I’m most excited about the great room. Now that the dividing stud walls are down you can really feel how grand it will be.
Here are the update videos for each floor:
Plans, Purpose, Panic
We have finally hit that next stage. The plat is in our name and we have been feverishly planning this home to suit our needs. What a battle that has been! You would think that with walls semi in place that it would put things a little into perspective for you. Not so much since the previous owners’ architect put a 4 foot long bathtub in a closet, so….. That’s what we are dealing with. Yes, a bathtub in a closet, seriously. I wish there had been a name on the plans they gave us so that I could roll them up nice and tight, just meander into their office and whack them upside the face and walk right back out. They don’t deserve an explanation after this level of heresy!
We have all contemplated what we wanted out of this house after living many years without spaces of our own. We know what we think we deserve and what we hope to obtain and what we want each other to have as well. Most of the bickering was over not believing that the other was truly content with what was happening with the planning. Derek wanted a large music room with plenty of rehearsal space and a recording booth. This space will also benefit the whole family. I will be so happy to have room for a piano once again. I wanted room to craft including space for silversmithing where I can use a torch without burning the house down, and also wanted an area large enough to dance in and possibly have a ballet bar, even if this was shared space. And the kids of course just wanted their own individual rooms and large bathrooms. We were able to fit this all into the house no problem, but it took finagling, fighting, fangs and in the end french fries usually calm the scene enough to come to a consensus.
It has taken us about 3 weeks total to complete the plans. We probably would have finished sooner, but we didn’t like the way they were coming out in the computer program that we normally use. Because of the wall thicknesses of this house and because of the 3 previous remodels we resorted to drawing up the plans entirely by hand. It was super tedious. I felt like Australopithecus banging it out. I should have just beat it into stone at that point. My 5 year old’s over there checking up on his investment portfolio on his iPad while I’m breaking the lead in my pencil against my ruler. psh.
Most of the problems we ran into with placement of the rooms was the walls of the original structure. There were so many 14″ thick brick walls that we didn’t dare mess with that. We thought we better just leave them right as they are. I’m not about to mess with structure on something that old if I don’t absolutely have to. We already have to with that sad, crumbly bay window, so let’s not push it with the interior. The interior has a few sections of brick additions. There was the original house, then another brick structure was added onto the old original porch, and then the rest of the house was added onto that. So we have 2 different sections of brick structure walls to contend with on the inside of the house. These are areas that have bathrooms and tiny rooms and closets crammed into them and so that is what they remain. They don’t really get to be anything other than what they already are.
When we first entered the house we noticed that there was existing pex plumbing to the area opposite the bay window and we thought how lovely it would be to have that whole area open up and become the kitchen. However, the windows in that area of the house are very low to the ground and would all have to be changed in order to make it feasible for kitchen countertops. We decided instead to move the kitchen farther back into the area of the house that we had originally thought would become the great room. We then moved the great room upstairs. After spending more time in the house walking around and imagining myself moving around day to day I know that we made the right choice with this. The entire living area will be upstairs now. The bedrooms and great room will all be upstairs and the kitchen, dining and our play spaces (crafts and music) will all be down. I am really loving the separation.
In the original plan the laundry was in the dungeon of a basement and I have never understood this unless you are just too in debt over your home that you just can’t afford a gym membership so we took 4 bedrooms that were in the previous plans turned 3 and a half into the great room and the other half is the laundry space, right next to the boys’ bedrooms. Lastly, that stupid bathtub in a closet will disappear as well as the 3/4 bath next to it. That will all become part of the new master suite with a grown-up tub, separate shower stall, water closet and 2 separate vanities. The walk-in closet will be behind the bathroom in an L-shape.
The plans will be submitted tomorrow and we will see where it goes from there. I’m pretty sure we covered all our bases. Hopefully I remembered everything we needed from the last project and dotted every lowercase j.
Now, i filmed these both exactly the same but one ended up recording the wrong direction, don’t hate.
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Bertha’s Bay
One of our biggest concerns about getting this house was actually one of the most beautiful details of the house. The large two story bay is crumbling. The bay is three layers of brick and all three layers are bowing in the middle right where the second floor attaches, well, where it used to attach anyway. We were told by an inspector in March that any settling was done long ago and that he felt confident with the structure, but we were just not convinced.
We messaged pictures to a few contractors and had a few others visit for second, third, fourth and fifth opinions and the decision was unanimous, inspectors are inspectors for a reason. The bay must come down. At least our minds were put at ease about the foundation, but the bay definitely needed to come down. Now we have options. Do we tear it down then:
1. Rebuild with an inner shear wall and put back the two inner and outer layers of brick?
2. Rebuild with an inner framed wall and have a brick facade outside?
3. Rebuild with wood only and tie to the existing brick walls and side with something else?
We have decided we like the last option best if it’s an engineering possibility. The decision is also hanging on the fact that we may be getting historical grant money and that may require us to keep the brick look. If not wifey would love to see it sided in scallops to give it a bit of a turret feel. This big ‘ol lady is a craftsman and all, but a splash of Victorian never hurt anyone right?
…btw I love this little nook for some odd reason. I can’t wait to put a gargoyle and some hens and chicks right there.