Building the Walls for the Northside

So lately I have had to stop working on the house due to filling in for work at a dental office but the boys stayed with it. They decided it was tim to start putting up walls. Oh my goodness how excited I was. To finally see the downstairs coming together has been amazing. Below I have put up a picture of what the house's layout will be eventually. What the boys have been working on is the right side of the picture (containing the laundry room, Bedroom 1 & 2, and the closets).

Scroll up to this picture as a reference when looking at the pictures below.

Bedroom 1 was the first to be built. Funny story, I came into the house to see what my husband was working on and he was putting up the wall in Bedroom 1 for the closet, the only thing was he didn't make a space for the doors. Thank goodness he hadn't nailed it in yet and was able to slide the wall over 2'6" to be the wall separating the laundry room from Bedroom 1's closet. The other wall that is closest in the picture below is the wall separating the laundry room from Bedroom 2's closet.

The picture below will show you how the laundry room was taking shape just after 2 walls were built. The walls may look crooked but it's just the angle of my camera. The window that is in the room now will later become an exterior door so that we can also use this space as a small mud room.

Then it was time to build the frame and the wall for the closet doors and entrance. Below the closet entrance for Bedroom 2 is shown as the wall closest in the picture (they put a 2x4 in the entrance to hold it until they had secured the wall into the ceiling joist and the concrete floor).

If you are still referencing back to the picture of the floor plan the wall separating the bathroom from Bedroom 2 is already up. I just didn't get around to taking a picture of it. Also the hallway for the laundry room and Bedroom 1 is finished. There will be more pictures in my next post of the walls being built.

Steffane B

Working on the kitchen and finishing the roof

So while the boys have been doing the heavy dangerous work I have been working on the kitchen....SLOWLY. Over the weekend we were able to finish the roof and pull the cabinets out (Hooray! Hooray!). First I'll tell you how my part went because it has been the most impact I have personally been able to do since I got pregnant.

Last week I showed you these two pictures:

The kitchen before any major work had been done (above) and the plans I had drawn out for what it would look like after I had moved the cabinets (below).

Well I was able to get that main piece of cabinet out (the one picture in the middle of the kitchen) and move it to the side of the stove. Boy was it a doozy!

Here's a picture of the cabinet actually detached from the wall (above). Because of the way the cabinets were originally installed into the kitchen, I had to cut the face of the cabinets to the size I wanted, then cut the shelving, and cut the 2x6 (which helps mount the cabinets to the wall) and then pry them out with all of my might!. The 2x6 was nailed into the concrete wall but there were only about 5 nails. It finally found it's way away from the wall.

Here's what it looked like cut from the remaining piece of the cabinet (it actually squared up against the side of the wall that the counter is still attached to). 

Then here is what it looked like after I pulled it away. I had to go ahead and cut out the cabinets on the other side of the wall where the pantry is going to go to have enough wiggle room to pry out the cabinet.

Here it is all removed. The window unit on the wall must have been there for a long time letting condensation drip down the wall behind the cabinets because the back of the cabinets were completely rotten. They were coated in black mold and I don't know what else. I had to stop at this point because I couldn't breathe.

But I did have enough time to pull the cabinets out of there existing spot and into the place where they are going to go (once Matthew blocks in the doorway you can see all the way to the right in the picture). Also, fun but annoying find!, when I was pulling out the old stove I noticed that the cord was not pulled ON the wall but actually INTO the wall. There was a 2 ft hole that the cord went into. I went into the room that is just on the other side of the kitchen wall and found a hidden existing exterior doorway. Now Matthew has TWO doorways to block in :/

As for the roof, I can't say much nor can I show you much because I wasn't involved in this process too much but you guys should get the drift from these photos my mother-in-law took during the construction. I'll have to post a photo next time of the completely finished project (as of right now they are finished).

So above you can them (my husband and brother-in-law) had finished gabling the roof and below you can see them in action nailing on the plywood.

Above, here they are again trying to finish up. We had to build this in between rain so whenever it dried up enough we were then able to dry seal the roof in. The new tin isn't on yet but it will do until after hurricane season.

Until next time folks!

Steffane B

Making room and fixing the roof

So lately here we have been really busy, no not with getting stuff done on the house (go figure), but with Matthew working extra shifts at the fire station and with the "Hurricane" we just had. So with all of those things holding us up on progress we made a huge effort these past couple of days to make an impact on the house. Our first priority right now is to fix the roof on the house that was added about 20 years after the house was built. I included a picture of it below.

So the problem with the roof was that (#1) the roof facing the exterior of the house was built on top of the original roof and (#2) there had been so many leakage problems that a lot of the insulation and wood itself had mold growing in it. Matthew decided he would like to keep the roof that was added on top of the original roof so we could have higher ceilings. The only problem with that is whoever had made this roof didn't understand that you need 2x6s for the roof joists and used 2x4s instead. It's not a huge problem but it does make the roof somewhat shaky. So we started putting extra 2x4s in between the pre-exsisting 2x4s to add some more support.

This is a picture of Matthew trying to install one of the new roof joists with my brother-in-law watching. This is the North side of the house which will soon be two bedrooms and a laundry room.

The added side of the house also raps around the back (the West side) so we had to also place extra joists there as well. This side of the house will have a bathroom and a nursery. (I'm taking the picture from the Northwest corner so technically where I am standing will also be a bedroom).

Yesterday all of added joists were finished and Matthew began to take out the roof in the Northwest corner to make the roof a Hip roof. Hopefully today he can finish it up and water seal it in so we can start building walls on the inside and start hanging sheet rock.

Obviously I wasn't much help with the roof (due to being pregnant) so I started working slowly in the kitchen. The above picture shows all of the cabinet faces removed because I was rubbing them down with denatured alcohol to get the old varnish off and then finishing them up with a light sand so they can be painted white later.

In between fixing up the cabinet faces I was slowly taking the counter top off because I plan to take out the cabinets under the window and moving them to make the kitchen bigger and longer. I also plan on taking out all of the upper cabinets on the left side (and reusing the later) to make room for a pantry which will be going in the left corner. I took a screen shot of how I drew it out in Google Sketchup to try and give you guys a visual.

So sorry for the long post, mostly due to the lack of posting but also due to the large amount of work we have actually got done. If you have any questions please be sure to comment below :)


-Steffane B