Blogs at HomeRefurbers.com

My free air compressor is costing a fortune #1: The little woman got her new fridge today

Bothus — Sun, 08 Nov 2009 03:16:00 GMT

I actually told the story about my free air compressor on Lumberjocks but since it has led to a kitchen/laundry room remodel I decided to follow up here.

The short version is that I got a free air compressor years ago and it recently quit working. I went to Sear’s Outlet to see if they had any and ended up buying the little woman a new French door refrigerator that we were planning to buy after the first of the year.

The new fridge wouldn’t fit where the old fridge was because the opening was 3/4” too narrow and 2” too short.

Since the new fridge was a surprise I asked our son to take his mom out to the movies the day Sears was going to deliver and install. Then I went home an hour before they were supposed to get there to empty out the old fridge and rip out the cabinet and side partition so the new one would at least slide in.

The reason we were planning to get the new fridge after the first of the year is because were we planning to tear down the wall and incorporate the laundy/pantry into the kitchen.

Here’s a video of the little woman coming home from the movies.

Here is a photo the next day showing the wall partially removed. I need to move some electrical tomorrow and stack the washer/dryer.

Bothus

Hello from Dead Apple Farm

Heide — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 19:13:41 GMT

I’m very glad to have found this site (via my husband’s longtime lurking on Lumberjocks)...I am Head of Demolition here, while Jay is the brains and the building. Four years ago we bought a pile of an antique farmhouse with 8 acres and had only an inkling of what we were getting ourselves into. The romance of having an almost 200 year old home has waned, I will admit, but there is a lot of pride in having done every single renovation ourselves. At this point, a large amount of the work has been taking out rather than putting in, and has forever turned me into a lover of the Dumpster. The previous owners had bought the house in 1970 when they were in their 50s and proceeded to cover everything with linoleum, dropped ceilings, fake wood paneling, and thick layers of paint. And from then till 2005, nothing changed.

There have been a lot of surprises along the way: our second child was born here, the 40’ septic pipe broke and backed up, there is a 300+ member maternity colony of bats (some rabid) in the attached barn, bears attacked the beehives, weasels decimated the chicken flock, some of the attached sheds fell down, and more frozen pipes than I care to remember.

But there has been such beauty and fun in spite of all the drama, and now that we have some of the crap (both figurative and literal) out of our way, it seems easier. Or maybe I’m just not shocked and disappointed anymore when I tear down some old moldy siding and find live wires right under it.

My hope is to document some of our projects here, partly out of pride and partly to remind ourselves of how far we’ve come. That way, maybe the next time I curse myself for buying an old fixer-upper Moneypit, I can recall why we bought it in the first place. Because of the orchards and brook and forest and quiet, and mostly for the potential of something great.

Kitchen remodel #11: Wood Trim Primer

3fingerpat — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 05:06:39 GMT

Here are a couple of pics of the baseboards installed, nail holes and edges puttied, sanded and primered:

I also mudded\floated out the remaining sections of the wall where the top coat of plaster had been removed. Just trying to level it all out before I primer the walls and ceiling this weekend. Then I hope to get the walls and ceiling retexturized. Happy Halloween!

Kitchen remodel #10: Doorway Wood Trim additions

3fingerpat — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 02:22:38 GMT

I worked on making new door trim moulding, well the bullnose trim anyways. The trim is just painted 1×4 MDF trim from the BORG. The bullnose trim is 1x pine that I planed down to 3/8” and then routed a bullnose profile. It is not much for detail but it matches the existing trim that was already in the house, so I thought it should stay as it was:

After finish nailing the trim, I set the nails and then used wood putty to fill all nail heads and joint seams to try to give the final paint finish a smoother look:

Here is the wall behind the stove that needed to be repaired, it had a big section of plaster that had cracked, came loose and had to be replaced. This is the first coat:

I hope to get the stove wall completed by the weekend, needs another coat of mud, a new baseboard moulding, which is already cut to length, just need to drill the hole in it for the gas line. Then wood putty the nail heads and seams, then sand all the putty down and apply the first coat of primer.

Tiny trailer house - new project

Bill — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 14:06:22 GMT

I have not been on HomeRefurbers for awhile, but I have been working on a new project. I posted it on Lumberjocks, and am adding a link here as well. Here is the tiny trailer house.

Building My First Home #3: Walls Framed up

slooper — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 00:13:32 GMT

One month after buying land, we have our walls framed up.

Going into this project I knew it was going to be a very involved process. With all the planning we put into this, it amazes me how many changes we’ve made along the way and how much I could not perceive before actually getting into the project. Fortunately, I think we’ve made some significant decisions that have turned out for the better. Some I was simply forced into.

The rain keeps pushing my dry-in date out. Maybe by this weekend….

Kitchen remodel #9: Finally some progress!

3fingerpat — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 23:43:33 GMT

Well, it has been almost a year since my last post on this project; never thought this was going to take as long as it has, but….a lot has happened in one year. Let me skip all the events and just say I am slowly back to working on this remodel.

I am still recovering from shoulder surgery and am not able to work on this as much as I would like, in fact, I just recently got to the point where I could raise my arm enought to hold\work a trowel. So I started by continuing on with the tile back splash above the granite counter top. Previously I had stopped just past the faucet due to the wall not being plumb. I had planned on letting my contractor correct this but figured I would give it a try myself, it worked out okay for my first try. This allowed me to finish the tiling above the back splash:

The next item on the worklist was to start filling in all the holes in the plaster that had been ruined\removed during deconstruction. I fixed the hole behind the refrigerator and around the door way next to the refer (you can look at the earlier posts to see the damage). Then I added back some door trim for the doorway next to the refer that leads from the kitchen to the laundry room. This picture is before I add wood putty for the nail holes and joints, then will primer it. As with the previous doorway trim, I have added a small bullnose trim piece that matches what is already in the house:

The next doorway to tackle is btwn the kitchen and our daughters bedroom, which is now my wife’s sewing room since both girls have moved out some time ago. Here is a before picture:

Here are pictures from today, after I had covered ( with drywall) the hole where the shelves used to be, and then used some filler to fill in the big holes where the plaster had been damaged\removed. I used topping mud to level out the area around the doorway so that the wood trim will sit level\plumb:

The next items on the list will be to make another piece of bullnose trim and then finish installing the doorway trim pieces. Then move onto repairing the plaster hole behind the stove. Then installing the floor board trim btwn all the doorways. Stayed tuned, more to follow….

Science room re-do #2: The finished product

BillyJ — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 03:44:20 GMT

It has taken me longer to post these final pics and write about it than it actually took me to finish the project. As usual, after finishing the first sink, the second went much faster. You learn what TO do.

After removing everything, I saw that the plumbers did a much better job on running the pipe than in the first sink. Apparently, they too learned what to do on the second sink!

There was actually room to work with. I assembled the sink and put the faucets on FIRST, rather than trying to monkey around with them while laying on my back. Again, I knew this on the first sink, but trying to get things done fast is not always getting them done properly.

Here are the finished sinks in the classroom. Everyone was happy, especially the teachers. Both of the teachers are under 5’4”, so they were ecstatic. The students were too.

As you can see, I still have to put some false backs where the cutouts are, so technically, I am not “done.” However, they are 100% functional at this point. Now the only job left in this classroom is repairing the bad laminate job they did on the tables (you can see on the last picture the laminate pealing off).

Complete House Remodel.... #4: Raise the Roof...er Ceiling.........

Todd Thomas — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 01:10:52 GMT

Sorry for the wait…...
Not sure if I mentioned it before but my lovely wife has decided that she, we, want this one…she really likes the location… The before story on the ceilings….Slim, my name for my wife Cheryl, is up mowing the grass and has our dog, Rusty, with her and Rusty decides he is going to go out into the neighborhood and introduce himself to our new neighbors…by the time we figure out he is gone we can’t get him to come with a call so Slim goes out looking for him….within a few minuets I get a call from her and she says that she has Rusty and that he was up the street in someones house playing with their dog and I needed to come and see what they did to the ceilings in the house….it was a standard vaulted ceiling but they had the house built with it that way and not redone…..So I started at ”No do you know how much work that would be for me? Do you forget I do most all this by myself” Let’s just say she pretended to hear me…..before you know it I buy into it and draw it out and said she needed to help Warning: Lots of pictures

So we took the Sheetrock down and pulled out the insulation….

So then we had to stick/hand build a new rafter system one at a time with 14 ft 2×6 lumber, oh yes it was fun!!

I would cut the pieces out during the day and then when Slim would get off work I could put her on top off a ladder to help me hold it while I nailed it up….and of course we worked around the old rafter system…I didn’t cut it out until I had the new in place and secured down tight….we decided not to make the vault go to a peak/point but instead to have a 3 foot flat part on the top…just a different type of look…The ceiling went from about 8 ft to 11”10”

just in case anyone is wondering I think we put 1 whole box, 4,000 count, of 16 penny nails in the new rafters…it might be over kill but like I say ” they don’t know if you did to much, only if you didn’t do enough!”

Building My First Home #2: Day 1 - Bulldozing

slooper — Sun, 13 Sep 2009 02:18:43 GMT

With ten years of untended overgrowth on our new property, it was hard to imagine what the land really looked like. At times I wondered if we’d paid too much or if we might have gotten stuck with some bad land. Today dispelled those worries. :)

Day 1 had two priorities: 1) find, clear and level a plot for the house and 2) start brush hogging to get a better idea of the lay of the land.

First thing this morning we picked a site to start clearing. While clearing a spot for a burn pile, our bulldozer guy found and even better, level spot, so we went with it.

Here’s the south-facing shot.The garden on the south side of the house will get plenty of sun.

And here’s the north-facing shot. Notice where the circular driveway goes around the trees in the back. I plan to put a park bench and a flower garden there.

Here’s the before-after pics of the entrance from the road. This was the biggest surprise of the day. It’s got the grove look we wanted to shoot for. Way cool!

Before

After

Part I