Family Work Day II

Thanksgiving weekend. This year it was in Nebraska, so I thought it would be "fun" on Saturday for the whole family, especially my talented nephews to join in the activities for some construction bonding. Everyone worked really hard as usual. Cheryl, Velma, Shannon and Rhonda had some unexpected late season gardening in damp cold weather to plant a million tulip bulbs while Tom, Liem, and Gary installed the support post in the basement and mixed and poured close to 1000 pounds of concrete for the footing. Owen and Miles helped their dad take down more lath in the kitchen and they also helped Grandma remove nails in the basement work area. Priming, cleaning, and other tasks kept everyone busy as well, and Shannon kept everyone fed with great organic food. Michelle had her hands full keeping Eli out of danger since he is now walking. All in all it was a successful work day and we celebrated that evening with dinner at a Chinese restaurant.

On Closer Inspection

This weekend's goal was to get two of the windows set permanently into their openings. This got thrown off course when I started checking the individual glass lites of the custom grill pattern and measured almost one-half inch difference in the four horizontal divisions - on the manufacturer's drawing that we approved they were specified to have identical widths. We thought a major window manufacturer should be able to achieve a better tolerance than +/- one quarter inch, so now we're waiting on a call back from Pella. Hmmm.

Windows

Another reason today was big, five shiny new Pella windows arrived! The windows took quite a bit of deliberation and design work as both Shannon and Gary learned more than they ever wanted to about sashes, muntins, Prairie School patterns, aluminum cladding, tempered glass, sill heights and a million other details. Shannon even had Ed Zimmer - Lincoln city historian - come over to consult. He pointed us to some great examples of venerable Lincoln homes in the established neighborhoods near B and C streets. We adapted one to our liking and drove the Pella salesman crazy trying to specify and order a custom-made grill pattern. But they arrived and it was all worth it to see one sitting in its opening on a trial basis (still need to do the exterior trim work), and to see how much more light is in the kitchen already!

First Inspection

A big day today: the building inspector passed the footing preparation!



Plus, we were able to confirm that the window framing in progress in the kitchen was up to snuff and our use of salvaged lumber from Eco-Stores was ok in the city's eyes.

Basement Hole

Since we will be moving a load-bearing wall in the kitchen, the support beam taking its place needs to sit on some posts. This required a deeper footing in the basement to take the load. We cut through the basement floor using a diamond blade in the circular saw. The post will land right next to the existing stairs so we had to remove part of the stairs in order to be able to cut under it, then brace it back together again. While doing this we discovered that someone had penciled labels on some of the treads - “Fisk” (the original architect in 1925).

The diamond blade in the circular saw worked pretty well but made the basement look like Mount St. Helens after the dust settled even though we used the shop vac to try to catch the clouds.

We also had to brace an existing post which happened to sit on the very square of concrete that needed removal. Surprisingly, the concrete was only a couple of inches thick, but that was fortunate in this case since the circular saw only has about 2.5-3 inches of usable cutting depth.

Family Work Day

Rhonda had a long weekend and wanted to help on the project, so on a Saturday in October, she, Velma, Tom, and Cheryl converged on the house and pitched in with hard labor. A lot more plaster and lath came off!

Starting the Kitchen

After the re-wiring reached the kitchen, we had to suspend that and turn to doing all the rest of the stuff needed before the kitchen could be re-wired, which basically meant gutting it, re-framing, installing windows, moving the wall, etc. Here's a couple of "before" shots.



Then we began tearing off plaster, removing cabinets, and the like. Here's the kitchen sans cabinets.

Help Wanted

Petey's true calling is in construction.

An Electric Jolt

August now, and finally work begins! We found an electrician that agreed to allow us to do the work of gutting the old wiring and cutting all the opening for the new outlets and switches, while he installed the actual circuits. This allowed us to save a ton of money and the electrician didn't have to do the grunt work, so we figured it was a win/win situation. The normal rhythm was for us to gut one or two rooms on the weekend, then the electrician would come during the week and re-wire that portion. Then we moved to the next room(s). This worked well until we reached the kitchen. At that point the house was about 80% rewired but now we had no choice but to suspend further electrical progress until all the structural work could be done and the new walls put in place where the new kitchen outlets would go. So we now had about 25 substantially sized holes all throughout the house waiting for patching.

Building Permit

Armed with the new houseplans, we went to the city to get our building permit. Ah, but not so fast. The city people were courteous and helpful, but they said they needed more details on the supporting beam that is to take the place of the load-bearing wall being moved. So it was off to find a structural engineer to give exact sizes and placement of load-bearing posts and beams. After a few iterations we had our official blessing from the engineer that we could take back to the city and finally get the coveted building permit.

Houseplans

Sometime around the middle of the year, we finalized the houseplans with the architect. A quick list of the highlights:

1. Rewire the entire house and run city lines underground.
2. New plumbing and water heater.
3. Insulate.
4. Install radon-mitigation system.
5. Enlarge kitchen by stealing space from the unused entry area and shift it to the middle of the west side of the house with new appliances, countertops, cabinets.
6. Create a built-in dining nook where the existing kitchen is, looking out to the backyard.
7. Move/resize/add windows in the entry, kitchen and dining areas (total of 5 new windows).
8. Redo the bathroom: new surfaces, pedastal sink, new tiled shower surround, built-in storage.
9. Create a formal entry area flanked by square columns and having a window seat.
10. Return the fireplace to its original facade by removing the flagstone surround; install a safer fireplace insert.
11. Add built-ins, wainscoting, ceiling beams, and other trim to tie all the rooms together in a Prairie Style consistent with the exterior.
12. Paint.
13. Refinish floors.

(good grief, there are 13 "highlights"?)

Legwork

Yikes, it's nearly the end of the year and I haven't posted any updates.

The first half of the year was spent working (slowly) with the architect to finish the plans, and researching and getting quotes from sub-contractors for all the work we didn't plan to do ourselves. We misjudged the amount of time this took, so we basically reset our project time-clock to the middle of the year instead of the beginning. I naively stated one year as the goal to get the project finished. We didn't want to start on any major demolition until we knew the plans would be accepted by the city for a building permit, but we did manage to get the ceiling tile and wallpaper off of the living room.

This revealed two things: 1) people can have really bad taste in wallpaper (three layers shown from newest to oldest: gray, village mural, pink herringbone),



2) There was a wide opening from the east wall in the living room into the master bedroom that was later closed in (see faint outline in photo below). It's a small two-bedroom house to begin with, about 900 sf. Connecting the living room to one of the bedrooms would have effectively reduced it to a one-bedroom.