Eight inches of angst

Generally speaking, it's really easy to pull a permit as a homeowner.

That said, your contractor should pull permits for the work they perform on your property (assuming permits are necessary). If you curious about why that's necessary, here's one article of many to illustrate!

I'd worked with my contractor in the past with few issues and wanted to work with him again to move the wall for the bathroom about 8 inches further out. As a 5' 6" by 6'6" bathroom, a transformation to 6' 2" by 6'6" makes a surprisingly big difference!

Planning a complete gut and remodel of a bathroom takes a while to plan. Think through the dependencies - the things that need to happen before something else can - well in advance!

This is what the floor looks like when you're planning for fixtures

During my planning phase a few months back, I spent plenty of time looking through the layout with contractors, planning fixtures, etc. We figured out the most space I could possibly add for the bathroom (from an adjacent bedroom) was eight inches if I still wanted enough room for casings on both doors into their respective rooms. The door into the bathroom then moved as close to that wall as possible, about six inches to the right.

It was rather painful to get the permit with my contractor but well worth it. Eventually, with about 5 hours, a to-scale drawing of the entire second floor (yes, to move a wall eight inches), adaptation for a bigger door to meet code (because it makes sense to have a wheelchair accessible bathroom on a non-wheelchair accessible floor, right?) and lots of questions from the city, we had a permit and could get to work!

This is where we started:

No, it's not normal to have cracked, paint-dripped beadboard on your walls, an air duct in the shower or a tub with the taps on one end and the drain on the other but these were all real-life scenarios in just this bathroom, I promise you.

To move the right wall over, first I had to take down the medicine cabinet (wired into the wall - those sconces are built into the medicine cabinet) and detach the plumbing for the sink. Because the sink was an S-trap (where the drain goes straight into the floor instead of looking like a P that goes into the wall before dropping into the ground) I could mess with the wall without having to get everything out first. For the record, S-traps are illegal because they could allow sewer gases in),

Starting with the closet in the room we were making slightly smaller, I got demoing. If you're taking out a closet like this, remove all of the wood pieces and hooks first using a screwdriver or drill and a hammer and crow bar and remember to wear a mask, gloves and eye and hearing protection!

Once all of the wood's out, the easiest way to break out drywall is to kick it out. After making a small hole to make sure you're not directly on a stud, take the flat of your foot and kick straight out at the wall. 

After removing the wood and drywall and carting them out to the dumpster, down came the plaster and lath, then the plaster on the other side of the wall.

A little more yet...

No, it's not load bearing, yes, the electrical was off!

And we had, well, no wall!

In my personal opinion, this took about 3 times as long as it should have but, occasionally, we hit such bumps.

Once it was all down, I could get to rebuilding.

The wall took no time to get up (top piece, bottom piece and studs every 16 inches on center) and pass inspection!

Now to get the rest of the room demo'd... how does one remove a 400 pound tub exactly?

The dirt pit in the driveway...

Things at Isthmus House are good these days. There's lots going on upstairs and we're really excited to be closing in on being done upstairs and getting that much closer downstairs.

This week though, I think it's time to look outside.

When I bought Isthmus House, I didn't think much of the outside. Considering there was still snow, that's not overly surprising.

I did notice that the gaping dirt pit in the middle of the driveway, but my attention to said driveway didn't stretch too much further. Lesson learned.

Really, the driveway was terrible. I figured this out when:

1. Water ran straight down the incline to the foundation and into my basement when it rained... or when I washed my porch
2. My car inclined down when I pulled into it
3. Shoveling snow started to resemble an ice chipping expedition

It took ages to deal with all of the pricing and contracting but finally we got the plans in place for replacement of the driveway from the sidewalk to the side deck stairs where the existing concrete leveled out. 

After grading for our new level, we started digging out the old stuff. 

Once the rock was all out and carted away for recycling, it was time to level the remaining dirt and put down a bit of gravel. 

The next morning, we were ready to pour concrete!

To prep the surface, the crew lightly wet down the gravel before truck arrived mid-morning. 

To work from the back of the house to the front, the wheelbarrows got loaded up and carted back.

Two workers brought back all of the concrete and dumped it for another worker in galoshes to spread it and smooth it out.

I will say, while the process was pretty quick, it was pretty impressive watching them get the concrete to just the right level and pitch using a float and trowel. 

Concrete smoothing complete, I learned that it's really important to cut joints so that when your new concrete cracks - and it will in a freeze thaw cycle like we have in Madison - it cracks on the pre-determined joints.

To cut the joints all the way across, the crew had to use pads that don't sink into the concrete so they can kneel on the partly dried surface.

Once the joints were embedded, the concrete was re-smoothed of any imperfections.

Finally, it was time to brush finish the surface by, you guessed it, dragging a horse hair brush over it.

And we were done! It's hard to believe just how much of a difference it makes. Granted, it's about a $3000 investment but it's worth every dime in not chipping ice away and the way it makes the front of the house feel.

We're on a painting roll...

Things are rolling at Isthmus House these days. Some days, it feels more like they're about to roll over me but mostly it's just progress.

We left off last week with one beautiful foyer and stairwell. At least looking up when you walk in my house is nice! The stairwell has gotten a little beat up the last couple of weeks with demo upstairs (hmmm, guess that's a story for another time) and contractors coming up and down the stairs. It's okay though; we'll fix it because that's what we do!

Two weeks ago we talked about drywall downstairs on the walls that had lost a lot of the plaster and didn't have any trim on them. My general rule of thumb for choosing which walls were drywalled and which weren't was the presence of trim (there's trim? let's get plasterin') and the amount of damage to the plaster (uhhh, it's hanging off the wall, there are no keys and the lath is broken... that might be a problem - although not an insurmountable one).

The moral of this story is that the downstairs of Isthmus House ended up with a pretty decent sprinkling of old plaster walls with new drywall.

One of these walls is plaster and one is drywall - can you tell the difference?

Once all of it was done, the walls primed and the foyer and stairwell painted (which required things like scaffolding on stairs) it was time to start on the downstairs paint.

As it turned out, almost all of the paint I'd purchased a while back looked waaaaaaaaay different (I think it changed) now. Grey was mauve, sage was dirty olive, it was just bad.

And so we went back to the drawing board and found new colors - half of which I mixed myself because, well, I'm picky! I learned (for once, the easy way!) that it's best to stay in the same sheen and brand and to always use really high quality paint for any project.

Fortunately, my painters were able to work with my eventual choices.

I like light, non-pastel colors and it's incredible how light and bright the rooms look and feel now with them on the walls.

We're down to just baseboards, casings and trim paint now but it's a wonderful change already.

Check out our before and afters - what do you think?

Original Living Room Paint

New Living Room Paint

Old Dining Room

Now you can actually see the trim!

We still don't know what to call this color...

New study!

When your painting party fails...

Over the course of restoring Isthmus House, lots of people have offered help. Some wanted to put a sledgehammer through my walls (haha, no), some helped in the yard, and some offered to help with whatever might come up.

Based on that last one, The Roommate and I scheduled a painting party with our friends.

A few weeks prior, I also hosted a priming party with friends where the drywall took on a much more finished look from last week's raw state!

After the primer was complete, well, let's just say having a painting party - even with free food - isn't terribly successful on Labor Day.

Following that particular bump, I brought in pros to paint better and faster than I possibly could.

On their first day in, they tackled the stairwell and foyer, going so far as to fill in a hole left by my electrician when I asked for a fixture to move slightly to one side and a few nicks left from the initial drywall.

A new bump, it turned out I only had one gallon of paint in the color I'd chosen for the stairwell. No idea how that happened, but it turned out to be kind of a happy accident.

You see, when I figured out that I didn't have enough paint to fill my stairwell (I need about a gallon and a half because of the vault), I opened it to determine if I could add white to it and make it work with the other colors... and was promptly shocked that my nice light sage green I'd selected was this color:

The color my mother dubbed Dirty Olive. It was awful and nothing like the one I'd chosen... or thought I had.

Over the next 20 minutes, I feverishly added white (same sheen, same brand) to make a new color and then another new color:

And another:

And one more...

Before finally landing on a color I could live with.

About a minute later (really, I was stirring the last batch when my painter said he needed it), the paint was going up:

The crew was super fast and gave me a roll of tape to mark any touch ups I saw and wanted them to finish when they came back.

I did what they said:

I ended up with up with about a hundred little pieces of tape on my wall - resulting a sigh and a shake of a head before getting started on the last coat by my painter.

It's hard to believe that we started out with this: 

The foyer turned out beautifully, with lighting that's classic to the house, original trim and not Dirty Olive walls.

That little bit of white to the right is actually just a still-wet touch up, but I love this photo!

I'm going to call that a win.

The difference walls make...

So much is happening these days at Isthmus House and it's getting a little challenging to choose what to write about every week but I think it's time to talk about drywall!

We left this story a few weeks back by prepping for drywall. Electrical was capped off, floors taped and doors plasticed.

I took vacation so that I could hang around since I was working with a new crew. We'd said Thursday, which I took to mean 8am... and they'd apparently taken it to mean 4:45pm. Yes, they were over 8 hours late.

Not a great start but they came recommended by someone I'd worked with in the past and came in a whole $6000 under the next highest quote. Although I don't generally recommend taking the low quote, I'll do it once in a while when they come highly recommended.

When they did show up, they were fast.

The first room took less than an hour and the rest followed suit. I suppose that makes sense since sheetrock was created because plaster took too long to finish during the housing boom following the war.

To deal with my newly square opening's broken plaster, the drywall was doubled up. It's important that the drywall not have any room to bow and that every screw hits wood so that it can't pull out of the sheet on its own.

Once all of the drywall sheets were up, it was time for mud. Any screws that weren't fully embedded are pounded in with the hammer end of a spackle knife before being mudded over.

Add some pre-mudded tape to all of the seams (this crew used mud boxes or a little metal contraption that coats paper sheetrock tape in joint compound)...

 some drying time and a second coat...

 



 and we were ready for sanding!

Sanding is the real reason it's important to protect floors, doorways and duct work; the dust gets everywhere.

In case you don't believe me...

Sadly, it didn't occur to me to specify that the crew would clean up after themselves like most of my contractors and, naturally, we ran two days over schedule because of humidity slowing drying times. That translated to me traveling for work and The Roommate being left to clean up the mess.

Again, this is why you put down paper - it makes the job about a billion times faster.

She did a fantastic job and this is what I came home to - beautiful walls and clean floors!

Well, mostly...