New house, new renovation project :)

[joe_momma]

I've never seen that much snow in my life. Holy cow.

 

[terry5357]

Gees Gabe, yo could jump off the roof and not get hurt with that much snow. I can honestly say I have NEVER seen that much snow in all my life.

 

[Gabe]

Lol guys ..... we got about 3 more inches overnight, and I went back to the path I made last night and continued it so now I can walk all around the back of the house and can even use the deck stairs again

I also cleared the driveway again and widened it so I gained about 3 feet or more:

And also cleared the "driveway" on the other side of the house, in front of the house in-between the driveways, cleared the mailbox area and a good 10 feet beyond each driveway:

Inside, the weatherization guys finished blowing in the cellulose insulation into the attic, they installed the new range hood vent ductwork and the new clothes drier ductwork going from the bathroom to the soffit in the front of the house.

 

[Gabe]

Today my GF's bro-in-law came over and helped with the re-building of the openings from the living room to the kitchen and from the kitchen to the sun room / future dining room.

For the kitchen/sun room opening header, we put together a heavy mother fucker of a beam, made up of 2 10-foot 2x8's with half-inch plywood sandwiched in-between, glued/screwed/nailed together:

For the living room/kitchen opening, we went with the same idea, only 62" wide instead of using the whole 10-foot 2x8's, so it wasn't such a huge header, more of a mini one

Previous owner may have made his own cute little notes on trim and other things he installed ... I made my notes too

 

[GallopingFord]

lmao. classic.

 

[claudermilk]

LOL. Years down the road someone is going to open up that wall & go

 

[Gabe]

Exactly why I did it, LOL.


Today I went and picked up 18 of the 70 boxes of hardwood flooring we ordered.
Snowing, so I couldn't/didn't want to drive with the tonneau cover open so that I could've grabbed more.

I'll go back in a week or 2 and grab more.

The red birch we picked:

The truck was feeling the 1100-lb weight somewhat, but handled it great.

Loaded:

Unloaded:

 

[Kenaizer]

That is some nice flooring!

 

[GallopingFord]

Loving the make shift driveway... Really compliments the house.

 

[Gabe]

That is some nice flooring!

Thanks A.J.

Loving the make shift driveway... Really compliments the house.

Lol ... it made it easy to unload parts/supplies ... like today, 18 60-lb 7'-long boxes ... took a few minutes but at least I didn't have to walk them up a treacherous/slick walk-up walkway (currently under 4' of snow) or walk them through the garage and up 2 flights of stairs ... right through the front door and up onto the floor in the living room. Done.

By the way, your comment could be taken 2 ways ... is my house ugly or something?

 

[GallopingFord]

Lol no not at all - just making a funny

 

[5.0 Probie]

A circular drive is perfect for that house. Nice to see you do it with the snow as you mentioned early in the thread you might do put in a circular drive at some point.

 

[Gabe]

Lol no not at all - just making a funny

Lol, no prob .... I've been sick for the last couple of days, so I hear and read things all fucked up ...

A circular drive is perfect for that house. Nice to see you do it with the snow as you mentioned early in the thread you might do put in a circular drive at some point.

I'd love a circular driveway, but it's gonna be a year or 2 before we'll be able to afford that ...



Today I took the morning off since I was feeling like crap, stuffed up, nose and eyes leaking, groggy .... all kinds of fun

But I eventually went to the house and removed snow from the whole roof perimeter, especially since we have another foot of snow coming this Sunday and then possibly 3" of rain on Tuesday-Wed. Then I cleared both driveways with the snow blower.

I eventually made it inside and removed the 2 cement boards I had installed in the bath tub back wall, and built in a cubby that will have a different tile in the background than the rest of the tub surrounds.
Will also give us a place to put our bottles of shampoo/whatever.

 

[Gabe]

Finished the cubby project today, hung the 2 cement boards back up and cut/installed the cement board pieces inside the cubby.

GF spent a bit of time cleaning doors and trim using water and TSP, to get rid of as much nicotine and other crap as possible ... this was one of the light-color dirty-water dumps:

And one of the doors that's already had 2 passes done on it with the TSP/water solution ... can still see vertical lines on it ... I'm thinking KillZ primer and then the new white paint ...

 

[wanted]

I would recommend shellac primer over killz's for cover up after cleaning the walls/doors...I had to deal with nicotine stained walls in my current house and in one of the rooms I used kilz max due to running out of the shellac.I'm now starting to see bleed through of nicotine stains in that room and the wall has gotten a sticky feeling. I could only find shellac from sherwin williams in my area but the price is comparable to kilz if you can catch a sell.

 

[i am ryan]

I would check the Craigslist materials section for replacement doors before I cleaned all that crap off.

 

[Gabe]

I would recommend shellac primer over killz's for cover up after cleaning the walls/doors...I had to deal with nicotine stained walls in my current house and in one of the rooms I used kilz max due to running out of the shellac.I'm now starting to see bleed through of nicotine stains in that room and the wall has gotten a sticky feeling. I could only find shellac from sherwin williams in my area but the price is comparable to kilz if you can catch a sell.

Thanks for the tip!

I would check the Craigslist materials section for replacement doors before I cleaned all that crap off.

It's not that bad, and it's much cheaper than replacing them, even with craigslist stuff

 

[Gabe]

I would recommend shellac primer over killz's for cover up after cleaning the walls/doors...I had to deal with nicotine stained walls in my current house and in one of the rooms I used kilz max due to running out of the shellac.I'm now starting to see bleed through of nicotine stains in that room and the wall has gotten a sticky feeling. I could only find shellac from sherwin williams in my area but the price is comparable to kilz if you can catch a sell.

By the way, did you try washing any of it off when you did it?

GF is doing 2 heavy passes on everything, first bucket we dumped out had black water in it ... so she's definitely removing a lot of crap simply by washing ...

 

[Johnf78]

Yes still do it after washing. Also make sure you rinse anything you do with just water when using a tsp cleaner good. It can leave a residue behind. There is also a product called B-I-N made by Zinsser and Seal Lock made by Insl-x (sold at most Benjamin Moore stores). The other nice part about a shellac base primer is that it is a vapor barrier primer and will lock in the odor.

 

[Gabe]

Yes still do it after washing. Also make sure you rinse anything you do with just water when using a tsp cleaner good. It can leave a residue behind. There is also a product called B-I-N made by Zinsser and Seal Lock made by Insl-x (sold at most Benjamin Moore stores). The other nice part about a shellac base primer is that it is a vapor barrier primer and will lock in the odor.

Found that B-I-N stuff after a Google search this morning, seems like top-quality stuff ... "smell and stain gone after one application"

I'll definitely try it ... will probably buy a gallon of it today and try it out soon ... need to make a Home Depot run anyway