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    • Blog
    Renovating the House! (Slowly)
    • I'm going to be hitting the ground running here pretty shortly with regards to the house work. I'm trying to get the basement finished, but I figured I would like to document the whole journey, all the small projects, etc.

      So, I figured I would do that here!

      The first thing I did was redo the "red room". The guy before me I guess really liked red. I thought it was questionable. Haha. This room would become my roommates temporary bedroom/living room until I finish the basement.

      Red Room




      The next step was to make my room something that is actually... livable. It was disgusting. Haha.
      My room

      This was what would become my room when I bought the place:

      Pulled up the old carpet, laid down some new stuff and painted:

      And the finished product. My mom was nice enough to make the curtains, and the girlfriend did the little art work things.


      The last two days was a fairly big job. We had some flooding in the basement. I figured it was mostly due to the water pooling under the deck and just sitting there until it found a way in. So I needed to do some landscaping. The plan was to rip out the old, dead garden (it was all weeds now), build up the land so that it slopes away from the foundation, and angle it into a drain pipe that we would install.

      The yard work

      Day 1, we ripped out the garden and dug the hole for the drain pipe. I told my dad like 50 times that we were digging it too close to the house, and that it wasn't going to be deep enough to have the pipe under the ground entirely, He disagreed.

      We ended up filling it and digging a new one where I said it should've went in the first place. Haha.
      Before: (not sure when this picture was taken, it was a realtor picture)


      Ripping up the garden:


      The first drain hole:


      The second drain hole haha:


      Starting to slope the land:


      Where the pipe drains to through:


      We got a BBQ the other day, so we decided to also put in a patio while we were at it:





      So now I've gotta just keep on top of watering it so it stops looking like shit. haha. Also we're going to get 3 more patio stones and make the BBQ spot one row deeper. Didn't make it big enough. Fits the BBQ well enough, but it doesn't leave room to stand on while using it.

      The drain and the patio stones as well as the sloping of the ground should stop future flooding though. I feel like we accomplished something this weekend. haha.


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      #1

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    • Step 2 was plumbing! It was uh, fun. I found out that my water service in had been leaking for what looked to be years. I was digging under the concrete with the crowbar and felt some really... muddy stuff. Broke the floor a little further and found the line providing water to the house was corroded and leaking everywhere. it hollowed out a bit under the house. Oh god. Haha.
      So, $300 later to have the city shut off the water... I went and bought a new copper pipe to rejoin the line. Water pressure in the house is waaaaay better. It was shitty, but it was a good find.

      So after getting the outside walls framed in, I had to lay in the plumbing. And that's what we did. Day 1 was about 12 hours, and many frustrations. Day 2 was like 5 hours, easy peasy.

      Breaking up the floor


      We made quite the mess on day 1. Haha



      The root of all evil



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    • The following weekend was framing the interior walls, and strapping the roof. Less disasters, so that was nice.

      Display Spoiler

      This is the entranceway:


      Entrance to the bedroom, a closet under the stairs, and we're standing in the living room.


      The living room/kitchen, and the washroom is at the very end of the room.


      New concrete dried. I think I kept it decently level and smooth.


      This weekend I'm finishing off the plumbing. We need to run all the feeder lines. We only ran the waste lines so far. We'll also be moving the washer and dryer downstairs at this point. I've been without laundry for a week and a half now! Also, I'll be finishing up the electrical probably Saturday. Maybe a bit of Sunday. hopefully I can take it easy Sunday though. It's been a while since I had a day off. Haha.


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      OP

    • A couple weeks back after we got all the plumbing and electrical out of the way, we finally finished framing the walls:
      Done the framing completely!



      Next was insulation. Did all the exterior walls in a weekend. Did the ceiling (which I didn't take pictures of) over the course of the week. We decided to soundproof/insulate the ceiling since it's the basement.
      Insulation

      Bedroom:


      Washroom:


      We also finally got the HVAC stuff in motion. A lot of work needs to be done for it. Pictured here, I've got new cold air returns roughed in, a couple new runs planned out, and finally sealed up the trunk, so my airflow is waaaaayyy better than it ever was before:

      HVAC Work

      New cold air return roughed in for the basement living room, as well as the new cold air return (old one was half the required size) for the upstairs


      Some furnace mods to accommodate the new return


      The trunk is all sealed up and a new run made for the new bathroom



      Very busy weekend this past weekend because I had a hockey tournament, we started drywalling, and we finished up most of the HVAC stuff. It's been crazy. But drywall is when you really start seeing progress. It's getting pretty exciting. Haha.

      Drywall

      Bathroom. We used mold/water resistant for the washroom walls, and this concrete wall stuff for around the tub.



      Ceiling fan installed, and roof drywalled. The roof suuuucks. You've gotta use heavier stuff, so it's a huge pain to get it up there.


      And this is the living room/kitchen. Mostly drywalled. Roof done.
      ]/spoiler]


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    • More drywall stuff.

      I've got the walkway to the bedroom done, a little closet under the stairs, and the bedroom. Oh, and the laundry room is a legit room now! Haha.

      Drywall 2

      The living room and the bathroom are fully taped, mudded and sanded. I'll be painting tomorrow. Also, you can see into the bedroom through the little walkway here. (Bedroom door comes later)

      Here's another view of the walkway to the bedroom. On the other side, there's a little closet under the stairs, since it would be dead space anyway.


      Looking into the bedroom:


      The bedroom is going to have 3 sorta different closets, since it's dead space anyway. Furthest on the left is a really deep one. Since it's in the corner, I'm going o build a shelving unit into it. It'll just be for misc storage. If you go all the way to the back of the closet and look to your right, you can see dead space behind the actual closet. this is where the stack and all the plumbing is. I left it accessible just in case.

      On the far right, you can kind of see the other little closet. It will also have shelves built into it and no door.

      In the middle is the actual legit closet. It'll be a double door, it's fairly wide.



      And finally, I moved the laundry to the basement to free up a closet upstairs. The laundry room is finally an actual room downstairs now. Haha. It's a little messy because we're still in construction, but It'll be plenty big when we're done and cleaned up. I'm stoked about it. Haha.



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    • Well, it's getting pretty exciting pretty quickly I think. I'm all painted, and all my electrical is done. I filled up the breaker panel, but we made everything fit. Haha.

      The paint was given to me. A friend has a painting business. He gave me 4 or 5 gallons and said just mix them and see what you get. I added a gallon of white to make it lighter. Turned out well I think.

      Display Spoiler

      This is the living room/kitchen.


      The kitchen [4 lights] and the living room [6 lights] are on different dimmers, so everything doesn't have to be on all at once.
      Bathroom


      Bathroom fan is on a timer


      Hallway to the bedroom


      Bedroom looking towards the hallway


      Bedroom looking from the hallway


      Stairs finally have a light! I might paint the stairs and the hallway here after I'm all done


      Also finally not doing laundry in the dark


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      #13

      OP

    • I too approve of the floor! I think that would look really nice in my living room (our floor really needs to be redone).

      Gosh, I wish I could get my bf to actually do some work around our house. We've been in it a year and had all these plans. So far, I have an unfinished pantry closet renovation... -_- lmao
      In his defense, we did spend a lot of money on other things... lawn mowers, snow blowers, and other various equipment. And we do need new windows badly. (That's the big $$$!!)

      I guess I can't complain too much, because my barn is going to be built in the spring... :saint:

      Anyway, I keep popping in here, so just wanted to say hi and keep up the great work! I'm going to look into getting those floors, too :D
      xox *~* MiSsKaTrInAlYnN3 *~* xox
      I write stuff sometimes
      Shadows of Hyrule | Shadows of the Yiga

      #16
    • If there's one thing I've learned over the course of this experience... it's that even the small jobs are huge if you don't really know what you're doing. Haha.
      But also, yeah windows are brutal. We did the downstairs windows last fall. I think it was like 240/window. We installed them ourselves because install was going to be a lot on top of that.

      Unfortunately my windows on the top floor gotta go probably next summer. And they're pretty big (probably about 450/window), there's 4 of them, and there's no friggin way I'm installing big windows on a second floor, so we'll need installers to. It's going to suck. Haha.

      Also if you can, look for floors that have the foam padding on the underside already. Easier than laying it down separate!


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      #17

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