[Spirit Deer]

Let there be light! EVERYWHERE! Well, almost.

The dining area of our kitchen will be where this temporary light has been installed on the left. The 6 holes in the ceiling with wires coming out will become home to dimmable wafer lights, and the one without the wire is where the new pendant will go above the island. The 2 windows on the right have to be removed for the kitchen wiring. Cabinets will go where the wall is missing.

Bedroom on the left and sewing room on the right.

Main bathroom will be getting 3 lights and a fan.

The laundry room never had a ceiling light before. It's getting 2 now.

 

[marthamfi]

awesome deal on the light! so much progress. the dogs aren't going to know what happened when they come back.

 

[Spirit Deer]

IKR! I keep wondering how they will respond. Last time they were there, it looked like this:

I just had the idea to do custom beading on the new light shades.i just have to decide what to do, how to do it, and what I'd have enough beads to do. I want unique things, and that would certainly be unique. Also beautiful. I need to give this some serious thought. I might want to bead on the fixture, too, so would need to get it done very soon. I can take more time with the shades, since they can be put up later.

 

[Spirit Deer]

I find this fascinating. This is almost all the old wiring stripped out of the main floor, and they took out everything.

That's it. That little pile. That's how inadequate the old wiring system was, never mind how unsafe it also was. Yet another reason to be happy we're putting in an all new system. R said we've added over 20 new circuits already, plus what was already there. Plenty of outlets for everything.

We're also adding a whole-house surge suppressor in the breaker box. R said our electronics should have 3 layers of suppressor protection, not just one from a strip plugged into the wall. The whole-house suppressor will be the first line of defense.

 

[Contrary Housewife]

You guys definitely bought the Handyman Special there, didn't you? Some of that looks like it shouldn't have been used for electrical wiring. It'll be nice to know you've got adequate circuitry for all your needs, and it is up to code.

 

[Spirit Deer]

We've come across very few ugly surprises so far, the biggest one being the chimney we opted not to remove. That one still stings a little, but I think once the new wall is up with the pocket door and the shelving is in covering the corner where the chimney is, it won't matter. We knew we were buying a fixer and anticipated big expenses like wiring and all new windows, new kitchen, baths, and laundry, so no suprises there either. We're focused on the result of getting what we wanted but never expected to find. I'm just happy we've been able to do most of the demo ourselves. That's saving us thousands.

 

[Spirit Deer]

Here's today's wild idea. I've been thinking about it for a while now, but finally hauled my lazy behind out to the cabin to take some measurements. I have this entertainment center and this dresser:

I'm thinking about marrying the two pieces by stacking them with the dresser on the bottom to form a single piece of furniture. I would have to beef up the dresser to support the extra weight. I was thinking about buying a big china hutch for the mud room, to put cookbooks in the top and games and puzzles (maybe) in the bottom. Or other stuff. It would be unique. If I painted it all one color it would look more unified. I was thinking about cutting the entertainment center down to make the whole thing a stepback hutch, which would make it lighter and look less like a big entertainment center stacked on a dang dresser. It's 16.5" deep and would be more hutchlike at around 12" instead. I'm going to keep mulling this idea over, but I like the way the 2 pieces look together based on the pics instead of just in my imagination. I hope I can make it all work. I have only $25 invested in the two pieces, and would be very happy if I could avoid buying a china hutch and use something I already have instead to save money and also get something unusual and hopefully cool.

Maybe I've been looking at pics of too many boho apartments. 😁😁😁

 

[Spirit Deer]

It has occurred to me if I can make myself get rid of at least one of the two antique wardrobes in my sewing room and replace them with the stacked dresser and TV center I was thinking about for the mudroom, and lose the big fabric rack, I could not only gain some floor space, but eliminate a bunch of totes and other random storage, too. Stacking those 2 pieces would create a massive 7H x 5½W storage unit 18" deep. Man, the stash I could manage with that! It would be almost like gaining a whole new closet.

I can see I need to reel myself back in. Once the Sheetrock is done, we will be able to start our own projects and need a good plan. I can't decide what to do first. Every room looks interesting, filled with possibilities and fun projects. I do think the mudroom almost has to be first by default, because we need the dog door ASAP. But we are trying not to add much weight to the south end of the house due to the shoddy supports in the crawl space that can't be corrected till we have warmer weather and the water turned back on. It's all a dilemma. And of course a lot of the planning can't be done until we can get contractors involved, which further complicates our plans.

I'm seriously thinking the starting point, after the big cabinet the dog door will be in, might be the sewing room closet. It's small (5x6), it isn't going to need additional wiring, plumbing, or windows, may not need the ceiling painted, drywall repairs will be minimal, and I would be able to finish it all except flooring fairly quickly. Then I could move some things into it right away and feel like something was being accomplished. Or maybe something else will become obvious as we come to the end of needing so much contractor involvement. Who knows?

Guess I better start figuring out some things about the dog door cabinet. Electricians will have to know soon where to reroute a wire that's in the way of the dog door which has only one possible location.

 

[Spirit Deer]

Okay, I think I now have the perfect use for the dresser pictured above. Husby and I have been haggling over what the half wall for the living room should look like. He wanted just a straight wall four feet from the island, and I wanted an L shape. I got the idea to use the dresser as the short part of the L, facing the mud room with the back facing the LR. I may want to convert the drawers to shelves and make over the drawer fronts into cabinet doors. I hate the trend of tossing drawers to make open shelves, but don't mind making shelves with doors from the drawers. The dresser would be fastened to the floor so it would, in effect, become a half wall. The new shelves would be used for storing board games and puzzles. I really like this idea and so does Husby, so maybe this will stick.

That decision led to a better idea than stacking the repurposed TV cabinet on the dresser, which I would have had to heavily modify to support the heavy cabinet. Instead, I plan to reclaim the Roughneck totes I used to have stacked in my sewing room before I got frustrated with always seeming to need the one at the bottom of the stack. I will build a rack that will hold probably 4-6 of them, including the 3 under the current fabric rack I didn't know what to do with. 2X4 framing will easily support anything I want to put on it. I'm excited about this project, too. I love doing that kind of framing project, so it's easy and fun for me.

I also decided to only make 13' of loft storage in the sewing room, and see if that's enough before doing any more. I think it might be, and then the room would seem bigger without the second long shelf up at the ceiling. Things change when we can see our new spaces in reality instead of just on paper.

 

[Spirit Deer]

I finally got around to measuring the space where I'm thinking of putting a big china hutch to use for cookbooks. It's not as big as I thought, only 4.5 ft. I have another TV cabinet currently in use as storage for potting supplies. It may fit that space. I like it, but it's far from antique, rustic, or lodgey. However, sometimes frugality beats out style, and we've never been purists anyway. I think our style is now switching over to Eclectic Casual. 🤣🤣🤣

 

[Spirit Deer]

I don't think I ever said J solved the mystery of the interior load bearing walls. There are none! J looked up in the attic and said the framing in the main part of the building was done with hand built custom trusses, which is why they were able to have the big open space for the sanctuary and why our kitchen and living room will also be wide open. He said it's a very solidly built building. The word he used was "awesome". Which makes the mystery of the crappy supports in the crawlspace even more perplexing, although we think that part of the building was a later addition obviously done by amateurs completely lacking common sense. 🙄🙄🙄😳😳🤬But it's nice to have our unprofessional impressions of the overall quality of our new house confirmed by yet another expert.

We bought 7 gallons of paint yesterday for the pantry, kitchen, and sewing room. It feels like a turning point, away from demolition toward reconstruction. Can't wait to get started.

In the meantime, I still have sewing to do, and we have a little more demo to do, too.

I've been looking at baseboard and trim prices because of having to replace some baseboards with wider baseboards where electricians had to open some spaces to run wiring. Holy cow! I'm so glad we, in our infinite cheapness, have been carefully removing the old baseboards and trim from everything so it can be painted and reused. It's going to save us a LOT of money.

 

[Spirit Deer]

Well, crap! I just talked to J and he confirmed my worst thoughts about Sheetrock and windows in the former sanctuary. The old windows have to go. That will leave large holes in the Sheetrock that would need to be patched. The new windows will mostly go in between the old windows, and will need new headers where more Sheetrock will be removed. By the time all that old 'rock is removed, so much patching will be needed it makes more sense to just remove it all and put in new to avoid the patching. And we thought we were through the worst of the mess. We're going in today, and will look the situation over better. We may be able to reduce the destruction by changing window placements and using the old window openings. We would still have to remove more Sheetrock for new, bigger windows, but not the entire walls. I don't think there are any other options in the kitchen though.

 

[MaggieTru]

dang!! sorry about all the sheetrock.

 

[Spirit Deer]

We drove in to check on our stupid building permit we were supposed to have last Monday. The inspector had completely forgotten about it. 🤬🤬🤬🤬 Now we're supposed to get it next Monday. We better! I get so tired of people not doing their damn job. Now we have a Sheetrock crew wanting to come next week, and no permit.

We spent 2 hrs at the house looking at the old 'rock to see how much we might be able to avoid ripping out. IMO, most of it should be able to stay, but will see what J says. I think by shifting the new window placements, we can make most of the old openings work, partially. They're almost all too narrow and will still need new headers, but we should avoid almost all the patching. The most damage will be from the 2 old windows to be removed in the kitchen, but most of that will be behind cabinets. Some of the damage will be between the backsplash and bottom of the cabinets, but I would rather put money into nice tile or tin backsplashes than new Sheetrock and perfect mudding and taping. The fancy backsplash would probably cost more, but would be nicer in the end and not be that much more. I think it will all work out better than I first thought. I hope. Can't wait to get new windows in. Utilizing part of existing window framing should cut down on labor costs a little, too.

My mom is mad at us because we're going to trash the old windows. "But somebody could use those!" Yes, Mom, everyone in town would be stampeding to our house to get our old, half rotted, inoperable, frost producing windows with opaque glass. Give me a break. Not hard to see where my hoarder tendencies came from. At least I'm not that ridiculous. 🙄🙄🙄

We spent a lot of time trying to figure out furniture placement in the living room. What we came up with is radically different than what we had been thinking of, but once we figured out we want to be able to see out our front windows when we're sitting down, everything changed and we realized there aren't many options. That made it easier in some ways, harder in others. The TV will now have to go between the mud room and LR. The back of the TV will be the first thing people see when they walk in. Not happy about that, but I'm sure I'll figure out how to make it look nicer or just live with it.

We may have to get a lower TV cabinet. I'm seeing potential in the long cabinet we salvaged a while back, the one on the right.

I can picture it with the top 3 spaces left open for cable box, clock, and sound bar, the middle 3 drawers replaced, and possibly a new electric fireplace installed across the bottom. I'm not sold on the idea yet, but it's worth some thought since I have to rebuild the base anyway. This isn't a decision we have to make now. It could even wait till after we move in.

I'm feeling better about the LR and window/Sheetrock situation. Still not happy about the permit.

 

[MaggieTru]

I feel your permit pain! Been there....
I got one bit of good sheetrock advice from a cousin who hangs it in minnesota...ignore if you have HAD IT with unsolicited advice. I'll leave a gap so you don't have to see it if you don't want.....





After my folks' place flooded and the sheetrock needed replaced on the entire 1st floor, he recommended leaving a 1" gap at the floor which will be hidden by the mop-board (is there a name for that?) so that if there was a minor flood, bit spill, or someone mopped a bit too heavily the moisture would not wick up into the wall.

 

[Spirit Deer]

Good tip. I think J does it that way. Yes, it would be covered by the baseboards. I'm a writer, so I'm used to unsolicited advice. 😂😂 It's sometimes helpful, doesn't offend me, and easily ignored if it's not workable for our particular situation. 🙂🙂

We met with J and the Sheetrock crew today and the window removals and replacements will commence on Tuesday, followed by the 'rock hanging. Quicker than anticipated, and it's going to waste a lot of heat, but J warned us today it's basically now or they don't know when because the spring construction season will be ramping up and they're fully booked for the year. We've been lucky to have them at our beck and call the past couple months. We're so much farther ahead than if we had waited till we were "ready" to call in contractors.

After that, we finally made decisions about the LR windows, and decided on three 30" windows. Those are stock windows, but they only have 3 right now, so I hope no one buys any today. Husby will be going to get them early tomorrow.

We also decided to replace the second window in the bathroom instead of closing it off. He'll pick up that one, too, along with another big load of lumber.

The replacement window for the one Menards lost is supposed to arrive today, but the truck is late. Of course it is. 🙄🙄🙄

I was shopping for windows today and noticed the ones we bought in January have gone up. Wwwwaaaaayyyyyy up. Like $130. Each! We bought 4. Huge savings! I wondered about myself, buying so early at a sale price that wasn't a very big sale in January. Man, am I glad we did!

I'm also glad I kept nagging to buy a few at a time. Now that J has dropped the window replacements in our laps so soon, we are very happy to have acquired 13 windows, and will most likely be able to get the last 5 this weekend. Just in the nick of time.

Lots more demo to do, unfortunately. J's bringing the big trailer again. sigh But after this round of rip and tear, we should be pretty much done with the worst dust-producing messes. Something to look foward to.

I can't believe at this time next week, we should have windows we can actually see through. It's been awful not being able to see out. I guess sewing curtains will be a high priority now.

 

[Spirit Deer]

Yea, Husby just bought the last 3 windows they had in the store that were right for the living room! Plus the second one for the bathroom.

Now if the one we ordered 2 months ago that they lost would just show up, we would finally have all our windows. It's supposed to be on "the truck" but the truck is late and they don't know when it's due, so apparently they've lost the entire damn truck now. 😳

They're lucky we find this more amusing than infuriating. Luckily it's a window we can easily put in ourselves, so it's not a huge deal if our window crew can't come back if it ever does show up.

 

[Spirit Deer]

Ah-ha! I found another cheap vinyl mini blind NIB that's been sitting by our side door for yrs, waiting to be installed on an adjacent window. It's only 31" wide but will probably fit somewhere. Maybe on the pantry window, if we ever get it. 🙄

I also have 2 very nice shade cloth shades (not sure what they're called). They're a shade cloth mesh, but on a roller like a normal opaque shade. They would be hard to see through unless they're backlit, so might be good temporarily in the sewing room.

We have odds and ends of curtain rods around so may not have to buy as many as I thought. I had been thinking I replaced all the old curtain rods that came with the lake house, but now that I've taken more time to think about it, I don't think it was very many at all, like 3 or so. No wonder we can't find a big bundle of them! Glad we hadn't put much effort into searching yet. I'll add curtain rods to the secondhand list, after I gather up what we do have.

Also need to see if the stair rails we removed from the spare stairs will work for hanging the LR drapes, now that we know what windows we're putting in. The wood rings that came with the drapes are huge.

Mom gave me 2 curtain rods and a wood closet dowel yesterday, so that will help.

I'm going to be obsessed with windows the next couple of weeks at least. Finally, CONstruction instead of DEstruction!

 

[Contrary Housewife]

Looking forward to new pics with all the changes!

 

[Spirit Deer]

I'm looking forward to it, too! I don't know how fast the windows will go in. Several don't need new headers, so obvy they'll be quicker. We also don't know if they will be able to be there on consecutive days, since our project is fill-in stuff to keep people working in the slow season. I hope they will be able to keep going once they start. Then it will be Sheetrock, for additional exciting changes.

I wish our missing window would have arrived, but alas. We will need to go buy ceiling paint before long, so maybe it will be there by then. I'm not too worried about it because it's one that doesn't need a header, so would be an easy DIY.