My Big Fat Renovation

[67ChevyRedneck]

1. I hate only painting half a wall, I hope I can get the paint to blend well without leaving an obvious paint line.

2. I use A LOT of tape.

3. But it's worth it!

[bopper_702]

just went through the whole thread and holy cow do u have talent my friend. house looks amazing after all the renovations. almost like new. great job!! seriously

[67ChevyRedneck]

Thanks!

Unfortunately, I haven't done much since the above pics in March. I spent MANY weekends getting my 65 Mustang ready for the Hot Rod Power tour (ran the whole thing, 3,424 miles total for us), and of the past 5 weekends, I've only been home for one of them.

I was planning to re-side the house this fall, but I've moved that to next spring. I just have to finish up the Hallway and one bedroom, and I told the wife I would do the master bath this winter to get that out of the way as well, and that would complete the entire inside of the house.

Also, my parents and a couple of sisters/husbands/kids are coming for a week for Thanksgiving and they've never seen my house and I don't want to have half the siding ripped off, as it might be the only time they ever come down from NY.

From the Power Tour:

[67ChevyRedneck]

I've started another mess!!!

Master bath... LAST room, as in , literally, physically the last room in the house that even could be worked on!

1 & 2. Didn't start off well... somewhere along the lines someone used speaker wire to add a 2nd light to the vanity. Yes, the wire was blackened in several areas.


3. It was such an easy fix!!!

4. New lights up.

[67ChevyRedneck]

Started to pull the tile off the tub. The flooring will be replaced and the tile wouldn't match, so I'm just going to surround it in wainscoting like the rest of the bathrooms.

Wasn't happy with how the tub was supported on the ends (grout around tub was cracked from too much movement) so I fixed that...

but was in a rush to get done last night so didn't take more pics.

I expect to be done with this one late Jan/Feb. I doubt the wife will give me longer than that on this one as it directly impacts her on a daily basis!

I plan to do phases to where it's still usable. Wainscoting & trim. Then wall repair and Primer. New tile floor. Paint ceiling, walls, cabinets, and wainscoting. Last is a new shower door.

This was also the only original color in the entire house we both liked. I kept a patch of it to possibly have it matched, or maybe a shade lighter.

[notsolo]

Also just finished reading and admiring your home improvements. That house like many was never that nice new. Going with vinyl siding again when you get to it? if so you might want to look at Cedar Impressions by Certainteed. Thicker than regular vinyl ( x3 ). Deck Turned out awesome BTW.

[67ChevyRedneck]

Thanks!

Not sure, price is going to have a lot to do with it... it's going to be very $ because the house/garage have so much surface area, but yeah, probably vinyl again.

1. Test fit the new mirrored vanity after removing that huge ass mirror glued to the wall. That was the 4th one I had removed.

2. Fixed the framing under the tub. Forgot to take pics, but it was much better than before. New sheetrock up. Not concerned with how it looks, it will all be covered with paneling.

3 & 4. New paneling up.

[67ChevyRedneck]

I did this a while ago (I think last winter), but I also got all the crown up.

Ignore the "crookedness" of some of the shots, this room is actually pretty square, the phone is doing that (makes it look like the wall coming at you in pic 2 and 3 has a serious tilt, it doesn't - the tilt also switches in each pic).

[67ChevyRedneck]

I only had to work Monday, using the last of my vacation to do the floor (off tues until sunday! - my job is "use it or lose it, I lost like 12 hours last year because I didn't know that...)

This was also the ONLY color in the entire house my wife and I liked, so I peeled a sample from behind where the wainscoting went and bought it to the store. We have it narrowed down to a few gray/blues that are similar.

[67ChevyRedneck]

Has anyone seen this before? It literally looks like it was burned in a fire??? No more beef and been burritos...

I haven't fixed a lot of toilets, maybe 6 or 7, but I don't remember ever seeing a wax seal that looks like it was charred in a fire???

[67ChevyRedneck]

1. Today was "make a mess day." Fun day. Clean up sucks though...

2. So, if you've actually read most of my thread, you would know that when my house was built they used glue on the sub floor joist. AWESOME idea.... when you combine it with the proper amount of nails/screws, yet again, I discovered about 5 or 6 nails per sheet of plywood... sigh...

3. And why I wasn't surprised. Most of the tiles were loose and cracked from the floor moving ever so slightly. Just like the rest of the house... I screwed the floor down to every joist every 6-8". The floor used to make a lot of noise/squeaks that you could easily hear in the living room/kitchen. It's soooooooooooooooooo much more quiet now. It's great! Jena and I took turns walking around in the bathroom and listening downstairs.

[67ChevyRedneck]

Floor cleaned up, screws down, primer for self leveler applied.

[67ChevyRedneck]

There was a noticeable dip in the floor, which is more evident with a level... Luckily the toilet was the highest area so I don't have to worry too much about tile/mortar thickness. There's just a wet skim coat over the whole floor and it filled that big low spot in nicely.

[67ChevyRedneck]

Looks like I'm behind on my updates!

1. New shower door was installed. Not fun when the top is almost 1" wider than the bottom I had to pre assemble everything as best I could before making any cuts to decide the best route. The best way was to make the right side square and use the adjuster on the left side to make up the difference (I tried to split the different, but the door wouldn't open/close/seal right...)

2.-4. Floor pattern mock up so I had a somewhat even pattern. I think it came out nice.

5. Sometimes you gotta spend money on the right tools. With 1/4"? thick tiles, this was well worth the $80 rental fee. It could cut a tile in about 10 seconds. The one I borrowed from my friend last year for free could barely cut the thinner 1/8" tiles I used and took about 30-45 seconds per tile!

[67ChevyRedneck]

Tile going down:

[67ChevyRedneck]

Starting the grout:

[67ChevyRedneck]

Grout done with most of the trim up. There are some gaps in pics still, that was because I hadn't gotten the quarter round on yet.

[67ChevyRedneck]

The wife has been using my bathroom since January. Not fun. There's stuff EVERYWHERE. Strangely, she's been fine with it??? I haven't touched the bathroom in about 4 weeks. We had a weekend away planned, I had a car stuff weekend, and a couple others I had other projects that took precedence! This weekend is going to be wall and ceiling repair to get it prepped for paint, and caulking... lots of freaking caulking... every time I say no more wainscoting... I do more... We really like the current color and picked one out that's pretty close. I need to get this done so I can have my bathroom back... shocked my wife hasn't complained yet... I told her late feb/early March.

I'd also like to note that the serious squeaking/popping sounds heard downstairs when someone was upstairs in the bathroom is COMPLETELY gone now that I screwed the floor and subfloor down to the joists properly. Now you just hear footsteps (but barely.)

I also don't think I mentioned it above but the tiles on the old floor had almost all came loose and were floating because of the joist issue and the subfloor the mortar was spread on only a had few staples holding it down.

[72 tigger]

Nice work! Any current projects or updates?

[67ChevyRedneck]

Good God, it's been a year???

Thanks for the bump. Yes, there's been a lot done!

Prepping the walls for color. A lot of little hole filling and fixing areas other people tried to fix and blended it all back in.

[67ChevyRedneck]

Then came the new color, which is closer to the old color, but more grayish-blue.

[67ChevyRedneck]

Then the upper trim got painted.

[67ChevyRedneck]

Then I started some of the final install stuff.

[67ChevyRedneck]

Pics 1 & 2 are before caulking and clean up.

Pics 3 & 4 area caulked. Makes the cabinets look a lot cleaner.

[67ChevyRedneck]

All of the cabinet doors got painted inside and out, top and bottom.