My Big Fat Renovation

[67ChevyRedneck]

All of the wainscoting was finish caulked and painted.

[67ChevyRedneck]

The final product. Everything is 100% done, all of the hanging stuff and decorations done, etc.

[67ChevyRedneck]

More...

[67ChevyRedneck]

In terms of color and trim this may be one of my favorite rooms in the house.

Jena loves it.

I earned some time off from house work for some much needed garage time...

[67ChevyRedneck]

...but then we got hit with another damn quarter + sized hail storm... son.. of... a... *****

The bad. My wifes car was destroyed and my C10 had about $500 in damage to new trim, so not worth claiming the truck.

The good news is my brand new truck I just bought was still at work and the house is 20+ years old now and was due for some better windows (the ones in the house were barely builders grade). Not only are we getting a new roof (again - haven't had it done yet, will get it done this spring) but insurance paid to replace 8 of out 18 windows. So I struck a deal with a really good company that makes very good high quality windows 20 minutes from my house (Taylors Windows) to install all of the 2nd floor and hail damaged windows (12 total) and I would install the last 6 (all under the porch and the 2 garage windows) AND caulk and repaint all of my window jams to save money, so basically after insurance, We got every window in the house replaced with high quality ones for $3,200 more than insurance paid out for the damaged windows.

I started with the garage windows.

[67ChevyRedneck]

Finished up right at dark. took a solid half day to do 2 windows... :/

[67ChevyRedneck]

Things went quicker on the next set, but I started on Thanksgiving Day morning at 7am.

We've lived in this house since 2009 and NEVER ONCE has this dog EVER gotten into my chair. She was pissed because I took her couch away for the day to work on the windows...

[67ChevyRedneck]

They're a much nicer window than what we removed. The outer frame is even shaped like brick molding to match the door trim.

Just a little bit to show what I had to do to each window to make them nice again...

[67ChevyRedneck]

Then I spent the next 3 weekends caulking and painting the window sills and trim and rehanging all of the blinds. Boring tedious work I had already done once... but it was worth the cost savings.

Just an example of one window redone. I did keep paint for every room in the house, so color matching was easy.

[67ChevyRedneck]

...and FINALLY. My garage is beautiful now!

The one white area behind the compression is because I still need to get an electrician to add a subpanel. I don't have enough space for a compressor and I want to add a couple more plug ins.

[67ChevyRedneck]

That's all caught up on the house stuff.

What's left to do inside is to finish all of the trim in the computer room and build the closet for that room. That's it. A few weekends worth of work if I ever get to it...

On the outside we plan to have the roof redone sometime in May and right after that I will begin the process of residing the house

Yup, with the windows and roof and all the interior improvements we're going to do it now while I have the time and $ to do it. Unfortunately I'm pretty sure it's going to take me a couple months of weekends. I've done siding before, it just takes time and there's some high areas I'll need scaffolding (or maybe rent a lift for a weekend) to do.

If you also noticed my house is naked under the siding, not uncommon to see here, but it should have been wrapped at a minimum. The new windows seem to have made a dent in our winter heating bill and the house feels warmer overall on the same temp settings as last year. Be interesting to see how it does fully wrapped as well.

Which is also why I've been going like gang busters on my C10 build the past month or so.

[72 tigger]

Very nice work! Everything looks great!

[67ChevyRedneck]

What in the hell is he up to now?

Stay tuned...

[67ChevyRedneck]

Originally Posted by 72 tigger

Very nice work! Everything looks great!

Thanks for continuing to follow along!

One of the few projects I haven't done myself, and wouldn't begin to attempt with the size of my house and steepness of the garage roof! Thanks for Guy Roofing for doing another excellent job (they did my roof in 2011 when we had another bad hail storm).

I only have one room/closet left to finish up inside the house, but there are some major changes coming to the exterior which were kicked off last month when the roof got a color change from hail damage (thanks State Farm!)

The color is "flagstone" and it's extremely popular right now (I hadn't noticed until we decided to go with the change, now I see it on houses everywhere - our area is exploding with development).

Being completely honest, I don't like how the color looks in pics. It really does look A LOT better in person, it's nowhere near as "brown" as it appears in the pics.

[67ChevyRedneck]

So, I've been having problems with water getting in the french doors. I've talked to several other people that have french doors and they have the same problem. I flashed and siliconed the crap out of it properly the last time it was done, the water is coming in from around the seals. Our door is a fiberglass face on both sides with a wood core that's exposed on the sides. The exposed side, even being fully painted, adsorbed water, shrank, swelled, and after only 5 years is rotten and letting even more water in.

SO, I wanted to build an accent roof to make the back of the house look a lot less boring and to keep water off of the new french door I will be buying. The new doors I've looked at are metal and are capped front/back/top/bottom/left/right/ with steel, so the wood core is NEVER exposed. I don't want metal because it can get dinged, but at this point I'm not paying $1,200 for another fiberglass door.

I started off exposing the structure of the house to find the best place to tie the roof, move a bathroom vent 6' to the left, and make sure I don't put a lag bolt through an electrical wire.

Of course the vent hose was a couple feet too short to move it that far... so I had to pull the vent in the bathroom, tape a new hose to the old, and slowly pull it through the floor.

[67ChevyRedneck]

Next up was putting the insulation back in place and the sheeting back up. The old sheeting was installed using 2"or so long staples everywhere, so of course they refused to come off the house withing buckling, so I put up new sheeting.

It also looked to me the way the sheeting was installed that there was a large gap where air could blow into the wall cavity, so I ran some rolled window/door sealer over the gap.

I will also be wrapping the house when the siding is done as a moisture barrier and to hopefully help lower our bills a little bit. Our power company gives us a "how your doing vs other homes of the same size" chart every month and we're 10-20% higher most months and there's only two of us.

[67ChevyRedneck]

So, I may have had an accident when removing the plywood from the wall... wife heard the noise and came outside.

[67ChevyRedneck]

When she came outside to check on me I was all like:

[67ChevyRedneck]

I always get asked how I build so many things by myself and always get them so straight/level. I do have my wife help sometimes, but most of the time it's just me.

One of my tricks it so mark where level is, use a scab as a holder for one side just below the level line, get the board up on the opposite side, line it up and put a nail in the lower corner for it to pivot, put a level on it, then do the other side. What also helps is I've had paslode framing and trim nailers since I bought the house. LOVE them. If you work by yourself they're a must.

[67ChevyRedneck]

Next up was to get the framing up. The top 2x10 that will take the brunt of the weight in tension was lag bolted to the 2nd floor framing every 2 feet. It should never go anywhere. The bottom 2x6 is in compression, but I still added lag bolts anyway.

The overhang is 30". It will be a tad longer with the drip edge and shingles on.

[67ChevyRedneck]

I just had to get a sheet of plywood up to see how it would look and I had to even commission the C10 to get some work done!

[67ChevyRedneck]

I got as far as I could the first weekend. I ran out of time and daylight and hurricane Nate was going to start dumping rain on use the next day so I made sure to get at least some tar paper over my new $$$ plywood.

[67ChevyRedneck]

And check this out!

It rained pretty good and for the most part the door stayed completely dry! It did rain harder and a little sideways later on and the floor and door got a little damp from splash back, but otherwise stayed 100% dry. Rain hitting the door and running down was the initial problem!

[67ChevyRedneck]

I might have had a little accident with the roofing plywood. On the first piece, I had my ladder too close to the roof so when I went to slide the piece along the rafters it kicked out, pushed me +/-8' off the ladder and fell to the deck

Luckily I was able to "jump back" away from the ladder so it didn't crush my ass.

I looked at equipment rental to do the siding and it was going to be $$$ for the time it would take me to do it, so I went out and bought scaffolding. I'll be able to reuse it to pressure wash the house every couple of years! The left side gets really dirty from the evergreen trees next to me every couple of years and companies want $5-600 to do my house!

I used to work summers for my uncle pressure washing cars and dump trucks for extra $. It's not fun but I'm pretty good at it. It's easy to break siding if you don't know what you're doing.

[Russell Ashley]

The overhang looks good, nice work you are doing. A metal door should hold up well but if the sun hits directly on it it will burn you hand if you touch it. A consideration if you have small children. I agree with you about the nailers. They're almost a necessity when you work by yourself.