So tired

It has been a long time since the last update but I have a good excuse, I was too tired to care.  With the onset of spring and the starting on the baby room I have been stretched a little thin.

Here is what has happened in the basement.  The office has been trimmed except for the north wall with the window because I still have yet to decide what to do about the window.  Option one is to replace with a new window and option two is to just install some glass block.  We have also moved into the office which has opened up the two upstairs room.  It's good because now I can get to work on the guest room and baby room, it's bad because now I have to work on the guest room and baby room.
Here is the office with trim:

I have also been a painting machine the last three weeks. It took a couple tries before I finally settled on a brand and sheen that I like (the four coats in the hallay will attest to that) but no everything is painted.

I have also started trimming out the rec room.  The carpet we ordered from Menards is available and I am trying to get the rec room ready for carpet this week because Menards has had the carpet for one week already and I am shortly anticipating a call saying "come pick up your damn carpet before we burn it!".

Here is the rec room as it looks now:

It turns out there is something cathartic about distilling about 30 hours of work to two paragraphs and three pictures.  It allows me to forget about the absolute nightmare that installing the doors in the rec room was or  the multiple dings and scratches I put in the wall installing those doors.  I also lets me forget about  the crack I discovered in the ceiling the other day as a result of missing some screws in a seam in the drywall (I blame my brothers:) and the ensuing problem of trying to fix it while matching the texture (spoiler alert, I can't do it).

Over-budget and behind schedule

I have been making good progress, although I am not as far as I wish I was.  We have also exceeded our budget.  In the budget each category included about 150-$200 worth of misc. expenses to cover extra materials or things I didn't think of.  Well, that misc. category has gone way over budget in every facet of the construction and has eaten up all the savings.  I still think the entire project will come under budget because we will be getting our carpet at Menards and they are having a huge sale this week.

I am also not quite as far as I would like and I blame the weather.  I need to paint the trim and doors and rather than hand painting 3 doors and about 400 linear feet of trim I was going to spray it all.  Unfortunately it has been so cold and I need the temperature to be above 50 since I will be spraying in the garage (per the paint manufacturers recommendation.

Heres where were at:

The office floor is installed and all the electrical is finished.  The office is just waiting for the trim.  This picture shows the office "in progress":

The recroom subfloor is partially installed.  There are still some pieces that need to be anchored.  Unfortunately my hammer drill broke so that delayed progress. Thankfully it was still under warranty so a quick trip to Menards and it was replaced.

The walls are ready for paint.  They have been sanded and primed and then double-checked, resanded and re-primed.  Don't worry mom, this picture is actually alot safer than it appears to be.

The floors have been cleaned and the platon subfloor has been installed.

We purchased a couch from Ashley and my brother and I picked it up and brought it into the basement.  By the way, at the start of this remodel and installed a trailer hitch on Julies car and that has decision has paid for itself at least two times over.  Being able to pick-up the couch alone saved us about 70$ (after accounting for our own gas use)

When picking the paint we just when by some of those pre-done color brochures and then when one step lighter to account for the lack of natural light. The swatch on the right is the color from the brochure, on the left is one step lighter.  I'm really glad we took the extra time to paint the sample on the wall because I think it helped us make a better choice in regard to color.

New speakers, paint and texture

I got new speakers from monoprice.com this week.

While the new speakers were very exciting, it required a little retrofitting in the rec room. If you look closely on the second picture, you might be able to see the new drywall I had to install under the soffit to accommodate the new speakers.

As to why I didn't plan on this from the beginning, I never anticipated using in-wall speakers.  When I first priced them out  the cost was not outrageous but it was just too expensive to justify, especially when I had perfectly fine speakers already.  So I just planned on mounting my current speakers to the wall.  Then, a week ago, I was checking out monoprice.com and was able to get 4 high quality, in-wall speakers, for less than 1 of the speakers I had originally priced.  Cut to one week later and I am cutting holes in my recently finished drywall.  

Since Sunday I have finished painting the office and it looks AWESOME.  

I have also textured the rec room ceiling.

Texturing the rec room ceiling taught me three important lessons:

1) I still lack the consistency needed for texturing the walls

2) Use the bags of texturing mud instead of just thinned-down joint compound

3)  Not taping plastic on all the walls and just planning on scraping any overspray of the walls is NOT a good choice.  Cleaning up the walls takes way more time than just hanging plastic.

colorization has begun

Thankfully, some of the basement is ready to be painted.  I was getting very worn out on drywall mudding and sanding and needed a break.  After way over-thinking it I decided on some paint on color choices.  We went with a pale blue in satin in the office.  We will be adding an additional horizontal stripe with an accent wall in green for an additional punch.

In the bathroom we chose a much more neutral color, also in satin, to compliment some of the glass tiles in the shower.

The rest of the drywall in the basement is getting much close to being done.  I just have a few walls left that need some final sanding and the rec ceiling needs to be textured and thats it.  I will be so happy when that part of the remodel is finished because the drywalling has been, by far, the longest phase of the remodel and I was already sick of it last week.

I think I have probably sanded an entire sheet worth of drywall dust!

I have been making slow and steady progress on the walls.  About half of them are finished and have been primed.  The other half is just in need of some final coating around corners and sanding.  I also need to texture the rec room ceiling.

Speaking of texturing, I had initially planned on texturing the the walls but I am now making them smooth. After some experimentation I decided to forgo texturing because I don't think I would be able to make a consistent and even look.  Since this will be on the walls and not hidden on the ceiling I was very worried that I would hate the texture once the paint was on the walls.  I knew I could make a smooth wall (activate obsessive perfectionist power) but it would just take additional time.  So I decided to trade time for  a finish I knew would not bother me in the future.

There are no pictures of the basement in this post because nothing has really changed (that you can see in a picture) so here is a picture of a cute puppy instead.

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My arm hurts

Over the last few days I have attacked the basement with drywall mud.  I have gone through 1.5 - 60 lbs pails and 2 - 50lbs bags and I am about 75% done, not counting texturing.  The office, and hall have two coats and the rec room is about 90% done with the first coat.  I haven't even touched the bathroom yet.  On a side not, there are WAY too many corners in the basement!

By they way, it turns out that one should examine laminate flooring on clearance extra carefully.  I looked at the flooring we got a few months ago and discovered that instead of having 8 separate patterns of wood planks, this system only had two.  In a long hallway that would not even begin to look random, so we had to return those.  My theory is that this type of flooring had one pattern per box and since it was on clearance they were down to what was on hand which happened to be overwhelmingly of one type of pattern.  Or maybe the guy that loaded it was just a jackass and didn't notice he was grabbing all of the same pattern.

Dust everywhere

Since he last posting we have finished hanging all the drywall.  I also got the shower enclosure finished (sans tile). see below.

Pouring the thinset for a base for the pan to better level it:

 Here is the pan with drain installed:

Here is the enclosure with a layer of plastic and the shelf framed in:

And the final product.  The cementboard is up for the tile and the fan is installed and vented to the outside.

I have also finished all the prep work for the taping and mudding.  I have gone through and check the screws, cut out broken board and pre-filled large gaps, holes and very uneven joints.

Long time no see

Well, a full schedule, a cold and some unwanted snow meant for a very slow last couple of weeks.  I didn't even get downstairs once all of last week.  I did get down there this weekend and even got some unexpected help.  Together, the wife and I got all the drywall hung except for the shower stall area and started putting on some corner bead..  The goal for the end of this week is to have the basement taped and ready for priming.

Painting the ceiling: Redux

After some internet research I decided on a new paint sprayer.  If you will allow me a little corporate shilling, I chose a Wagner "Paint Crew".  Yes, that is the same brand as the handheld sprayer I recently threw away but after much research I learned that the problems I experienced with that model is pretty typical for that level of sprayer regardless of brand.  It turns out that those handheld sprayer  are only worth it for infrequent, small jobs.  So I chose a more robust, professional style sprayer:

This was definitely the right choice.  I took 2.5 gallons to spray the black on the ceiling and it took longer to clean the sprayer up than it did to actually spray the ceiling.  There was never dripping or spattering.  It worked exactly as one would expect a paint sprayer to work.  So now the ceiling is done(I have a picture lower in the blog)

On a side note, I tore down a drywall panel above the stair and found a surprise peeking out at me:

By the time I had taken the entire panel down I had hit the jackpot:

Free baby toys...Yay!!!

At one point there was a hole in the wall in the kitchen and this must have been the previous owner's kid's stash spot until is was covered up and the toys were lost to history.

Yesterday I got the office insulated and drywalled.  On the second picture you can see the finished ceiling.

On another side note, I hate the CFL flood lights I bought for the recessed lighting.  When you first turn them on they are at about 20% of total brightness and take close to 3 minutes to get to full brightness. Something that is totally unacceptable in my opinion.  I will be returning these and looking for a different brand.

Painting the ceiling

Things are looking really good.  Got the the okay from the building inspector on all the rough in work.   Heres the proof:

Today I decided to tackle the ceiling painting job since that is the last step before drywalling everything.  I got everything prepped and hooked-up my Wagner airless sprayer and began spraying the primer.  

Here is the before:

Here is the after:

You: " So how did the Wagner airless sprayer work for you, would you recommend it?"

Me: "They say a picture is worth a thousand words, so take a look at this:

"Any questions?"

All the...small things

I am soooo close to drywalling everything...sortof.  There are so many little things that are just adding up and seem to be taking forever. "Give me some examples" you say.  Well, here you go.

I needed to put at least on directly wired smoke alarm in the basement on a separate circuit.  The easy choice would be to just wire a new circuit to the basement alarm, I did not choose that option.  I thought it would be nice to connect the smoke alarm on the top floor with the one in the basement so if one goes off the other will too, alerting all floors in the house.  Well that required new cable to the upstairs smoke alarm since the builder did not plan for connecting multiple smoke alarms.

A whole in the wall to run the cable to the attic: (yes you read that right, I needed to go back into the attic yesterday:(

I also needed to anchor the plumbing to prepare it for drywall:

In addition to those little things I also finished running the electrical today and framing in the office door.

This sucks

Over the weekend I tackled another project that I had been putting off.  I needed to connect the plumbing vent for the basement bathroom into the stack vent.  The only place that was possible and code compliant was in the attic.  I debated just running the new vent through the roof but I really didn't feel like cutting holes in our roof in the middle of winter.  Below is a picture of me in the attic attaching the vent into the existing vent. Not pictured is my overwhelming hatred of this task.

On a side note my reventing of the kitchen vent from earlier in the month seems to have gone well since there is no longer a frost build-up in the kitchen area.

On another side note...<sarcasm> thanks for the heads-up <sarcasm>  To all you handy guys viewing this blog, how come no-one noticed I roughed in the shower on the wrong wall.  I put it on the wall opposite of the door which is especially a no-no since we will be just putting a curtain in.  Thankfully PEX is incredibly easy to move and this little mistake will only cost me about an hour.

Slow and steady

The plumbing is all roughed in!  Tonight I finished plumbing in the utility sink and running lines to the wet bar.  I also installed the shower valve and riser.  See pictures below:

FML

This weekend was a bachelor weekend so I figured this would be the perfect time to plumb in the new water supply lines to the basement.  This turned out to be the right decision because this phase turned out to be a giant pain in the a$$.  It required three separate hardware store runs, a couple buckets, a bunch of towels and a big fan.

I planned to supply water to the new bathroom by adding a PEX manifold and running PEX lines to each fixture.  I was going to tap into a main line near the bathroom and add a valve.  This project reminded me of an ancient Chinese proverb "when you want to drive a nail into a piece of wood, don't get fancy, just hit the fucking thing with a hammer"

Here is my first (fancy attempt):

I soldered a tee into the main line and the valve would control the water to the PEX manifold.  It turns out that in a large, clean space and no water in the pipes I am pretty good at making solder joints.  In an awkward location with pipes that don't completely drain I suck at making solder joints.  The large spray of water from the above tee joint after I turned on the water will attest to those previous facts.

Below is my plan B (unfancy) attempt.

I decided to just abandoned the copper lines to the kitchen and add a simple elbow joint to divert water to the PEX manifold.  I would then resupply water to the kitchen through the PEX manifold.  Since all of these connections would be in a supply closet and not hidden behind walls I felt fine going with this less time-tested method.  The weird connection joints are a recent discovery of mine (and turned out to be a major godsend). They are Watts push-on connectors and provide a water-tight connection without soldering.

Here is the final product.  This is the PEX manifold with lines running to the kitchen and basement fixtures:

I loved this stuff.  Once I got going it took only two hours to run supply lines to a kitchen and a bathroom including shutoff valves at each location.

I also added drain lines for the wetbar and moved the utility sink to my shop.  Below is the before and after pictures of the wet bar area.

Speaking of my shop,  I may have made it too small.  See below: