On the front section of the house, there was a hipped roof for the porch and it had perpetually been a problem with leaks. I was constantly up there tarring away where the roof met the wall to keep it from leaking. Granted, I probably could have fixed it by simply flashing it properly where it met the wall but I had another problem: that front roof was designed so that all the runoff ran out over the steps (and consequently down your neck) instead of off to the sides of the house where the plants could enjoy it. Granted, I could have installed gutters but tearing off that roof and sloping it to the sides permanently solved the runoff problem, removed two roof lines, and left me with no gutters to clean. :-) All in all, the net result was a much less troublesome roof.
As we worked our way around the house (roofing), we also ran the siding up at the same time, replacing all the windows that still needed replacing, and removing any other obstacles to doing a bang up job. When we got to the North wall, it had a whole crapload of stuff attached to it: cable TV, electricity, and phone lines had one wall an obstacle course for siding. It was during this same time period that I was getting my fiber cable laid so I hand dug a trench from the curb to the side of my house and laid two 4" PVC conduits in them.
I then bought my 200 amp service box, underground box, and all the conduit, 000 gage wire and electrical goodies to build my new electrical feed. Once I was ready with the new box, I got Consumers Energy to come out and they ran their cable through my conduit up to my underground box. Once they ran their cable, I had them shut down my feed and I made the swaps in my box and 5 minutes later had power restored to all the computer equipment I house. Wohoooo.
Between replacing the roof on the front half of the house, replacing all the siding and windows in the rest of the house, a hiking trip in the Killarney mountains, installing a DS3, upgrading the electrical feed, gas meter, and few other little projects, it was fall before I knew it. All the interior renovations were sitting on the back burner as I worked furiously to get the outside of the house all buttoned up and weatherproof before winter.
Somewhere in there I also found time to tear out the old kitchen, remove it's floor, remove the walls, replace the window, tear out the old laundry area, re-joist it (the old ones were all rotted away), lay the new subfloor, and then hand lay all the 3/4" tongue and groove solid oak hardwood flooring. Shortly thereafter all my kitchen cabinets came in (Aristokraft solid oak cabinets with dovetailed drawers, premium drawer slides, yadda yadda) and I installed my new cabinets. Once the cabinets were installed the counter guys came and got all the measurement and went off to custom build the counter tops.
It was not early December and with the new kitchen making rapid progress and the family Christmas at Matt's house deadline drawing nearer, I tackled the bathroom. I still have a hard time coming to grips with how much time I spent working in that bathroom. The first thing I had to do was tear out everything, including the old cast iron vent tube and plumbing. The old bath fixtures had been leaking so I also had to tear up the entire floor and restud the bath floor too. The support beam was sagging so I had to support and jack it up to level as well. So, after tearing out everything so that nothing was left but a big hole in the corner, I started in. Because of the laundry being in the bath and the ceramic floors, I went overkill and studded 2x8's on 12" centers. I then wove two layers of 3/4 inch flooring for my subfloor and laid my concrete backerboard over that. Not only is my new bath floor solid but it's pretty water-tight too. :-)After laying the floor I replaced all the walls, ran the wiring, and ran all the new plumbing. Wow, can that eat up a chunk of time. I then spend a couple days finding out that the Gerber Ultra-flush was the toilet for me. It's a 1.6 gallon that flushes everything down the first time, every time. It's a power flush that makes people jump the first time they hear it sucking their turds away. Everything in the bathroom took a long time. Wiring the lights was a bugger because the ceiling wasn't very accessible and I had five fixtures (one center and four flood lamps) in the room, two in the closet, separate outlets for GFCI, whirlpool tub, washer and dryer. Then building in a closet, shelves, scabbing walls back to true so that the tub will fit, setting a whirlpool tub, tiling in the enclosures, floor, walls, and surrounds, hooking up fixtures, etc.. What a job!
After spending a lot more time than expected in the bathroom and having Christmas looming on the horizon, I got the cold water plumbed into the sink and toilet and Nathan, Melissa, Mary, and I started our 36 hour marathon before Christmas to get my house looking and feeling like Christmas. I spent the week leading up to Christmas with drywall mudding implements in my hands. When I wasn't mudding I we were putting up more drywall to mud or sanding away. I bought huge painting cloths to contain the drywall dust and we worked like mad to get the front portions of the house (the living room) looking good. This photo was the night before Christmas:
After working thru the night, we had it looking like this before my family showed up on the morning of Christmas eve:
A tremendous amount of work was done in a very short period of time and I owe thanks to Melissa, Nathan, Mary, Daniel, and everyone else that helped out. After our little Marathon session, my family showed up with presents that covered all of the floor within 10 feet of the tree. We had lunch, opened presents, and I settled into my long overdue pose:
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