Normandy Park Restoration

Finished up enough of the drywall last night that I have have a fully usable theater: And, I have the office side facing the family room done: Unfortunately I ran out of drywall screws so I wasn't able to put the final panel up on the stairwell, but this at least finally gives me a real perspective for the size of each room.  It looks like they will work out very well, however that may have to wait until I get some furniture in there to know for sure, but that won't be for a while. The original landing room, which you can see here, was very small and unusable:  The original family room, shown here: was very long and skinny, and I was worried that I might still have that issue with the new layout, but by shortening the landing room, it's made the rooms much more livable.

Non-stop rain this weekend, which discouraged me from doing much drywall, but finally on Sunday I got sick of waiting and ran down and threw some drywall on top of the wagon, put some plastic on it and headed home.  About 6 sheets is the maximum that I'm willing to put on top of the car.  I got some water resistant (blue) and normal drywall (white).  The water resistant stuff is used in the basement, with the normal stuff upstairs. I was able to get the island wall facing the living room, and one backside sheet installed, which you can see here.  This finally gives some feel for what the final kitchen space will look like. Then, in the basement theater, I was able to get the entire back wall drywalled. The black things leaning on the wall are the sound traps for the theater.  I should have time during the week to grab a few more sheets of drywall so that I can finish doing the theater room over Christmas.

Got a free sofa from a coworker.  I will serve as a temporary sofa until I finish more of the renovation.  The current red one will get sent down into the theater once I finish the drywall down there.

Got the wall mounts for the in-wall speakers done.  This is only a temporary mounting, as I'll need to get the drywall on before I can complete the install.

Needed to do some cleanup work.  Giving the self-leveling suspension in the wagon a workout. Also finally put some insulation in the walls where it had none, and put some more peg board in the bike room.

Got some 4x8 sheets of pegboard this weekend and paneled the bike room walls.  It's a little sloppy, but this isn't intended to be a finished space.  Plus I'm assuming that I will probably have to pull them down later for electrical and plumbing access.  But this gives me a better feel for the space.  From that I can tell that I have enough space in there with the bikes that it will work as a viable shop. I also got the theater room wired back up again, and wired one side of the kitchen, so finally I don't have an extension chord running across the floor to power the refrigerator upstairs.

Cleaned up the wiring in the bike room enough that it made sense to make it more usable.  Having several doors lying around from the demo work, I decided to cut them up and make a bench.  This was also done to cover the sump pump and plumbing. I'll add some pegboard later, and I've only done a quick cleanup job as I know I'll be doing more wiring and drilling in the floor joists what will make more of a mess later, but at least I have a place for the bike stuff now that's relatively usable.  This is what it looked like before.

It fits. Had to tear out the stairway cover so I could start doing the interior wall covering to meet code requirements, but really wanted to get the new wagon in the garage so I could work on it.  Managed to organize it enough to fit. Of course you can see a big pile of scrap wood on the side of the garage, I'll have to clean that up soon.

Needed to get the basement doors finally boarded up.  These were the old egress from the basement into the carport, but since it's a garage now it's not a valid egress so they had to be removed.  Here is the before:  And here is the after According to code the entire wall between the house and garage must have drywall on it, so I'll probably do that pretty soon.  This is a long time in coming, as the old double doors never closed right and leaked air like a sieve.  This will also be the first wiring drop for the garage wiring, so getting this done now allows me to wire the garage properly. The original cover I had over the stairs was really hard to get up, more than I planned, as each section was just too big.  So I'll have to redesign that a little bit.

About 99% done with the shelving.  Just a little fine-tuning to do.  Had the last minute idea to store the ladder in there, but it didn't fit so I'll have to tweek that section a little to make room for it, then I want to add one or two more cross slats and it should be done.

Getting closer with the garage shelving.  Will need to get some more wood to finish it.  Will likely add one more column towards the back of the unit.

Had to start pulling off the siding inside the garage so that I could wire it properly, but after I moved stuff I reorganized a little then got the itch to start on the shelving.  This should help keep stuff out of the way as I'm working in there.  Just getting started now, will take a few days to get it done.

Now that we have some decent weather, I got the skip coat of concrete put on the cinder block.  Here is the before and the after I didn't worry too much about making it perfect, as most of this will be under dirt anyway, but wanted it to blend in a little better than the raw cinder block, and have a little better water barrier than just cinder block alone.  Came out better than I expected.  Once it dries I'll put some tar sealant on the lower part, paint the upper to match the rest of the foundation, and then get to work on redoing the window well.

Discovered something I'm not good at, building cinder block walls.  I got the job done, but it's not pretty.  Here is the hole I had to fill:  And here is what it looks like filled.  Code allowed me to do this with treated wood, but I wanted the job done right. I need to put a "skim" coat on it so that it blends with the cast concrete.  If I can do a decent job of that the irregularities of the cinder block should be covered.

Almost done.  My math was off by about 3" on the top, so I'll need one more plank across the top, cut down.  Then some trim around the windows.  Also, I can't put the one last lower plank in until I fill the old window hold with cinder blocks.  But the look is almost complete. Compared to what it used to look like (this is just about the same angle). I also plan to pull up the bushes in front and replace them with more Japanese Blood Grass like the two I've planted near the entry door.

Got the glass installed.  Here is a night time shot that shows the exterior lighting with the clerestory windows. Should be able to finish the siding tomorrow, then I'll get a good daytime picture.

It's easy for me to forget what the house looked like and how far it's come.  Here is a shot of the house from when I bought it.  This is pretty much from the same angle as the siding picture below.  Nice improvement. And here is what it looks like now.

2nd round of siding installed. ....and after the 3rd round Hopefully I'll be able to finish it with one more round of work.  The angle of this shot starts to give you a feel for the overall look of the place.

Man, this stuff takes a loooong time to stain, but the results look very nice.  Here I've started the first round of siding. I will probably do this over the coming 2 weeks, staining some on one night, and installing is 1-2 days later.  It seems to take about 24 hours for the stain to fully dry.  Looks great though. Here is a better shot where I've stacked a few of the excess pieces on top so you can see more of what the wood will look like.

Takes a long time to stain the siding properly.  I build a rack for it that has a bunch of niles driven into 2x4's so that I can stain both sides at the same time with only the nail heads touching the backside of the beams. It's going to take a while to get all of this stained correctly.  Don't think I'll be able to finish the wall this weekend.

Here is the sample of the new siding material.  You can see the 2 slats to the right of the center window. The finish is much more consistent than the other stain I had used, and while it still has a rich color, it has less red tint to it.  I think it looks much nicer.

Not much of a wall to hang it on, but got my new clock.

Here the paint is about 1/2 done, so with one coat it's a little splotchy on the wall, but gives a good feel for the color.

I got a few boards and slapped some of the stain I'm planning to use on them.

The house is finally air tight again.  I have one of the clerestory windows done, with the raw glass in place, the rest are framed in their final form.   The vertical window is also framed, it's now properly framed in with a good 15 degree sill angle as it's likely to get wet.  All but the one window have hard plastic in them, the same type that's used in large florescent fixtures, as it's a cheap way to get a cover that can be seen through.  This is temporary so that at least I don't have bugs coming in while I'm waiting for the rest of the glass to come in. Doesn't look too different from the last shot but a lot of work to get it right.  Turned out I couldn't do the last open area above the door, so I had to redo the wall there, and the window above the door needed some additional framing above it as it was a junction point of the tongue and grove in the roof.  Only the outside framing is done.  I may want to integrate the inside framing with the dr

Scored a perfect floor lamp of Craigslist for $45....woohoo! ...and an action of of le mutt.

Nice little Craigslist find I also sold the sectional that was in the theater.  Just never found it comfortable.  Will probably move the current couches down there and get some new ones for the upstairs.

Finally putting stuff back on the house.  This is the first basement window.  Currently it's only loosely tacked in place, I'll get it fitted this weekend.  Big improvement over the aluminum single-pane windows.

Got the accent beam in place.  Took forever to trim the 4x4 separator down.  Still need to fill and sand.  Plus there is a little discrepancy between the beams, so I'll sand that even as well.  Not sure if I'll get enough done this weekend to frame the windows as well, but we'll see.

Here is a good shot that shows the exterior night time lighting.  Other than the tall, thin window, which is covered with plywood right now, this show some of the lighting coming out of the new clerestory windows.  They are covered with clear-ish plastic, so the light shines through nicely.

Needed to remove the front window and frame it before I could finish the laundry or kitchen framing and drywall, so I decided to go ahead and tackle the front wall of the house.  After several mockups I arrived at this: So I started by tearing off all of the front. As of Sunday I'm at this point and calling it a weekend, other than tacking up some plastic to cover the holes.