Normandy Park Restoration

I'd been meaning to replace the bathroom sink for a while.  Here is the old one: A little dated, but more importantly, looks dirty anytime you use it.  Found a good deal on it's replacement, here. Much better.

Finally pulled up the old subfloor in the "breakfast" area of the previous kitchen.  Here it is: The kitchen cabinets will extend out into this area in the new layout.  Here I've laid down 2 sheets of subflooring. It's just laid in position for now.  There's a small section of the floor as you transition from the back to the front that has a bow to it, so I'll have to shim it up.  Originally I was going to shim just the top sheet, but I think it would be better if I got underneath and shimmed between the floor joists and the diagonal slats.  We'll see though. At this point I've also added a 3rd section of track lights above the new area.  There will be a 4th section above the back door so that the whole area is well lit off one switch.

Finally decided to tackle the exposed floor joists to the left of the main stairs.  Here you can see the exposed section before: and after: This isn't intended to be the finished surface, rather a flat, square surface on which to mount some trim pieces.  I will likely run some tile backerboard up the side of the concrete, up over the new cover piece, and use that as a mounting surface from some stone facia. I was also finishing up some of the drywall in the laundry room and put the washer and dryer back in there as I'll need to use them for a while until I get the replacement units and finish the plumbing.

Again using a scrap door.  Good that I am as sizing is very important on these doors as I'm discovering.

Got some of the framing done, put some drywall in, and finished the subfloor. I'll be removing the nest of pipes on the back wall and using PEX tubing.  The connection box is tacked in where I will probably end up putting it.  I'm dragging my feet on doing the actual plumbing work, haven't filed for the permit yet, will probably do that this week.  Going to set it up with washer on the left, so the dryer vent will cross behind the washer.  I'll plan to use rigid pipe for that so that it's a clean installation. I actually need to pull the subfloor up so that I can glue it down too.

Decided to go ahead and install the office door so that I could learn the ins and outs of the barn door hardware I bought.  Used an old hollow core external door, it's not wide enough, but it's close, and if I botched it learning it doesn't cost me anything.  It will be replaced with a proper door, but not until the flooring is done, which will be a while. Quality of the hardware was better than I expected.  Made a few little mistakes, but nothing big.  I'll hold off on getting the real door until I know what the exact height of the flooring will be.  For now this at least allows me to keep the cat out.  I'll go ahead and order a 2nd set of hardware so that I can do the bike room.  I'll do the same and use an old door so that I can test it.

Now that I've done the most of the basement framing, I'm going to focus on the upstairs for a while.  Knowing that I wouldn't touch the basement for a while, I figured I'd make the office/lab/den/nerd-hole workable.  Put some Ikea legs on an old door, wired it up for cat5e, some lighting and shelving and we're all set. Even with the rough framed walls this should tide me over for a while so that I can at least get some use out of the room while I work on the kitchen and laundry upstairs, which will take a while.