Finishing a Garage, Part 1
Posted by Wayne
After a much needed (and much deserved, if you ask me) break, this past weekend I started on a new house project.
I’ve spent the past couple of months deciding on which project I wanted to tackle next. I’ve been wanting to finish off our garage just so I can have a nice place to work on the rest of the house projects. Our garage is gloomy and ugly. Some of the drywall work is the worst I’ve ever seen. The walls of the garage are covered with that “holey” material to hang tools from. There is only one electrical outlet in the garage. There is only a single light bulb in the garage. I temporarily fixed the lighting issue before we even moved into the house by adding some fluorescent lighting, but nothing is hardwired and there are cords running all over above and below the rafters above. With a little effort I can fix all the shortcomings of the garage and have a really nice place to work.
This past Saturday my friend Tito was helping me pick up our old appliances and countertops to load up in a trailer to take to the dump. While I had the trailer (borrowed from my folks) I figured I should swing by Home Depot to get some drywall and start on the project.
Before
Alone in the Wilderness
Posted by Wayne
Last night I was hypnotized by a movie on PBS called “Alone in the Wilderness”. It’s a documentary about a crusty old guy who is builds himself a log cabin next to an extremely remote Alaskan lake. He was filmed building the cabin “by himself”, but obviously there was a person there filming too. In any case, I was extremely impressed with the guy’s craftsmanship and the ease with which he built the cabin over several months to prepare for the harsh Alaskan winter.
Finished Kitchen
Posted by Wayne
Kitchen Before
Kitchen After
Quite an improvement, huh?
Replaced garden window, replaced countertops, painted cabinets, new appliances, new sliding glass door, installed wood floor, new pantry door, new ceiling lights, installed undercabinet lighting, tiled backsplash, replaced outlets
Total cost: $8000. Total time: about 120 hours (that’s my estimate and I’m sticking to it). Most of the work was done in random 3 hour shifts over about 5 months.
Completing the Wood Floor
Posted by Wayne
We had two gaps in the wood floor that I had completed some time back. One of the gaps was between the sliding glass door and the flooring, and on the other side of the floor there was a space between the flooring and the carpet of the living room.
We had bought a matching threshold and t-molding piece to fill these gaps, but I needed to wait until the baseboard trim was in place before installing them to cut them to the right size. Once I had the baseboard trim installed cutting and applying these pieces with my nail gun was a breeze.
The nail gun left tiny holes in the top of the pieces, and I could fill them if I needed, but they aren’t noticeable so I just left them as is.
After
Installing Trim and Casing
Posted by Wayne
At this point in the kitchen project everything major was completed. All that was left was to install baseboard trim, casing around the sliding glass door and pantry, trim the vinyl window, cut and install the wood floor thresholds, and replace and bring out the electrical outlets to be flush with the newly installed backsplash.
Installing trim is pretty straight forward, but requires accurate measuring and great attention to detail to end up with a seamless final product.
Before I could start on the actual trim and casing work, I had to build out the sliding glass door to be flush with the interior wall.
Installing a Microwave
Posted by Wayne
I was not particularly excited about putting the new microwave in after the trouble I had getting the old one out. It was attached with two bolts coming in from the cabinet above and on the back with a wall mounted bracket. I removed the two bolts, and then lifted and pried from every possible angle trying to get it off of the wall bracket. I took half of the old microwave apart from the bottom because I believed there must be a hidden screw attaching it to the wall bracket somewhere, but I couldn’t find anything. I eventually just ripped it off the wall. I still cannot figure out why the old microwave was so tough to take down.
Installing a Dishwasher
Posted by Wayne
When we were purchasing our appliance set the salesman asked us if we wanted to have their guys install the appliances, and I told him I could handle it but I was curious about installing the microwave because I had such a tough time getting the old one removed. He told me if I could install the dishwasher, I could easily install the microwave. That removed my fears about the microwave because I knew the dishwasher would be a piece of cake.
It certainly didn’t hurt that I removed the old dishwasher so I had a good understanding of how the new one would go in. There are 3 things you have to connect: the dishwasher drainage, the water supply line, and the hardwired electricity. The water supply line has it’s own shutoff valve underneath the sink and the electricity is on its own breaker, both of which I turned off before removing the old dishwasher.
Laying a Hardwood Floor
Posted by Wayne
We had our appliances scheduled for delivery on about January 19, and my original goal was to have the hardwood floors installed before that date so I could start right away with installing the appliances. We picked out some engineered wood in early December from Home Depot and it needed to be special ordered and they told us it they would have it in about 2 weeks. We also had to order a t-molding for where the hardwood floor of the kitchen would meet the carpet of the living room, and a threshold piece for where the hardwood would meet the sliding glass door.
I prepared the floor by ripping up the old linoleum and removing all of the baseboard trim. The linoleum left a fair amount of paper and glue residue. I spent quite a bit of time scraping up all of the paper, but I was still left with a lot of old glue that didn’t really want to come up. The difference between where there was glue remaining and where it came up with the linoleum left a lot of spots in the floor with up to an 1/8th inch difference in the height of the floor. I had intended to nail down the wood to the floor, but because I couldn’t easily get a super level surface I went with the easier option of gluing it down. I knew the glue would fill in any of these height differences and leave the finished wood at a perfectly level height. This was probably over cautious because the height differences were really minimal, but I didn’t want to take any chances.
Kitchen- Replacing a pantry door
Posted by Wayne
Like the rest of the doors in the house, the pantry door in our kitchen was brown and ugly. My first step in replacing it was to remove the matching brown trim from around the outside of the door. I was a little surprised to find that the builders of the house had sized down the door frame by building out pieces of wood trim to match the size of the pantry door. This inside framing was loose, a result of nails that were too short to hold it to the surrounding framing, but I didn’t really want to go to the trouble of rebuilding it so I carefully left it in place. I would resecure it to the surrounding framing and paint it to match the door before re-trimming the outside.
Before
Cabinets- Installing European Hinges
Posted by Wayne
As I detailed in an earlier post, before painting the cabinet doors I bored 35mm holes into them for mounting european “cup” hinges with a drill press and a special drill bit. The european hinges are a real visual upgrade over standard hinges because they are hidden from sight when the doors are closed. The moving pieces of a european hinge basically fold up and go into the cup when the door is closed, and the cups are recessed into the back of the door by about 1/2 inch.
When I was boring the holes for mounting the hinges, I wasn’t particularly concerned about the vertical placement of the hinges. I just bored the holes into the doors at about the same location as the old hinges. The important part was that they were all the right distance away from the edge of the door. I bought a european hinge kit from Home Depot in the cabinet hardware section which included the 35mm drill bit and a plastic template which you could place against the edge of the door and mark the perfect location each time.
A lot of places on the internet lead you to believe that you need some sort of jig to locate and drill these holes correctly. While I probably wouldn’t try to freehand these holes with a boring bit in my hand drill considering the consequences of a mistake (a ruined door that I couldn’t replace), the kit I bought from Home Depot cost about $15 and included a template and the required 35mm boring bit. The $15 kit paired with a drill press was more than sufficient. It took me about an hour to bore all the holes in 17 doors and every one was perfect, and mounting the doors to the cabinets proved pretty easy as well.
Painting Oak Cabinets- Part 2
Posted by Wayne
To prepare for the messy job of spraying paint I hung plastic sheeting to seal off the painting area in the kitchen and also created a “painting room” in the unfinished basement in which I’d spray the cabinet doors. The “room” was made by stapling plastic sheeting to the floor joists above and I covered the floor with butcher paper.
My original thought on painting the doors was that I’d somehow hang all the doors from the floor joists but began to realize that this was just impractical to do in my basement. Instead I’d lean the doors against the walls in my sealed off space, spray them, and after they had dried I’d rotate them bottom side up for the second coat to make sure I was hitting all the sides (it was mostly the bottom of the door that I’d be missing on each coat as it was against the floor). Then I’d repeat with the backs of the doors. I was also doing a primer coat on each side. So for those doing the math, that’s three coats per side, or six total coats.
Painting Oak Cabinets- Part 1
Posted by Wayne
Figuring out what we were going to do with the honey oak cabinetry in the kitchen would determine whether or not we would bust our budget. There are three options I can think of when it comes to updating cabinetry:
1) Buy new cabinets- Obviously the most expensive option. Our cabinets are ugly, but still in good shape, so I didn’t see us replacing the cabinets without trying a cheaper option first. We didn’t even get a quote on new cabinets, but I’m guessing it would have been in the neighborhood of $5k.
2) Buy new cabinet doors and veneer or laminate the cabinet boxes with matching material- This was a much less expensive option, but still probably would have cost around $1200-1500. This was my first choice, but my wife got it in her head that any veneering or laminate on the cabinet boxes would start peeling off over time and claimed to have seen this. I totally disagreed, but was willing to try to save money first by going with option #3.
3) Paint the cabinets- This was by far the cheapest option (<$100) but most labor intensive. We had gotten pretty good results hand painting our bathroom cabinets which are made out of the same honey oak material, but those are not at eye level and it is a lot darker in the bathroom than the kitchen.
Kitchen- Replacing a sliding glass door
Posted by Wayne
The first task I took on in the kitchen was replacing the sliding glass door leading to the back deck. The door I was replacing was metal, brownish/green, was constantly coming off the track on the bottom, and wouldn’t lock so the previous owners of the house has sawed down a broom handle to just the right length so you could lay it down in the track behind the closed door and the door wouldn’t open. Needless to say, this all had to go to make our kitchen look decent.
Updating the Kitchen
Posted by Wayne
Before
Oh boy, now we’re getting to the fun stuff. As I write I am in the process of finishing the kitchen updating. As you can see from the picture above, we started with your typical 1980’s kitchen: honey oak cabinetry, laminate countertops, linoleum flooring, ugly bay window, ugly sliding glass door (just outside the picture to the left), etc. If I go upstairs now and look at the kitchen, I can’t believe it’s the same space.
For this project I’d be painting (hopefully) and installing hidden european hinges on the oak cabinets, tiling or installing granite countertops with an undermount sink (and all the plumbing that comes along with it), adding in some sort of tile backsplash, replacing the appliances, replacing the lighting, replacing the bay window, replacing the sliding glass door, tearing up the linoleum and installing wood flooring, and replacing the pantry doors (not seen just to the right of the photo). This is a big job. Probably not so start-from-scratchish as the office space I completed, but there was just as much work to do here.
I read a while back that the absolute minimum cost for upgrading a kitchen is $15k. I knew for a fact I could do this for $5k, with all brand new nice appliances, and people wouldn’t believe how good it looked. Tune in again to see how I did it and how it all turned out (or come to our unveiling party March 1, invitations to be sent out soon).
Office Space- The finished product
Posted by Wayne
Finishing the office took me a couple of months just working on the weekends. I liked the finished office so much that I had to buy a 20″ iMac for the space rather than put my ugly old computer down there. My wife uses the office space to do her interior design work and we’re both down there frequently.
I also bought a pretty sweet set of Harmon Kardon Soundsticks II speakers off of Ebay and the subwoofer fit perfectly into the box I had built below the desk for that purpose. The sound in the room is incredible.
We also added a few extras like the shelf above the desk and the corkboard on the back wall.
Office Space- Built in Desk
Posted by Wayne
Now that I had the room drywalled it was time for the fun part. Rather than bore you with the details of the decorating (which were all my wife’s ideas, so I can’t take credit), I’ll skim those and get to the built in desk, which is really what the room was all about.
The first step after drywalling was to prime and paint the room. The ceiling was painted white, 2 walls off white, and 2 walls tan. For the carpet my wife picked out some large carpet tiles that I didn’t think much of at first but they have really grown on me. These carpet tiles have a thick rubber backing so they really don’t move if they go down on a concrete floor. I started in one corner and worked my way to the other, sticking the tiles down to the floor with a double sided tape. I think the key to making these tiles look really good is to get really tight seams, so I took my time positioning them and sticking them down. When I got to the edges, the carpet tiles were very easy to cut. I would make my measurements, flip them over, and then use a straight edge and utility knife to cut right through them.
Office Space- Electrical Wiring
Posted by Wayne
Electricity seems to mystify (and scare) a lot of people, however I find it quite interesting and easy to work with. As far as being scared, I can’t blame those people… but it’s easy to avoid getting shocked. If I’m changing a light fixture I turn off the switch and tape it down with some masking tape so no one turns it on causing me to forget what the off position is. If I’m working with an electrical outlet, I plug something into it and turn it on, make my wife stand there, and then go outside to the breaker box and turn off breakers until she yells that it isn’t working anymore.
Now that I’ve said it’s easy to avoid getting shocked, I have in fact been shocked with 110v several times and it wasn’t too bad (nothing on my body smoked afterwards). I understand that getting shocked with 220v is a much more electrifying experience, and as I have future work involving 220v in the queue I will plan on being much more careful with that.
Before mounting electrical boxes to the framing I had to make a decision on exactly where we wanted the outlet(s) located on the wall. It was at about this time that I made the decision that I would be custom building and laminating a wall mounted permanent desk. I figured the computer would plug in down below and the computer monitor would plug in through a grommeted hole through the desk. I also wanted to have an outlet above the desk just for plugging in things every now and then without having to crawl around under the desk.
Office Space- Framing, part 2
Posted by Wayne
Squaring up the room while attaching wood framing was a fairly simple task, but it was time consuming. By measuring an equal distance from the framed wall in two spots and connecting the dots I was able to get a parallel line which I drew on the floor with a marker and the straight edge of my level. I wanted this parallel line to be exactly 1 inch from the cement wall in the narrowest place (the top right of the image below) because I would be starting with a 1 inch piece of wood for my framing. As I went down the wall the framing would have to get thicker and thicker to keep it even with the line I had drawn on the floor. As long as the framing was built out to that line, I knew I’d have a square room when I drywalled.
Office Space- Framing, part 1
Posted by Wayne
Probably the most difficult part of finishing this unused space would be the framing (or more accurately, preparing the room for drywalling). When we were looking at buying this house I took a quick look in this space and I thought this would probably be an easy task. However, after living in the house for a while and examining the room more thoroughly I recognized several problems with the space (perhaps explaining why the previous owners left the space unfinished when they were finishing the basement right outside the door).
The first obvious problem was that 3 of the walls were cement foundation (the other wall was framed with 2×4 studs). The cement walls would require that I put up some shallow framing on them so I would have something to screw the drywall to.
Another thing that I noticed was that the walls were not square to each other. In the image below I’ve estimated the angles of the corners. Because we wanted to put a desk in the room, the room being anything less than square was unacceptable because I believed once you put a square desk in the room you would quickly notice all of the funky angles.
Although I could have just framed and drywalled as is, I really didn’t want to spend all the time finishing the room only to find I had created a room that you have to stumble around in like a drunk because your subconscious brain could tell the walls were all going in different directions.
Office Space
Posted by Wayne
This next project was something that I did to an awkward little room at the bottom of the stairs in the finished part of the basement. It could have been a good laundry room but there was no 220v electricity, venting, or plumbing nearby. Basically the room had no purpose. My wife wanted me to make her a little office out of it for her interior design work. Originally I had told her that this would be a piece of cake but changed my mind about that and put it off for quite a while until she finally talked me into it.
Despite the size of the room, this was the biggest project I had taken on in our house to this point. I would have to lower the ceiling two inches (more on that later), frame out the walls because 3 or them were cement foundation (the one closest the camera was framed already), while framing the walls attempt to square up the room, install a lighting canister, run electricity and install electrical outlets, do some difficult drywalling, paint, carpet, trim, and build and laminate a custom built in desk. This was a big project!
This is the first project where I’m going to try to break it down a little more step by step. Check back soon for my first installment.
