How We Spent 2006

I know, the title sounds like a school paper. So what ;). I haven't written this much since college, so I might as well title it so. What I have for you here is the detail of what we did to our house...in excrutiatingly high detail. I wrote it mostly for my sanity, just to get it down. Which means I won't blame you if you don't read this, although I'm sure you'll get something out of it.

First, I put together a description of each floor and what we planned on doing so you have a basic image. Then comes the full detail of what we did in chronological order over 9 pages. There are a bunch of construction picts throughout the text and after that is a link to some before and after pictures. You can read the full description or go right to pictures. Understand that I may be from a family of Architects, but I really knew nothing about how any of this was done when we started. I still don't, but by comparison I'm an expert ;).

The funny thing, you have to realize is when Ali and I found this house we were excited because it was so perfect, "we could move right in". Ha. The stuff we wanted to do grew exponentially from the original concept. Mostly because of the "once we expose the walls, we might as well replace the stuff inside" philosophy. It paid off, because we would never have the opportunity to do the stuff we did again since we weren't living there while the bulk was getting done.

Attic -

Just your run of the mill unfinished, uninsulated attic. It's accessible at the top of the second floor stairs from a pull down ships ladder. The center section is tall enough stand, but there's a big AC unit in the center of it, and several AC ducts running around. Clearly, the guy who installed this didn't plan anything out...it was a mess. We wanted to move the unit to the back, but it turned out to be cost prohibitive.

That being said, the only work we wanted to do was to completely insulate the attic, rewire the AC unit to the inside (its main line was running outside) and add a 3rd heating zone put in so we can add heat there in the future. Because the floor is mostly open up there, I have access to the 2nd floor from above, so I wanted to put in a network/video conduit that runs into the "wiring closet" in the basement

2nd floor -

OK. Picture at the top the stairs there is a small hallway running perpendicular to the stairs...the stairs being in the center of the house. Stand to the left and there is a bathroom and small linen closet to the right, a small bedroom straight ahead and a medium bedroom to the left. Stand to the right and there is a second bathroom of the same size (5' x 8') to the left a small room straight ahead (no closet) and a large (master) bedroom to the right.

Basically, we wanted to take down the walls connecting the bathroom, small room and master bedroom to create a master suite with a larger bathroom and walk-in closet. All of this by sacrificing only the small room and 1 foot of master bedroom space. Plus, above the master room there was a small but long crawl space in the attic (about 4' x 16')...kind of a waste...so we took most of the ceiling down to create a vaulted ceiling above the bed. Then add new baseboard heaters throughout the floor and add radiant heat in the 2 bathrooms.

1st floor -

In the center column of the house where the stairs are was a small closet. Two owners ago, it was transformed into a [very] small bathroom, but it was taken out (only the fixtures...the pipes were still there, capped) when the house was sold because it didn't pass code (no vent). Then in the front hall there was a foyer of sorts with a hanging closet at the end. We originally thought to just put in a vent and replace the fixtures and we have a half bath on the first floor, but soon decided that we didn't want an airplane bathroom. It was small.

So instead, we wanted to close the wall off in the front foyer, removed the closet and made that room the half bath. Where the center closet was, we wanted to return it to a closet again. Also remove the old in-wall steam radiators and add baseboard heaters around the floor.

Basement -

The basement was divided into two areas, a finished [left] side and unfinished [right] side, separated by the center stair. The finished side was a decent sized room (about the size of my original apartment ;) ) and had thin carpet, wood paneled walls, and simple acoustic ceiling tiles. In the back there was also an enclosed boiler room, which had the washer and dryer, and two closets, the larger of which was an old capped off bathroom. The unfinished side was just that...exposed concrete slab, cinder block walls and ceiling joists and had an exterior door and a small window in the back of it.

The first day we walked into this house in November ’05, I saw the finished side and pictured where I wanted the couch and TV. Since this was the basement, naturally soundproofed on 5 sides and the light was controllable from this one small 2' x 4' window (which was behind a hinged panel), perhaps, I thought, I could put a full blown home theater down there. Only one problem...the ceiling was just over 6 feet height and not very comfortable for a 6 foot guy to hang out in. That and I would need a new TV ;).

You should know that at first, during our "move right in" scenario, I was going to have my office on the second floor in the closet-less room next to the master bedroom. That was where the last owner had his office, so it already had a cable line running to it. But then we realized it would be better to have it downstairs near the main TV (as I need to capture and output to TV, plus sometimes I like to have the Tivo on in the background while I work). So that gave us more of an excuse to make the larger bathroom and closet upstairs since I no longer needed the room, and to make the basement better because I would spend more time down there.

So the final plan was to lower the floor of the whole basement, finish the left side and turn it into a home theater / office with a small closed off boiler room in the back. Since there was already a drain and dryer vent to the right of the stairs (evidence that that's where the washer / dryer were originally), we wanted to create a laundry room on that side. Then keep the other 2 thirds of that space unfinished to be my workshop. Also add a radiant heat assembly under the entire floor.

A lot of planning but of course nothing would happen until we officially close on the place. So...

|1|2|3|4|5|6|7|8|9| next
Back to the News page