August. The final sprint to move in day. The storage facility charges by the month, so if we couldn't move in at the end of this month, we have to pay for another whole month which we didn't want to do. I arranged to have the movers come the first in September without charging me another month. So it was settled. We had one month to finish.

Clearly, in order to close up the new walls, we had to sheetrock and spackle them. There were some patches here and there on old walls, like on the first floor where the old radiators were. The work shop and the boiler room are the only rooms in the basement where there are exposed walls and ceiling. For added soundproofing, I had 2 layers of 1/2" sheetrock put in the ceiling of the theater room. Ideally I should have had a drop ceiling, but even though it's now a taller 7 foot ceiling, it's still low. Drop ceilings take up several inches at least, and every inch counts here. One is better than three to four.

At first, all 3 bathrooms walls were covered wonderboard, which is a really thin layer of concrete. While green sheetrock is water resistant, wonderboard is water proof. However, it doesn't have a smooth surface, so unless you plan on putting tile on top of it, it's not a good idea. Because of that we realized all the walls didn't need to be covered in it. The sheeetrocking crew (when they showed up) were busy doing other things, so in the interest of finishing, I took off all the wonderboard and installed greenboard where needed in the bathrooms. I've still got most of the pieces in the garage.

So now the new areas needed doors - master suite, 1st floor bathroom the whole basement. Six in all. I had help, but I did get the new door and door frames up. The trim will be added later.

When we realized it was too expensive to move the AC unit, we decided to just move a couple of ducts around. One duct needed to be in the wall before we closed it up, so that had to get done in a hurry. Everything was a rush at this point. The painters had to wait on that wall until it was finished.

I tried to arrange each floor to be completely sheetrocked, spackled and sanded so that the painter could start. Starting with the second floor and working down. It worked for he most part, but it turned out that the guys who originally did the spackling didn't do quite a good job, so I had the painters do it. Even still, while the painters were finishing up the 1st and 2nd floor, the basement was still being finished by the other crew.

The painters went crazy. Every single room in the house needed to be painted. Keep in mind almost half of the walls were new. Obviously, every room had a reason for each color, that being something to match to. On the second floor, it started with the stone tile we chose for the bathrooms. For the guest bath (the small one) I really liked this royal blue granite and since it's too dark for the walls around the tub, we found a light blue granite to match.

The only problem with that tile was there was a limited amount. At first, the guy sold us tile that was 1 inch thick. Even I questioned how that would work on the wall (it's really heavy), and when the installer saw it he said no way. So we exchanged it for their entire stock of 16" x 16" x 3/8" tile of the same stone which was just enough in the end. We still have one of the 1" tiles in the kitchen as a cutting board / hot plate.

So naturally we had the guest bathroom walls painted with a cool (blue) white. For the master bath we chose a light, sandy colored limestone and light cream color for the walls, carrying that color into the bedroom. I wanted the bathroom colors to contrast each other...one warm, one cool. The medium guest bedroom, being across the hall from the guest bath, is a light blue and the small bedroom is a light green to compliment it.

On the first floor, we used a Japanese theme to choose the bathroom color. We chose a light yellow-green granite tile and a paint to match...kind of bamboo color. The previous owner redid the tile around the fireplace and we went off that blue color to find a blue-green color for the walls. As a total coincidence, it's the same color that's in the Restoration Hardware stores, so finding the right curtains was easy.

From the kitchen, dining room and stairway we needed to find something that worked with the wood furniture and the existing kitchen cabinets (it's a kind of an open kitchen). In the dining room we also used a darker color below the chair molding.

The previous owners sold us this great dark green couch set that I wanted to use in the theater and we bought a new beige set for the first floor that worked with our color theme. Between the color of the couch and my existing desk, I found a nice terra cotta color for the basement walls. Typically theater ceilings are black (you want it to disappear), but with the lower ceiling I went with a warm medium gray.

The final step to hooking up the hot water heater and boiler is to attach the side vent. Both the boiler and hot water heater need to expel the gas from the combustion and normally they are hooked up to the chimney and the gas just rises out. However a side vent uses a fan in he unit and blows the gas out the side (hence the "side" in the side vent ;) ). It's much more efficient, but the only guideline is the exit has to be 4 feet from any window. Normally that’s difficult, but right above the boiler room is the new bathroom and right outside that room is a bricked up window (based on the quality of the brickwork, it was probably done by the same owner that wired the lights ;) ). So the vents went through the 1st floor bathroom and out the side. I built (yes, "I") a box 1 x 4 feet on the exterior wall to over up the pipes and filled it with fire proof insulation. This worked out nicely because we now have a shelf for knick-knacks. Later, my father built a wood shelf to put on top.

The reason for the side vent was the chimney is about 6 feet away from the boiler. If we were to hook up the boiler to the existing vents, I would have to create a box along that wall (outside the boiler room) to cover up the pipes, making that wall useless. So in the interest of saving valuable basement space, we used a side vent and went, interestingly, up.

In order to accommodate the fire code, we needed to cover up the back of the basement stairs. We were about to do that and we discovered something wrong with them. They were original (i.e. 77 years old) and when you looked at them from underneath, the tread (what you step on) was barely attached to the stringer (the side pieces). So as a last minute decision, we had the stairs replaced. It was a good thing too, because one hit with the hammer and the tread came down.

After the stairs were installed, I installed a new tread and nose on the landing. The nose (the piece of rounded wood along the edge) is really just for aethetics for whn the carpet goes in. Since the carpet is going to cover it, just screwing on a 1" nose works fine. Then I added a molding on the top of the stringer of the basment stair as well as removing and replacing the small molding on the second floor stair. They were covered in so many layers of paint, it was just easier to do it this way.

End of August. With the move in day approaching, we still didn't have a working bathroom and the carpet wasn't down. The two things that needed to be done so we could move in. Before that though, we needed the stone floors to be put down. No floor,  no bathroom. No stone, no carpet because it's messy...the carpet is the last thing to go in.

There are 4 areas where we were putting in stone floors (4.5 if you count the closet...more on that later) and 2 areas are walls. In order of priority, 1) guest bath floor, 2) master bath floor, 3) laundry room floor, 4) guest bath walls, 5) master bath walls, and 4) front hall / bath floors. The floors have a different priority than the walls because the fixtures needed to be installed...plus those floors needed a mud (concrete) layer to be put down on top of the radiant tubes. So that was first.

The guest bath was relatively easy because the tiled area was really only a 5 x 5 foot area. For the laundry room, we choose a warm, creamy colored porcelain tile because of the red color from the theater room next door. We choose porcelain because it was really cheap...cheaper than putting linoleum down (or original choice) considering the stone guys were already going to be there. The laundry room was important to get done because that was the only thing is the basement that was left in order for the carpet to go in.

When the tile was put in, it was installed so perfectly; that it revealed a flaw to the landing stair...it was crooked. This I knew all along and when I installed the tread, I just matched the stair, not the wall. Originally the small area between the stair and the laundry room door was supposed to be carpet. Its pattern would have hid that fact, but instead we continued the tile into that space and the lines of the tiles really made the step look wrong. So I had to remove the tread, and offset it to match the floor. That made it much better.

Since it was ready, the basement carpet was installed first. There was a happy accident along the wall of the basement. For some reason, a piece of the original floor was left in the corner. I thought it was neat to see the original height of the floor. But, in a brilliant move by the carpet installers, they chipped away that piece after I told them to cut the carpet AROUND it. Oh well. The carpet was installed on the stairs down into the theater room. Only the boiler room, work shop and under the stairs (server room / wiring closet) were left with the exposed concrete slab. The carpet we choose was a mud-colored berber type carpet with beige, dark green, and dark red specks.

Now the basement is ready for stuff to be put everywhere.

September. A little overlap of stone and carpet. The last week until move in day was maddening. I really wanted the tile and the carpet to be finished but that wasn't happening. The stone guys were able to finish the floor of the master bath. It was installed so the grid pattern was offset by 45 degrees so as to differentiate itself from the walls which were going to be the same stone. There were several delays in getting the stone guys to come back and that delayed the carpet for upstairs. But I couldn't stop the movers from coming. The good news was the plumbers hooked up everything in the gust bath so we had a working bathroom. We were ready to move.

September 2th, 2006. Move in day. Everything was set for the truck to come. We had to not only deliver the stuff we had in storage, but pick up and drop off a couple of things at my parents house and drop off a couch at a friends house on the same block. It was Labor Day weekend and with a Saturday move, we would have 2 days for initial unpacking. 8 months working up to this point...and it wasn't going to happen. There was a huge storm forecast for that day and the movers really recommend against that day. Ordinarily, they don't move on Sunday, but they made an exception in this case. So...

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