Renovations Day 1 - Monday, September 26, 2016

5:21AM             We're renovating our home. The contractor starts today. The kids are still sleeping. Carolyn is readying for work. We had to remove everything from the first floor of the house. Although we had been working on clearing out and cleaning up over the summer, and especially over the last few weeks, the real push took place this weekend. We started on Friday evening and worked for two full days to get ready. It was about 10:30PM last night when we finally knocked off after making sure everything was ready.

We're renovating. And not just a little project - we're basically renovating our whole first floor. It started with a kernel of an idea - to finish our basement. I said that maybe it would be best to renovate the kitchen first since the water and such would need to be accessed from below. So it started as a kitchen makeover. But the flooring throughout should be replaced before the cabinets go down - tile in the hall, laundry and powder room, hardware in the kitchen, family room, dining room and living room. We were convinced to renovate the powder room and the laundry room too, as long as we had to remove the cabinets. It was a good time to replace the fireplace at the same time. I made the mistake of asking how we should finish the wall, which opened us up to stonework and a new mantle.

The fireplace was installed a couple of weeks ago. It looks great but it still needs the thermostat added and I want to replace the vinyl siding to complete the finished look. More on that later.

We saved ourselves about $2500 by doing the demolition ourselves - removing all baseboard, removing the living room and family room carpets, the dining room hardwood, the powder room, laundry room and kitchen vinyl and the hallway tile. The kitchen cabinets were removed with help from my brother-in-law and sold for $500. This cost offset the cost of removing the flooring debris. But I made $50 selling the mantel to the same couple who bought my kitchen. The powder room cabinet was removed and has become part of our makeshift, basement kitchen.

My son, Matthew is a plumber and has agreed to save us part of the $750 plumbing cost by plumbing the kitchen, powder room and laundry room. The removal and capping of the kitchen and powder room plumbing went without a hitch. Carolyn saw a couple of recent Facebook posts were people doing renovations had their work ruined by leaking plumbing. I had  a dream since then that Matthew (a volunteer firefighter) was showing me how to hose down a roof on fire by spraying our garage roof from the neighbour's roof, but the hose bib leaked and sprayed water all over the cabinets stock-piled in our garage.

The real renovation starts today. The contractor said that everything had to be removed from the first floor, so all of our furniture and possessions from the first floor of our home (except the refrigerator) sits in a rented POD on our driveway. We've set up a makeshift kitchen in the basement. 

Carolyn likes cleanliness and order, but renovations are anything but when they're underway. Although she had been pretty good so far, with only a couple of meltdowns to date, yesterday she was really starting to get to me and I began to fire back at times. The kids both got it too last night.

So this morning I'm up early to complete some last minute items before the contractor comes at 7:30AM:

• fished a string down the wall behind the fireplace in case I ever need to run a new cable
• removed a temporary cover over a hole in the kitchen subfloor, where a support for the half-wall separating the kitchen from the family room penetrated and was fastened to a floor joist
• fastened the water line from the fridge to the back of the fridge after draining it
• cut the old wire for the fireplace which lead back to a now-empty switchbox.

The contractor will be here today to begin the six-week renovation. Carolyn has made up a plate of homemade banana bread for the crew. I'm hoping that a little hospitality helps grease the wheels.

6:40PM        The contractor and his crew has long since left, dinner has been served and cleaned up (McDonald's - Matt had truck checks at the fire station before training), and we've cleaned up what we can, upstairs on the main floor and downstairs in the "kitchen".

The three-man crew laid our hardwood in the living room, dining room and partially in the family room and kitchen. The colour (Cumin) and the 3" wide boards look great - the rooms look larger.

I took today off work to greet the contractors and to get a few things done around the house that were put off while we got the house ready for the renos. It was a good thing too because the contractor and I had a few details to iron out this morning:

• Did we want pot lights in the family room? After some discussion we agreed to four lights near the corners. Add $600 to the cost. We had to figure out the switches for the lights and the fireplace. Layton will mount the thermostat on the opposite side of the joist from the existing fan switch. Bill will remove the second switch box and patch the hole. Layton is to run a new 18-guage wire from the fireplace to the thermostat directly.
• Did we want them to screw the subfloor down with additional screws? Bill thought that I had screwed down the subfloor, but it seems the original flooring installer added screws to the nails used by the builder. There is a risk that if there are too many screws, the staples are more likely to hit one and deflect up and through the board. No additional screws were needed, so we saved around $170.
• Bill would fix the holes in the plywood subfloor where the half wall was connected to the joist and for the plumbing. He did and it looks great.
• I was asked where the hardwood came to along the hallway between the columns. I told them there was carpet installed there and it came halfway. They asked if it was OK that the hardwood ended "somewhere" along the edge of the columns. I asked if they could end it in the middle and they agreed although it was not stated, I knew there would be more waste and more work.
• Bill asked which trim we wanted, and we discussed it. I think that I told him the right one - I will have Carolyn look at it since it's stacked in the garage.

Completed:

• hardwood in the living room, dining room and extending into the hall towards the kitchen and family room