Room remodel

[Irving]

I'm remodeling my house room by room, hoping to be done by this time next year. This now makes two rooms done out of 9ish other rooms. This is NOT a how-to thread because I'm just learning this stuff myself and the only advice I'd have to offer is just all the different mistakes I've made. Really, I'm just happy to be nearly done with this room. I was going to pull one over on you guys and say I knocked this out in about 8 hours total, but it took me so long that I can't even play that little joke. Let's get to the photos.

**A big thanks to Wulf202. I would text all the contractors I know the same question, and he was always the first, and usually the only one to respond to my questions. Thanks for all the tips along the way.
*Also a thanks to either Zetnik or TheGinsue. I can't remember which one of them forced some army issue knee and elbow pads on me. As soon as I got them home I thought "When am I ever going to use these?" But I have to say that between the framing, flooring, cutting, and trim work, they were the most valuable tool I had, right after the fancy compound miter saw I bought.

My wife pulled the nasty carpet out herself. The original floor in this house is so ugly, that my wife didn't believe it was flooring, and actually thought it was some kind of underlayment.


This house has this bedroom, and the one on the other side of this wall sharing the closet space between the rooms. Each room had a closet half as long as this wall. Pretty standard for the 1950's, but very small by today's building standards. In addition to that, this room had the particularly stupid design where the bedroom door and closet door open into each other. You can see the line near the door handle from the closet door handle. Both doors had this line and if you opened the bedroom door while the closet door was open, they'd lock up with each other. Terrible design. The patch job shown, that I wasn't particularly happy with, is the only thing I didn't do myself.


Now you've got the lay of the room.


Remove the floor.


Flood cut in anticipation of relocating electrical outside of closet.


Frame up closet and run electrical. Careful of that gas line.


Drywall on the closet. I really tried to take my time and do as good of a job as I could, but when I was done and it looked like I just finished riveting together the hull of a ship, I realized I probably used three times as many screws as I needed. I also decided to just keep that receptacle in the closet and add another on the outside.


I did have a helper hang the door jamb.


I've never really mudded drywall before except for the occasional wall patch (which always came out fantastic). This was quite the learning experience. I would constantly pendulum between "Hey, this is easy, I don't know what everyone complains about!" to "Sweet Jesus this looks like garbage!" I'm fortunate in that the original texture of my walls looks like someone got drunk with a trowel and went to town, so it was easy to match and any mistakes I've made just blended right in with the past 60 years of all the other home owners mistakes.




For a while I had an issue where my dog had decided that she needed to be in the same room with me, as close to me as possible, at all times.


She even laid down and got the mud tape wrapped around her face. Not once...


But twice!

[newracer]

I hope you have sampled for asbestos.

[Irving]

Here is a picture of the texture throughout the house. I'll spare you anymore drywall mudding photos.


Walls painted, new receptacles, moisture barrier. For the same price as Home Depot sells enough moisture barrier for a single room, I bought enough for my entire house on Amazon.


New light. Not as flush as I'd like, but I wasn't going to spend the time and/or effort trying to remove the original fixture box that was nailed to the ceiling studs. This is a dimmable LED that provides much better light, at less energy than the original double bulb set-up.


In an effort to make my house feel more modern, I've decided to install one of these handy USB receptacles in every room. I'd like one of these at every spot, but at $22ish a pop, that'd be prohibitively expensive. Also, these covers are $5 compared to the regular style that are only $1. If I could do it again, I'd forgo the fancy screwless cover, but now I'm pot commited. I mentioned in another thread that I was thinking about running CAT cable throughout the house, but since I've decided to rent this house at some point, I won't be doing that. As for the electrical, I've consulted with a few electricians (some of them on here), and decided that the most economical way to upgrade to "grounded" outlets is to replace all the breakers in the panel with CGFI breakers.


Getting started on the floor. I had the wife pick a color in the style I wanted on the Home Depot website. It's a Pergo XP.


Getting to the fun part. While this floor looks much better than the one I did in the first room, this one shifted on me during install and I noticed at the point of taking this picture that the entire floor had floated itself cock-eyed compared to the walls. Very frustrating, but with some pro-tips from my life coach, I got it moved enough that it came out okay once the trim was down.


I can't express to you how much I hate painting. It takes a lot of prep to come out looking decent, and I run out of patience very quickly. Then after spending a lot of time taping everything up, the tape just pulls my new paint off the wall anyway. Here is the prep for painting the trim. This is the second time I taped above the trim, as I had done it earlier to caulk everything. Taping twice, on new paint, is just playing with fire in my opinion. I'm sure there are tricks, but I don't know them.


I've finished the closet. Wife already had these shelves sitting around the house in huge boxes for the last 18 months. I'm very glad to put them to use somewhere.


I've got glass doors to go in the closet, but I didn't have any liquid nails so I couldn't complete the install tonight.


Fortunately, the paint inside the windows can be removed easily enough. The windows are terrible and I'd like to replace them, but there is no wood frame on the outside in the brick veneer, so I don't know how destructive it will be to replace them. For now that can wait.




Now I've only got to install the closet doors, paint the inside of the existing door jamb, rehandle the door, paint the vent covers, and order blinds for the windows. This has gone on for too long, but I'm near the end. Next up is the hallway. Wish me luck.

[Fentonite]

That looks really good. Especially the Shiner Bock!

[Irving]

Thank you. A lot of beers were consumed over the course of the remodel.

[Wulf202]

About the first pictures. Those look like 9" tile marks. If you find 9x9 tiles they might contain asbestos. It's hit or miss on them actually containing it but use caution. This is also the reason you can't buy that size of tile anymore

[thedave1164]

Nice

[rondog]

Nice work! I hope the closet doesn't interfere with bringing in furniture and such.

[Irving]

Nice work! I hope the closet doesn't interfere with bringing in furniture and such.

It will a little, but shouldn't be too bad. I've been in a lot of houses, and this seems to be a popular way to lay out a closet. No couches are going in there for sure though.

[Gunner]

Looks good! Those knee pads are a life saver. I keep talking myself to get some and I never seem to walk out with any

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