From Hovel to Home

When we first bought the house the laundry was located upstairs in the kitchen/dining room: We decided to convert the cellar into livable space and chose the back corner for the laundry room location. After gutting the basement and framing new walls we had a space for a laundry room, notice all the drain lines hanging there for Luke to bang his head on. Several months ago we replaced all our copper drain lines with new pvc ones.  We rerouted the pipes to run in between the floor joist to create more head room.  The new lines run through a plumbing chase between the laundry room and adjacent bathroom.  This houses not only the drain lines but will also contains the radon mitigation system and dryer vent.  Eventually I will put the washer, dryer and sink on this wall. The west wall has a crawlspace access into the addition.  I need to build a more attractive access panel. The north wall is half covered by the controls for our hydronic h...

This is Luke's office.  It does not technically count as a fourth bedroom because it lacks a closet. In addition to painting the ceiling blue and the walls red the previous owners also splashed soda(?) all over the ceiling.  It then baked on for almost a year before we bought the house.  My mom and grandmother spent hours scrubbing it off. Last winter I could not handle the oxblood walls any longer.  They sucked all the light out of the room.  I grabbed a bucket of mistint paint and covered the walls.  I didn't have enough to cut the corners but it was still an improvement.  Then I installed a radon mitigation system that involved running a 3" pvc pipe through the office (The pipe is crooked here, I forgot to get a pictures after I fixed it) The plan was to eventually hide the pipe inside a closet. I framed up a wall that spans the entire length of the room.  The office will have a seven foot long closet on the left.  The rig...

After eighteen months and countless comments from guests it's time I do something with the master bedroom.  When we first moved in it was a Spiderman themed mess with black and blue walls and red trim.  The closest I came to making it "homey" was to take the web-slinger stickers off the wall. Last fall we finished the back bedrooms and moved into the guest room.  A month later I discovered the master bedroom had a wall full of mold from our previously leaky roof. I ripped down all the sheetrock, but this is the wall that separates the bedroom and living room so for the last four months we've had this view from the sofa. Since then I've insulated the exterior walls and  built the master bathroom, but the bedroom is in a pretty sorry state. My parents will be staying for a few days at the end of the month and I thought it would be nice to have the master suite ready for them.  I had a four day weekend so I recruited Luke to help...

I've been working alone for the last four months while Luke worked on his thesis.  But last weekend he had some free time to help on the house.  Even though we did not work on the same projects it was great to having him around.  His main project this weekend was dealing with the dog pen. Atlas and Rikka share a 160 sq ft pen on the side of the house.  One side was closed in by the covered patio.  We removed the covered patio last fall and the cinder block seating wall was not enough to keep the dogs in the pen. Removing the cinder blocks was fast and easy thanks to the demo hammer. We debated doing a cedar fence, but Atlas really likes to see what is going on in the yard so we needed something a little more open.  We settled on building our fence out of the same aluminum balusters we used on the porch railing with a cedar frame. They look happy in this picture but only because I was bribing them with treats. The pen has shelter, water and ...