Upstairs remodel

[JayS]

Was going through some pictures on FB memories and realized I never made a build thread for this major remodel. Biggest project I’ve ever taken on. Basically gutted the entire living floor of our raised ranch. Kitchen, dining room, living room and 3 bedrooms. Tore down 2 walls, one of which was load bearing and installed some big engineered beams as well as a cantilevered beam in the ceiling downstairs to carry the load. Thankfully my good friend is a structural engineer and was able to help with the plans/beam/town approval process. We ended up having to do one post because my roof trusses were never properly sized and no matter how he designed the beam there was going to be too much deflection with snow load. The only postless solution would involve a full roof and truss tear off to install proper full trusses. Way outside my budget and the single post wasn’t that big a deal to incorporate into the island.

We went with Ikea for the cabinets after talking to three friends that did Ikea kitchens, one of which sold his house and then did Ikea a 2nd time which I thought was about as solid of an endorsement as you could get.

New lighting throughout, refinished the existing hardwood and had the existing matched into the kitchen which was the only room that didn’t have original hardwood. We did hire that job out to Nickel City since it involved every square foot our of living space and I couldn’t afford to have the house down for the amount of time it would take to DIY it myself. Now on to the pictures:

Here’s what we came up with using the Ikea kitchen design tool online. We then had a consultation with the Ikea kitchen designers (which was supposed to be in person at Ikea Burlington but got moved to virtual because of covid). For not being a designer I only missed a side panel next to the dish washer so I did pretty well.

Here’s a link to the online planning tool. Very cool stuff.
https://kitchen.planner.ikea.com/planner/#/gb/en/

Some before. I don’t have a ton of before in the album and don’t really feel like searching.

Exploratory demo seeing what kind of mess I was in for moving wiring and switches out of a wall that was about to not exist:

The wife was very happy to finally be getting her new kitchen:

One of two Ikea pallets delivered and unpacked:

The local freight company lost the entire 2nd pallet. Thankfully it was found the next day and delivered.

Shit gets real when the dumpster shows up:

So many layers of shitty floor. I spent an entire day and at least 3 gallons of sweat getting that floor up. and pulling remnants of staples and nails.

Exposing the beam/header/truss mess:

Temporary supports so the house doesn’t fall down on us:

So long final cabinets. I was able to leave the ovens and dishwasher basically free standing for much of the remodel which really helped with living through this:

Hey, I know, let’s destroy the downstairs too since we have to cantilever the load because the load bearing wall upstairs doesn’t actually line up with the steel beam and posts downstairs. At this point we no longer have a room of refuge to escape the remodel:

So many Simpson ties, strapping and lags my buddy said we should send Simpson some pictures and see if they’d send us a couple t-shirts or something:

The evening the beam was in. That moment where we went, “OMG, this is going to be a completely different house when we’re done”. We knew it would be, but man it was exciting to see the new footprint for real with the walls down.

This was also the night of many rum drinks when my structural engineer buddy had another genius idea. The coat closet in our house is at the top of the stairs, and since that’s a really inconvenient place for a coat closet we just put coat hooks and shoe racks in the foyer and made the coat closet a pantry. Brian goes to my wife, "Jen, come here, reach into this pantry. See, you can’t even come close to reaching the back. Jay, you need to cut this way back so it will open up this area around the island. I guarantee you your first big party people are going to hang out around that island and you’ll want that extra space. Probably his best idea the whole project. So, out comes the sawzall again:

Recessed LED lighting going in. All powered by Lutron Caseta smart switches.

Replacing floor sections and starting to rough in drywall since the inspector came and signed off on all our work:

Another, “Holy shit, I barely recognize this house” excited moments. No reason for the purple drywall other than having scraps from other projects that happened to be the right size:

Since we were moving the cooktop from the perimeter wall to the island and didn’t want a hood vent sticking down in our open space, we went with a pop up vent and needed to run an exhaust duct through the floor and out the back wall of the house. We also had to relocate a return from the wall that didn’t exist to an outside wall, as well as move a gas line. Much help from @Wahoo and Vantage Heating and Cooling on that part:

You can see cement board for the backsplash has gone up in this one.

The typing is starting to lag pretty bad, will continue in next post because I think I’m hitting some kind of memory limit in chrome.

[JayS]

Drywall repairs commence:

Time for paint:

More paint, and our air fryer that lived on a TV tray:

Starting to mess with cabinets. The over the fridge cabinet basically set the height of my uppers. Ended up like 18.5" vs the standard 18". No one would know except I just told you.

Corner cabinet is the place to start. Ikea rail system makes cabinet install so much easier. Set the laser level in the middle of the room, anchor the rails into the studs and start dropping cabinets one by one on the rail:

Base cabinets start going in:

You can see the small gaps between the cabinets and the sink cabinets. These were the only filler pieces I used, despite this being just off the shelf cabinets vs custom cabinets.

The island is just kind floating around for now:

Island install starts:

Built the one cabinet around the post:

Buffet made from Ikea cabinets between the living room and dining room. Will get the same countertop as the kitchen:

Countertop guy shows up and starts making templates:

Island electrical for outlets and power for the vent:

Cabinet doors and hardware:

Countertop day!

We have fire!

And water!

Hardwood matched into the kitchen:

Stair risers repaired and prepped for paint. Doing white risers and dark hardwood steps. I’m handling the painting, Nickel City doing the staining.

Preparing for the floor refinishing. At this point we had moved into our downstairs and the 3 of us were living basically in the one big room. Everything from our dining room, kitchen, living room and 3 upstairs bedrooms was now moved to the garage since every square inch of flooring was being done, even into the closets. This SUCKED.

Put up a temp shelf to hold the main router and wifi, because no way we could go without wifi for a week:

Robot vacuum still on duty:

Sanding has started:

Testing colors:

Staining has started:

Camera seems to capture a different color depending on lighting/angle, but I can assure you it’s a perfect match throughout the entire upstairs:

I had to destroy and rebuild the final cabinet because I needed it to wrap around my chimney. Ended up with a perfect shelf for spices in the L shaped cabinet:

Finishing off that corner:

Finishing off the post:

Backsplash going in. I had planned to do this job but then I tore my rotator cuff and had surgery and no way I was going to be able to reach over the counter with tile or the grout work.

Adding crown to the cabinets:

Many miter cuts:

Base molding for the island:

With HVAC vent:

Finishing stairs:

Trimming windows/doors:

Base molding:

The little details, like carrying a piece of trim over the HVAC register:

Or properly terminating the base with a sliver of an angle piece glued on:

Pantry install. These cabinets were a casualty of the pandemic supply chain so this got done WAY later than the rest of the project. Getting the 90" cabinets was impossible during peak pandemic. They’re so tall they had to be assembled in the garage and then carried up the stairs vertically since they couldn’t be stood up without hitting the ceiling.

Matching crown. Of course the ceiling isn’t perfectly flat here. Nothing a little caulk won’t hide. “Little paint, little caulk make a carpenter what he’s not”.

Ceiling repairs downstairs. This was about 10 months after everything else because I needed to wait until my shoulder was 100% to do the drywall work over my head:

The box for my 100" drop down projection screen:

Flat black all around the screen to help with light absorption from the projector:

Refinished the stair railings. We were going to have them powder coated but the several week turnaround was an issue. Too many people over to our house all the time to have no railings for that long. Primed and rattle canned them in 2 days.

6 panel doors to replace our flat 60’s builders doors:

Matching bi-fold closet doors:

Much trim, so wow:

[JayS]

We couldn’t be happier with the result. We’ve had several parties since and the open concept space works just as we intended. With the cooktop in the island you can be cooking and still be completely involved with your guests. The dumpster was delivered 10/14/20 and we had countertops installed and a fully functional kitchen again on 1/7/21, despite doing this in my free time and still taking some time to ski and have fun. We had ovens and a dishwasher almost the entire time and only lost the kitchen sink from around 11/15 until 1/7 when the counters were installed. Hauling dishes downstairs to our laundry sink wasn’t fun for sure.

The final trim bits definitely took a while, not helped at all by me destroying my shoulder at the end of ski season March of 2021, then having shoulder surgery to fix it May of 2021 and physical therapy through July to get my strength back. It’s close to a year to get a shoulder back 100%. There’s no question if I could go back in time and decide to do this myself again that I’d definitely do it. Only thing I’d change is not starting it in the middle of a global pandemic (supply chain issues) and not wreck my rotator cuff skiing before I finished.

[drvnkd]

Looks a lot better.

I dislike home repair/remodeling.
I do it, because I’m cheap and use it to justify new tools.

It wasn’t until we were selling our last house that I finally finished up 20 or 30 loose ends. My wife has since learned, and now I have had way more projects per year that I put off as long as I can.

[juicedz4]

Looks great, excellent job.

As much as I like “projects” Id hate to do all this at once. So good work.

Dan

[LUC1F3R]

Awesome job! quite the transformation.

[yamba6]

Turned out fantastic! Nice work.

Curious as I’d like to consider doing the sanding of the floors. How much does it cost to rent a sander and how much of a pain in the ass is it and how much time does it take to sand say just the dining room?

Such a great feeling having all that new, different look in the house. Really would love to do my kitchen. I remodeled my tiny main bathroom. Took it down to the studs only leaving the bathtub. Tiled it all and did everything myself. Took a little but pretty satisfied being my first time.

[JayS]

@yamba6

Curious as I’d like to consider doing the sanding of the floors. How much does it cost to rent a sander and how much of a pain in the ass is it and how much time does it take to sand say just the dining room?

No idea because I hired that entire job out. I will say it took over a week with 3 guys that do this for a living working 8+ hour days to sand, repair, stain and poly mine. It was a lot more than a single room though. @BOBBYGRV has done this himself before though.

[LUC1F3R]

@yamba6 I’ve also done my own and I think its not a bad diy. Make sure you use a hand belt sander at the walls and go easy on the walk behind drum sander. Make sure both go with the grain. Highly recommend water based varathane because you can put on 5-6 coats in a day because of the fast dry time and its held up to 100+ pound dogs well even with a dark stain.
Be prepared for lots of dust.

[JayS]

The system Nickel City used left almost no dust. I have heard the dust horror stories from some people.

[yamba6]

Did you have to fill any of the wood? Is that possible. Unfortunately my dumbass has been throwing a toy for my Golden and when it’s time for his nails to be clipped, well let’s just say the floor takes a beating. it’s not terrible but I have a couple decent marks. (not like the whole finish is worn away)

[LUC1F3R]

We had an area near the front window that the dogs had tore up pretty good, id say most of the gouges were about 1/8 deep. As long as your flooring is toenailed like @jays is you can take most of that out with the sander. Just take your time and if you see any nails stop. at that point counter sink the exposed nail and use a little filler, the polyurethane will fill any light scratches that remain.

[yamba6]

Thank you!!

[JayS]

There were several severely damaged boards from god knows what the prior owner did that were replaced. Most of the damaged was sanded out. You can’t really use filler because it’s never going to stain the same as wood. You can get away with filler in small areas because the grain hides it but large damage the board has to be replaced.

[BOBBYGRV]

I own a machine called a square scrub, I used it in my janitorial business for stripping & waxing commercial VCT tiles. You can put sand paper on it with a pad and use it to lightly sand the floors. It is no where near the job of a refinish, basically just a light sand an recoat option. It produced a ton of dust. I threw a furnace filter on a box fan and stuck in the window of each bedroom I did. Seemed to work just fine for collecting dust, but each room was taped off and doors sealed shut. Still got a bit of dust throughout the house, but wasn’t terrible.

I do have a large living room and hallway to be done. I will probably hire that out when the time comes as I just don’t feel like going through this process again and won’t be doing it myself.

[JayS]

@drvnkd

I dislike home repair/remodeling.
I do it, because I’m cheap and use it to justify new tools.

Same. There were several times during the project where I went, “OMG… what have I gotten myself into”. Definitely got some new tools out of this project. The cost thing is the biggest factor. At the same time we DIY’d ours a friend of ours had hers professionally done and I saw that it ended up costing her and almost fainted. Like she might as well have just sold the house and bought one with a kitchen she wanted.

[drvnkd]

Yep.
My in-laws went with bathfitter for a tiny Tonawanda house bathroom update.

It was over 10k, to replace a tub with a walk in shower. That was literally it. same old ass sink tub, floor etc.
BUT… 0%… done in one day…

LOL x5 because it was not done in one day. There were studs and 2 floor joists that needed replacement/sistering, and the installers don’t do that. +1k.

We tried for a day or two to talk them out of it, but it was a waste of breath.