 | August was a VERY busy month, and I worked on the house nearly full time with assistance from a variety of helpers. This picture shows how I installed water pipes and drain lines for the upstairs bathroom. |
 | We frame in the upstairs bathroom wall. You can see the toilet's drain in the floor. |
 | Here you see through the bathroom wall into the shower area. |
 | I forgot to buy the shower until we had begun putting putting up the roof joists. All of a sudden I realized if we continued, there would be no way to get the shower into the bathroom. So I drove over to Home Depot and bought a shower. Then we shoved it up a ladder and onto the kitchen roof. From there, we shoved it up the steeply pitch second-story roof and lowered it into the bathroom dormer area. This allowed me to buy a large 36" one-piece shower that doesn't have any joints to leak or cause cleaning problems. |
 | This photo shows the drain venting system used to make sure the plumbing will work well. I owe a huge thank-you to Ray McGinty, an Albany building inspector, for the advice he gave me about how to build this drain system. |
 | The sink and shower use this venting system which travels across the ceiling and ties into the toilet's vent. This allows the system to work well while having only one vent protrude through the roof. |
 | While we were doing all this remodeling, I decided to upgrade the heating system's duct work as well. One of the pipes is a cold air return. This sucks air from the top of the second floor and pulls it through the gas forced air heater to improve air circulation to the second floor. The other pipe isn't currently hooked up to the heater, and it terminates in heat registers in both upstairs bedrooms. If it is hooked up, it will deliver heat more efficiently to the upstairs. I don't consider this part of the heating system too critical -- both bedrooms have wall mounted resistance electrical heaters. |
 | Dave Helton exists from the bathroom after installing sheet rock. |
 | Barbara wanted to have a laundry shoot so that people could drop dirty clothes into the utility room without walking downstairs. |
 | This before-and-after pair of photos shows how sheet rock improved the appearance of the front parlor. |
 | Dave Furry helped with the sheet rock work in the front parlor. He did reasonable work, but Barbara asked me to let him go when she looked up his criminal record. |
 | Dan Garrett helped hang sheet rock, tape, and mud. He is an enthusiastic worker, but he could use more experience to get the details looking right. |
 | The back of the dining room required extensive sheet rock work along with paint scraping before actual painting could begin. |
 | The Utility Room Above: We install insulation on all the outside walls prior to putting up the insulation. Below: In the lower photo, you see Ken Williams installing sheet rock in the |
 | The bathroom prior to taping and mudding. |
 | Kitchen
Top: After the sheet rock was done in the kitchen, we began installing cabinets. Middle: Barbara uses a roller to paint the cabinets. Bottom: The dishwasher is installed. |
 | I take a break in the kitchen. |
 | Dining room
Above: Dave Helton scraps loose paint from the wainscoting. Below: Barbara paints the wainscoting a chocolate brown |
 | Above: Ken Williams paints the window trim in the front parlor. Below: Ken paints the pipes in the utility room |
 | The kitchen cabinets have been installed, but the doors haven't been hung yet. |
 | The kitchen floor had accumulated a year's worth of dirt and construction debris -- most of it landing in the cracks between tiles. It took a lot of hands-and-knee work to remove this material before installing the tile grout. |
 | I installed lattice for the side porch. To make the lattice work identical to the original, I needed to start with lath and install each piece separately. It would have been faster and cheaper to buy lattice panels, but they wouldn't have had the exact same pattern as the originals. |
 | I wish we had more pictures showing the installation of the railings for the porches. All the material was custom cut by David Helton. |
 | Paul Gomez painted moldings and helped with the sheet rock work. His brother, Gary Gomez, did the best sheet rock finish work on the project. I can highly recommend his work, but I cannot recommend paying him anything in advance. |
 | David Helton and I began cutting into the roof to open a hole for the bathroom dormer. The demolition part was messy, but it went quickly ... partly because we were willing to toss all the used materials onto the lawn below. |
 | David runs a skill saw down the roof to create the finished opening size. |
 | After a few hours, David takes a break ... and we have a new view out the side of the house. |
 | We start to frame up the outside wall. |
 | About the same time, I removed the rotten porch decking to expose the supporting joists. I was surprised to find the joists in generally good repair -- I had expected them all to be rotten. |
 | I beefed up the porch with additional joists and concrete blocking. |
 | Finally, I installed Douglas Fir flooring. I obtained this flooring from the living room of a historic home being demolished in the Monteith district. |
 | This shows what the front of the house looked like in July. |
