A lot has been happening in the house since the last time we spoke. If you follow us on Facebook and Instagram, you’ve seen some of the activity. Over the past three months, we’ve been prepping the house for drywall. Before hanging drywall, we have to make sure everything that is supposed to be in the wall is in place: plumbing, heating and cooling, electrical, blocking (wood blocks where we may need extra support when hanging items or fixtures), vacuum system and insulation.
One note: take photos! We have used our photo database multiple times already and it must be said: You will NEVER regret taking too many pictures. While everything is exposed, we are snapping pictures of every wall of every room so we know exactly where everything is once the walls are up.
Framing
As you read in the previous post, most of our renovation time so far has been spent on framing and fixing rotten areas. We have taken the entire house to the studs. Originally, I wanted to keep as much of the original plaster as possible—to save on cost and to maintain the history of the home. However, once we began demo it was clear just how much rotten wood that plaster was hiding. Bringing the house to the studs has allowed us to repair all of the places where there are issues and fix future “problem areas”. This also made running all the pipes and wires much easier. In the picture below, you can see the combination of new and old wood.
Electricity and Plumbing
All of our systems needed to be replaced. The house still had knob-and-tube wiring and we altered two bathrooms and added another. We installed a tankless water heater and ran gas lines to our cooktop range and four downstairs fireplaces. The water and sewer lines are also being replaced from the house to the road.
Davis Plumbing and Andy Willoughby’s electric team have been phenomenal to work with on our project. Both spent extensive time walking through each room with us to determine exactly what we needed and how we wanted things placed. They listened to our requests and concerns and worked through each issue or suggestion professionally and successfully. (And neither team picked on me about my folder of diagrams and spreadsheets… bonus points!)
Central Vacuum System
This part was a little tricky. We loved the idea of a central vacuum system. After researching, the unit was about half the cost of a high-end professional vacuum (without the hassle of having to sit through a demo or posting on FB for all my friends to purchase one as well). What we didn’t know was how difficult it would be to get someone to install it. After a few hours on Google, and a willing general contractor, we were able to convince our plumbers and our contractor’s son, Jonny, to tag-team the project—it requires PVC pipe and a low voltage wire. This is a splurge that I think I will be happy we added down the road.
HVAC
The house had new HVAC units installed about 28 years ago; however, most of the ducting looked much older. There were also concerns since the most recent tenants consisted of raccoons, cats and squirrels. When preparing the crawlspace for our vapor barrier, the old ductwork system was completely removed. We also moved both return units to a more central-hallway location.
Leak-Proofing
One benefit of having a completely open house: finding a million little leaks. Oberg Roofing has been phenomenal about coming over every time there was a torrential downpour to mark leaks with spray paint. This allowed us to seal spots prior to installing insulation and sheetrock.
Insulation
The final step before drywall was insulation. We have our insulation inspection scheduled for this afternoon and we are also measuring for sheetrock today. Fingers crossed all goes well and we can proceed to the next step of Our Little BIG Dream!
Thank you for following along! We’re looking forward to the next stage…