Okee dokee... It's been a little while. Hopefully we'll be back to a more normal updating schedule now that things have settled down a bit. We moved into the house in September and had cut back on our house-work quite a bit since then. Things are picking back up again so it's time to get back to work! So without further delay, to the marshmallow kingdom we go!
So we actually did this work this past summer when it was in the 90's in Seattle, which is not normal at all... And most unpleasant for this particular work. We donned our special marshmallow suits to prepare for the journey!
After getting all suited up, time to jump on in! One of the main goals of the future bedroom is to upgrade the insulation effeciency. Currently, the walls varried in their R values from R-5 to R-15 depending on which part of the room they were in. The ceilings are R-19. Our plan is to double the wall thickness and add an additional layer of R-15 for a total of R-30 in the walls and add a 2" rigid foam insulation to the ceiling to get an R-34 value there. That's still not even to code for new construction here in Seattle, but the ceiling is already pretty low and we can't add any insulation on top of what's there so all we can do is add down. The 2" foam is the most bang for the buck as far as R value per inch of insulation...
Here's the before. Everything all nice and tidy and kraft paper backed...
So onwards we go. We first removed all the old insulation, which was a mixture of kraft-backed fiberglass and some older stuff that I don't know what it was, but couldn't have provided much insulating value...
Some of that older stuff wasn't in the best condition.
Cotton candy-land!
We removed all the kraft paper first. We'll then take out the insulation itself ond reuse it in interior walls, but we needed to remove it to get to the current electrical and put in our future electrical!
We then unrolled the insulation right out of the walls and into large garbage bags for later use. After an uncomfortable not-too-long, we had the walls bare!
So we're pretty much window experts now! With 2 window removals and installs under our belts we're fellin' pretty good! We happened to have an excellent friend in town. Sir Gabe! We acquired his and our current rommate/friend don's help with the removal/install of our final window.
Who could say no to help from those 2!?!?!
She's a doozy! That window in the back is actualy 6 feet wide and 4 feet tall.
We thought it might be a bit much for just 2 people. Especially since it's about 8 feet up on the outside. And great company is great!
So just like usual, cutting away the old window.
And there's our strong sexy helpers making sure nothing comes crashing down!
Vanessa and I worked on the sill.
While Gabe and Don worked on framing the rough opening.
Once they framed the rough opening, we applied sheathing and attached the sill. Smiles for EVERYONE!
Then it was install time. Put the new guy in his hole and sealed him on up!
A couple roofing nails later, and we're good to GO!
Awww... Good times! Thanks VERY MUCH to Gabe and Don for their help with this guy. Couldn't have done it without you!
The end product!
Stay tuned for a trip to the marshmallow kingdom! Coming up next!!!
So next on our list was the removal of the old flooring in the bedroom. There was an old parquet floor installed in almost all of this side of the house. If you look closely at this photo you can see the outline of the square tiles on the floor.
We started with some shovels we found in the garage but quickly found that those little buggers were glued down real well. So we once again went back to the trusy little multi-function tool from Harbor Freight. This thing has really proven itself useful for us!
So the middle of the room wasn't glued down quite as heavily as the sides.
One of us would use the multi-function tool to scrape up the sides of the tiles and the other one would use the shovel as can be seen leaning up against the wall on the left there to try to scrape up as much of the tiles as possible. It was a slow process, but we made steady progress.
And before we knew it we were done! Took 2 half days to get that guy cleared off.
Turns out the tongue and groove sub-floor underneath is in pretty good condition, so we're going to leave that in place. We're pretty excited about that. We really didn't know what to expect. We were hoping we wouldn't find anymore special kitty places.
So now that we've got most of the mess making tear-downs taken care of we finally got around to installing the new sub-floor in the area where we pulled up the subfloor. We bought some 3/4" T&G plywood and got to it!
We sized it up first to make sure it fit correctly...
Looks good so far.
Glued.
And Screwed!
Alright! Our first construction, as opposed to de-construction! Actually quite sturdy too!
Moving right along!
And before we even knew it we were done!
It's quite sturdy now. And the room is slowly losing that cat-pee aroma as it's being replaced by the scent of freshly cut lumber. A vast improvement!
Stay tuned! I'm not even sure what's coming up next!!!
