After ten years of complaining about the layout of our upstairs we got ambitious and I decided to get it started. Our house has never had a master bedroom. It's a 4 bedroom house and each bedroom has an attached small full bathroom. The back corner bedroom had a stove pipe that runs right up the middle back wall of the bedroom for the stove and was exposed (it was like that when I bought the house.) I usually just kept the door shut on that bedroom and used it to get ready for work in the morning since I leave at 5am. Anyhow we decided to blow out the walls between the two bedrooms and make a big master with a his and hers bathroom. Here is what it looked like after moving out the furniture right before starting demo. Stair well. Looking down the hall from top of stairs. Bedroom we never used. Our bedroom Getting ready to start the demo
Demo day! My dad came over to assist which was much appreciated! My wife watches way to much HGTV! She wanted to do the whole sledge through the wall thing so she got her way and afterwards we did it my way so there wasn't tons of tiny pieces of drywall lol Walls coming down. Lots and lots of rewiring to be done....... Filling it up
Stairs and hall were had all the carpet ripped out also. Putting wood floors and all new trim back in.
I didn't take pictures of this but our house has popcorn ceilings so we used a pump up garden sprayer to soak the down and we scraped all the popcorn off in the two bedrooms, down the hall, and the stairwell. The stairwell was the most fun using ladders and planks it was almost like a circus act lol I knew there was no good way to match them up so I decided to do a knock down on them since I didn't want to deal with sanding them flat.
Before I could work on framing in the chimney and adding another closet I found an issue with the chimney install that wasn't done by me. From the attic it looked like the chimney had shielding around it to give the needed clearance to combustibles but when I dropped the trim ring I wasn't real happy. It had been half way done and hacked together they had used a piece of sheet metal round duct work and cut it in multiple places so the insulation could pour in around the bracketing that holds the chimney. Needless to say I corrected the issue. I built a proper piece of duct work for an insulation shield and installed it so it goes to the roof line. I also called the chimney manufacturer and went through the needed clearances and ensured all clearance we're exceeded.
Next I worked on framing in the closet and chimney. Didn't take a lot of pictures of this part but you can see the results. The chimney is now cased and this closet is going to be a built in dresser more or less. I didn't take the chimney casing all the way to the wall since there was a floor register for the AC there that couldn't be moved. I will be building custom shelves in the cubby for storage. Also framed in the new doorway to the bedroom. If you look back past the doorway you can see I took out some drywall on the bottom of the wall to add extra electric outlets.
Ha treadmill, that sounds like to much excercise for me lol! Hoping to put two small chairs up there and have a reading nook for my wife. I told her we should put a tv, coffee pot and min fridge with beverages and I can just stay up there out of her hair but that was a no-go with her I may still win on the TV though. I will just do it and let the storm blow over
Trying to get caught up to where I am at now. After ripping the top plate of the walls off it was obvious a section of the ceiling was coming down to get the drywall back up correctly since 2/3 of both walls just had nailers attached between the hipped rafters. Up in the attic I went to shovel back as much insulation as possible. After clearing it back I just ripped out the drywall and let the rest of the insulation fall. We bagged up what fell and put it back when we were done. Patched back in. I probably should have done this differently and I'm betting I will regret this later.
Once I got the drywall up I paid a friend of mine to come finish it just because I HATE doing mudwork and it would take me ten times longer than him. I then turned my attention to the floors and since I hate squeaky floors and mine had a few squeaky spots I fastened them down every 9" with 3.5" fasteners that have serrated threads. I'm happy to report there are no squeaky spots now Also I decide to splurge on a new toy ops I mean tool. Also replaced my dying tool bag with this. I use it when running HVAC service calls and like to keep it to the necessities so its light.
That looks like quite the project. Gotta love the stove pipe that was previously installed! Keep the pictures coming - I'll bet it will look great when it complete .
Ours is in the basement but my wife actually uses it to run on every other day so I'm not aloud to hang clothes on it
I didn't take a lot of pictures of the painting process as we were painting in a rush in between volleyball practice and volleyball tournaments. I did spray the ceiling in the whole upstairs and the closets with a commercial paint sprayer and let me tell you it was fast! I sprayed close to 800 sq foot of ceilings and there closets in under an hour. Once the ceilings we're done we rolled the walls. The only pic I have from all of that is my wife suited up to help spray. She would kill me if she knew I was posting this
After finishing the painting I scraped the floors by hand to level everything off and remove any mud or paint leftover from the previous work. Then I put down the aquabar floor covering in prep for the wood floors. You can see the painted wall color in the background.
We just got back from being up at Quarter Horse Congress for the day watching the barrel racing and pole bending sweepstakes. Had a good time up there and actually got to see some of the cowboy mounted shooting which was pretty interesting to watch. Anyhow here was the start to laying the wood floors. I'm laying the bedroom wood floor perpendicular to the hallway and I'm going to tie in the hall to the bedroom with no transition so I took me a while to lay it all out. I had to square the first piece to the bedroom doorway and then square the stairs to the bedroom door way ended up having g to split the difference but it did turn out great. Once everything was squared up I snapped chalk lines, the ripped down 2x4s a ND fastened them to the floor to give myself a solid edge to nail the first pieces up against and keep everything straight.
