Monthly Archives: January 2012
Home Renovation, siding
| January 30, 2012 | Posted by matt under home |
When we bought our house in 2002, it had dark brown aluminum siding. Here it is, circa 2002.
Several years ago, we had the siding painted a lighter brown color, knowing that it would not last for more than a few years. This helped a bit, but we weren’t completely happy with the color.
After demolition, we found that the exterior of the house has changed even more over the years. We think it was originally white plank wood siding with a nice dental molding on the front that was still exposed after the aluminum siding was added. Take a look at what was on the side of the front door under the aluminum siding.
Since we were adding on some new space in the back of the house, we needed to choose how to finish the exterior. Currently, a popular choice is Hardie board siding. It is a fiber cement based product, that has a color finish applied at the factory. It is available in various finishes and styles, including plank, shingle, and panels. The planks are also available with different textures. It is engineered to be durable in cold weather climates like Chicago. The color variety was good, but making a choice was fairly difficult. We narrowed our options down to three choices: Monterey Taupe (l), Khaki Brown (c), or , Woodstock Brown (r).
We decided on the Woodstock brown. The trim is cedar that is prepainted white at the factory. One option that we had wanted to have was the shaker style of siding that Hardie offers. It turns out that it is insanely expensive, we were quoted a $1200 up charge just to have the front triangle and the two dormers done in this style. I’m not sure why it’s so much more, but we opted to stick with the plank siding. If the house was all siding instead of part brick, we may have wanted to break up the siding by using the different style.
Here is the siding up close with some of the trim. In this picture, the caulk has not been applied yet.
Here is the back of the house.
And the front.
There is still some trim from the old windows to paint white, and the gutters have not been put on yet, so it will look a little bit different when complete. So far we have been very happy with the color and finish in the product.
Home Renovation, plumbing, electrical, and HVAC
| January 30, 2012 | Posted by matt under home |
A big part of any home remodel is all the stuff that’s hidden in the walls. For our home remodel, there have been few surprises in these areas, but a considerable part of the budget goes into them, mostly in skilled trades needed to do the work.
We managed to avoid some of the more costly upgrades such as needing a new main water line. For plumbing, we had the following changes:
- A new 3/4 bath for the master bedroom
- A new powder room on the main floor
- A surprise failure in our 40 gallon hot water heater, so we replaced it with a new 50 gallon model
- Relocation of the hose bib outside, since the addition covered the original location
- Minor plumbing changes needed for the new furnace
For electrical, we had fairly typical changes to keep all the new areas up to code, along with a few upgrades. When we remodeled our kitchen 7 years ago, we upgraded our electrical service, so we had enough power for the new areas of the house.
- Moving the main electrical lines to the corner of the house to accomodate the new areas of the house
- Code requires smoke detectors and CO detectors to be hard wired in the entire house
- Several extra outlets in closets and behind the TV location
I also decided to wire all the new areas for cable TV and Cat5 ethernet or phone, also known as low voltage wiring. I also wired for in-wall and in-ceiling speakers for the family room. Once the drywall is fully installed and painted, I will install the speakers and wall plates and terminate the wiring. I was able to purchase all the tools, speakers, wiring, and supplies for under $500 from monoprice.
For HVAC, there is a new furnace and A/C unit installed on the second floor. It will handle heating and cooling for the master suite and the third bedroom that is also on the top floor. The downstairs furnace and A/C unit will handle cooling for the new family room, the main floor, the two lower bedrooms, and the basement. The chimney that went up the back of the house had to be torn down and the vent for the furnace and hot water heater moved up through the house to vent through the roof. This bought us a few extra inches in both the powder room and one of the closets in the master bedroom.
Home Renovation, roof
| January 28, 2012 | Posted by matt under home |
Our roof was nearing the end of its life, and replacing it was part of the motivation in doing our renovation at this time. While a roof is not extremely expensive, it made no sense to replace the roof and then do any changes later. The color was a medium brown that had not matched the original dark brown siding, and we had never liked it. We had painted the house a few years back, but the roof was always a sore spot. It also needed repair, we had a few ice dams near the front windows during the winter and the shingles had started to degrade quite a bit.
We went with a charcoal architectural shingle that matched the roof on the garage that we had replaced a few summers ago. The new roof is probably at least a third to half larger than the old one due to the higher peak and the fact that the back is now all shingled, whereas before there was a flat roof on the sunroom.
The roof went up in about a week, the roofers had some pretty good weather the week before Christmas. The roof was finished the day of a pretty good rainstorm and we had no leaking.
Home Renovation, framing
| January 22, 2012 | Posted by matt under home |
After the foundation was poured and the crawl space slushed, the foundation was ready for the framing to start on top of it. We knew that the framing would be dramatic, moving quite quickly. The first day, I came home from work to see that the entire first floor was installed, and two walls were already up. By the second day, both all the first floor walls were complete and the carpenters were already working on the second story. Their approach was to build out the new area of the addition and move over the back of the house. They saved the front dormers until last.
The second story took a few more days to take shape. A temporary door at the top of the second floor bedroom was installed and the third bedroom was ready for the demolition required for the access to the rear of the house.
We had now reached a decision point that our contractor had told us about when we signed our contract, the space between the new master bedroom and the old third bedroom was occupied by rafters from the original roof. The original plan was to remove just enough rafters to make a hallway and small utility closet for the furnace. But depending on the layout, the carpenters were going to see if they could install a beam above ceiling height that would allow support for the roof top and the back of the house, allowing us to claim all the space between the two rooms. This amounted to about a 5′ by 15′ area that could be used to enlarge the bedrooms or provide closets. It turned out that they were able to do this for a very reasonable amount of money, so we decided to go forward with that change.
Here you can see what the beam did to the interior space of the old third bedroom. It provided almost a foot of extra headroom, and removed the clipped ceiling from the south side of the room.
Here you can see the temporary support for the laminated beam. At the time the photo was taken, the beam was not supported down to the foundation so it was supported temporarily for a few weeks until lumber could be dropped through the house walls to provide enough permanent support.
Beyond the photo is a five foot deep area for closet space. We elected to divide the space into three closets. The one on the west side of the hallway is a utility closet for the furnace. It has some extra space and room for attic access. The other area to the east of the hallway was divided into two walk in closets, a smaller one for the third bedroom and a larger one for the master. This allows the master to have two walk in closets.
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