Rewired, Relighted, Patched, Drywalled House

 Since my last post, Rick has gone off on a tangent to rewire the whole house with new cable/Internet wires so everything is "up to date" electronically... for the moment.  We all know that electronic components and systems change way too quickly to ever totally be caught up, but we do the best that we can.

This is the access hole that started our 
latest recabling project.

The tangent all started when Rick took down one of the fluorescent lights in the exercise room.  That left a cavity in the ceiling with a hole which contained access to the wiring for the living room electronics.  Well, before we patched THAT hole, we just had to make sure that the cables were up to date.

So Rick spent the last few days running new cables over the finished ceilings in the basement and through walls.  Now his computer and my computer are hard-wired into the Internet.  We moved the router to Lindsay's old bedroom. With the router being more centrally located, reception is better throughout our property.  

He took time out from the rewiring to repaint the stairwell walls and ceiling to the basement before the new carpet arrives.  We ordered a carpet called "Down Home," which is a combination of an ivory, tan, and brown plush weave.  The carpet will be installed on July 27.

 

The repainted walls and ceiling on the
staircase make the area brighter.

While we were at it, we also bought and installed new can lights in the storage room.  We had many dark corners in that room, so adding more lights was a welcome addition.

The new can light to the far right finally illuminates 
that dark corner of the basement.  The storage room
is overcrowded right now with furniture and items
from the two other rooms we are refinishing.

Yesterday, we added cable access from the router in the basement to the living room, and today we are working on adding new cables to the TV in our master bedroom.

Meanwhile, Rick is patching the old fluorescent light cavities in the ceiling in the exercise room.  He also recabled the TV in that room, so reception is good down there, too.

Left-over drywall makes a perfect finish to the 
basement workshop.

Then Rick used the left-over drywall to finish a part of the wall in his workshop that never had any covering over the insulation.  That area was great at collecting sawdust from his saw!  Now, with the drywall installed and primed, the room will be much easier to clean after a project.  Additionally, we were able to use the expensive drywall that was left over from our latest wall projects.

Building materials in the last year have skyrocketed in price, so we are happy to use whatever materials we have to make this house as comfortable as possible.  With the prices of houses, we are in no hurry to move anywhere else!

Out with the Blue Painted Walls, In with the New "Cookie" Walls

Much has happened since my last blog, including several major decisions regarding the walls and the flooring.

Our original plan was to put rolled linoleum or vinyl plank floors into the downstairs bedroom, cutting out only the amount of carpet that was still good so we could patch the hallway carpet.  To paraphrase Robert Burns: The best laid plans of mice and men often go awry.  And that is exactly what happened to those plans.  

Rick adds a new coat of aqua paint over
the blue walls in the bedroom.

Step Seven of our original scheme was to paint the new drywall in the hallway and the bedroom.  Rick did that, painting the hallway a bright white and the bedroom a soft shade of aqua green (although I admit that it looks blue in the pictures I have taken). 

Step Eight was to splice the carpet.  That is where our plans changed.  A close look at the hallway carpet revealed that it was badly worn in places, and any splice we tried to add to that wear pattern would not have looked good at all.  OK, ditch the splicing idea. 

We then decided to investigate either solid sheet linoleum (since this IS a basement!) or try luxury vinyl plank flooring.  We learned that linoleum was not a good choice both because it would have been a nightmare to lay both in the bedroom and piece into the hallway, and because the size of roll that we would have needed to cover the bedroom was impossible to fit down our basement stairs.  OK, ditch the sheet linoleum.

We were excited to try the vinyl plank flooring.  After laying Pergo planks both in our house and in Stephanie's first house, we knew that we could do that labor, so we bought all of the flooring and hauled it downstairs.  We ripped out the old carpet in the bedroom, Rick pulled out all of the tack strips, and we replaced a clean-out drain cover that we found buried under the floor.  We started to lay the vinyl planks and immediately ran into problems.  

Six rows of plank flooring proved to us that it would
split apart on uneven floors.  This is as far as we got
before we ripped it all out.

While the planks were waterproof and made for basements, we quickly learned that they did not stay together if the floor was not even.  Sadly, when our house was built, it was not built to have a finished basement, and the floors are less than perfectly flat.  Each time I walked on the part of the floor that we had down, the planks pulled apart.  To solve that problem, we would have had to spend about $1,000 getting our floors leveled.  The planks were not worth it.  OK, ditch the planks. We returned the unopened boxes to the store and discarded the rest into the garbage in pure disgust.  

As we debated our options on what to do next, we knew that we would have to replace the fluorescent lights in the ceiling of the exercise room.  We found that the lights were not properly installed and not grounded in the bedroom, and the same held true in the exercise room.  The picture shows what Rick found buried in the ceiling that acted as a power supply for the light fixtures -- an open box that could have set the house on fire.  Replacing those with properly wired and grounded can lights let me sleep a little better, even though we still had not found an answer to our flooring dilemma. 

This is what we found buried in the ceiling
of the exercise room.

So now we were back to square one.  The spliced carpet would not work, the linoleum would not fit, the vinyl planks would not stay together on uneven floors, tile would be too expensive, and leaving the floors with nothing on them was not an option.

That is when we decided that we would have to go back to choosing a new carpet for the hallway and the bedroom.  We discussed and agreed that rather than buying carpet for the stairs, we would buy oak treads and risers and rebuild the stairs, staining them to match the woodwork in the rest of the house.  Good plan... except research revealed that the stains and sealers available to the do-it-yourselfers were not a good choice.  They all either wore poorly which would have resulted in having to sand and refinish the stairs about every five years, or they resulted in a topcoat sealer that was dangerous because it was slippery.  The only stains/ sealers worth buying were sold only to professional floor installers/ finishers, and we were not about to hire someone to complete that work.  OK, ditch the oak stairs.  We took all of the treads and risers back to the store today.

In the meantime, we had gone to local carpet Store #1 to look for carpet.  The saleswoman was less than helpful.  She pointed us in the right direction, told us to choose a nylon carpet for durability and for stain resistance, and offered no additional information or help.  When asked about weave or backing or guarantees, her only solution was to read the back of the carpet sample.  Thanks.  THAT we could do ourselves.  We took a couple of samples home and decided to get a quote on one of them. 

A man from Store 1 came out to measure for the carpet.  At that time, we had still planned on using oak stairs, so he did not measure for a carpeted staircase.  The quote came in about $500 more than we expected, and we would have to add almost $1,000 more for the stairs.  Neither of us was THAT thrilled with the carpet choice.

Today, we chose to shop further.  We went to local carpet Store 2 and met with a very personable saleswoman.  She listened to what we wanted and brought us a carpet that she thought would work well for our application.  It actually was less expensive than the carpet from Store 1, and we liked it better. We brought it home but could not quite decide on a color.  I liked one variegated sample, but Rick thought it might be too dark.  Neither of us felt it was perfect for the room.  We liked it in the sunlight, but in the basement it seemed to take on a grey tint.  We even went back to Store 1, got that carpet sample again, and brought them both home to compare.  

Then it hit me: the carpet that we both liked better from Store 2 just did not look good with the blue walls downstairs, even though it was a fairly neutral shade of beige. Our solution was to go to our favorite paint store in town, taking the carpet sample with us.  Within 10 minutes, our saleswoman at the paint store found the perfect shade of off-white (called "Sugar Cookie") that made the carpet sample come alive.  Finally we had some success!

Rick starts to repaint the wall Sugar Cookie
to rid us of the blue walls in the exercise room.

For the first time in three weeks, we both are content with our choices.  We will replace all of the carpet in the basement with the variegated sample from Store 2.  Someone from that store will be here on Monday to measure the stairs and the rooms for an estimate.  In the meantime, Rick bought the new paint and already has painted the hallway and part of the blue exercise room.  We know that if the carpet does not look right in the aqua bedroom, we can repaint that room (again) with the same Sugar Cookie paint.  

We still have to patch the ceiling in the exercise room and to take out all of the blue carpet in that room, but we will have almost two months to do that before the new carpet arrives.  Unless the chosen carpet's quote comes in at over $5,000 (which I doubt), I think that we finally are on the road to getting our basement back into a habitable condition. 

Forced Basement Remodel

 A few weeks ago, Green Bay had a power outage.  When Lindsay went to our vacant house to turn on the water so our water-back-up sump pump would work, she discovered that our furnace had been leaking and that the carpet was so soaked, it was growing mushrooms!

She called in a repairman for us, and we learned that the furnace had probably been leaking for over six months as the condensation discharge hose had fallen out.  It was not properly installed ten years ago, and it finally gave way; however, since we were not here to do "proper maintenance," and since the installation company was partly at fault, our homeowners insurance will not cover the cost of the repairs.  They told us to go to the furnace installation company for repair costs... like that would happen with a 10-year-old furnace malfunction!

So we flew back to Green Bay earlier than expected, and we have been working downstairs ever since.

Step One was to remove all of the moldy carpeting, drywall, stud walls, and carpet strips.

Rick cut out the moldy carpet to expose the
wet carpet pad and the moldy woodwork.

The wet carpet and mold went around the corner
into the bedroom area, too.

The wet stud walls and drywall were full
of black mold. 

Step Two was to spray the entire area around the furnace to kill any mold spores left in the concrete.

With the stud walls and drywall at the end of the hallway
and around the corner into the bedroom removed, Rick
sprayed the area to rid the house of mold.

Step Three was to rebuild the stud walls that surround the furnace.

First up was the stud wall for the end of the hallway.

Rick works on the stud wall in the bedroom.

Since one door was impacted, Rick had to add
new moulding to the door frame.

After a few careful cuts, the new drywall
covers the end of the hallway.

Rick screws in the drywall to the new
bedroom wall.

Step Four was to replace the old-fashioned, incorrectly wired fluorescent light fixtures before we burned down the house.  We replaced them with LED canned lights.  We figured since we had to drywall anyway, now was the perfect time to run new wires and to drywall the ceiling.  We will do the same with the light fixtures in the exercise room, too.

New can lights flank the hole in the ceiling
where the old fluorescent lights once hung.

We had to build frames inside those holes
to which we could fasten drywall.

Then up goes the new drywall to cover the old hole.

Step Five was to replace the old light box above the stairs with a canned light also.

The old stairway light box was way at the bottom
of the staircase, so it did not light the stairs well.

The new can light is further up the stairs,
and we added a second at the bottom of the stairs.

Step Six was to install new drywall, to tape the joints, and to mud it all. While the walls are just tedious to mud, the joints to the ceilings and the overhead work on the ceiling are the most difficult to complete.

The second coat of mud goes over the tape
on the seams of the new drywall.

Once the mud dries and we sand it, we
will be able to paint them.

The overhead work is the most difficult.

Step Seven is yet to come.  Once the walls are sanded, we will prime and paint them all.  Then we can look downward since Step Eight will be to cut good carpet from the bedroom that was not damaged and to seal it to the carpet that is left in the hallway.  

Steph Nine will be to install new flooring in the basement bedroom. We still are debating whether to use rolled sheet linoleum or to choose waterproof vinyl plank flooring instead.  While the sheet will be about 1/3 the price of the planks, the planks almost will be easier to install, and they will (in my opinion) look much better.  That decision is yet to be made.

While we were looking at lights, we also noticed that the canned lights in the kitchen had badly yellowed from years of heat from the lightbulbs, so while we are in the remodeling, it's-only-money mood, we replaced all of those lights with new LED lights, too.  The LEDs have a 20-year guarantee.  At our ages, I wish we had such a guarantee, too! 

So the work goes on.  In the end, we will have a repaired basement that will support the sale of this house some day when our daughters have to sell it.  Until that time, it will be safe and will look good.  We'll settle for that.