Justin Ohms’s Weblog

I finally finished up the great room. The wall is all gone, and the wall’s and ceiling patched up. The floor has all been put back in place…

and thanks to my friend Chris (who loaned me his finish nailer and air-compressor) the base boards are all in. The floor took about a weekend and a couple of evenings to put in but since most of the baseboards were already cut (and I numbered them when I took them off) the baseboards only took about an hour to put back in. I still need to fill in the nail heads with color matched putty and caulk the top edge but otherwise everything is done.

Here are a few pictures…

Here is the view from the stairs…

A view from the kitchen….

A view from next to the fireplace…

Well the last week has been busy. Last weekend and this past holiday weekend I spent closing up the walls and ceiling, (drywall, mudding, taping, painting) and then reinstalling the kitchen island in it’s new location. Here are a few pictures…

Wall closed up…

Textured and painted… (You can still sort of see the patch on the ceiling but that’s mostly due to the fact that the paint doesn’t quite match the existing. We a spot like this in the kitchen as well. This should all get cleared up when we have the house painted later this year.)

Some pictures of the island in it’s new home…

The kitchen island wouldn’t have been such a big deal if it weren’t for the fact that in addition to the electrical outlet, it also contains our central-vac kick plate. Since the island moved about 12 feet from the middle of the kitchen to it’s new home in the bay window I needed to extend that length of pipe for the vac. Lucky for me I found this great 2″” flexible PVC pipe that allowed me to extend the line without having to build all the pipes and connectors using standard PVC. In fact because the system does not contain water I decided that I wouldn’t’ even bother using PVC cement and instead just duct taped the overlapping connections. This has the added benefit of being easy to take apart if something does get stuck in there in the future. The electrical was easier to move since I was able to pull the line down and move it so that there was just enough wire to reach the new location without having to install a junction box. I suppose if I had needed to I could have put one in the crawlspace, but I was very tired of being in the crawlspace. Between the duct, the pipe, the electrical, the vac, the speaker wire. (Oh yeah I ran speaker wire to the ceiling before I closed in the walls.) I’ve been down in the crawlspace about a dozen times in the last month. It’s not really that bad down there, I just don’t like it.

Just put in some new mini can lights to replace the chandelier that I moved to the new location of the dining table In this picture the 3 in the foreground and to the left are the existing lights, the three to the right and back toward the red wall are the new lights. I had never put in these lights before and was happy with how easy they go in and how I didn’t have to really open the ceiling up to put them in.

Here I’ve pulled up the floor and moved the island out of the way the next step is to pull out the fridge and dishwasher (not good considering my history with plumbing)
Unfortunately the floor did not go under the island so all of this is necessary, oh well gives me a reason to replace some scratched sections of floor.

This picture the 3 stacks on the left are the old floor and the 1 on the right is the new WRONG floor. We have to take this floor back and replace it with the correct stuff. Technically it’s the same style and color however it has a different locking mechanism because the manufacturer changed to a new system in 2007. Lucky for us they were able to located 1600sqft of the old style in a warehouse in Atlanta. It should get here next Tuesday.

I finished up removing the wall this weekend. The final task was to move the HVAC duct that runs up to the master bedroom. I had been putting this off due to the hot/humid weather we had been having. I didn’t want to mess with the AC while the weather was so bad. Here are a few pictures of where the wall use to be…

I wanted to reuse the original riser duct that goes from the crawlspace to the 2nd floor but was unable to find a transition piece (oval to 6″ round) that curved the correct way at the top. In the end I replaced that piece with 10″x3 1/4″ duct and new transition pieces for both the top and the bottom. This should have the added benefit of improving airflow through this duct. The drain pipe has also been moved in this photo and now sits in the column just to the left of the duct. I’m just glad that I shouldn’t need to go back down in the crawlspace for awhile.