Fall/Winter Work

Well, things are getting close to being done.  All of the major components are completed.  We mainly have doors and trim work to be done which will take awhile to finish.  The bathroom is fully functional at this point.  The water pressure for the shower is a little low, but it is usable.  A big thanks to everyone for their help.  Of course we can never thank Jon enough for all of his help (Jon now has his contractor's license).  Check out his website at http://jetcarpentry.com/.  Our friends, Jude and Alex, helped us install the last major item, the cork floor.  A long time friend of the family, Garth Steel Klippert , did the vanities and cut the counter tops made of paperstone.  He did a great job!  Check out more of his work at http://gsdb.blogspot.com/.  It would have been a much bigger job without them.  Whitney finally had some time to help as well.  Besides the cork floor, she pretty much sanded, painted and installed the drawer pulls on her make-up desk.  Check out the slideshow, "Fall/Winter Work" for the most up to date photos.

Summer Work

Well, once again it has been way too long since I updated the blog.  We have been quite busy with the house.  We got our framing inspection passed and after a couple of tries, we got the electrical inspection passed as well.   We decided to add extra closets to our original plan.   The sheetrock work has been done now and some of the electrical work has been added.  We won't add all of the lights, etc. until all of the taping, mudding and painting has been done.  Just a week ago, we installed the upstairs toilet and a temporary sink.   Whitney is VERY HAPPY about it.  We will soon finish the sheetrock work and start installing the tile for the shower.

April & May Work

It's very late so this will be very short and sweet. The latest slide show is the work Jon and I have completed the last couple of months. It includes a lot of framing and some side projects as well.
Enjoy!

Plumbing

Once again it has been way too long since I added anything to this blog. Luckily, we have not been idle and there is much to talk about. We have recently finished and passed our inspection on what I refer to as the "Holy Grail" of house remodeling... Plumbing. Plumbing...hmm...an odd choice maybe. However, I understand and can whole heartily endorse the cost of a plumber. Personally, I think it has been the most challenging and at sometimes the dirtiest job we have had to do. At the end of the installation, we replaced all of the plumbing on the west end of the house; drain pipes and supply pipes. We used copper for all of the supply lines. To quote a favorite movie "Copper...it cost's money because it saves money". I hope this is true. Although we replaced our plumbing in Austin with the new fandangled plastic piping, we had second thoughts about doing it for this house. For the DWV piping, we used ABS. If I had unlimited resources, I would have had someone else do it and used cast iron. ABS is pretty easy to work with, but it is noisy as hell. New photos have been added to the blog to show some of the work.

Structure Work Finished

The crew at the Hill House recently finished the structure work for the new bathroom. To meet the new codes for a bathroom (40#'s per sq ft), we had to add four new beams to the west side of the house. We added new glu-lam beams (4x10) to the upstairs "knee" wall and then ran 4x4 posts down to the basement. These beams take the load of the roof off of the second story floor. Then we added two solid 4x10 beams under the 1st floor bathroom walls. These new beams turn the existing first floor bathroom walls into load bearing walls which will support the second floor bathroom. We couldn't have done the work without Jon's friend, Damian. For the low cost of fajitas and beer, he spent the afternoon with us helping us to place all of the beams. There aren't as many photos as I would have liked. With only the three of us, it made picture taking difficult. For the glu-lams which went into the second floor, we had to lift them on to the roof and bring them through the middle skylight. All and all, a very successful event. See pictures under Structure Work Finished.

Structure Work Begins

After a surprisingly busy fall for both Jon and I, we are back to working on the new bathroom. We went through the official permitting process with the city. This was a little scary at first since it looked like we might have to do some major work to the house to get the upstairs classified as a livable space. However, we luckily were able to get the upstairs grandfathered in as livable space since it had obviously been used as such for many years. This means we do not have to redo the stairway up to the second floor (plus various other things).

Since we are installing a new bath, we do have some modifications to make. The biggest one of these is adding structural support. We got a wonderful architect to help design the bathroom, do our drawings for the permitting process and to design the new structural support. His name is Jacob Chavez (jchavezdesign@gmail.com). Jacob was great to work with and has become one of our new friends here in Portland.

Because of the new footings for the new support beams, Jon and I recently had to reroute the main sewer pipe. We did a lot of pre-work and the rerouting actually went very smoothly. I highly recommend getting a orbital Sawzall with a metal cutting blade encrusted with diamonds (Blade - $15 at Homey D) for this type of work. It cuts through cast iron like it was butter. We also recently constructed forms for the footings and just got them officially inspected by the city yesterday. We will pour concrete and finish up the support work after the holidays. See the slide show on the recent work.

The Dynamic Duo

Whitney and Jon's parents (Richard and Mary Anne Tirrell) recently spent a couple of weeks with us. They came to work and work they did. We built a fence, stripped wall paper from three rooms, and painted three rooms. We were amazed at how much we all accomplished. It couldn't have happened with out Richard and Mary Anne. Many, many thanks goes out to them. You can view much of the process and finished work in the slide shows adjacent to the blog.