Adventures in Remuddling

It takes a team to renovate a home. Here’s a rundown of who’s who:

Haitham - Tig’s renovations mentor. Haitham is an electrician by training, but he also does general contracting. Right now, he is renovating a 6 unit condo building in Dorchester . Our home is one of several side jobs he has. Haitham looks like a typical contractor.

Continue reading “The Cast of Characters” »

I can’t believe 4 weekends have already past by. Saturday morning was spent installing the mail slot into the front door. The home has a front door that leads into a small room with 2 other doors. Each one of those doors goes into each unit (one upstairs, one on the 1st floor). The previous owner had the front door with a door knob, but no locks. Only each unit’s doors had locks. One of Serena’s dad’s job was to update the locks, and while he was at it, he installed a lock on the main front door. This led to a small dilemma of the mail, as mail was usually left in the small rooom.

So we bought a mail slot. After I cut the hole, with a template from the mail slot manufacturer, I realized the mail slot did not fit properly (they created the template upside down - those #$%^@#$%).

Continue reading “Weekend 4″ »

The past few days were mostly myself and the plumber. Both the building and plumbing rough inspection got signed off this week.

Now it’s all me. Tasks for the next few days include preparing to cover up the walls with drywall and cement board. I need to re-align the radiator pipes before I lay down my walls and floors. The exterior walls need to be insulated and then a vapor barrier needs to be installed over the insulation. So lots to do.

I might also start on the kitchen too.

It could have been worse.

Today I had to make three trips to a large well known home improvement store. On one of those trips I bought sound board (a fibrous material that’s about 3/4″ thick designed to absorb sound). Since our master bedroom is adjacent to the bathroom, we wanted to soundproof the bathroom a little.

Continue reading “Sound Board Disaster” »

Drywall is now on both bathroom ceilings! Tig’s parents came for Memorial Day weekend and we had a barn-raising day. Or in this case, a ceiling raising day. While Tig measured, Dad cut the drywall.

Then, Tig and Dad pulled the drywall up to the ceiling. Mom and I come in with propping tools (our arms are too short to hold up drywall) and support the sheet while Tig screws it in.

Continue reading “Ceiling is in” »

It may be hard to believe, but sometimes I’m really anal and exacting.

So…

Continue reading “Ceiling Drywall …” »

I’ve been prepping the guest bedroom for painting for 3 weekends now. It’s not as high a priority as our two bathrooms, so I tend to do a little bit, and then leave it to help Tig. It also didn’t help that I started with the most hole ridden and cracked plastered room in our unit. The closet was never painted, there are three large cracks on the west wall and holes in the closet. The previous owner, over the past 43 years made over 30 holes in the room (hanging wall shelves, nails to hold blinds, hooks, etc…). If my spackling efforts fail to fix these flaws, plan B is to buy a really large world map that covers most of the wall.

On Saturday, I loaded the caulk gun and started to close various gaps between the trim.

Continue reading “Guest room - prep work” »