Scary Cabin

For what seems like minor changes to the upstairs structure, the framing took quite a bit of time. Mostly this is because of all the angles involved with tying into the ceiling. Of course we were also tearing out sheetrock and old framing along the way. Until the sheetrock goes up, it’s hard to tell if the plan will work out. Basically, this is what we ended up with.

1) The bathroom/back bedroom wall was bumped out into the bedroom by about 9 inches. This provided enough room on the front wall for a narrow (24”) door. This provides a single common door to the bathroom and removes the two existing doors. The two existing doors opened into the bedrooms, so with those gone, it should make the bedrooms a bit more open. It also should make the bathroom a bit more open as well. With some extra space in the bathroom, we can look into adding some linen storage.

2) The bumped out wall continues past the door opening into the back bedroom, but only extends just above the door. This leaves a triangular shelf above the door and to the right of the door. Below the shelf and to the right of the door will be a built-in bookcase. The bookcase will but into the knee wall. So all told, we lose 9” from the back bedroom, but gain some architectural/storage features.

3) The front bedroom gets a bit of usable wall space with the removal of the bathroom door that opened into the room.

See the pictures of the upstairs / upstairs bath and it might make sense.

There’s still a little bit of demo to do in the front bedroom closet, but once that’s done and all the debris is hauled off, the upstairs should be ready to start rebuilding.

Started on the electrical re-wire at the end of the day. The plan is to replace all the upstairs wiring, outlets, switches, fans and lights with new. So far, two new outlets, a new switch and new outside light are done.

Well, maybe moving day is a bit optimistic. The Living/dinning rooms do have furniture now. Too much furniture actually. We hauled up all the furniture we had been accumulating so we now have room for many people to sit comfortably. And for the first time ever, we had dinner on a real dining table with real chairs. We also sat on our new sofa and watched a movie Saturday night. When you’ve been working on a place for over 2 years, this is a real accomplishment.

Ok, enough lounging around, back to work! With our focus turned to the upstairs, we made some progress on the upstairs 1/2 bath. We knew we wanted to do something with this small room, but hadn’t really finalized any plans. A lot of time was spent with blue tape, laying out wall/door locations and thinking about what option would work best. The options were:

1. Do nothing. Just refinish the walls and tile the floor.

• pros: Not a lot of work.
• cons: Will have to live with the awkward small doors and cramped bathroom.

2. Remove the door from the non-master bedroom making it a master en-suite.

• pros: Again, not much work and makes electrical a bit easier.
• cons: Anyone sleeping in that room would then need to use the downstairs bath at night.

3. Expand the bathroom in to the front bedroom and move the door to the hallway.

• pros: Larger bath. Usable by both bedrooms. Later a dormer could be added to make room for shower.
• cons: The new door would be in an awkward location. Really should move plumbing to make it work.

4. Expand the bathroom into the master bedroom and move the door to the hallway.

• pros: Larger bath. Usable by both bedrooms. Later a dormer could be added to make room for shower. Door is in a less awkward location.
• cons: Losing some space in the master bedroom. This can be somewhat mitigated by using some of the space for built-in bookshelves.

We’re going with #4. The less awkward door and not having to move any plumbing to make it work were really the deciding factors. We did tear out the one bathroom wall and started building the new wall. The new wall is only about 8 inches away from the old, so we’re not taking a lot of space from the bedroom.

Here’s the list of what needs to be done upstairs. Ordered roughly by priority.

1. Demo upstairs bedrooms
2. Finish demo of closet
3. Demo bathroom
4. Frame new wall and new door opening
5. Remove/cap unused vent line
6. Re-wire outlets & outside light in bedroom
7. Re-wire outlet/light in bathroom
8. Re-wire closet light/outlet
9. Frame niche in bathroom
10. Install insulation
11. Drywall work in bathroom
12. Texture bathroom
13. Paint bathroom
14. Install lights
15. Subfloor in bathroom
16. Tile bathroom floor
17. Door casings and baseboard in bathroom
18. Install toilet
19. Install vanity
20. Frame for whole house fan
21. Install whole house fan
22. Insulate outside walls
23. Install new ceiling fans
24. Drywall work in bedrooms
25. Texture bedrooms, hall and stairway
26. Paint bedrooms, hall and stairway
27. Subfloor for bedrooms & hall
28. Kneewalls (drawers, cubbies, shelves, etc.)
29. Install window casings
30. Install floor in bedrooms & hall
31. Install door casings
32. Install baseboards
33. Install window blinds
34. Install doors

With the downstairs in pretty good shape, it is time to start demolishing the upstairs. With a full crew, we parked the trailer below the upstairs balcony and started ripping out paneling, sheetrock, knee walls, carpet. Basically everything. Most of the interior walls are staying with the exception of the knee walls so we left those alone, but the exterior walls are now down to the studs. The nasty carpet was pulled out and what was left of the pad scrapped up. It took a little over a day to get almost everything out. By then we had a full trailer so it was off to the dump. All that’s left to do upstairs is the closet and half bath. Throwing the debris straight off the balcony into the trailer worked out pretty good. I think we’ll do this again for the rest of the upstairs. The upstairs looks brighter and larger with all that dark paneling removed. Demo always seems to go pretty fast.

As a reward for getting the upstairs torn out so quickly , we bought a new couch. The fact that it was on sale for 20% off didn’t hurt either. So we now have some real furniture in the living area. Next week we’ll haul up some of the other furniture we’ve been stockpiling. It’s going to be strange not eating meals on the cheap small patio table and camp chairs.

The big news in this episode of the scary cabin is that we’ve moved our sleeping arrangements to the downstairs bedroom. This is big news because it means that we’ve mostly finished the downstairs and have started work on the upstairs. There are still a few small things to finish up downstairs like baseboards and a few moldings and, of course, the utility room (it’s a small room….).

The major accomplishments that led up to the move were installing the TV. Yes, that’s right, we now have a TV in the living room. Of course we had nothing buts setup screens to watch, but we do have a TV. Also the face frame for the built-in bookcase was built, installed, and painted. Genny did a bit more paint touch-up too.

Before we could move into the downstairs bedroom it had to be cleaned out. We’ve been using that room for storage and construction (that’s where the table saw and miter saw lived). Once cleaned out, the beds were moved downstairs and the sheets washed (another milestone, we used the washer and dryer for the first time). We then realized how much stuff we had stashed away in the upstairs bedroom.

Big T’s Trees was out and trimmed all the dead wood out of the various pine trees. They also cut down a couple of stumps and ground down a couple of stumps. Besides making it a bit more open, we did get a small pile of chips out of the deal.