Upstairs cozy nook and behind the scenes

I'm going to show you a secret!  When you go to someone's home, and you see a partial wall sticking out, such as this one (below), it's usually  because there is something inside it such as plumbing or heat duct.  Sometimes you will notice a "box out" along the top of a ceiling.  That's usually heat duct.  This is in the closet that we enlarged upstairs.  We had to run some plumbing from the bathroom below it, which is right below it.  So we had to make a box out.   I'll show you more after it is dry walled.

 The other side of the box out.

 

 Behind this closet door is alllllllll attic.  Lots and lots of attic.  With lots and lots of insulation.

 Had we decided to enlarge this closet, and it was in the original plans, we wouldn't have had to add to it later.  As it were, we had to add a partial wall,  (we- as in Dave!) which was a bit tricky.  We also had to remove the original 2x4's the carpenters installed and add support beams below the floor.  I tried to find that post from a couple of years ago, but couldn't find it.  We had to do it before we enclosed the ceiling on the main level.

 Anyway, Dave loves a challenge and he finished the wall.

I thought I would show you some of the behind the walls stuff that goes on in a home.

Lots of wiring. 

  Lots of plumbing

Also lots of duct work, and insulation.

 This is a space that he made for a cold air return, which will be in the upstairs foyer ceiling.

 And here is the closet now.

 It looks very much like a cozy nook, and I love it!  Dave reinforced the support beams across the top.  He calls that "putting the love into the house."   

 This is from standing inside the closet looking across the foyer.  The bathroom is across from the closet.

 That's it for now.  There is always so much behind the scenes stuff that goes on to building a home.  I know it's a bit boring, but if we didn't need wiring, plumbing, or heat, or support beams it would go a lot faster! 

Have a great weekend!

Cindy

And PS - Happy St. Patrick's Day!

We are moving along now....

Since Dave has been on eight hour days, and afternoons, he wakes up and starts working on the house.  I'm home to help whenever possible.  So, we have gotten quite a bit done in the last month.

The plan is to move upstairs this summer!  We'll see how it goes.

So....

The insulation in the attic is completed.

 For those of you who know R values, this is an R value of 50.  We are on a hill and it is windy.  I think normally the R value would be 25, which is one layer, but we added an extra layer and crossed it the other direction over the first layer.  I was glad to finish this before summer heat arrives.

It's one big sea of insulation.

And for the record, do not walk on this stuff, because there is some plumbing and vents and such under the insulation.

This is the bathroom ceiling upstairs on the 2nd story.

We had to do some work in that bathroom, even though we don't even need that level finished right now, because duct work, plumbing, and some electrical, go into this ceiling,

which is our bedroom ceiling.  (below the upper bathroom) And we couldn't cover our bedroom ceiling until all of the 'stuff' that needs to go into it, for the above level was completed. 

So, we got the tub installed,

 which required building a wall.

This is where the tub plumbing had to go, which is looking into our bedroom ceiling (below)

I don't know if you can see it from this picture below, but originally the vanity was going on the left wall.  You can see the plumbing for it on the left bottom of this picture.  However, after installing the tub, there would be no room to stand in front of the vanity.  So we moved the door to the center of the room, (it was on the right hand side of the wall)

and you can kind of see in the picture below, the vanity is going to go against the wall on the right now.  However, this required moving plumbing that was already installed.  It...is...always....something.

In my spare time I've been stapling these air vent things in the ceilings...which I forgot about until I saw this picture!

OK this is enough for now, but I have a mouse story to tell you in the next post.

Cindy

Master Bathroom

We've been working on the house, mostly Dave with me throwing in a helping hand now and then, but it's all behind the scenes stuff which is hard to show in pictures.  I mean, you've seen one wire or pvc pipe you've seen them all, right?  And, I can't get a full picture of a room to show you the difference between before and after.  So imagine, the master bathroom on the main level was an empty room with studs, and a few plugged holes in the ground for drains.  

Dave built and put up a few walls....but remember,

 we had to decide where everything was going, way back when.....two years ago....while we were working on the basement bathroom.  We had to have plumbing in place before we closed up the basement walls.  And of course, now I wish we could change it.  I decided I wasn't going to stress on this kind of thing anymore.  It's a bathroom.  So, see where all of those pex (tubing?) are coming out of the ground, and the tall pvc pipe.  Well, that was before we put up

this wall.  The shower goes on one side 

and the tub goes on this side. (where the ladder is)

The tub area now looks like this...below...with a little shelf that will be behind the tub.

Hidden, will be a special note, under the shelf,  just for me (I'll know it's there!)  and he changed the date without me telling him to!  HA HA!  Our anniversary is on New Years Eve.

Now, about the part where you have to figure out where everything goes on the next level.  We had to figure out where everything was going on the 2nd floor bathroom, a couple of weeks ago, even though we are working on the main level master bath.  It didn't take long because you only have a few choices.

See this pipe below......it is in the ceiling of our bedroom and it is coming out of the toilet of the 2nd floor bathroom.  It has to be gently sloped (for obvious reasons)

 

and it has to run in between the studs, not through them.  So that doesn't give you a lot of options.  The pipe has to come out of the toilet above, and run in between the studs below, lest you weaken your bedroom ceiling/second floor flooring.

It goes across the ceiling into the next room, which is the bathroom,

then you can see where it connects in to the plumbing,

that is also connected into the plumbing in our basement, that we figured out a couple of years ago.  I bet you had no idea all of this was hidden in the walls of your house, did you?  I sure didn't!

I'll talk about doors and lighting next...I don't want to post too many details at once! 

Sweet!

At Christmastime I had some friends over and they wrote on the inside Kitchen walls.  I love having people do that.  Someday.....years from now.....if this house ever comes down, someone will see all of the love that went into building it.

Cindy

Ok, so let me tell you what we've learned about bathroom vanities, faucets, and plumbing. We put the plumbing in, which I think I've told you before, according to the measurements of our bathroom vanity at home. Well, we found out they have started making bathroom vanities higher up now, so ....ahem....us older folks don't have to bend over so much. So the plumbing is in place, we bring the newly purchased bathroom vanity in the room, and the plumbing is too low for this particular vanity. Luckily, Dave can access the plumbing from behind , so we don't have to ruin the newly drywalled and painted bathroom wall.

However, when he removed some sort of plumbing something or other, water shot up like a geyser. And he did have to patch the original hole where the drain and water lines were, and re-do them a few inches higher than the old. So there was some patching on the wall, and cleaning of the bathroom already. And he spent the entire day yesterday working on the plumbing. Anyway, that was one lesson.
The other lesson, we bought this vanity that comes with this marble top. Well, we didn't think about it until yesterday, but if something happens to that top, we have to replace the entire vanity. The top comes with this particular vanity because it's an odd size. There are two smaller ends with drawers that go to this vanity that we do not have in place yet. Anyway, I'm warning y'all now, do not break this top!!! When we do the upstairs, we are purchasing the vanity before we put in any plumbing. And we are purchasing the vanity separate from the top.

Also learned a bit about faucets. In our house we live in now, one of the bathroom faucets does not swivel. I prefer it did. Dave never even realized it until I told him! We found out that when the faucets are wide-set, most of them do not swivel. When they are narrow set, they do. Above is a wide set vanity. 8 inches. Most people probably don't even know there is a difference, but there is. And we could only find one faucet that swiveled for the bathroom vanities in a wide set.


This is a kitchen faucet, that swivels. I thought it looked better than the bathroom faucet. I doubt anyone will ever notice the difference so we went with the kitchen faucet!
These are the reasons that when you say...."oh we are installing a bathroom vanity today" and it sounds easy and quick, and when you actually DO install it, it takes a week.
And when people ask a week later, "what are you working on now, when are you moving in?"
You reply, "Still working on the bathroom vanity." They give you this questioning look.
We have spent hours and hours looking for vanities, faucets, etc. I even spent the entire Labor Day with my cousin, Vickie, looking at vanities and curtains, and Dave and I spent even more time looking, trying to figure things out. Nothing, NOTHING is as easy as it sounds. But we are learning a lot and when we go to do the upstairs, it shouldn't take as long!

Here are the curtains I went with.

They weren't my first choice, but my first choice were see through and gauzy. These are cotton and not see through. And these could be purchased immediatly and not special ordered. Believe it or not, we found two curtains that were the 63" length, that did not have to be special ordered. And we went to about four places. And I needed four panels. I remember back in the day when curtains came in pairs. Now they come in panels, and it's rare to find four of the same kind without having to order them.

Since we are going to be living down here, we need something that isn't see through for night time. And I wanted something that could slide easily on the rod because we will open them during the day. It's really dark in there with them closed.

I think they turned out pretty nice for not being my first choice.

This is probably a bit hard to figure out but I decided to post it anyway. I was working on a shrug crochet pattern a couple of days ago, and as I held it up to see how it would fit, I decided it would make a nice curtain for the door (in the above picture). But I was home, not at the other house. So I held it up to the door at home and took a couple of pics.

Yesterday I put it on a rod and it fits perfectly. I like it. I need to make another panel. When I get it finished I will show you what they look like.

I didn't care much for the shrug pattern anyway!

Cindy