Demolition Derby!

I decided to start my week off with a little destruction. Of all the phases of renovation, demolition is one of my favorite, second only to the final phase of placing the last piece of trim or hanging the last picture.  There is no other part of renovation where you can see the most change with the least skill and time.

In this project we are expanding one of the smaller bedrooms by incorporating a large master closet to make that the new master bedroom. Since we won't be living here, we really don't need a giant walk-in closet.  Demolishing the wall between the bedroom and closet took less than one hour.  So here are the before and after pictures, sorry for the picture quality, I only had my Blackberry with me:

There's nothing like swinging a sledgehammer with abandon.  My 11 year old was very disappointed that I did this without him.  He'll be able to break up the big pieces of sheetrock to throw into a trash bag later.

There are two outlets along this wall, as well as a phone line.  I will terminate the phone line in the attic since we are not planning to have a landline at this house.  The two outlets will be fairly easy to move by removing the wire between them, running each of them into the old closet area (it currently has no outlets so that is good), and running a new longer line through the attic to connect them again.  I will try to disturb as little sheetrock as possible.  Also, the light box in the old, small bedroom was centered on the room but will not be centered in the expanded room.  I was just going to move it to the new center but now I am thinking of just running another lightbox off that one which would conveniently go right into the slot where the old wall is.  That way, we would have two ceiling fans in the room and my husband can run the one on his sdie to his heart's delight without making me mad!  It also means less patching of the ceiling.  All good things.

The other issue that I will have to deal with, once I remove the studs, is that there is tile on the closet floor and popcorn on the closet ceiling.  From what I can tell in the rest of the house, the popcorn comes off really easily.  I am debating whether I need to take a batch to get tested for asbestos.  The previous tenants removed most of it from the house.  It looks like it scrapes right off and the closet might be the only area where I need to remove it.  I have no idea how difficult the tile will be.  I am hoping it pops off easy because it is a really ugly teal tile that fills the master bath as well.

The new master feels like a really good sized room.  The old room was 12 x 12 1/2 feet and will now be 18 x 12 1/2.  The added bonus for now is that the old closet used to be part of the original master bath and so now this new master has an access door to the master bath. 

I think the next big project is the den ceiling.  We have cedar beams in a vaulted ceiling.  The space between the beams is covered with popcorn.  Instead of removing the popcorn I am planning to install cedar v-groove planks.  I have experimented with different stains and finishes and I will tack some up to see how each looks.  Right now I am leaning toward the cedar with just a clear satin polyurathane finish.  I'll try to take more pictures next time.

New lock

I set out to change the front door lock on Friday and then to get a lot of other work done at the house.  Due to schedule changes, I did not get out to the house until 1 pm and only had a couple of hours to work.  But how long can it take to change a lock?  I have changed a number of interior and exterior door knobs and deadbolts in my time, so this would be a piece of cake.  I was excited to try out the Kwikset "Smart Key" that says it will let you rekey your own lock whenever you like. 

So I started with the front door handleset with deadbolt.  Surprisingly, I liked one of the cheapest version that was less than $100, so I got that one.  I took the old handleset and deadbolt off, taking care to keep them together just in case (a lesson I have learned in past).  I decided to try the deadbolt  first since that is the part with the key.  I got the handles lined up and screwed them tight.  Everything looked OK and seemed to work with the door open.  However, when I shut the door and locked the deadbolt it was very difficult to lock and impossible to unlock.  Nothing I could do would get the deadbolt to unlock.  I had to unscrew everything from the inside and still couldn't get the lock to release.  I called Kwikset and was waiting in the phone tree line when I tried using the interior bolt from outside the door while jiggling the lock when it released.  Whew!  I obviously did something wrong.  After trying to figure out my mistake and rereading the directions I tried again only to find the same result...four times. 

While waiting again in phone purgatory, I was about to reinstall the old deadbolt when I finally figured it out!  I had left the old strikeplate in the doorframe which was a slightly different shape than the new bolt.  So the lock was trying to fit into a hole too small and getting stuck.  Once I took the plate off, everything worked perfectly.  Installing the handset was not too bad except that it required a slightly larger hole in the door.  A chisel took care of that.  Long story short, the lock is installed and that is all I accomplished on Friday.

Next I will get a new lock for the back door and use that key to reset the front door so they both match.  The way the sets works is that you insert the current key 1/4 turn, then insert the rekeying tool, pull out the current key and insert the new key.  After a turn, the lock will now respond only to the new key.  The new key has to be another Kwikset key.  My plan is to buy a couple of more locks for the back doors and they have three sets of keys I can rotate in and out as needed.  What's the old saying about the best laid plans?  I'll let you know if it works out. 

Next trip out I plan to tear down a wall to expand a small bedroom into a large closet to create a new master bedroom.

Locks and keys

This week I went out to the house to meet some contractors regarding landscaping, deck, and water systems.  The creepy thing is that the front door to the house was open.  Not just unlocked, but ajar.  And there was a copy of our front door key on the front porch shelf.  I happened to be on the phone with a friend and she listened as I walked around the house to make sure nobody was there.  I didn't see anything that looked out of place or missing.  Like Goldilocks, I checked the beds to see if someone had slept there, but I don't think so.  Very weird.  Also, almost all of the windows were unlocked which could be new or not.  Maybe an old friend or housekeeper of the previous owner was returning their key and went in to check out changes we were making.  Who knows.

Needless to say, we are changing the locks.  At this point I am not worried about things being stolen because I doubt someone wants to haul away the various furniture items I have purchased using Craigslist.  But I really don't like the feeling of walking into a house where a stranger might be lurking. 

Anyway, so now the question: purchase all new locks or rekey existing locks.  Right now there are actually three keys to different deadbolts and no keys for the keyed handsets.  I don't know if a locksmith could get all the locks on the same key since they are probably all different brands.  So I went to Home Depot down the road and talked to the lock guy.  Apparently both Schlage and Kwikset have new locks out that you can rekey yourself.  Since we might someday rent out this house for various events, I think that might be a good investment.  So I bought a front door set and will try it out before I purchase the others.  I'll install Friday and then post about how easy or difficult it was.

So this visit was spent mostly with contractors and going shopping.  Not much got done.  I did install a toilet roll holder and clean the soot off the front of the fireplace.  I researched how to clean a stone fireplace and looked for an industrial cleaner called TSP.  Maybe they don't sell this anymore because I couldn't find it at Home Depot, Lowes or HEB.  So I just used some laundry detergent we had out there and a hard bristle brush.  Most of the soot came off fairly easily and wasn't as tough as the website led me to believe.  I guess the moral of this story is to try the easiest and least caustic thing first.

The weird thing about the fireplace was that there were hundreds of nails among the soot that I scooped out.  I assume the previous owners were just burning scrap wood that had nails in it.  But there were so many nails for so little soot I wonder if there is another reason.  Do people purposefully put nails into their fireplace for some reason like holding the heat longer?  If anyone has any ideas, true or make-believe, I would love to hear them.

That's all for now.  Next trip is tomorrow.

In the beginning...

So I am finally getting better about documenting the projects that I work on.  My husband Adam and I have been improving houses for about 15 years.  We try to take photos as we go along but that is never at the top of our list.  Some of my friends have told me that I should do something with these skills I have developed so I have decided to share the things I learn through a blog.  Also, it helps me document things about the house so I can reference it later.

I have a new canvas, so to speak, in a house we have purchase 45 minutes out of town.  It sits on a hillside with 13 acres and a great view of the Texas Hill Country.  We chose it because of the lovely setting, the wooded areas, and the fact that the house has "good bones."  It was built in the 1970's and added onto in the late 1980's so the decor is not great but that's where we come in.  I don't think there is a room in this house that we will not touch in some way.  Probably the utility room is the closest - it only needs a light and countertop.

We purchased the house from the second owners who thankfully painted all of the fake distressed-wood paneling white and removed most of the popcorn ceilings.  We have owned the house now for about 45 days and so far have painted a little bit.  The three smaller bedrooms were coated in this brownish color from ceilings to trim with the exception of the ugly dark brown Luan hollow doors.  The picture to the right doesn't do the ugly brown justice.  It looks like the previous owners bought two colors for this house, white and brown.  Everything is one or the other.
I have painted two of the bedroom ceilings with white Behr ceiling paint.  I have started using that for all ceilings that I paint because I find it is very hard to match whites.  This way I always know which paint will match it if I need to touch up later.

This house needs a great deal of work to the exterior.  It has not been maintained properly over the years so there is a lot of wood rot and erosion.  One of the first tasks is finding contractors to create some type of erosion control on the downslope of the house site.  We also want to add a large deck since the main thing we like about the house is the view.  We will likely have the same company work on those and I am getting bids for that right now.

One strange thing about this house is that the back wall has unfinished stonework on it.  It looks like it has been this way for years.  So the stonework only goes halfway up the wall although there is old tar paper stretching up the wall.  As it is, I don't think it is weathertight and likely collects moisture behind the rock when it rains.  We originally just thought we would tear down the half-wall but are now thinking of a new strategy involving the new deck.  We are taking bids to have a roof put over that part of the deck so that the rock would be covered.  That would protect it from the rain and save us from having to reside the whole area (which is very large).  We may or may not screen in this covered area but we love the idea of having fans with lights and the ability to put more comfortable furniture that is not total exposed to the weather.  We'll see how that turns out. 

We are also going to have the exterior wood replaced with Hardiplank to the extent possible.  The old cedar panels look like they are on their last legs as the sun is pretty bright out here.  Hopefully the cement siding will hold up better.  Once we are done with all the interior remodeling that might require vents to the roof, we will likely get a metal roof but that will be farther in the future and might be cost prohibitive.

So that's the brief introduction.  I will post more as I move forward on specific projects.