Magnolia House

Studio South Wall

So here's the latest progress on the studio, The south wall is pretty close to done.

The barn doors have new supporting posts and a threshold. They still need a little care, but I'll save that for next weekend.

The door came out of the garage attic. The horizontal board is where our old cast iron laundry sink will go, so Cynthia can clean the clay and glaze off of things, including her hands.

Here's a reminder of where we started. An old garage on a wood foundation, with 1 X 12's as walls (and no studs!).

It's all sitting on pole barn type construction now, with new 4 X 4 posts all the way around.

 We managed to reuse about two walls worth of the old boards, and had to go new on the others.

Another couple of weeks and there will be pottery happening here!

bathroom one just about done

Last weekend we got the upstairs bathroom going. 

Bath and toilet by Sunday night.

Shower by Wednesday night.

And now just the little details.

The downstairs bath is starting to take shape this weekend.

Upstairs bath taking form

This weekend I had a board meeting to attend, so my schedule was pushed back a little, but we made some great progress in getting all the woodwork installed in the upstairs bath.

From here it's caulk, fill, and paint, and then we can install the fixtures! 

The bathtub finally landed in the bathroom.  It's wider than the door, so we had to move it into the room BEFORE rehanging the door frame.  This was something I had to remind myself of over and over again.

Our kids and grandkids are here now, so our bathroom limitations will get old fast.  There was a line-up for baths last night! 

We'll see if we can't have everything up and running before the week is out.

Woo hoo!

 

Running out of steam, but getting closer...

Cynthia is off to Portland to prepare for our daughter's wedding. 

We made it pretty far before this weekend, which was our deadline.  We are some wainscot and paint away from assembling the upstairs bathroom.

Downstairs we have a tile shower and wainscot to do as well.

We have our living room and dining room set up downstairs, and all the rooms upstairs set up.  They have paint, but need trim work.  We're getting close to the completion of phase 1!  Whew!  The kids move in next week, ready or not!

Rub a dub dub, Cynthia in a tub...

Cynthia's tub arrived today.  She couldn't wait.

Next step:

hoisting it upstairs.

It took four of us to get it into the house on the main floor.

 

 

 

  Here's where it goes...

A little more tile work, and off we go.

 

 

 

And the walls go UP!

This week, things started taking shape. 

The drywall is going up, the shower pan is in, plumbing is coming together, the electrical is almost done. 

With any luck, we'll be tiling bathrooms over Memorial Day...

Phew!

Putting up walls

We're moving the bathroom wall out a couple of feet upstairs so we can fit a tub and a shower in. 

Cynthia originally suggested it, but I was nervous about the complications with the city.  She worked it all out yesterday!  So here's the wall we built last night.   We can't take down the old wall until the inspector is convinced it's not load bearing (it's not).

Andy is hard after the electrical.  We're going for the total rewire.  When we're done we'll have all new electrcal and plumbing, all new wall board upstairs, and two new bathrooms.

Our dumpster left yesterday.  In the next couple of days the old chimney will turn into raw material for a patio.

 

 

 

 

 

 

We're trying to figure out how to finish the shower downstairs before we demo the one upstairs... 

We may have to do something a little out of the ordinary.  We already feel like we're camping!

And the walls come tumbling down

Saturday, Cynthia and I stripped the upstairs of the fiberboard paneling and ceiling tiles. 

The trim work was the toughest.  The finish work was basic, but excellent.  Every joint was beautiful.  I hated pulling if off, but it was necessary...

Wall board and ceiling tiles flew out the upstairs window to the ground below and then we gathered up the debris and hauled it to the dumpster.

We had people thinking our dumpster was a public works project and neighbors starting throwing their trash in it.  At one point I heard Cynthia hollering out the upstairs window at some one trying to throw an entire queen-size mattress, box spring, and frame in there.  She caught them in time.

The dumpster's nearly full now.  The yard debris pile still towers in the side yard, and my neighbor, Juan, is taking the scrap metal.  The electrical bid came in last night at $21.5k, about twice what I was hoping for and over a third of our overall budget.  We'll do some more work on that.

We're thinking through contingency plans for when our kids arrive in town in June.  We may not be quite done!  If we have one bathroom for a while, I guess that will work...  We're still shooting for the whole tamale.

"No hay dumping.  El uso privado sólo."

 

 

 

 

 

Another piece of history to the right...

 

 

Water falls, with or without pipes

This morning before church, I was poking around, and decided to open up the wall in the bath room with the upstairs plumbing running through it.  YIKES!!!!  The drain pipe was totally rotted out, and every time we took a shower upstairs, water was basically pouring down the pipe, inside and out, some going to the sewer, and some under the house.

A whack with a hammer and the pipe came tumbling down.

I spent two hours extracting the pipes from the walls; these thigs are HEAVY. 

The rest of the day I figured things out, made a Home Depot run, and then  went about replumbing the drain, since we only have the upstairs shower to bathe right now.

We're moving the toilet, so I got to use smaller pipe, which in turn, allows us to rebuild the wall to original (it had been boxed out around the larger drain pipe). 

All better. 

Water inside the pipes. 

Air outside.

Duct Tape and Bailing Wire

This weekend, we have been surveying the house for the various electrical and plumbing work that needs to be done, both for repairs and for relocating some things.

I went under the house for a while, as well as in the attic.  Common theme:  duct tape to patch drain pipes that have rotted through.  The drain system will need to be totally replaced from top to bottom.

The supply plumbing goes every which way, and add to that abandoned pipes from a solar hot water heater.  I followed one pipe to the far corner of the house to figure out where in the world it was going, only to find it connected to another pipe and headed back. 

 

The inlet plumbing will be a total redo as well.  Cynthia is using a hose to fill the washer... (sorry Cynthia).  I like doing inlet plumbing a lot, so I'm actually excited to tackle this.

Today I'll try and commit this all to paper, so we can visit the city for permits.