Baseboard is In ... No more remodeling for Sara

Sami decided to make all the track lights point at certain spots in the room.

... and I guess my title is not entirely accurate. There is one piece of trim on the ceiling (behind Sami) that I still need to replace. We haven't bought it yet though, so I couldn't do it today.

Here's another picture of Sami adjusting the lights.

After we installed the baseboard and quarter round, Sami put in the speakers.

The screen is made of a special material, so the sound from these three will come through it.

The bottom part of the wall is built out further than the top part. This is because of the concrete foundation wall behind it. It makes attaching the screen tricky, but it's a nice place for the speakers to sit.

Here you can see the size of the screen and how it will cover the speakers.

We still need to add the black trim to the bottom (we stretched the screen ourselves) and hang it at the proper height. The top will be near that blue piece of tape.

Belly & Floor Update

The floor is nearly done and that's a good thing, because my belly is getting HUGE!

In this picture, I am taking the tape off the floor, because the glue has dried and the floor is OK to walk on. It is a floating floor installation (above concrete and vapor barrier/insulation), the boards are glued only to each other and not to the floor.

I still have to work on the door threshold and the the last couple rows of floorboards. Hopefully I can get the baseboards installed next weekend.

Home Theater Wiring & Floor Installation

Sami is nearly finished putting all the wires in for the home theater.

(He took these two pictures, so they must be important).

There will be a big panel here with all kinds of fancy outlets so all the wires can plug in.

Finally we got to start installing the floor.

It is an engineered hardwood floor - American Hickory.

The tape is only on there temporarily to hold the boards in place till the glue dries.

Installing the Projector

On Saturday Sami mounted the projector.

This was trickier than it looks. He had to figure out the center of gravity and also make sure that the image hitting the screen would be level and the right distance away for optimal resolution.

Earlier in the week we had pulled off the paneling and plywood behind it so that Sami could paint sealant on the foundation wall.

There were some hairline cracks in this part of the wall that caused part of the flooding last year.

Although the sealant paint is red, it is not the same stuff on the walls.

The new outlets in the ceiling for the projector.

We are skipping a bit here. Because I was doing this part, I wasn't taking pictures of it.

Anyway, I made a template (from a paper bag) of the holes I needed to cut for the electrical boxes. Then I had to place it carefully, using a small nail to test and make sure there were no joists where I needed to cut. (There is one running right between the two boxes).

Wires have been run through the ceiling and over to the open wall.

Before Sami attached the wires to the projector and before I put the covers on the electrical boxes, we fished the wires through the hole in the ceiling, over to the space above the window.

Then Sami hooked up the power wire for the projector to the existing circuit. (you can see him looking at the outlet here).

Now we've installed extra insulation in the wall.

This insulation is called Prodex. It's very thin, but still has an R value of 15.

We will be using the same insulation under the floor when we install it.

The paneling is back up.

We used our pneumatic brad nailer, so this part was quick and easy.

After nailing, I caulked the seams and nail holes. Later I will do touch up prime and paint on the wall, and then I will be ready to re-install the window and ceiling trim.

Superbowl Sunday Staining

Nearly a year ago, we went shopping for a dining table and chairs. We looked at a lot, but Sami had something particular in mind and didn't like any of them. Finally, we went to an unfinished furniture store and Sami saw some he liked. They've been sitting in boxes in our garage since last spring.

After the flooding and subsequent floor removal, the home theater project was seriously delayed. However, it did provide a convenient (and warm) place to assemble and stain the dining room furniture.

When we were looking at houses, we saw a new house with dark red cabinets in the kitchen. Sami fell in love and decided that he wanted his kitchen cabinets to be that color someday. So, the dining table and chairs will be mostly dark red. We started working on them last Sunday just before the superbowl.

BTW, the home theater won't always be so red. The red sealer on the concrete will be covered up when we put the floor in, and the red blanket is covering up the screen which is too big to remove from the room.

In anticipation of the plumber's visit, I repainted the part of the concrete foundation wall that will be behind the water heater. The rest of the wall (color to be determined) will be painted later after we've repaired the drywall.

My beans and peas are doing great! I've got some peas, some scarlet runner beans, some purple hyacinth beans, and a couple yin-yang beans. Hopefully it will stop freezing so I can put them outside soon.

Cool Sconce

My SBAP class met at Earth Advantage the past two days. We had a bunch of classes on insulation and lighting and stuff like that. They have a light lab there where you can see how different lights make colors look. Also we got to see a cool LED can light.

In the classroom, they had a bunch of these cool art sconces. I wasn't terribly impressed with their art, but I thought the fixtures from Visa Lighting were very cool. (We took down an ugly traditional sconce in the home theater room, and I think it would be great if we could replace it with something like this.)

Home Theater - Vinyl Tile Removal

We've peeled up about 3/4 of the vinyl tile and our trash bin is full. Hopefully it won't take us too much longer to pull the rest up.

Unfortunately we had to leave the screen in the room because we built it there and it's too big to remove without disassembling it.

We had to pull the baseboards off to get the carpet and pad out. We decided to cut the bottom 2 inches off of the paneling so we could seal the joint where the foundation wall meets the slab. The cut will be covered up by baseboard when we're done.

Sami found this old Highlights magazine from 1975 in the wall. The kid who read it must be in his 40's by now.

Home Theater - Soggy Carpet Removal

We never managed to get the carpet dry... the pad had been acting like a giant sponge. Yesterday we removed the baseboards, pulled out the carpet and pad and discovered... nasty vinyl tile that had been painted white at some time. We're still working on prying that up so we can seal the concrete slab and install some other floor covering.

It was sunny yesterday afternoon, so we tried to save the carpet by laying it out on the car to dry. It seemed to be working... until we got up this morning and it started snowing. Looks like that carpet is definitely a goner.

Sauna Project - Flood!

Friday evening Melissa and Erica came over to help remove some more drywall in the laundry room (to prep for plumbing work).

Yesterday Sami and I worked on installing the tile in the laundry room. We marked out the layout, cut the edge pieces and tiled the corner where the water heater will be moved...

We woke up to find our pretty tile job underwater... Don't know if we have to rip it up and start over, or if it will dry out ok.

Our bathroom and our home theater room flooded too.

Unfortunately, the carpeted home theater room was packed full of stuff since we're in the middle of several projects. We had to move everything upstairs.

After we cleared the whole basement out (and turned the rest of our house into a huge mess), we found this crack in the foundation wall under the stairs.

We're hoping it's the only one, but actually it seems like the water is coming from the joint between the foundation wall and the slab.

Unfortunately I think the only thing we can do right now is to buy a sump pump and get the water out of our crawl space so it won't keep flowing in.

Enlightenment

These are the fixtures we bought at Ikea a couple weeks ago. Installing them was a bigger project than Sami expected, but we enjoyed it for the most part.

First we had to take down the ugly old fixture. It was a big frosted glass and gold colored hershey kiss shaped thing located where the left fixture now hangs.

Then we had to figure out where the projector should be mounted in order to be the desired size and cut another hole in the ceiling for the second fixture. Of course the joists were running the wrong direction so we had to get an extra long 1/2" spade bit to drill through them and fish the new wire through. This would have been easy if we could have crawled into the attic and worked on it, but this is the basement and the bedrooms are right above.

So, we got the wires all hooked up and realized the hole where the old light had been installed was bigger than the round part on the new fixture. I did a bit of taping and mudding and it looked a bit better. Sami went looking for the paint and discovered even though there are 15 cans of paint in our garage, none of them were the flat white for the ceiling. He went out for groceries and got some paint too. It's not a perfect match, but very close.

Sami hooked up the light fixtures and we moved the arms around and fixed them in place using drywall anchors. We'll still have to adjust the lamps later when we have everything set up in the room. The next step is to buy a dimmer and install it.

Red Rum

Sami gets decorating ideas from "The Shining"...

Actually we had to paint around the molding and the grooves in the paneling with a paintbrush because the roller couldn't get them.

Painting Part I

All of the rooms in the house were painted this beige off-white color. It's fine, but boring. Sami and I have lived in neutral colored rooms our whole lives and we wanted a change. We decided to paint the office/guest bedrooms this soft green color and our bedroom a medium blue. At first we thought we might paint the two extra rooms different colors, but then decided maybe we didn't need 5 different colors in the house right now.

This room is the basement part of the split level (the windows are the low ones you can see behind the bushes on the snow picture), so it it only 6 steps down from the living room and kitchen area. This will be Sami's home theater. Our friend Eric (on the milk crate) came over to help tape the rooms and get ready to paint. The second photo shows the grey primer we had to use in order to paint the room a darker color.