Kitchen Remodel (Rough-Ins)

Some updates to share on the kitchen remodel project.  The previous post described the demo operation.  With that out of the way, we are on to putting things back.  

The first order of business was to get the window installed.  I was hesitant to order the window until the demo was done just to be sure the conditions were as expected and the rough opening could be made large enough.  Luckily, it was and we were able to procure the size of window we had hoped and still fit the header in above it.  Surprisingly, the window came in after only about a week and a half after ordering!  The installation went without a hitch and after the usual Tyvek tape, sill flashing, Flexwrap corners and drip cap, should be nice and tight.

The new window installed in the opening.  (Ignore Mike and his long cardboard tube - I'll get into that later!)

After completing the window, we started on electrical, HVAC and plumbing rough-ins, beginning with HVAC.  Since Erin's office above the kitchen was remodeled before the kitchen, I had ran a temporary duct exposed in the kitchen for heating and cooling.  Now that everything in the kitchen is exposed, we could conceal that up the wall and across in the ceiling.  We also added a return for that room.  Within the kitchen itself, we added an exhaust duct for the kitchen range hood and a supply duct under the kitchen sink cabinet.    All these ducts had to then be routed and hooked up in the basement, which took quite a few elbows, bends, etc!  The relatively new HVAC code also requires that all seams, joints, etc in ductwork be sealed, so lots of foil tape was required!

Here you can see the range hood duct (left duct running up wall), supply duct for the office (right duct running up wall) and kitchen supply duct (lower left, will be under the kitchen sink cabinet).

After that came electrical rough-ins.  Besides all the outlets, there were a ton of lights to rough in - 6 can lights, 5 pendants, and undercabinet lights for all the cabinets.  The electrical rough-in is still ongoing at this point, although getting close to completion.  Similar to the HVAC code, the electrical code also has many requirements for kitchens in terms of power requirements.  For example, you are required to have at least 2 separate 20 amp circuits for countertop outlets.  But, even though the range hood outlet is just a few feet away from these, you can't tie into this circuit.  In total, the kitchen alone will have 5 circuits!

Looking west.  This wall will have upper and lower cabinets functioning as a built in buffet look.  You can see the electrical rough-ins for this wall are installed.  Gotta like the photo bomb from Owen also!

On 6/11, we tackled leveling the ceiling.  Presumably (and long before our time owning it - probably in the 80's), when the house was raised up to remove the crawlspace and install the full basement, the above kitchen wall didn't end up back at quite the right elevation.  It was about 2" higher than the rest of the exterior walls.  We corrected this 2" in the kitchen floor, but unfortunately, because of the sequence, the unlevelness still exists upstairs.  This means the ceiling is not level.  Because our cabinets extend all the way to the ceiling, we needed it level to look correct.  In the past we have used 1x3 pine furring strips to level walls, ceilings, etc.  But the problem here was that part of the floor was actually too low to fit the furring strip along with 1/2" drywall and still plane out with the new dining room ceiling.  So, instead, we ran 2x4 segments perpendicular to the floor joists.  This way all these 2x4's would be exactly level and match to the dining room ceiling.  As you will see in the pictures, some were practically flush with the bottom of the floor joists, while some were nearly 2" below the floor joists!  It was a painstaking process to install about 90 of these blocks, but the end result will be a level ceiling!

Looking across the ceiling at the leveling blocks.  These were screwed into the floor joists.  The drywall sheets will fasten to these and not the floor joists.

More leveling blocks.  You can sort of see from left to right that the blocks hang further below the floor joists as you head west.  The blue beam is what these blocks are all leveling to.

And here is the worst case scenario in the SW corner of the kitchen.  The blocks are about 2" below the floor joists!

All in all, it was quite a bit of work, but definitely a requirement to have a level ceiling.  This is more background work that will never be seen or appreciated once the ceiling is installed!

Oh yes, and that picture of the window with Mike sticking in the long cardboard tube.  I was working on a ladder/platform reading measurements off to Mike who was outside and would cut the 2x4's to length.  Rather than have me get off the ladder all the time and come to the window, Mike had an idea to use this long cardboard tube to pass me the boards while on the platform.  It worked great!

Mike improving his reach to pass me the 2x4 leveling boards!

Now to address the question of how you go about actually leveling a whole ceiling based on a specific point.  While you could start at the desired point and use a bubble level and work your way across the room, this would not be very accurate by the time you got to the other side.  Any deviation from level each time a board was fastened could compound by the time you got across the room and you could end up quite a bit different from the desired point.  The best way to level a ceiling is to set up a laser level that projects a flat beam around the room.  The actual height of the laser is irrelevant.  The important measurement is how far below the desired level point the laser is.  So if my dining room ceiling sits 2" above the laser line, I want my leveling blocks to sit 2" above the laser line also.  Now you could use a tape measure, but a better way is to use a mini story pole - or block of wood in my case.  The black mark you see here is the desired height of the leveling block.  I just hold the block and this gauge in place, shift up or down until the laser hits the mark, then screw it in.

Here is my story pole, or gauge block.  The black line represents the desired height of the 2x4 leveling blocks.  I simply hold up the 2x4 and raise/lower it until the red laser line hits the black mark, then screw in and move on to the next one!  Obviously, it is easiest if you can mount your laser as high as possible so you aren't trying to hold a long gauge stick.  So I went through and fastened one end of the blocks in this manner - hopefully you follow the next part.

Why not fasten both ends of the block using the laser level.  For one thing, when the screws contact the block, they can slightly shift it up or down depending upon where the screw hits the grain.  Also, it is easy with the laser to end up slightly above or below the line - that would only be 1/8" or so, but I like to be right on.  So, I fastened one side of each block, then clamped a level to those sides that were fastened, then simply screwed in the loose ends.  This way I knew all the blocks covered by the level were all level and on the same plane.

Using the level technique to level up the second end of the 2x4 block.

So, that's where things stand now.  More electrical, some plumbing and gas to rough in before final inspections can be scheduled followed by more spray foam insulation!  One other fun tidbit - Menards had their 11% sale, so we ended up getting the light for the front door - a small detail, but another item off the list!

New light for the front door installed!

Stay tuned for the next update!

Before the construction in the kitchen began, but a rare sighting of Tippy and Shop Kitty in harmony.

And of course a picture of Owen!

The "baby" water heater at Menards is something Owen has to visit every time we are there.  He goes into the plumbing aisles all by himself and gets various fittings and "hooks them up".  He is very serious about it!

Kitchen Demo

Wow, the first Dan's Wood post in a long time.  Better late than never.  I wanted to try and start keeping up with the kitchen phase, as it is something that might be more interesting to most readers than updates on the bones of the house.  It is funny that Erin and I refer to this as the "last phase" of the house - in reality it is the last big phase but there are still "incidental" items after this like:

• Finish Painting and Caulking the Outside of the House
• Finish the Porch
• Finish Master Bathroom
• Sheetrock and Fire Tape Garage to Meet Building Code
• Stain Windows and Install Trim on All Windows Throughout the House
• Finish the Basement

Back to the kitchen project.  What better time to start tearing things apart than the traditional 3-day Memorial Day weekend.  I made it a 4 day weekend with Friday off and things got started in a hurry.

Thursday night I jumped the gun a bit and started removing the old cabinets.  I knew from previous experience that this kitchen was installed very solidly.  Keep in mind we had plans to re-use these cabinets in our pantry, so I couldn't just bust out the sledge hammer.  The biggest challenge to removal you might ask?  Without a doubt it would be trying to remove the screws that held the face frames together.  Let me tell you - if you want to make it a pain in the butt down the road, countersink square drive screws and then pack the screw heads and holes full of wood putty.  Very hard to find and nearly impossible to get out.  The secret was using a small dental type pick and also a special screw extractor bit.  

Here was the kitchen as of Thursday night.  I was able to get a good jump start on the planned Friday demo.

Friday morning the reinforcements arrived - my dad and father-in-law Mike.  We finished removing the rest of the items you see here and got started.  First the sheetrock was removed on the walls.  Luckily, the kitchen had been previously remodeled so there was no plaster and lath to deal with!  

Sheetrock is removed from the walls and the first two layers of the ceiling are removed.

After that went the ceiling.  It was made up of wood slats mounted to furring strips mounted to none other than plaster and lath.  Mike dropped all this in a matter of about an hour.  After that, the plastic and fiberglass insulation batts were removed from the walls.  

The end of day 1.  All wall and flooring material has been removed back to the studs.

While Mike was doing basically all the demo in the kitchen, I was in the pantry working to re-install the salvaged cabinets to give us back some sort of kitchen to use during the demo.  On the first day, I was able to get in all the base cabinets.  

Re-installation of the salvaged cabinets progressed well on the first day.  Surprisingly, even though the layouts were completely different, the cabinets fit together remarkably well.

Start day 2.  Day 2 was the day of the floor.  The floor had some issues with it - probably the biggest issue was some poor framing that had been done in one area.  Why not just cut off two 2x8 floor joists and throw a single 2x6 with a few nails to carry the load.  The floor had previously been very bouncy in this spot.  The same situation had occured in the living room.  The floor was also not level in the SW corner.  

Floor demo is started.

Before we could actually get to the old floor boards, first we had to remove the top 6 layers of flooring!  From the top down, wood laminate, plywood underlayment, some sort of newspaper coating, hardboard, vinyl tile, sheet flooring - then we finally reached the original wood pine tongue and groove flooring.  So, yes, 7 layers of flooring in total!

The flooring is all demoed.  Here you can see the white colored 2x6 header that was installed after two floor joists were cut off towards the middle of the picture.  This picture is looking down into the mechanical room, thus all the tubing, wiring, ductwork, etc below.

The next step was to fix the poor framing job and add cross blocking down the middle of the floor span.  This takes us into day 3.

Cross blocking was added down the center of the room - this helps to straighten and stiffen all the floor joists.  We also added a stiffening beam with three columns below to further help stiffen the floor.  The middle of the kitchen is going to have a large island which will weigh quite a bit.

Things were also progressing well in the pantry.  I got the rest of the base cabinets installed along with the countertop and sink.  This countertop was a new off-the-shelf purchase from Menards.  The dishwasher was also re-installed for the time being from the kitchen - yep, our pantry has a dishwasher - pretty serious business.  A portion of the upper cabinets were also installed.

Day 3 progress in the pantry.

This takes us to day 4.  The last day of the long weekend was spent re-framing some items.  The first picture shows the south wall of the kitchen.  This is where the refrigerator and range will go.  Even though the wall was in good condition and plumb, a new 2x4 furring wall was added to allow for duct work to be installed for the kitchen hood, room above the kitchen, etc.  The gap in the framing is where the fridge will sit slighly recessed so the front will be flush with the counters.

Day 4 progress - south wall.  A new 2x4 furring wall was added in front of the existing wall to accommodate duct work.

The east wall had more challenges.  The wall was bowed out along the bottom sill plate and also was not plumb.  In other areas of the house, we have installed horizontal furring boards and shimmed them to make everything plumb.  However, in this case, I tried something new and just attached new 2x6 studs level to the old out of plumb studs.  This actually worked very well and now the inside of the wall is plumb and straight.

This picture is actually from weekend #2 of work, but you can see the new window framing is also complete along with the new plumb studs.

Here's an in-progress picture of the east wall framing.  You can see there is not much of the original wall left!

Framing the new window is in-progress.  Mike was on the outside handling demo materials and cutting boards while I was installing them on the inside.

By the end of the second weekend, the pantry was also completed and is functioning as our interim kitchen.  Believe it or not, we have not yet succumbed to take-out... yet..., but thankfully it is summer and we have been able to grill out.  

So there you go - two weekends worth of kitchen progress.  More to come soon. 

Oh, yeah, for those of you who didn't know, we now have a third cat called Tortie.  She showed up last summer and similar to Shop Kitty, is very well mannered and probably was someone's indoor cat.  So now she has joined our family at the farm!

Tortie, when she was still an outsider.  She is now an insider.

And lastly, just a funny picture of Owen on our typical Menards trips.  He loves to be lowered inside the sample chimney section out in front of the store.

Owen @ Menards