Family room

This is something I would never have realized without having a houseblog that allowed me to easily look back on my bold predictions, but I believe that I have just solved one of the great puzzles of remodeling. We all know when we think a particular project will be completed, but how can we predict when it will really be done?

Today I put the 2nd coat of stain on the door of our family room closet. That got me to thinking about how long it had been since I had started sanding the door. A quick search on our site revealed the answer…1 year, 11 months. Ironically, I titled that post ‘back in the saddle,’ which implied that we were back on the horse for a ride, not just a quick trot around the yard. Sadly, the door sanding post came a good six months after the room was allegedly nearly done. And not to mention that in the meantime some animal(s) had holed up under the tarp for enough time to do unspeakable things to that door.

So, to summarize, here’s the chain of events that have led to “finishing” our family room:

• Fall 2007: Chloe moves out of her room, freeing it up to be our TV room
• 7/2008: I will give us a pass here, since Ginger was born a year earlier, but we now finally start the project.
• 10/2008: We are nearly finished after only 9 weeks. We are on a ROLL here!
• 5/2009: That’s strange…where did the last 7 months go? Anyway, it doesn’t matter, because the door is being sanded, and we are going to be done soon.
• 5/2010: Now would be a good time to get the patio cleared off for the summer. Ooh, wait a minutes, what’s this crap under the tarp?! Damn it, this never would have happened if I had just finished sanding this door when I stopped a few weeks (a full year) ago!
• 4/2011: Last week I did actually finish sanding the door (as well as the upstairs bathroom door), and I stained it this weekend. Things are really moving now!
• The future: All that’s needed now is two coats of poly and some hinges. How long could that take? [I am documenting this now as a challenge to ourselves to actually see this thing through.]

So back to the question of when a given project will be completed. After analyzing many such improvements in our house, I have realized that all projects can be broken down into a simple equation…

Multiply these factors together:

• Cost of project (in US dollars)
• Number of children squared
• Disgust or annoyance with the project (measured in # of hours it takes to force yourself to start working on it on a Saturday morning)
• Number of other projects that are competing for your attention
• Number of times you think or say “wouldn’t be it be cool if…”

Divide by these factors:

• Bank account balance or equity line in US dollars
• Partner’s “encouragement” to finish (units are # of times subject comes up in a one month period)

The end result will be the number of months it will take to finish the project. The amazing thing I have discovered, though, is that no matter what project you plug into the equation, the end result is always virtually the same…somewhere between 3 and 4 years. This doesn’t apply to the entire house remodel, mind you, as that will never be done, but it is a good estimator of how long a single component of the remodel will take.

I hope that others will find this equation useful and stop themselves before they even start projects. Or better yet, before they purchase their home. If you stopped telling yourselves that this “little” project will only take a few weeks, you could save a lot of headaches and cash. Try this out before embarking on your next job and see if it still makes sense! And if anyone finds this to be useful or discovers missing factors, please let me know in the comments.

And since we are actually getting close to finishing this family room, let’s get back to the closet door. As with all our old fir doors, it looks fantastic with fresh stain, most importantly, there is no visible trace of it having been used as a toilet.

Inspiring

This kind of gets me motivated to start working on the rest of the upstairs doors. How long could that take?

I looked back and realized it’s been six months since we’ve posted (or done) any actual renovation updates.  Today, that’s changing.  I started sanding the old, worn stain off the family room doors, so that we can match them to the new trim stain.  It’s not much fun.  If anyone knows of any power sanders that can actually do a good job in the crevices of these doors, let me know!  I spent almost three hours working on a single door, and I’m still not done.  Yuck.

Close, but still a long ways to go...

This was the status as of last night.  All the trim is finished, stained and polyurethaned.  We picked up our couch yesterday, and I am nearly done with the TV wiring.  A trip this weekend will keep me away from it until next week, but we could be watching movies in here within about a week!  And we are just two doors away from being 100% finished with this room.  I had to use a really wide angle lens to get the shots, so don’t be fooled into thinking the room is bigger than it is.  It’s only about 11×12′ in reality.

View from the doorway

View from the couch

View from outside the window

I wanted to show off my patch of a section of floor that was missing due to a heat register I had relocated a few years ago.  As you can see from the previous patch on the floor, this room has had quite a history of the registers being move around.  Stephanie had suggested stealing some of the flooring from a closet, so I robbed a piece from the coat closet and cut it down to size.  It came out pretty good, especially when compared to the giant, poorly thought out patch just in front of it.

After all trim installed

"New" flooring, borrowed from coat closet

Hole remaining after drywalling and adding base trim

Register in the wall when we bought the house

Today was a fantastic but long day.  I finished installing the base trim, finished puttying all the nail holes, sanded all the yet-to-be-installed trim (crown, base shoe, base cap, window stop), sanded the putty, taped the walls and floor and put on a coat of stain.  

Stained door trim

Stained closet door and back window

Today was much more fulfilling than yesterday.  If you compare the pictures, you’ll see why!

It always takes me awhile to get back in the groove of hauling up all the tools and starting the circus of sawing, shaving, cutting, sanding, shimming and nailing that’s necessary to install door and window trim.  At least a couple of times during the last two days I wished that we had torn down the plaster instead of drywalling over the top.  Which is worse?  Tearing down some plaster, which takes just a little physical labor, or creating a trim nightmare by increasing your wall depth?  What made it so bad is that the drywall is not at a uniform depth, so the depth difference varies from 1/2″ to 3/4″, sometimes along the length of a given piece of casing.  That meant I had to try to cut and sand down a  strip of fir at an angle to try to even things out.  Of the four openings in this room, only the closet door cooperated by needing a constant 1/2″ filler strip.

Next?  Finishing the base trim and filling all the old and new nail holes, a little more sanding and then onto staining.  I also need to buy, finish and install the crown and the little cap trim that sits on top of the base.  I never have any idea what that piece is called.  I will be going to McCoy Millwork to get these pieces, since I couldn’t find anything appropriate at the usual suspects, Mr. Plywood and Home Depot.

I went through the site and realized that we didn’t have any “before” pictures of this room.  I created a new post so you can see what it used to look like.  Don’t be fooled by the walls in the picture.  The white paint over the wallpaper over the cracked plaster photographed really well!

Door now has trim

Side window and first piece of base trim

Closet door and window facing patio

Today I started installing the hybrid of old and new trim.  Most of what are using in this room is the original trim, but the sills and a few other pieces will be new.  Each piece of casing has to be shimmed out by 1/2″ on the jamb side to account for the increased wall depth.  It is a tedious process to put these back together, but it’s worth it to us to be able to adapt the original trim to the “new” room.

Window trim

Close-up of new sill and old casing

New sill

Ummm…maybe only 3 or 4, but it’s 97 years worth.  Lots of distractions got in the way today, so I only accomplished a few hours of paint stripping and bought a few extra pieces of fir I needed for window sills.  Adding the drywall on top of the plaster means that we’d lose 1/2″ of depth on the sills, which wouldn’t leave enough extend beyond the casing.  That meant another trip to Mr. Plywood for some beautiful 5/4″ 1x4s.

I had mentioned our Speedheater in the last post, so today I thought I’d show what this thing can do.  We bought it when we started the house in 1994 and sort of built the $400 cost into our initial projects.  I was shocked to go to the eco-strip website and find that they are now $600!  Ouch!  Even though it was very spendy, we feel that it’s paid for itself several times over in terms of labor.  While I’ve never been able to get results anywhere near as fast as shown on their video, this thing does work miracles.  It can cut through many layers of paint at once, without chemicals or flames.  It turns the paint into a gummy mess that can be easily scraped off, as long as you’ve heated it up enough.  On average I’d say that I have to hit each area about three times to get down to bare wood, but perhaps we have a particularly tenacious variety of paint in this house?  And I’ll always end up with a trace of residue that I’ll have to finish with a chemical stripper and some steel wool.  Check out the pictures for proof.  This would have been a horrible nightmare to do with chemical strippers.  The second picture is my clumsy attempt to take a self portrait while running the Speedheater.  Since I can’t hold my camera in one hand and reach the button at the same time, it’s pretty tough to do!

Old growth fir, out from its hiding place

Speedheater self-portrait

I didn’t bother taking a picture of the 2nd coat of paint in the family room, so you can just look at the last post and pretend it’s a new picture, if you’d like

Today saw the end of the painting and the beginning of the stripping of the door jambs. Used the Speedheater (infrared paint remover) to remove the bulk of the old paint layers and then followed up with a stripper gel. Although not exactly quick, this has proven to be our “go to” combo when we have to strip trim in place. It’s the best way we’ve found to get paint off without sanding (obviously a no-no with lead paint,) but it’s still not very fun! And lastly, here’s a picture of our trim, ready to go on the walls!  Some of this was actually taken to be dipped and stripped 4 years ago!  It’s been patiently sitting in the basement, ready to return to its rightful place.  Most of this pile is original, but the base trim will be new, as will the crown molding.

Dipped & stripped and new trim

Some progress today, with the first coat of paint in the family room, which is Chloe’s old bedroom.  Although the reflected light makes the ceiling look as though it’s the same color as the walls, it’s actually much lighter and completely different.  I’ve taken the next week and half off to work on the house, so look for more progress soon!  

First coat of paint in family room