Started back to the kitchen work. I only did a small amount of flooring until I got to the point that I realized I'm really going to have to pull the kitchen completely apart to keep going... so it's now all or nothing. I'm going to have to make a trip to Ikea and order the cabinets so they're ready to install after I do the rest of the flooring, plumbing, drywall, and then all the little details.
Well, it's finally time to tackle the biggest, or rather, most expensive renovation project, and that is the kitchen. I don't plan to do anything too elaborate, but I'll be adding in a peninsula to expand the counter space, removing the soffits above the existing upper cabinets to expand the space up, and I already removed the built in pantry a while back so the fridge would move into that space.
To continue the floor work that I started in living room and beyond, I first started on adding more osb to the floors in the kitchen to give it more of a solid foundation for the marmoleum flooring that will continue in the kitchen as well.
Art canvas now immortalized in the floor.
Still need to buy more sheets to complete the floor, and also temporarily remove the lower cabinets in order to do so.
Next, I moved onto removing the soffits, which I wasn't looking forward to, as I'd be dealing with attic insulation, and I imagined a mess. Turned out it wasn't too bad as I took things slow, and was able to clean out the insulation as I went, without it falling down on me as I'd had some foresight and stuffed in batt insulation years earlier above the soffits (when I insulated in the garage attic).
Kitchen before the soffit work.
Removal of cabinets
Turns out they wrapped the framing in plywood.
Removed!
And patched.
I ended up tackling one side each weekend. So it took a bit of time, but here's a few pictures of the rest of it.
So, it's official - the Lego room is all done. At the last moment, I decided to make the main table collapsable, so the floor space can be fully open or not. The carpet is nice and cushy too, which is very welcome after walking around on that concrete. For the shelves and tables I bought butcher block. The top shelf being birch and the table hevea. They were surprisingly cheap, but they definitely added up to be a fair bit.
Fancy laser light to get the level all the way around.
Shelf pieced together from 4 birch butcher blocks.
Some LED lights attached to the bottom.
Took some time to get the table mounts to arrive after being delayed, but they are super solid and I'm happy I was able to get them all lined up without any major issues. I did have to raise up the table to about 38" as otherwise some of the mounts would have hit the power outlets.
First ones in place.
Test fit.
Set a temp stand in place so I can place the last piece and mark it to be cut.
All done.
And down...
There's about a 1/16" between the side desks and middle. I wanted them fairly seamless and they definitely are - hopefully that doesn't cause any problems. Got a pretty cool chill space overall though - here's some photos of the other side too.
The last unfinished rooms of the house are: the kitchen and then the storage room and laundry room below that. They have always been kinda tied together, as plumbing fed through the storage room ceiling to feed the kitchen and laundry room. The storage room ceiling rafter space was also recently used to feed piping for the Radon mitigation system that ran to the adjacent garage and then out the roof. It fed plenty of Cat6 cabling for various gear, too. With all that work out of the way though, the storage room was ready to be completed. But what to do with it; how to finish it?
First off, I don't think I ever took a before picture of the space. I did, however, make an attempt at a video. I was planning to try to post all the work on youtube, but after filming one, I decided I just didn't have the time to do that and compete the space in under a month like I was planning to. So, enjoy my first and only youtube video to see the before:
First off, as the video shows, I was to frame out the closet under the stairs. As I moved to framing the walls, I had to install rigid foam board against the concrete first, and then work on how to get some airflow into the room for heating/cooling.
Framing added to the slope of the stairs (to attach drywall to)
Gluing foamboard to the concrete walls.
Closet with door added, and drywall installed.
Patchwork of drywall.
My ductwork creation.
Took some work to get this to fit / figure out how to make it functional.
I had to add a fair bit of extra 2x4 blocking so the ceiling panels had sometime to attach to properly. As you can see, I had to add blocking, as otherwise, there was nothing to attach the panel to where the ceiling met the wall where the ductwork was.
Drywall mudded.
Wall assembly on the floor.
Wall framed out.
And other side.
Insulation time.
First look at the dual lights I added too.
Walls and ceiling all done.
Added some plastic vapor barrier just to hold in the loose insulation.
With all the prep work done (I completely skipped over the electrical work I did too), it was time to move onto the finish work. For that, I chose to copy the stylings of the "she shed" studio that I created as I really like the aesthetics of it. So, OSB for the walls, and pine tongue and groove for the ceiling. I discovered a different kind of pine t&g too, which worked out a lot better as it was thick and sturdy, and I could nail it directly to the rafters without any prior backing like I had to do in the studio.
Just starting and going well.
Cut around one light done.
Cut around lights and vent.
Ceiling done!
The start of the OSB'ing.
Tops all done.
You can see what I created to hold the top boards in place while I attach them.
All done.
Next was trimming up the window and doors and laying down the baseboard.
Creating the frame for inside the window.
Shimming the window in place so it's centered.
Spray foam adding in the cracks to keep the cold out.
Trim added.
Door trimmed (with the final paint decided on in there)
Drywall mudding sanded. Brutal work.
And.. the final pics, all work completed and waiting on the carpet to be installed.
