Slow day of putzing and boxing.

Not too much to show off today, I spent a bunch of time putzing around with little things.

This is what the bathroom flooring will look like with the OSB floor, I like.

HaHa Anj, Gotcha!

I finally took some time to box in my furnace but I actually had to do it right because I think if I cut corners here they would be very visible later on once counters and stuff get put up. Eight tuberfores and a whack of triple measurments later I got it all up and it looks semi-square.

After it all got put up, I re-measured my sink that will end up butting up to the right side of this box... apparantly the sink is 5'4'' and I only left 5'1'' between the box and the wall. Shit. Tomorrow I get to tear the box apart and make room for those three inches!

Edit: Fixed it two days later.

First piece of drywall on a non-bathroom wall!

I hate windows.

I may hate putting in new windows but man do I love expanding foam. After I foamed this window I ran around foaming every little crack in the place. If I had this stuff as a kid I would have wrecked everything imaginable.

I really don't want to see the trailer trash goings on out front so I decided to just remove and cover the front windows. Less light but more room for some hella awesome bookshelves in the future.

So, this was a pain in the arse. I got the window out, framed in the seven inches on one side then realised that there was no way I was lifting it five feet off the ground while on a ladder then be able to level it and screw it to the wall. I tried using a lifeline and called a friend, in fact I called every friend I could think of and nobody could or would come over so I did it myself, screw you all. My back hurts and I doubt a rubber ball will sit nicely on the sill but I was determined.

And it even opens!

Finished living room windows, or exterior parts I guess.

My poor little shop vac, the horrors it has seen could fill up three chapters of a long winded Tolken book. A hero he is and I get slightly amused when I suck up drywall dust, my little red coke-head.

Finally finished plumbing in my water lines, tomorrow they go live and I see how many leaks I have. Water tank is splattered with stain and bottom left you can see some of my expanding foam.

Who needs straight lines? Feed and return for the hot water tank.

I was feeling adventurous when dry walling the bathroom so I built a small linen/ towel box above the hot water tank. Then I realised that it'll be a bitch to mud and sand. Before I really tested if my little box was going to hold weight I piled all the tile I have for the shower, a pail of mud and various tools in there. A few days later it was still fine so I mustn't suck at all this as much as I thought I did.

I stayed until after midnight doing a big cleaning, and the warehouse/addition even saw a broom today. I can't wait until I can put the washer and dryer back where they belong, they take up too much space in the room I have them in now.

That's it. I'm tired and there is internetting to do.

Edmonton shopping haul

Hinton doesn't have the greatest variety of supplies. Sure if you're looking for something basic you can find it at a greatly marked up price but all in all, I am trying to get stuff in the city in lump sums.

I hit all the home building re-usable stores in Edmonton and got some great buys.

The big old antique sink that has now completely re-arranged my plans for the kitchen was by far my best deal. Fifty bucks and it is in pretty good shape. This behemoth is five wide and weighs quite a bit but I snapped it up as soon as I saw it. It'll need to be re-finished but I am currently looking into some unique finishes to both keep the cost down and save me from sanding this beast. Notice the top left corner... that is floor stain, my bad.

Starting with the windows, I picked up this 31"x32" window for fifteen bucks, it is tinted so I don't get the greatest view of my neighbours but I'll live with it and smile at the deal.

I grabbed two of these green babies for eighty bucks, they came out of a commercial building and weigh a metric shit ton but the price was right for double pane windows that open. 42"x42" and a bonus was that they were a half inch shorter than the windows they replaced and just seven inches narrower so I didn't have to mess with headers and general precision cutting etc.

I am planning on putting this between my fridge and stove, just a little 6" wide cupboard.

This stuff was an odd buy and worked really well in my plan to have some sort of wainscotting from north to south on the non-kitchen main wall. There was five garbage cans of this type of board, I suspect they were exterior wall shingles (or something like that). We roughly figured out how many linear feet was needed and went to sorting them all out. I think there ended up being 160 of them and we got them for 30 cents a foot, way cheaper than new wainscotting and I think it'll look really good once it gets up.

Mind the mess.

My sister found this little unit and it was just five bucks. For now it is a stand for my laptop that plays me some punk rock whenever I'm working.

This stuff was a great find. I was at a loss for what to lay down in the bathroom as I didn't want to have the stained OSB in there. Initally I was thinking of going with some kind of rubber shop flooring but I stumbled across this ash Bamboo flooring for twenty five bucks a box. I think I could have just grabbed one but it sells for close to seventy five a box so I could eat the cost of a little extra material.

Finally, I think these tiles were fifty cents a piece and they had nine. If my terrible calculations are correct that should be enough to tile the bottom of my shower pan.

Now I did have to buy some new stuff but even with that I hit some great deals and stayed true to my cheap plan.

These were on sale which I really like. I needed a bunch for the shower and I was able to trade a bottle of Rye for some more here in town. They should look really slick on the shower.

These lights are in the bathroom. At ten bucks a piece they were actually cheaper than just getting simple wall mount bell fixtures. They should look really good with the sheating that I'm using for the shower surround.

Drywall dust makes me wheeze!

I am finally getting to the point where I can see what this is all going to look like, or rather what it could look like if I ever figure out how to make straight walls.

After a few days, the floor is really shiny, I like shiny. Now that I am working on it though I am a manic wreck whenever I drop something on it. Ideally I would have liked to do the floor after all my half-assed attempts at carpentry were done but the stain was an issue and I didn't want to get stain all over my drywall so now I just have to be ultra careful.

The waterproof membrane in the shower pan is in, I'm putting off finishing it until I am done mudding and sanding the bathroom.

Apparently there was a fire right beside the place a few years ago. Instead of fixing this window the previous owner just covered it with 1/2" OSB, caulked it and forgot it.
Then I replaced it with a fifteen dollar second hand window.

Second coat of varnish on my OSB floor.

Nothing exciting but I am surprised with the reflective surface already. I should have enough to do six coats total and there will be a wet sand in there somewhere.

Edit: By mid-afternoon of day three the floor has four coats on it. I am applying them every 4 hours and have enough varnish to do six coats. Every coat is making it pop a little bit more but to be honest I can't wait to be done this job. Everything else has pretty well come to a halt inside as I do these coving coats. Tomorrow... I drywall the bathroom.

Staining and varnishing an OSB floor.

Like I have said before, this remodel has to be done on the cheap. With that in mind I had to figure out something that would cost me very little while still looking killer sexy after it was finished for the floor. I have 800 sq/ft of floor space in total, 640 sq/ft of that are everything but the bathroom and addition where I am going to do something different than the main part of the pad. When I priced out laminate flooring I was looking at about $700-$800 for the cheapest stuff I could find as I couldn't rely on re-stores having 40 boxes of the stuff in a colour that I would like. The OSB idea came from a reno that my dad and late step-mother did in the late 90's where they sanded and varnished an OSB floor to finish off an addition on their acreage. The end result was awesome and I figured I would price it out for my place.

Cost:

3/8" OSB - $160

Industrial sander (rented)- $42

Wood filler - $6

Stain - $33

Varnish - $64

Screws - $15

Brushes - $15

______________

Total $335 - give or take a few bucks for small stuff I forgot to add up.

After putting a ton of work into prep, getting this first coat of varnish on the floor felt so good. My back was killing me from the sanding day and I was excited to see how the wood grains would pop out once it was all shiny and stuff. I applied it with a varnish pad in very thin coats with 3 hours of drying time.
The picture above is to show the contrast between the plain sanded and stained floor and the first coat of varnish.

Since I did the majority of the stain in the evening, the spots that I did during the day dried sort of patchy because the sun dried it faster in some spots more than others. I kept that look because the overall appearance of the floor has a very uneven but almost free flowing colouring that I wasn't expecting but looks really good.

I opted out of getting the cheapest indoor clear coat possible because I didn't want this to fall apart before Christmas so I went with a mid grade and lucked out with it being on sale for the week. On the can it says that I should have needed two cans per coat but I ended up being able to do the entire place with a half can.

This stuff was super cheap and covered a huge area with a single can. I used two and a half cans to cover the entire floor but I might have been able to do it in two if I didn't lay it on so thick in the office. Once I figured out how to get it on evenly without spattering six feet up the walls I covered much more area per can.

As I think back to the first few days, this makes me happy with how far I have come with this.

Just a bit about this project.

So, I write all of these starter posts as I come off the high of my floor stain so hopefully all of it made some kind of sense.

I just want to throw a few things out there before I go any further.

I am not just winging this, I have a bunch of great resources at hand to help me out from the good old internet to relatives and friends that do this sort of stuff every day. My brother in law and his brother have been a great help when I am stuck on something that scares me, not scare me in a 'ahhhh' kinda way, rather in a 'I might just fuck this all up' way. I also work for a guy that has his Electricians Journeyman ticket so he has given me lots of help with electrical questions.

For stuff like the plumbing I know the folks at the local electrical and plumbing supply store and they really know their stuff. I also hit up a guy that we use at work for some plumbing work, he came over one day to take a look at my plumbing/ water lines and gave me a big thumbs up with how I had them all set up.

This whole project is meant to be done on the cheap. Initial investment aside I am at $1100 right now and that includes a blog post that I will add with a bunch of stuff that I bought at re-stores in the city. So far the biggest cost was the 3/8" OSB but Leo at our lumber yard has been giving me really great prices on all the timber I buy so that has helped in a big way.

I had the help of my sister when sanding the floors. She went ahead of me and sanded off most of the stamping on the OSB while I ran the big sander.

I don't really know what the final outcome will be here. For all I know I could end up selling it and losing money but in the end I have the experience and I think that is worth more than the dollars that are going to come out of it in the end.

Red Mahogany stain, chicks love Red Mahogany.

Staining my OSB floor

So this is actually all happening on the eve of my floor sanding day. I had a kickass day here, the sanding went much better than I had expected and my energy was still high so I fired up to Canadian Tire to pick up some cheap deck stain. It was a toss up between a more black stain and this red stuff, in the end I am really enjoying how it looks.

For this whole process I didn't look online, I just said "screw it, were doing it LIVE!" and went for it. That brush is really stiff and reminds me of something that an umpire would use to clean home plate but it worked great. Starting in the office at about 9 at night I went at it with no clue what I was doing but I was in a room with no airflow, huffing the powerful fumes of deck stain.
Half way there and I was only halfway into my second one litre can of stain. I didn't think two cans would get me past the bathroom but it covers really well and the OSB didn't absorb it as much as I thought it would.
That was it for the night. Out of stain and I was having trouble seeing straight.
Ya, pretty much self explanatory.
I am not a clever man.

I call 2X4's "tuberfores" now.

Framing my bathroom in and the big sanding project

This is what I call a grade A water line setup. I really did try to solder some copper stuff, then I made that FTS face again and went with 1/2" compression fittings and thread to PEX Shark Bite fittings. The dryer line previously wasn't actually hooked up to anything and that whole bathroom floor demo had the added benefit of having a disgusting layer of dryer lint that had been absorbing water for years! Yay for me! Getting set up to make PEX lines really hit the pocketbook but I think it will be worth it. The folks at our local Bartle and Gibson were awesome when I would go in with random newbie renovation guy questions and they helped me out every step as I tried to get this all set up and lined in.
This is the start of my shower pan. I did the math and realized that it would be cheaper to just make my own, except I have no idea how to do it so I watch how-to videos every night. Actually most of the stuff that I've done thus far have been with the help of YouTube.
Not shown in this picture is just how terribly bad I am at not only driving in framing nails (no air gun for this guy) but also how I am somehow genetically unable to make walls straight and or square. Drywall will hide that, right?
The big-ass sander from Cat rentals! I really should have taken more pictures of this process. When I layed the 3/8" OSB down I had it with the rough side down so on the top side you could see the factory stamp.. that had to go. I hit it with my belt sander and got rid of all the stamps then used wood filler on all of my rookie cuts where the boards didn't fit right and on all (most) of the screw holes. I sanded the floor with the industrial sander first with 90 grit three times then switched to 120 grit and sanded it twice with that. I shop vac'd the floor between every sanding and also re-applied wood filler where needed.

The nasty bathroom floor demo.

Tearing out the water logged MDF flooring

This whole process took me about a week. I spent every minute I had on this dreaded job and it was almost enough for me to just say forget it and burn it all to the ground. For starters this was MDF that had been kept moist, I don't know what you know about MDF but it's the same crap that Wal-Mart furniture is made of. Once it gets wet it swells, then dries, then makes me want to kill. To top it all off, these boards were screwed, nailed THEN glued to the 2x6 floor joists so I couldn't just lift it off, no no no. I had to break all the funked up MDF then try to chisel the glued on junk off as well. I bought chisels, tile lifting tools, sharp bars but found that my wrecking bar+ a ball peen hammer worked best. Then I got mad and hit it with my belt sander and 80 grit paper. It was faster but the dust was terrible.
Before I tackled this job I asked a GC to come over and tell me what I was dealing with. Black mould? He told me that he didn't think it was black mould but I wasn't risking it so I was wearing two particle masks and goggles the entire time I was doing this tear out in the bathroom.
With all the MDF out and many many many runs over the underlaying surface with my trusty shop vac I was starting to feel much more satisfied. I also used four litres of bleach on this whole surface just to scrub more funk off and also a bottle of mould inhibitor for extra assurance. By this time with all the chunks out of the trailer it no longer smelled of gross, but rather it was smelling like timber. Nice non-rotten timber.
Booya! I layed that piece of 3/4" OSB subfloor at about midnight just to give me a feeling of getting somewhere again.
After I added the insulation I carefully added a new layer of poly under the joists then run some new PEX lines that feed the hot/cold in the kitchen. I replaced the P-trap for the shower as well.