Post 37: Drywall and Texture and Paint

Welcome back!  If you need a refresher, we just finished installing our new granite counter tops!  Since we have removed our furdowns and destroyed our backsplash, we have a lot of drywall that needed to be replaced.

We had some experience with this in our half bath, so we weren't too worried.  All we had to do was measure the wall that needed drywall, cut the drywall to fit, and screw it in to the studs.  (We scored our drywall with a razor blade and then bent it to cut it the rest of the way through.)

Once we had walls again, it was time to tape, float, and texture the walls and ceiling.  Now, around the time we got to this part, Alan was swamped with school and my holiday to-do list just kept getting bigger.  We were barely chipping away at the kitchen, so we decided to call in the pros.

FYI, if you're ever at a loss for a budget-friendly contractor (or any contractor, for that matter), try using Thumbtack.  It's a free app that lets you type in what type of service you're looking for, where you're located, and what your time frame is, then it sends you quotes from handymen/contractors who are willing to do the job.  You compare, haggle, and agree on a price, and if you find someone you're happy with, you hire them to do the work for you.

What probably would have taken us months took our contractor four days.  We went to work, and when we came home, they had made major progress on our kitchen.

Here's what they did for us:

• taped and floated the ceiling
• sanded the ceiling
• floated the walls over the wallpaper
• textured the walls and ceiling
• painted the whole room

It's definitely a different feeling having someone else do the work for you.  I don't feel quite as proud... but it's still satisfying to have a job well done!

We're getting so close!  Hang in there with us as we finish out our biggest renovation yet, and click here to read about our chandelier update.

Post 36: Counters and Backsplash Demo

Last time, we showed you our kitchen electrical work.  This week, we are talking about our counter and backsplash demolition (and showing you a look at our new counter tops).  

We have really enjoyed our granite tile counter tops, but since we are trying to brighten up our kitchen, we decided to go with a lighter granite slab.  We think it's really important that the kitchen makes a great impression since it is such a focal room, and we're hopeful that new counters will do the trick.

Our first step to new counter tops was to demo our old counters.  We are getting our new granite professionally installed, but everywhere we priced, we would have had to pay extra for demo, so we decided this would be fun and cost effective to do ourselves.  We took out our kitchen sink and our stove top and we were ready to roll.

What we discovered was that there were three layers to our counters. To take them off, we had to remove each layer, one at a time.  I thought about drawing a picture, but this one from The Family Handyman was so good, I didn't think it was worth me trying to create my own! (This one actually has four layers.) So what you see is the granite tile, then a waterproofing membrane (we didn't seem to have this...), then backerboard, and then plywood.

We removed the tile layer by “chiseling” it off with a hammer and lever.  (I should say, Alan did it this way.  It was more efficient for me when I just whacked the counters over and over with a hammer, so I chose this method.  To each his own.)

I definitely recommend ear plugs!!

Both methods worked fine.  We had all of the tile off in about an hour.

Once the tile was off, we had a middle layer to remove.  This layer kind of looked like drywall, but it’s called backerboard.  This layer came off pretty easily with the hammer and the lever because it was basically just glued on.

With the backerboard gone, all we had left was a layer of plywood.  I asked our contractor if we could leave this, but he encouraged us to replace it.  (There was a lot of sealer left over and he said we would get a better seal with clean plywood.)  We used a magnet to find the screws because so many were hidden by the sealer and then we unscrewed the plywood base. For screws that we couldn't quite see or get to with the drill, Alan used his dremel tool to sand down to it through the sealer. Then, we could easily unscrew them.

No more counters! (As you can see, we took this opportunity to paint the cabinets. More on that another day.)

To remove our backsplash, we basically had the same method: hammer and lever.  This went horribly in some spots and beautifully in others.  I think it’s because the tiles on our backsplash were so big.  If you angled them away from the wall to get behind them with the lever, they pushed back into the wall on the opposite side, leaving us with huge, gaping holes.

Yuck.

At least we’re good with drywall, right?

This led to our next step... We cut out the yucky drywall and replaced it with new sheets. The walls on our kitchen were becoming quite the jigsaw puzzle, so we opted to take most of the drywall down and have large, solid sheets instead of small, choppy pieces. It was a little extra money, but it saved us a lot of time cutting out odd shapes and fitting everything together, so we decided it was worth it.

With the drywall up, the only thing left to do to prepare for our new counters was to install the decking. This was pretty straightforward. We measured the counter tops and cut plywood to fit over the top. We screwed the plywood into the counters and we were ready for granite!

A while back, I took a trip with Alan's (and now my) Aunt Christine to pick out our granite slab. I loved this one and though it would really brighten up or space. (We're in a shadow, but it looks much brighter in our kitchen. Keep reading!)

Granite day finally arrived and we were so excited to get our new counters installed. 

What do you think?

Our kitchen is obviously a huge project, but we are moving right along!  Soon, we'll show you how we finished up the drywall and start to put the room back together.

Post 35: Hiding Electrical Wires

During our last project, we discovered that there were quite a few electrical wires hiding in our kitchen furdowns.

In order to put drywall up (without hitting the wires with a nail), we needed to conceal the wires in the walls and behind the studs.  This would be really simple if at least one end of the wire were free, but, since all of ours were hooked up (you know, bringing power to our home), it was a little more troublesome to hide them.  Here's what we did.

Note: I realize this might be a little boring, so I livened it up with some help from Lucy and Gus.  Enjoy!

Step 1: Decide if the wires are long enough

Huh?  

Since the Romex cables had to reach their destination on either side without the extra space in the furdown, some of them were no longer long enough.

I still need more.

Think: it's a further distance to go around a corner than it is to cut across the middle.  Previously, the Romex was cutting across the middle through the furdown and now we need it to go around inside the wall.

To see if a wire was long enough, we just held it up across any stud it would cross and saw if it had enough length to reach the extra distance.

If it was long enough, this was a simple fix.  We could go straight to step 3.

If it wasn't, there was a little more involved before we could get to that step.  (I didn't measure, but I drew out what this looked like in case you're visual like me!)

Which leads me to step 2.

Step 2: Lengthen the wire

We had quite a few Romex cables that weren't quite long enough, so we had to figure out how to lengthen them.  Luckily, my husband is basically an electrician, so this was no sweat. ;)

(Okay, there may have been a little sweat.)

Before we go into this step, let me tell you what we learned about electrical wires.  When you have a connection point between two wires (basically, where two wires are twisted together to continue the power supply), that connection point has to be accessible.  If this is in the attic/basement, it simply has to be visible, but when there is drywall covering it up (like in our kitchen), there has to be a removable plate in front of it.  My understanding is that this is so if anything goes wrong, you don't have to knock out a bunch of holes in the wall to find and access it (and it signals electricians to know there is an extra connection in the cables).  Here's a picture of where a junction box was used without an outlet.

Prior to working with any of these wires, we turned off the power to our kitchen at the breaker box.  With the power off, it was safe to disconnect the wires and lengthen them.  At this point, we had to decide how to make the fewest connection points.  Each connection requires a junction box, so we wanted to keep those to a minimum.  (I really didn't want a bunch of blank outlet plates on the wall of our newly renovated kitchen.)  Here's how we went about this part:

A. Can the wire be disconnected at the outlet?

Yes

Remember, the wires we are working with all power something in our house, mostly in our kitchen.  Several of them go straight to outlets or switches.  For these, we removed the outlet plate, pulled out the outlet or switch, and disconnected the wire from the back.  Then, we either moved the cable behind the necessary studs and reconnected it, or we lengthened it.

To lengthen the cable, we attached a new length of Romex to the outlet (as much as we needed to make the whole cable long enough) and then connected it to the existing cable in a junction box.

I tried to draw kind of what this looked like so that it would make more since.  (I know, I'm an artist... not!)  Drawing A is essentially what we started with.  The Romex was not long enough to stretch around any studs and was pretty much already taking the shortest path from the power source to the outlet.  Drawing B shows how we detached the existing Romex from the outlet, added a new length of Romex, and then connected the two in a junction box.  

Note: Since we are doing a big "renovation" already, we decided it was okay to take out some of the drywall to access existing junction boxes more easily.  This will all be patched and hidden when we put the room back together.

No

For wires that weren't connected at outlets we could reach (or we didn't know exactly where they led), we cut them with wire cutters and connected the ends to an extension of Romex in a junction box.

B. Connect wires within a junction box

We were fortunate to only have to install one junction box.  Alan was really clever about figuring out how to get everything to connect all in one place -- yay!

Junction boxes have holes at the back corners for wires to feed through.

When two cables meet inside the box, a connection can be made.  To do this, we stripped the outer rubber coating of each wire, twisted them to the matching wire of the extension piece, covered them with a plastic wire connector, and then wrapped them in electrical tape for extra safety/security.

Step 3: Conceal Romex

Don't fall asleep on me.  We're almost done!

Note: This step really worked in tandem with step 2 depending on if it benefited us more to move the wire with a free end.

Once all of the wires were long enough to be concealed in the wall, we had to decide just how to do that.  There were several options.

A. Weave the wire behind the necessary stud(s).

This one is pretty simple.  With one end of the wire disconnected, move it behind any studs that it is in front of and reconnect it at a junction box.

B. Drill holes and weave the wire through the stud(s).

For a wire that wase free at one end, sometimes it was best to drill holes through each of the studs it would cross and feed it through the holes.  Once this was done, we reconnected the wire at a junction box.

C. Conceal the wire behind a cable protector.

This step worked for all wires, even if they weren't disconnected on one end.  The basic idea of this option is to notch out a section of the stud where the cable crosses it, push the cable into the notched-out section, and cover it with a cable protector.  We bought a cool little tool to help us get this job done easily -- a Dremel Multi-Max.

We used the wood cutting blade and cut out sections that could be covered by the cable protectors.

It took about five minutes for each "notch."  

The cable protectors hammer into the stud easily.  We just fed the wires through the notch and hammered the plates into place!

Now everything's hidden and ready for the next step!

Almost everything!!

After all of this, we had an electrician out to install recessed lighting.  Now, instead of one big light in the center of the room, we have great lighting on all sides of the room.

Before:


After:

That is all for our part of the electrical work.  I promise, it's not that scary.

But this is!

(Okay, enough of my dogs.)  See you later for our countertop and backsplash demo!