Well we’re finally going to move in this upcoming weekend. Should have been done a few weeks ago, but I got really busy on other people’s houses and dropped the ball a bit on our own.
All in all we’re really happy with all of it. Still a bit disappointed about the tile work around the jetted tub, but it’s better than it was and I’m starting to get over it. Learned a few lessons during this process for sure.
The only things left to do up there are lights over the vanities in both bathrooms. Totally my fault…. the wires were in the wall so I forgot to buy fixtures for those two spots. Oops. Electrician is coming back monday to install those for me as well as the exterior spot lights.
So here’s a few pictures. I took some with flash and some with the room lighting. I’m horrible at taking inside pictures anyway, but my first generation digital camera doesn’t help things. So I apologize in advance about how grainy some of them may be. The colors are a bit off too. To give you some reference, the carpet in the master bedroom looks purple in some of the pictures but it’s actually dark charcoal grey. Me thinks the ‘reds’ are off in my camera a bit.
Replies
Looks good.
When does phase 2 start?
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It's only satisfying if you eat it.
Probably about a month. I'm pretty slammed right now and to be honest, we need a little break over here at the ranch. It kinda sucks because when you go from the old to the new you have to go into a demo-ed bedroom and up the unfinished stairs to get to the new part. It's kinda weird, like a time warp or two seperate houses or something. So that should motivate me.
Just been getting a lot of good paying frames lately that I don't want to pass up. I'm always scared that the work is going to dry up so taking time off is like pulling teeth. Realistically, I only need a week or so with my guys to do the demo and re-frame and then it's back to playing GC which I can handle PT. Nothing too substantial going on down there and we're removing (walls) a lot more than we're putting back up. Some demo, little framing, little electric, and then another round of lipstick. Not too bad.
By the time that nears completion it should be nice enough out that I feel pressured to do the landscaping. I hate it when the snow melts because I see how much work I have left out there. Going to look at a used Bobcat tonight though. That should cheer me up. ;)View Image
Great Job!
By my count, you have 7 cans of paint 3/4 full. Why can't the women folk choose 1 or 2 colors throughtout? I'm on my sixth color...Troy Sprout
Square, Level & Plumb Renovations
LOL. Pretty much.
The front door has already been painted twice and she plans to change it again when the painters come back in the spring to do the porch ceiling. I learned early on in this to just let it go when it comes to colors and finishes. I can't complain, I got to design it, frame it, and choose and install the trim.
Sometimes when I hear her talk about the addition "we" built and all the decisions "we" made together I wonder what job it is she's talking about. Oh well.View Image
"Sometimes when I hear her talk about the addition "we" built and all the decisions "we" made together I wonder what job it is she's talking about."
Goes both ways lol. I talked to a guy the other day and he said "we just had a baby last month". I said "we!? you helped out through the whole deal or just the 20 minutes in the beginning".
I like the colors and detail. Nice, clean yet practicle. Good job. What was it you were unhappy with about the tile? Maybe I missed that in another thread. If it looks bad you could always snap a few shots and send them to Nuke so he could compare them to some other nightmare. :-) DanT
and send them to Nuke
That ain't right. LOL.--------------------------
It's only satisfying if you eat it.
The guy who did the tile had good mechanics but bad delivery, if that makes any sense. What I mean is, he knew his stuff when it came to materials, products, and quality installation procedures. But it seems he lacked experience. I saw his portfolio, saw one of his jobs myself, and talked two other people who were happy with his work.
He did great on the laundry floor, the other bath floor, and the master bath floor. All simple layouts. But he kinda struggled with angles and layout when it came to the tub platform and step. But oddly enough, he did great on the shower surround which was a little tricky with the roof line running through it.
Anyway, he pulled some of the tile off the corners of the surround and reworked it a bit. It got better, but still not exactly as I think it should have come out. To be fair.... I didn't really know what it should look like either until I saw it done "wrong" first. Wouldn't have been fair to 'Monday morning quarterback' him to death and it honestly didn't bother me enough to pay him to tear it out and start over after waiting for another order of material to come in. Live and learn.
What I don't like can't really be seen in the picture I posted. How convenient. Well actually you can kind of see it. If you look on the outside corner of wall tile you can see that there is a thin vertical course. That is the result of the rework. Had it been done this way from the beginning, all the tiles could have been spaced equally.
All in all, I can't complain. I think I pulled this thing out of my azz pretty good overall.View Image
FWIW, he's at it again.
http://forums.taunton.com/n/mb/message.asp?webtag=tp-breaktime&msg=69034.1
Does the sun ever shine over there? This one is a classic.View Image
http://forums.taunton.com/n/mb/message.asp?webtag=tp-breaktime&msg=69034.1
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It's only satisfying if you eat it.
Oops. Wrong shortcut. Here it is... sixth post in.
http://forums.taunton.com/n/mb/message.asp?webtag=tp-breaktime&msg=69010.1View Image
Thanks. I was getting paranoid. :-)--------------------------
It's only satisfying if you eat it.
I was getting paranoid
I think that's Nuke's line.[email protected]
It's Never Too Late To Become What You Might Have Been
Yeah it was a lot of hard work.--------------------------
It's only satisfying if you eat it.
let them do the painting
She and I have an agreement:
If she chooses the colors and I paint, then she can't blame me for the sh!tty color and I can't blame her for the sh!tty finish.
Troy Sprout
Square, Level & Plumb Renovations
Very nice Brian,
You and the missus must be tired by now. Is there room for the two of you in that big tub?
Keep the camera handy ok? LOL!
I wish you both the best.
Eric
[email protected]
It's Never Too Late To Become What You Might Have Been
Plenty of room in the tub, but the home movies stay..... home. :)
Glad you like it, we're pretty happy and yes, we're pretty tired too. A break is definitely in order.View Image
I think you'll like Coco in center. He gets a good jump on the ball and can really move. Not that good of an arm. Should be a 300 hitter, and if he's on first you can count on him to move to third on a good single. Double, he scores. Maybe you can get him some instruction on base stealing. He's got the speed, just needs the move.
So, whats the book on what we got?
Now, back to the real point. Nice job Brian!A great place for Information, Comraderie, and a sucker punch.
Remodeling Contractor just outside the Glass City.
Quittin' Time
Yeah, we're pretty excited about Coco. I'm thinking we managed to scrape together decent team this year. I hope they get David Wells to resign though. He's always good for a couple great press conferences a year. And 15 wins is 15 wins. Especially from a left hander in Fenway.
I'm sad to say that I don't know diddly about your pick-ups. One came in the door here as part of another trade this off-season. I think they're all untested prospects, aren't they? To be totally honest, I can't believe the Indians made the deal. I thought for sure they wouldn't make it unless we threw in Manny Delcarmen (a really good-looking pitching prospect who came up a couple times here last year). I still fail to see the real upside for you guys. But I'm sure not complaining!
Thanks for the pat on the back about the house too. Means a lot coming from you guys.View Image
Andy Marte is a good fielder, and a great hitter. Along the lines of Scott Rolen, or Adrian Beltre. He had some time in the bigs last year when Chipper Jones was hurt in Atlanta. All that said, he's still just a prospect.
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It's only satisfying if you eat it.
Congrads bro......I know how you must be feeling. I "feel" like I just moved in here even though I've been here the whole time...lol.
Nothin' like a mostly finished home...just remind your wife when she asks why everything isn't finished yet... like good ol' Lisa used to say here, "a finished home is a listed home". So.....don't fret what you haven't finished...or ya'll have to move : )
Be home sweet home
a...The secret of Zen in two words is, "Not always so"!
When we meet, we say, Namaste'..it means..I honor the place in you where the entire universe resides, I honor the place in you of love, of light, of truth, of peace. I honor the place within you where if you are in that place in you and I am in that place in me, there is only one of us.
Wow! you be one busy man...looks schweeeet.
Spheramid Enterprises Architectural Woodworks
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Thanks brother. Hoping to slow things down for a bit. Need to catch my breath.View Image
Sweetness man. I bet that is nice to have behind you. Looks like your wife had fun picking colors :-) When my wife and I were first married, we attended one of those Home Depot workshops on faux painting. I think we did a good job, but that was 1 or 2 colors ago :-)
Looks like we may be building sometime in the next 6-8 months. I'm looking forward to that.
Did you say you're looking to build for yourself again? Awesome. I'd love to do one from the ground up, but land is just stupid here. To get a decent piece of land here you've got to buy something and knock it down. Too rich for my blood. We just knocked the top-half of ours down. ;)View Image
We haven't built before. My brother did and I should have, but didn't. I'm on my way out, but you can bet I'll post a lot of pics :-)
Looks great. It's always exciting when a new house is finished.
Cheers,
Don
Beer was created so carpenters wouldn't rule the world.
Hi Diesel -
I bypassed the thread a couple of days; just realized it was yours.
Real nice job. I gotta say, I'm a little jealous. You tore off the 2nd floor and put it back, and I think if memory serves me, I may have finished about 2 and a 1/2 rooms since you started. That's not right.
As far as the colors, I agree with you big time. It's only paint. Don't be afraid of it. Ellen and I were doing the dining room together and when we got done, I think she counted five colors. But I like it. As long as you are happy with it, that's what counts.
Good for you. Hope you all get to enjoy the place for lots of years.
Don K.
EJG Homes Renovations - New Construction - Rentals
Looks real nice, Tell the little women she did good on the colors!
Present house were in we started in Oct.2000, moved in July 2001 finished (I think) Dec 04.
Looks like you got the big stuff done, don't sweat the small stuff!
Anything you would do different if you had to do it again?
Got any current exterior photos?
Thanks man. I hear you about taking forever to 'finish'. That's my biggest fear because I feel guilty on weekends if I'm just laying around and I know there's stuff I could be doing. I guess there's always stuff that need doing though, right? We'll get there. I just try to thing about how far it's come along since September.
Here's the most recent "before" and "afters" I have. You may have already seen these, but I'll post 'em anyway.
EDIT: Anything I'd do differently next time? Yeah.... sub the whole damm thing out and just have the GC call me when it's done. LOL.
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Edited 2/1/2006 7:04 pm ET by dieselpig
>Here's the most recent "before" and "afters" I have.Absolutely amazing. Awesome job! Looks like one of those TV shows that get it all done in 1/2 hour. Probably took you longer though. <G>
Brian
Looks great!
I like all the different paint colors, I'm getting tired of all these new houses with the old standard "white" paint in them.
Nice job
Doug
I like all the different paint colors too Doug. I'll admit that I "steered" the wife a bit and told her to go bold. She tends to lean on the pastels and I pretty much hate them. They're so wimpy. It's just paint.... not like it's hard to change it if you really hate it. The pastels are all different shades of white to me. So she said she'd try to pick bolder colors and ended up shocking me with her choices. I love it. She doesn't call them colors, she calls them 'flavors'. We have the grape room, the orange room, the peapod room.....View Image
Looking good. Of ourse I knew it would. Nice job man. Treat yourself to a full throttle.
Ugha Chaka! Ugha Chaka! Ugha, Ugha, Ugha, Chaka!
Thanks Gunner. I quit the "Full Throttles" lately. Now I'm on to "Monsters". They rock. Awesome afternoon pick-me-up. I frame like the Devil for a couple hours after one of those tall boys.View Image
We have a guy that does all that power drink stuff. He swears by it. I tried a can of Monster, then drank a cup of coffee. Slept like a baby for about two hours. Doesn't do a thing for me.
Ugha Chaka! Ugha Chaka! Ugha, Ugha, Ugha, Chaka!
We have a guy that does all that power drink stuff. He swears by it. I tried a can of Monster, then drank a cup of coffee. Slept like a baby for about two hours. Doesn't do a thing for me.
jet lagged on a trip to Vegas, I took a couple sleeping pills to get on 'Vegas time'. Da## things didn't put me to sleep, I was wired for about 4-6 hours. Just about bouncing off the walls.
What is monster? Super caffine, or something else? I'm a caffine adict. It doesn't give me energy, just keeps me from dozing off while at work.
jt8
"Obstacles are those frightful things you see when you take your eyes off your goals." -- Sydney Smith
Edited 2/2/2006 9:54 am by JohnT8
Same here. I drink diet coke all day. Usually one just before bed. Can nap in the afternoon or go to bed and sleep well. No affect to speak of. DanT
Same here. I drink diet coke all day. Usually one just before bed. Can nap in the afternoon or go to bed and sleep well. No affect to speak of.
I ain't picky. Diet coke or pepsi will do. Whichever is on sale that week. Usta like diet RC, but its hard to find around here. If we're talking cans, I go through 4-9 per day. I'm kinda liking those 24oz bottles though. Lets me top off my 32oz insulated mug and reseal. Go through 2-4 of them.
As an adict, the stuff no longer has any effect on me, but if I fail to drink my quota, I start to get really sleepy.
jt8
"Take your life in your own hands, and what happens? A terrible thing: no one to blame." -- Erica Mann Jong
I love it. Well worth the effort. And as someone else already said, nice to see a house that isn't afraid of color. Tell DW she has a good eye for color. I'd like a house where you can denote the rooms by the colors. So instead of saying, "I left the book in the living room," I could say, "the book is in the blue room." (or some such).
I like the scale of the place. Too many of the pics that get posted on this board look like people are living in auditoriums. I don't want a LR with a 20-30' ceiling... 8-10' is just fine. I don't want a 1500 sq ft MBA. I don't need space and prep areas for 100 people in my kitchen/DR.. just big enough for my immediate family and/or friends is all I need, and if it has a bit of flexibility to include some extended family once or twice a year, that's great.
I also like the carpet. When my bare feet hit the floor in the morning, I don't want them landing on cold tile or wood floor. Carpet is comfy. Tile belongs in BA's and utility rooms and kitchens. Wood belongs in DR's and LR's that don't have TV's (if there's an entertainment center, then the room really needs carpet). IMHO.
OK, now lets talk about your CAMERA! If I can buy a $400 framer for my hobby, surely you can buy a better dang camera for your BT hobby! DW's colors are not being properly showcased with that camera you're using now :)
jt8
"Obstacles are those frightful things you see when you take your eyes off your goals." -- Sydney Smith
Thanks John. We love it too. And with the exception of a few minor details I feel like we built exactly what we wanted to build. We never really got carried away and blew the budget on anything. The only budget breaker (and it was a huge one) was the HVAC system.
I was going to just add more hot water baseboards upstairs but the more I talked to everyone they all seemed to say that I was crazy not to add AC while we had the place open. From there, since we were running the duct work anyway, we decided to eliminate the baseboards all together and go with hydro-air and a sick Buderus boiler to run the whole thing. I gotta believe that if you're going to blow the budget a bit, might as well do it on good mechanicals. To a certain extent, that stuff pays for itself. More so than something like Italian marble tile or appliances that we'll only use twice in our lifetime or something.
We like carpet too. At least for the 'living' areas. The downstairs will have a bunch of wide plank pine flooring but we like carpet on barefeet in the morning. The upstairs won't see as much traffic as downstairs either so hopefully we can keep it nice.
You're right about the camera. It's so old it's embarassing. But it works and I don't mind taking it to work and having it around my gorillas. I'll blow the whole wad on pretty much anything for the company, but luxuries outside of tools is tough for me to do. Irish Catholic=born guilty. ;)View Image
We love it too. And with the exception of a few minor details I feel like we built exactly what we wanted to build. We never really got carried away and blew the budget on anything. The only budget breaker (and it was a huge one) was the HVAC system.
You're never going to get everything you want squeezed in. Just shoot for most of the important ones and you're doing better than most. Especially if you didn't go way over budget.
I gotta believe that if you're going to blow the budget a bit, might as well do it on good mechanicals. To a certain extent, that stuff pays for itself. More so than something like Italian marble tile or appliances that we'll only use twice in our lifetime or something.
We think alike. I like to blow $$ on larger amp electric panels, higher efficiency furnaces/AC, better insulation, etc... Meanwhile my female advisors are telling me I'm not going to have any $$ left to put finish details in. Apparently they think Advantech is not suitable as a finished floor surface. Or how could I spend thousands on crawlspace insulation that no one will ever see and then think about saving the old tub or exhaust fan. :)
You're right about the camera. It's so old it's embarassing. But it works and I don't mind taking it to work and having it around my gorillas. I'll blow the whole wad on pretty much anything for the company, but luxuries outside of tools is tough for me to do. Irish Catholic=born guilty. ;)
Well I'm mostly Scot protestant who grew up without much surplus $ for luxury items. You didn't buy toys, cuz chances are some important bill was going to come along to eat that $$. You can see how long it took me to talk myself into that framer. It wasn't until it crossed the point from being 'toy' to being a 'useful tool to save me consderable time' that I was able to get 'er on the buy list.
Same thing in your case. The camera isn't a toy, it is a potentially very useful marketing tool. And if you ever get around to setting up a website, you're going to need an archive of some reasonable quality photos to put on there. The quality of your work far exceeds the quality of those photos. And you're only talking about $2-300 for a really good picture taking digital. That is cheaper than having someone come out and professionally shoot one construction site. And as a extra bonus, you can then take good pics of family gathers and whatever else. :)
jt8
"Obstacles are those frightful things you see when you take your eyes off your goals." -- Sydney Smith
John,
I asked this before, maybe of you?, but what program do you use to creat the swf files, how much is it, free would be best :) and how hard is it to use?
I asked this before, maybe of you?, but what program do you use to creat the swf files
Macromedia Flash
, how much is it, free would be best :)
Now I'm not going to ask you where you got your copy, but I actually paid $$ for mine. :)
and how hard is it to use?
Depends on how much you want to do with it. The clip of DP's house wouldn't take very long to figure out.
[edit] I'm using Version 6, which is probably 3 or 4 years old. Works just fine if you're actually thinking of paying $$ for yours. Otherwise, there usta be folks passing copies of stuff around. Obviously frowned on by the software makers, but still happens. Due to my current job, I'm out of the loop on the 'passing copies around', but if you post in tavern someone might have some info for you.
jt8
"Take your life in your own hands, and what happens? A terrible thing: no one to blame." -- Erica Mann Jong
Edited 2/3/2006 9:46 am by JohnT8
That's awesome! You even got Mulligan in there..... sweet dude.View Image
Those exterior shots are like night and day, Diesel, nice job. I wouldn't have even known it was the same place.
Interior looks nice and crisp in the photos. Not a lot of distracting details, clean, solid, just right to this one time Yankee.
That tile issue? Let it go man. There'll always be something or other that bothers you a little about your own work, you know, like you do something towards the end of the day when you're tired, then lay awake kicking yourself and vow to jump right on it in the morning and do it right? Then the next day it doesn't look anywhere near as bad as you remembered?
Same thing whenever you build or remodel for yourself. If you did get that tile "perfect" you'd start noticing something else you wish you'd done different.
I think the place looks great, and it meets your family needs, right? Crimony man, that's about 3 times any carpenter's house I remember seeing when I was a kid. Well done.
TIPI,TIPI,TIPI!
"The only budget breaker (and it was a huge one) was the HVAC system. "Heh, heh, heh....looks like Joe talked you into partin' with more $$$$ than u planned, eh??? Trust me, he's good at that!!! LOL!!!No worries, mate, he's a good dood. (We're playing cards @ his place this Sat night....I'll try and win some of your $$ back)I'll email (or shoot) phone you sometime soon about the project we discussed, but from the sounds of things, you need a break!!!I'll give you a jingle in a few weeks.