Most people have hobbies on one type or another. Remodeling my homes, blogging, and reading are several of mine. Remodeling, or building new ones has been a hobby of mine for 25 years and in that time I have built for myself 1 new home, remodeled 4, and built hundreds for customers of companies I have worked for. The new one for me only took 6 months from start to finish. It is an expensive hobby, and very time consuming, and several times, I have been told that I need to get a life! My current home has been in progress since 1994. That was the year it officially started with replacing an old furnace with an energy efficient model. As long as I was at it, I increased its size to add another 60 percent of living space to the home.
The main project was to add a great room, main floor laundry room, rear entrance, and space for a screen porch. The 1st part of the remodel started with a flurry of activity and using some vacation time for getting the foundation in, and the frame up.
After the foundation was installed, the 1st step was laying the joists. At this point, we had been worrying about aligning the new joists with the old joists. We'd been having a fairly intense debate about some dubious floor joists and apparently “joist” sounds a lot like “Joyce,” and the Joyce we were referring to had some real issues. We'd called her “dirty Joyce,” “rotten Joyce,” “twisted Joyce” and “saggy Joyce.”
To the Joyce’s of the world, I apologize. I wasn't trying to insinuate anything. Thou in high school I did have a girlfriend by the name of Joyce who was from the big city, I was from a little town called Harmony.
The house is older; it was built in 1932 and was a duplex. The new great room would require a portion of the roof being tied in (called a lay on) and the existing roof joists and rafters were again sagging and surmised that they would be unable to carry any new added framework. The decision was made to remove all of the old roof structure and replace it with a new roof truss system.
We gathered together a large group of friends that were also carpenters, and set the date for tearing off the old and installing the new roof. It would be in early December, and if any precipitation did fall, it would be in the form of snow. Snow is easier to deal with than rain, when it involves roofs and trying to leave the rest of the structure livable.
By late summer of the following year, the addition was complete; the old had been opened up to the new, the Great room was in use and it was onto phase 2 of this project.
Phase 2 would involve changing the bathroom and enlarging it with a large Jacuzzi and glass shower. It also involved moving the exiting stairway to the basement to a new location. Once that was done, the next project to do would be the kitchen. That would require a complete gut of everything down to studs, rewiring, etc.
But it got delayed, for a while. Like 4 years, while I volunteered to be a project manager for a million dollar church remodel. The church remodel took 1-1/2 years, but then a friend working with me on that remodel asked if I would help him on his. After we were almost done with his, I moved onto another friend that wanted a timber porch added to her house. I thought it would only take a few weeks, but she also had a secret list that I did not know about. Since she was 75, and being my mentor and good friend, I chose not to walk away from the new list, but instead stayed to finish her work. She joked afterward, that if she had told me the whole list, I would have never started. She probably was right.
Time does fly, and I finally made it back to my place 2 years ago this fall. In that time, my hobby became an urgency to complete. The 1st project undertaken was giving the kitchen a new look, then a bedroom was expanded to a larger floor plan that opened out onto a screen porch, the screen porch was built, and the final major project started last year was a timber porch on the front to the home.
However, there were some roadblocks that had to be fixed first. The new porch would encroach onto the mandated setbacks, and a survey had to be done for variances. While doing the survey, it was discovered that the county surveyor made an error 50 years ago and it had to be fixed to build the porch. That took the winter, and finally late spring, the porch was started.
The plan was to have it completed by mid summer, but it did not happen. Today, I am happy to announce, it is 95 percent complete now as the new sidewalk was installed 2 days ago! This afternoon, I was painting decorative timbers, hooked up the lights to the porch, and pulled of the forms for the sidewalk and steps. I also pulled up my list on the computer this evening and started crossing off tasks that had been completed this year.
There is still some painting to do, and if it gets done this fall yet, then that is great, if not, then next spring will be okay. The painting is not going anyplace, but I have been delaying kayak trips into Northern Wisconsin, the Apostle Islands, the Peshtigo River, and other places for 4 years. This winter will be the time for planning those trips and setting those plans into motion.
In between the kayak trips, I will most likely be starting over at the great room, as it does need a fresh coat of paint. A fireplace would be nice also.
The main project was to add a great room, main floor laundry room, rear entrance, and space for a screen porch. The 1st part of the remodel started with a flurry of activity and using some vacation time for getting the foundation in, and the frame up.
After the foundation was installed, the 1st step was laying the joists. At this point, we had been worrying about aligning the new joists with the old joists. We'd been having a fairly intense debate about some dubious floor joists and apparently “joist” sounds a lot like “Joyce,” and the Joyce we were referring to had some real issues. We'd called her “dirty Joyce,” “rotten Joyce,” “twisted Joyce” and “saggy Joyce.”
To the Joyce’s of the world, I apologize. I wasn't trying to insinuate anything. Thou in high school I did have a girlfriend by the name of Joyce who was from the big city, I was from a little town called Harmony.
The house is older; it was built in 1932 and was a duplex. The new great room would require a portion of the roof being tied in (called a lay on) and the existing roof joists and rafters were again sagging and surmised that they would be unable to carry any new added framework. The decision was made to remove all of the old roof structure and replace it with a new roof truss system.
We gathered together a large group of friends that were also carpenters, and set the date for tearing off the old and installing the new roof. It would be in early December, and if any precipitation did fall, it would be in the form of snow. Snow is easier to deal with than rain, when it involves roofs and trying to leave the rest of the structure livable.
By late summer of the following year, the addition was complete; the old had been opened up to the new, the Great room was in use and it was onto phase 2 of this project.
Phase 2 would involve changing the bathroom and enlarging it with a large Jacuzzi and glass shower. It also involved moving the exiting stairway to the basement to a new location. Once that was done, the next project to do would be the kitchen. That would require a complete gut of everything down to studs, rewiring, etc.
But it got delayed, for a while. Like 4 years, while I volunteered to be a project manager for a million dollar church remodel. The church remodel took 1-1/2 years, but then a friend working with me on that remodel asked if I would help him on his. After we were almost done with his, I moved onto another friend that wanted a timber porch added to her house. I thought it would only take a few weeks, but she also had a secret list that I did not know about. Since she was 75, and being my mentor and good friend, I chose not to walk away from the new list, but instead stayed to finish her work. She joked afterward, that if she had told me the whole list, I would have never started. She probably was right.
Time does fly, and I finally made it back to my place 2 years ago this fall. In that time, my hobby became an urgency to complete. The 1st project undertaken was giving the kitchen a new look, then a bedroom was expanded to a larger floor plan that opened out onto a screen porch, the screen porch was built, and the final major project started last year was a timber porch on the front to the home.
However, there were some roadblocks that had to be fixed first. The new porch would encroach onto the mandated setbacks, and a survey had to be done for variances. While doing the survey, it was discovered that the county surveyor made an error 50 years ago and it had to be fixed to build the porch. That took the winter, and finally late spring, the porch was started.
The plan was to have it completed by mid summer, but it did not happen. Today, I am happy to announce, it is 95 percent complete now as the new sidewalk was installed 2 days ago! This afternoon, I was painting decorative timbers, hooked up the lights to the porch, and pulled of the forms for the sidewalk and steps. I also pulled up my list on the computer this evening and started crossing off tasks that had been completed this year.
There is still some painting to do, and if it gets done this fall yet, then that is great, if not, then next spring will be okay. The painting is not going anyplace, but I have been delaying kayak trips into Northern Wisconsin, the Apostle Islands, the Peshtigo River, and other places for 4 years. This winter will be the time for planning those trips and setting those plans into motion.
In between the kayak trips, I will most likely be starting over at the great room, as it does need a fresh coat of paint. A fireplace would be nice also.
1 comment:
I love doing this type of hobbies, it is a passion of mine. It takes me back to my childhood, when I would help dad, but it also is fun to just be creative and let the juices flow.
But a lot of what I can do now, I could not do before. I paid attention and just tried to do anything, like plumbing, electrical, heating, anything to do with a home. I wanted to know how to do it all. And that is all it really takes, is the desire to just do it. This was my play.
So, I was always perplexed why I needed to "get a life"
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