Before:


After:


Made the changes to the mudroom/kitchen entry today and it feels really good. We loose a little closet space, but I think its well worth the improvement in flow and transition.

Interior walls

The first floor interior walls show (from l. to r.) the bathroom, the closet, and the mudroom. There is a door from the mudroom that will allow access into the closet. The stairs to the second floor will eventually be located to the left of the bathroom.

This photo shows the closet. There will be a built-in shelving unit that will fill the space opening towards the camera. We currently have a shelf of similar dimensions in the yurt and it works well for us.

This is the upstairs bathroom. The end wall with the door was not yet completed when I took the photo.

Last week was a short work week because we went to Boston on Thursday. Mostly I worked on building the interior walls on the first and second floors. It went pretty smoothly.

I was apprehensive that building in the walls would somehow diminish the experience of the first floor; that it would suddenly feel small and cramped and chopped up, but to my relief it actually still feels spacious and open.

Having these walls in place allows me to start laying out the electrical boxes; the switches, the outlets and the mounted lights, which is what I started working on today.

The five inch move

I chalked out the walls on the first floor. The space in front of the door will be the mudroom. The area where the table saw is sitting will be the bathroom, and the plumb bob (the pointy weight on a string) is hanging from the stair opening on the second floor to check that it is in line with the wall of the bathroom. It is.

Here's the first floor plan again for reference to make sense of the lines above. The photo is taken near the bottom of the stairs facing towards the doorway in on the right in the plan. (Remember to click on the photo for a clearer view.)

See how the lines on the floor run right into the door? No good. These lines represent the wall separating the mudroom from the kitchen. Correcting this requires moving the door about 5" to the left.

The opening with the door removed

New framed opening done, starting re-installation

Yesterday I laid out the interior walls in red chalk on the floor and confirmed what I was already aware of, which is that having chosen a 3'-0" wide door instead of the 2'-8" door that I'd originally drawn, the door was butting into the wall between the mudroom and the kitchen.

The options here were to either have a slightly bigger mudroom and slightly smaller kitchen, or to move the door. There really wasn't much of a question. Move the door. So, what has mostly been "building" made a slight detour into "renovation". I had to take out the door, reframe the opening 5" inches to the left of the original, and then reinstall the door in it's new location. Easy to describe, but a lot of work to do.

Nonetheless, by the end of the day today I had it back in and fitting nicely, so tomorrow I'll finish up the loose ends of the project and go into coming up with a framing plan for the interior walls, order up some lumber and put 'em up. That should be fun.

Another day, another wall (or two)

We finished off the north facing wall of the mudroom this morning and then built the little jog that faces east. More of the same: cut list, cut, arrange, put together partially, check the dimensions, fix the anchor strap, square it up, attach the rubber sill gasket, chalk the lines, lay down adhesive at the perimeters, lay down the the ply and nail it, cut out the openings with a router, clean it all up, lay down the seam tape, roll the seams, cut and attach the battens, move the lifting masts into place, attach them, and then, finally, crank the wall up like lifting a sail.

At this point, the wall is up, but then there's moving it if needed, bracing, removing the lifting masts, adding adhesive where the walls meet, check for vertical and then, finally nail it.

It takes a while, but once its up its ready for siding, so we're doing lots of "prep" for the finish stage now, so the time invested is well worth it. The more we can do while the walls are laying down, the more effiecient we can be.

The mornings are chilly, but its hot during the day.

Here's some pictures:





More walls tomorrow.