Journey through remodeling my house. The original goal of this blog is to look back on the project 20 years from now, when pictures aren't enough to remember everything, and I thought this was easiest way to do it. But I'm regretting that since Blogger's interface is only getting worse. I only update this periodically even though I'm usually working on something and taking pictures.
Comments are disabled because of spam...so if you want to reach out for whatever reason my email is wcvp@me.com.
I didn't take many pictures, but we put in a temporary-ish door. Once the upstairs is done, I'll be moving up there and doing the downstairs, so I need a way to get in up there, plus it makes getting large materials inside much easier. This was just an all in one thing from Lowe's that cost about $200. Once I get around to doing the siding I'll replace the door and frame with something permanent.
We also broke the window on the stairs as we were moving a cart of trash down...
And made a mess of the front yard. I backed my truck right up to the front door so we didn't have to deal with moving the carts down the front stairs and up into the bed.
I didn't take any pictures, but before blowing the insulation back up, we put the new fiberglass insulation in to block the holes where the cellulose would just blow out. We also put up the drywall on the slanted sections of the ceiling so we didn't have to worry about it falling out as we were working.
To actually blow the insulation up, we used the same server blower (I think it came from an IBM Bladecenter Type H) where that black hose I used to get dusty stuff out the window came from, in addition to 2 new 25' 8" hoses like I had before. We tried a few different ways of actually blowing it, like feeding the insulation into the fan itself. This didn't work since it kept clogging up, so we tried it with an old blower from what I am guessing was a swamp cooler, with a newish 3/4HP motor, but it also clogged up quickly. We ended up buying some ducting so it could be fed into the air stream going into the 8" hose, and also attaching the other 8" hose to the intake and ran it outside so we wouldn't be sucking in insulation. At first it was a pain to get the insulation in without it just blowing back out, but after awhile we got the hang of it.
You're probably wondering why we didn't just rent an actual insulation blowing machine to do this. Well, since we're reusing the stuff that was already here, there's a bunch of crap in it like nails, screws, and small shards of wood, which I'm guessing would damage the machine. Plus it's more fun to make your own. A few months later I helped my neighbor insulate his attic, where we used a real insulation blower. Mine was just as fast. When I do the rest of the attic I'm going to try and make a system to feed it in.
My Dad preferred feeding the insulation compared to controlling where the hose went, so that's what he did most of the time.
Here's a video from the beginning, we clearly had no idea what we were doing...
And what it looked like on the output side
Soon after that we figure out the key was turning the blower sideways so the input was by the floor, and just shove it in from a big pile. Luckily cellulose isn't itchy, so it's like playing in snow without the cold and wet. We also decided to use that old swamp cooler blower to help get the dust out, when we turned the insulation blower off, all the dust would be gone within a few minutes. I used an adjustable pulley on it and ran it at about 1.25HP so it moved a ton of air.
Here's a longer video which shows a better example of the process. I'd make sure my dad had a pile and move the output hose around to get the insulation everywhere in the attic. All the stuff drew around 18.5A. The insulation blower requires at least 200V to turn on since it has a built-in VFD which I don't know how to control, so we had to use a transformer. When I do the rest of the attic, I think I'll switch my supply up here to 240V and switch the other blower wiring over to 240V as well so I have less voltage drop on that 14AWG extension cord running upstairs.
It really was like it was snowing in there, this is the extension cord that ran the blower going outisde
And after we got enough insulation up in the first part, before we put more drywall up
Finally done with the attic of this room
Then we took the cellulose out of the walls and bagged it for later, and put the new fiberglass in. There's some missing since a door will be going there.
The ceilings in the upstairs were originally around 6'10", which felt pretty cramped, especially since downstairs they are 7'6" - 8'. So I decided to raise the ceiling in the upstairs. Luckily, because of the way the house was built, it actually isn't that difficult. Above the ceiling in the master bedroom, there was a layer of (seemingly decomposing) wool insulation, then some unfaced fiberglass, and then the modern cellulose that's also in the walls. This was actually really helpful since I wanted to reuse the cellulose after the ceiling was raised, but not the wool since it was dirty and gross. Here's what it looked like after removing the old drywall on the ceiling and letting all the wool insulation fall out
And then with the fiberglass pulled out and all the cellulose knocked down (after cleaning up all the other stuff)
We (my Dad took some vacation time to come out and help me) decided to try and leave all of this there while we raised the ceiling joists and put up the drywall on the ceiling so we didn't have to bag any of it. This ended up being a major pain in the ass and we would have been much better off bagging it. Here's a look before we started raising them
Raising the ceiling joists were pretty simple, it was just pulling them down, cutting the ends, and then putting it back up in the new position. Here's a few done, the new ceiling is about 8'4"
You can see the difference between the new and old height easier in this picture. We didn't move the first joist yet, so it's still right over the windows
Finally all done
And now to put up some of the drywall, I bought a drywall lift from Harbor Freight and it was extremely helpful
Surprisingly, this house was actually insulated for the most part through blowin cellulose, but there are some spots that didn't have any. I also talked to my neighbor and he said that attaching drywall to other materials (like lath), and he said it generally doesn't stay on long term, especially on ceilings, so I'm just going to take it all out and replace it with fiberglass then mount the drywall directly to the studs.
I also decided to look down that cavity next to the chimney, it's just open, but there's one of the main supports for the house at the bottom, so unfortunately there's no reasonable way to run an HVAC duct through there for the upstairs like I wanted (so I could remove the others since they'll be a pain later).
Here's the measurements I took of the upstairs at this point, I used this a lot for trying to figure out a new floor plan, but I couldn't really come up with one.
Removing the tub was pretty gross
And now it barely looks like a bathroom
I think I've spent more time cleaning up than actually doing work on this house so far
I needed to get rid of the toilet in the upstairs bathroom. I could have just walked it down the stairs and put it in my trailer like a normal person, but instead I decided drop it out of the 2nd floor window. I also drove down to Kenosha to pick up my friend who lives in Chicago so we could film the whole thing and make a Youtube video out of it. Here's a link to the full Youtube video: https://youtu.be/2X7lvaCvO4M
Somehow he made the whole adventure into a 15 minute video, so in case you just want to see the toilet fall, it's here:
I cut the romex going through that closet, so that means I didn't have any power on the 2nd floor anymore, so I ran a 14AWG extension cord from the basement to a homemade outletbox and switch.
It worked out, there was an unused GFCI in connected directly to the breaker panel, and since I didn't need the bedroom outlets anymore, I was able to put it on a dedicated breaker. You can see the wiring coming right out the front that is for my temporary bedroom and the extension cord for upstairs coming out of the GFCI outlet on the bottom.
I had a ton of extra cat5e, and LED bulbs don't draw much current at 120V, so I figured I'd just use that along with the bulb bases from the old light fixtures for lights. To be "safe" I took some of a single twisted pair to work with my and put it on the hipot tester, and I was able to max it out (3kV@60Hz) without a blinding flash, so it should be good for this.
I also took out that bathroom inside wall, now its like movie/TV set
