Big Changes - Update May 12, 2015

My updates seem to be getting closer together and showing more drastic changes. So far this week we've had contractors, plumbers, electricians, landscapers and arborists all here busily creating chaos in our lives and transforming our home. I'll let the photos tell the story of what's gone on since the last update.

Johnathan and Dorian rip the old roof off the carriage house. Most of the larger planks you see in the foreground aren't from the roof. They're from the floor that was torn up inside from the area that used to be our closet, laundry room and hallway leading to the carriage house.

This shot gives you an idea of the amount of debris being carted out of the carriage house. You can also see the difference in the pitch between the old original roof and the new one if you look in the corner where the roofs meet.  There was considerable rot in the old original roof but it never leaked since it was under the new one.

So this is the laundry room and hall and closet floors ripped down to the floor joists. You can see some of the water pipes that ran to the washer and to the barn in the lower right of the picture. Below that is dirt. This part of the house only had a crawl space under it. The further part of the floor (with the blue tub sitting on it) is inch-thick terracotta tiles that will have to be jack-hammered up. That was the old carriage house floor. All of this will be ripped up and replaced with a concrete slab (poured right over the dirt) that will have in floor heating as well as a channel going through the center of it that will house all the plumbing and electrical that goes to the barn/garage.

Looking up from inside you can see the extent of the rot in this one area of the roof.

In this photo I'm standing against the wall (teetering on a floor joist) and taking a photo looking "down the hall" toward the laundry room. It's ironic that the partly demolished area is in our house and the gleaming white surfaces you see at the far end is actually the interior of the barn.

And then there were three. Yesterday morning there were 7 giant Poplar trees. Burton's Towering Tree Service arrived and spent the day dispatching four of them. They'll return today to get rid of the remaining three. Trevor (Burton) wanted to get them down before the leafed out. I'm very happy to be rid of them. They do open the property up quite a bit but at least we won't be cursed with the white fluff they spread over the neighborhood each year. Last year it clogged our pool filter, our heat pump and even got into my car heater and caught fire.

They're here....

Although the contractors have been here for over 9 weeks, the calamity was pretty much restricted to the barn. Those days are done. This week the demolition began in our living space. This morning I enjoyed my coffee and worked on an article with the pounding of hammers and the screaming of a reciprocating saw in the background. This is likely to be a regular morning for us for the next few months. It really makes the washer and dryer and fridge sitting in our den seem normal.

Old meets...old. So, if you look through the doorway you can see the newly renovated barn. This doorway will be expanded and turned into an archway and will lead from the laundry/utility room into the Costco room. The door on the right will be replaced with a garden door that leads out to the back yard. Audrei has requested a cloths line be set up out there. This area of the house (former carriage house) is going to have a cathedral ceiling with a skylight in it to open it up a bit.

It's really like an archeological dig around here. When the guys tore down the walls in the carriage house they exposed the old original roof (with cedar shingles painted mint green). They believe there may actually be a third roof built over the one you see at the top of the photo. It's fun trying to piece together the lineage of the different parts of the house.

The washer and dryer and fridge had to moved from the old laundry room. The only spot we had was the den. The electricians and plumbers are arriving this morning to hook them up. This will be there home for the next month or two while the new laundry/utility room is being created. Rio looks less than impressed.

The new garage door is in. It's not hooked up yet (no power in the barn yet anyway) but it's all in place. The cedar shingles will change to grey pretty quickly on that South/East side of the house. At that point the grey door will match nicely.

This is looking down the hallway that used to connect the house to the carriage house. The wall on the right will soon be gone. When you look down the hall you can see the far wall which is actually a barn wall. It starts to give a sense of how large the laundry/utility room is going to be.

Full of surprises. Our century home appears to have steel studs in this wall. We think this area of the house used to be part of a wood room. Our current laundry room and carriage house access was likely built sometime after the former owners bought the place. I'm guessing this wall likely went in during the early 1990s but it could have been 10 years earlier or later.

May 2015 Update

This will likely be one of the last posts you'll see exclusively of the barn. Matt tells me that they're going to be starting on the carriage house transformation next week. Although it's been hectic lately with a lot of stuff going on, all of it has been restricted to the barn. From now on the work will actually be encroaching into our living space. I think Audrei, our housekeeper, put it best when she said, "It's going to be a long summer."

Here are some photos of the finishing touches that have happened in the barn this week.

Here is my pottery studio space. The walls and window trim are all done. The counter will be just under those windows which are south facing - lots of natural light.

This is the north side which will overlook the driveway and the lower lawn. All the trim is done. The electricians will be back in soon to install the light fixtures.

New windows and doors really give everything a nice, finished look. You can see the scaffolding outside that was used to do the new shingles and the new cupola.

This is a shot of the floor with the new finish on it. The finish is a new product designed to protect and seal the concrete as well as give it a nice shine. The steel door that goes to the basement is in the foreground.

Another shot of the floor. This is  the north side of the garage where the Porches (Mike's and JP's) and the Corvette (someday) will go.

The crowning glory of the barn is the over-sized cupola that Matt built. There was a cupola on the barn originally but it was only about 18 inches square. We decided to upgrade. Our new cupola is 5 feet square with a copper roof. Matt built it in his workshop, assembled it there, disassembled it and then trucked the pieces to our place and reassembled it on the roof. Here they are taking the individual pieces up.

Matt and Jonathan formulate a plan.

This picture was taken from an upstairs window in the house. The cedar shingles will eventually grey to match the rest of the barn.

Here is a view from the rear of the property. You can really notice the copper roof in the sunlight. The new cedar shingles will grey quickly on this south-west facing side of the barn. The new shingles really made a difference in the appearance of the building. It looks awesome but the garage door, the outside lights, the ramp and the driveway are still to come.

Things moved quickly this past week.

April 7, 2015

The concrete buttresses in the basement stand in about 9 inches of gravel, then a plastic membrane (you can see the edge of it along the wall) and then a layer of gravel to hold the membrane in place. The membrane keeps the moisture below the dirt floor.

Curious dogs watching the progress. In this photo you can see the corner of the new steel door that will give us access to the basement. Brian is standing in the basement entrance. Bentley looks a little suspicious of the whole thing.

April 9, 2015

The steel door is now set in place.

The hole is cut in the back of the barn for the garage door. You can see some of the old horse stall hardware on the left side of the photo. The white panel on the right is where a door used to be.

April 10, 2015

The old floor is sealed with a durable woven polypropylene underlay to go beneath the concrete.

April 13, 2015

Jason laying the plastic pipe, that will carry the hot water from the furnace, that will create the in-floor heat in the concrete slab.

All of the heating pipes enter the barn/garage through this opening that leads into the carriage house.They will be thread through a conduit that will be embedded in the concrete slab that will be the new floor of the carriage house. I guess we'll have to stop calling it a carriage house soon. It will be the connector between the barn/garage and house and be used as a laundry/utility room.

Lots of loops

This used to be a door. It's been filled in and will be shingled over. We'll let the shingles age and discolour naturally so it'll be a few years before it blends in completely. You can see the remnants of a large radiator that used to be in the dog kennels in the barn. They had to break it into two pieces to remove it. It was so heavy it took two guys to drag just one half of it.

Yes, that's a trellis they're putting on the back wall. But it's not for flowers. The trellis creates a space between the cedar shingles and the wall and allows them to breath.

Dorian removes the last of the old outside light wiring. You can see the wiring for the new lights just on the left side of the old door frame. The concrete ramp you see going up to the door will be removed with a jack hammer later. The door and the two smaller windows to the right of it will all be shingled over. You'll never know they were there since all the shingles on the back of the barn will be new.

April 13, 2015

The cement is poured and the guys worked away all evening at smoothing it out. They went over it with the power trowel and then let it set up for a while and then went back at it again. They repeated this until satisfied with the finish. They left at about 10:00 p.m.

They needed a couple trowels for this job.

The floor will be fine to walk on and we can start storing some things in the barn/garage in 24 hours but it will be 26 days before we'll be able to park cars in here.

 

April 3 - 2015 Update

We are exactly 1 month into our renovations and a great deal has happened. The barn basement is nearly complete. The concrete fortifications have been poured, extra support beams are installed and the gravel floor is partially in place. That gravel will be covered by a thick plastic membrane (to keep moisture on the outside - for the most part - some will still seep in through the walls) and that membrane will be covered with sand to hold everything in place. Someday we might opt to pour a concrete floor down there as well but, for now, it will remain a dirt floor basement. Once the snow is gone and the ground thoroughly melted Matt and his crew will dig a drain that will allow water to naturally drain from the basement. My friend, Patrick Cantienni, is a grape grower and wine maker and I'm going to ask him to come over and see if the basement might be suitable as a wine cellar. Matt feels that, with all the insulation in place and a heated space above it, that the temperature in the basement will likely stay pretty consistent throughout the year. That sounds like good wine storing conditions. We'll see. Here are some pictures of the latest work being done:

This is the rear (north-east) corner of the barn basement. The white PCV pipe you see draining into the old sump pump will be where it drains naturally (by gravity) when finished. The wooden structures on either side are the forms for the concrete buttresses that reinforce the basement walls.

This is an extra support beam that was installed in the center of the basement. A concrete footing was poured and then the framework of the wall goes up to the extra beam above it. This is at the foot of the stairs that go up to the main level of the barn. In the background you can see the wooden form of another support buttress.

This is the rear (east) wall and the south wall. We left the original windows. The actual windows will be replaced with newer, more energy efficient, ones but they'll look exactly the same. This corner has had extra electrical wiring installed to allow for a kiln or other studio equipment. The windows look out over our garden area so it'll be a nice place to work.

I'm standing in the doorway on the west side of the barn (the house is behind me). You can see the outline of the where the garage door is going to be - the light blue insulation across the top shows the width of the door. It is basically the full width of the tallest part of the lower floor. You can also see the extra beams that were installed across the ceiling.

This is the north west side of the barn. You can see the holes that have been drilled in the Styrofoam insulation. Even more insulation will be blown through those holes. Matt has told us that this barn will actually be easier to heat than our house because he's able to insulate it so well.

Here is the sluice that the guys fashioned to more efficiently transport the gravel to the basement. They shovel it in here and the guys in the basement spread it evenly around the floor.

This is what remains of the mountain of gravel that was dumped on our parking pad. And this was the second load. The first one has already been shoveled into and dispersed around the barn basement.

The Start

On Tuesday, March 3, 2015, the first hammer swing marked the beginning of our major renovation here at Cedar Crest. It was truly a bitter sweet feeling to see a century of history fall away under the mauls and crowbars. The remnants of the old kennels were in the barn. As we tore down the walls separating the kennels we discovered (under false walls) that each kennel had a fold-down grooming table. However nostalgic the demolition also showed the wear and tear of the years. We discovered two support beams that will have to be replaced and years of horse urine had rotted out a great deal of the floor boards under the box stalls. These will have to be replaced prior to pouring the cement floor. The following are some photos we took just as the contractors were getting started and showing their progress by the end of the week.

It took a couple days for the guys to clear all the "junk" out of the space. Most of it was stored in the loft of the barn. At this time we're only renovating the foundation (reinforcement) and the main level (garage, storage and studio). We're pretty sure the hardware in the box stalls is all original. We're keeping it and perhaps we'll allow it to enjoy a reincarnation in the new space or in the garden.

Another final view of the box stalls before they come down.

Removing one of the interior walls to further open up the space.

More walls and stalls coming down.

The site of the old kennels. Each one had a window. We have the original blueprints for the barn so we know that this area was originally built to house poultry. There's no way of knowing when it was converted to dog kennels or perhaps it was never used for poultry at all.  This area of the barn was once heated - as is evident by the large cast iron radiator against the wall. I had hoped to be able to keep the barrel you see in the background but on closer inspection we think it's actually full of creosote so will have to be disposed of as a hazardous waste.

More walls torn out to open up the space. This was where we discovered a support beam that was smaller than what we'd anticipated. We had to call our engineer - Larry Honey - back in to take a look and make a recommendation of what needed to be done to provide adequate support.

Standing against the north wall of the barn and looking toward the south wall. There had previously been about three interior walls between the north and south sides of the barn so looking from one side all the way to the other was a very strange sensation.

This is the view from standing in the doorway on the east side of the barn looking to the west side. There used to be 3 box stalls on the right. You can still see the wall of one box stall on the left side of the photo but that was taken down later that day.

This is the opposite view from the photo above - taken from the door on the west side of the building looking to the east.

This is standing about mid way through the barn looking west - toward the house. You can see the front of my car parked by our kitchen door. The access to the basement is seen here open.  We will continue to use this as the only access to the basement. The wooden door will be replaced by a plate steel door (that will support a car) once the new concrete floor is poured.