Pool House – Page 8

I hope you all had a fun and relaxing Labor Day weekend. If you didn’t, I hope you got some work done, like we did. Our weekend started with a bang, literally. Ben finished demoing the pool house wet bar with the help of his trusty hammer Meowmeow. Thor has Mjölnir, Ben has Meowmeow.

Do you see the resemblance? Sure, Ben can’t grow hair, but he can rock a mean hat. Though Ben rarely wears a cape.

{unedited picture via}

For now the doors are awkwardly low, but that will change.

A little more digging and knocking down the stone wall to go. Then we can have someone come in, cut the concrete, and we’ll have a ground level opening to install the new door and window. Ben will build a lower header to make these the same height as the rest of the house windows.

~~Thor~~ Ben and Handy Sammy started in the kitchen and worked their way down the line to the rest of the windows. Taking out the bay window wasn’t terribly difficult. Some prying, hammering, and wiggling and it came out.

After installing the kitchen window, the big window in the breakfast nook came out.

The original bay window sat about six inches off the floor. We don’t consider our patio a view, so we decided to shorten this window by about a foot. Ben built a short wall to raise the new window up to the header.

Saturday afternoon brought on an unexpected complication, this:

So many problems here. First, someone cut out the rim joist. Bad. idea. Unlike Nike’s slogan, just don’t do it. Then, some genius ran plumbing for the solar panels outside, only insulating with thin foam. And we didn’t have any support for the window. Good thing those solar panels aren’t there anymore. Ben cut off the water lines inside the house and replaced the cut rim joist. We also shortened the stationary panels on either side of the sliding door, so he built a short wall to raise these windows to the headers.

The sliding door at the back of the house is the first of six we’ll have in the house and pool house. So, it was a good learning experience. After reading the instructions, install was easy enough.

I guess the panels are crazy heavy though. Oh, we found another no no when removing the old door. Wiring for the scones doesn’t come from the floor or attic. The right sconce is looped from the left over the door. Fortunately Ben didn’t cut at that door to get it out. One more reason those have to go.

Soon, Ben will start wrapping the house with insulation. To accommodate the added depth, the new windows have supports made of three 2 by 4s.

While we love all the new windows, our favorites are the two larger bedroom windows. For egress, these double hung windows are 4 feet wide by 5 1/2 feet tall. In a word, huge. And fantastic. The guest bedroom window is about ten inches closer to the floor than the original.

And the boys’ window is about 18 inches closer to the floor.

An outlet right below the boys window was in the way, so Ben turned off the breaker, cut down for the window and added an outlet on either side. A nice little two for one special.

Now we’re really excited to get the pool house windows cut and installed. That means this whole window process is done…until we’re ready for the other three sides of the house. This is a nice stopping point as the back of the house isn’t easily seen. And it will give us enough to do before winter sets in without being rushed.

Bring on the insulation and siding. And tearing up the back yard.

Because this post is already long, I’ll share pictures of the windows tomorrow. Until then, tell us what you did over the long weekend. I saw a lot of camping pictures on Instagram.

It seems like every project we plan to tackle requires at least two steps before we can get to it. One thing contingent on another. For example, before we can paint our bedroom we have to scrape popcorn ceilings and install new trim. Now we’re gearing up to install new windows on the back of the house. Windows arrived last week (more details to follow) but we have a few things to do before that can happen. Of course we can’t leave anything as it is. A few weeks ago, Ben’s aunt and uncle visited. They noted how strange it was to climb up three steps in the pool house to get to the wet bar, only to go down three more to reach the patio.

We always thought it was different, but that really got us thinking. Why not lower the wet bar area, making it level with the rest of the pool house and therefore level with the back yard? Yes, let’s eliminate the steps entirely. So that’s what Ben did on Sunday.

For men, demo is the best part. The fun part.

Smashing things, prying up pieces, and making piles of scraps.

It seems this little area was quite over built. But Ben likes a challenge.

Being the smartie he is, he got the car jack from the garage and used it to hoist up the joists.

When the mood strikes, he’ll finish the demo work. But how is this necessary? Well, in order to make the inside and outside level, we’ll have to lower the sliding door by a foot or two. So the raised wet bar has to go so we can bring in a concrete cutting guy to notch out the foundation. Then Ben can install the new sliding door at the lower height. See, one thing hinges on the other.

For the time being, we’ll have a demoed, unfinished space. When we get around to remodeling the kitchen, we hope to reuse the stove, granite counters, and sink in here. Ben will make new cabinets before that so we’ll have a functional, but small, kitchen in the pool house while we renovate. Also, we won’t feel guilty using the oven in the summer because we won’t heat up the house. But we’ve got one more iron in the fire.

How many different projects are you working on right now? Are you starting to prep for fall? Kids going back to school?