Category: Home Improvement

You may have noticed that we’ve been plugging away on the pool house projects.  It’s far from speedy progress, but so far we’ve covered the ceiling in tongue and groove planks and painted it white. We followed that up by widening the door connecting the main house and pool, tore up the old outdoor carpet, and broke up the original tile.  Other than planning for the pretty finishes for the main space, as well as the bathroom and kitchen areas, we’re still in the ugly, dirty stage of remodel.  Each finished task feels like a victory right now, so wrapping up the additional framing and electrical allows us to move forward to insulating.

Bathroom electrical included installing a new bath fan, venting it to the exterior (and not just the attic space).  Two sconces flank either side of the (future) bathroom mirror.  A horizontal 2 by 4 wall allows us to hide the plumbing in the wall, which was hidden in the cabinet before.

Hidden plumbing is necessary for our open vanity plan:

On the other side of the bathroom wall, the working part of the kitchen has outlets and wiring for under shelf lighting.

The guts are all in place to create this set up:

Directly across from the range wall will be a kitchen seating area, complete with sconce boxes for accent lighting.

 

Due to the six-foot square skylight above, an overhead light isn’t possible, but we didn’t want to rely strictly on the recessed ceiling lighting.

A 17″ tall bench will line the left and back walls, so our outlets are placed just above, if someone wanted to plug-in a phone or computer in this area.

At the far back corner was an in ground hot tub, but it hadn’t worked in at least 15 years.

Knowing how plumbing can fail, we opted to remove the old tub and instead will replace it with a standalone unit.  A pair of outlets designated for the future hot tub plug-in are at the bottom of the back wall.

 

Another pair of sconces will softly light this area.  Determining placement was interesting because of the height of the window in this area.

Everything that goes on inside the walls is incredibly important for the function of the room, but are easily taken for granted once closed off.  I’m hoping we can cruise through the insulation installation and start closing up the walls with our exterior grade A/C plywood.  From that point on, progress will be much prettier and far more noticeable.

If you’ve been following for a while, you already know we’ve been chipping away at the pool house, which happens to be the biggest room in this house.  What started as a leaky, water stained dated room is slowly starting to come together.

This year, we ripped out the old fiberglass ceiling sheeting and painstakingly installed individual tongue and groove pine planks.

To create the light, bright atmosphere we’re after, we then stained the large beams and painted the ceiling white.

While already a huge improvement, the rest of the room still needs serious TLC, but today I’m focusing on the plan for this little offshoot area.   What was a wet bar, separated from the main room by three steps, will become a small kitchen.

Work started in this spot four or so years back, when we discovered the raised platform was completely unnecessary.

For better flow, we demolished the platform, then lowered the door and window to create a seamless transition from inside to out.

Today, it looks like this, with the back deck directly through that door:

Those floating white boxes represent the future range and sink.  We’ll have to reroute the drain pipe that drops into the concrete to be able to center the range on the wall.

Something kind of like this:

Or maybe this is a better visual:

Before our kitchen remodel, but after we had already purchased the cook top and double ovens, Ben found a 48 inch DCS range with tall backguard on Craigslist for $1,500.  Normal retail price is around $7,000 plus around $800 for the backguard.  Before this amazing find, we planned to add a 30 inch range, which would have cost around $1,500 so this was a huge score.

We’ll center the range, with a custom-built vent hood cover and an open shelf or two above.  Seeing as we’ve loved the stainless steel counters in our master bath and laundry room, we’re going that route again here.  A small bar sink will go off to the right, but we’re debating whether or not to add a stainless steel back splash from the counter to the shelf.

Range    .    Faucet    .    Tile    .    Bison Print    .    Serving Bowl    .    Drinking Glasses    .    Hand Soap    .    Cabinet Color

Over on the other side is an angled wall, with a five foot wide window in each section.

The plan includes building benches below, with hinged tops for pool toy, floatie, etc., storage inside.  A pair of sconces will flank the window, with a table and chairs for a little place to hang out or eat a snack.

Union Square Sconces    .    Batik Pillow    .    Indigo Lumbar Pillow    .    Windsor Chairs

Just this weekend, we stocked up on our sheeting to cover the walls, hoping we can start hanging it soon!  Where do you fall on the one or two shelves?  How about the stainless back splash?

P.S. For more pool house progress and plans, check out the overall design board as well as the bathroom plan of attack.

These last few weeks have been hectic, with the school year wrapping up, complete with several fun field trips-yay!  We’ve also spent plenty of time helping friends of ours with projects for their upcoming wedding-double yay!  The combo of the events means very little has happened on the home front in the last few weeks-boo!  The little bit that has happened is boring, but necessary for the future wall finish.

I think I confused at least a few people when I mentioned building new walls, as it implied we’re building interior dividing walls.  Instead, we’re building new walls following the exterior walls, simply to add insulation and electric.

This pool space is large, around 1600 square feet.  Adequately heating this large area is crucial, especially if we want to be able to use it through the winter months.  To keep as much heat in without a furnace constantly running, we’re building another wall, just inside the perimeter.

 

 

Another wall gives us plenty of space to tuck insulation in front of the previously minimally covered concrete wall.  It also eliminates the half ledge where the concrete and stud walls meet.  Before, only 4 outlets were in the entire 1600 square feet: the pump room, one in the bathroom, and two in the wet bar.  We’ll add outlets around the room, all GFCI connected for safety.

Before we can add walls around the hot tub area, we have to fill the hole with concrete.  In place of the previously broken and recessed hot tub, we’ll have an above ground, stand alone tub.  These self-contained models are much easier to work on, or replace if it becomes broken beyond repair.

The front wall that connects to the deck is a slightly different situation, as it doesn’t need insulation because it is a full stud wall.  So it was already done, right?

Nope, because the 24 inch stud layout doesn’t match up with our wall treatment.  Knowing we’re going with a board and batten finish, we need a 16 inch on center stud placement to be able to hide the nails behind the batten strips.

To avoid building a full wall, we opted to attach 2 by 2 strips horizontally along the wall.  This will allow us to nail into the strips at 16 inch intervals, but doesn’t add a thicker wall.

Tucking insulation between the strips is just a quick way to make use of the space between the boards.  A solid wall is the turning point when a project starts to look and feel finished.  It’s the culmination of all the hard work that goes on behind the scenes, er, walls.