Bathroom Renovation: Closing the Walls
Now for the exciting part! With everything in place behind the walls, it was time to install the drywall, finish installing the subfloor and putting up Kerdi Board where the…
subfloor
Kitchen Renovation: Part 8 – Framing and Drywall
Once the window and doors were installed, it was time to frame the interior and install the subfloor. This was probably one of the most exciting steps in the process…
New Basement Stairs: Part 1 – Opening the Stairs
When we opened the dining room, we wanted to also widen our basement stairs. But at that point we thought that we would have to reroute our radiator pipes, so…
Load-Bearing Wall: Part 6 – Patching Hardwood
After we removed the dining room wall, we were left with a small trench in the hardwood flooring where our wall used to be. We were planning on waiting to…
Basement Renovation: Part 3 – Furnace v. Boiler
The only major scope creek that we had during our basement renovation was our decision to change from forced air (a furnace) to radiant heat (via a boiler). We made…
Stair Upgrade: Part 1
We originally planned to hire someone to come and rebuild our stairs – both in the basement and the handrail on the second floor. But as our basement work progressed,…
Reinstalling the Subfloor on the Second Floor
We decided to make our lives a bit more complicated by deciding to change our heating system from forced air to a boiler with rads. Since the pipes need to…
Replacing Hardwood Upstairs: Part 3 – Subfloor Installation
Once the original subfloor was clean of all its dog hair and dirt debris, we were ready to start installing the subfloor. Shimming Just like last time, we checked to…
Replacing Hardwood Upstairs: Part 2 – Demolition of Back Bedroom and Hallway
Once the master and middle bedrooms had subfloors installed and were painted, we moved into those rooms and started demolishing the hardwood floor in the back bedroom and hallway. Removing…
Replacing Hardwood Upstairs: Part 1 – Master and Middle Bedroom Demolition
The upstairs floors were generally in better shape than they were downstairs. There were, however, a few problem areas that looked like they fell victim to water damage. Given how…
Vestibule Tile Installation
Our front door has a small vestibule. It was originally covered in tile, but when we replaced our hardwood floor we took this nasty blue tile out. We opted to…
Replacing Hardwood: Part 6 – Subfloor
Replacing Hardwood (Part 6): Subfloor Now that our floor is good and shimmed (referred to in our house as the sub-subfloor), it’s time to work on the subfloor. The subfloor…
Load-Bearing Walls: Part 1
Replacing our hardwood floor seemed like a simple idea. We would tear up the old floor, put down a new subfloor, install the new floor, and stain the thing. It…
Replacing Hardwood: Part 5 – Shimming
After yet another trip to Home Depot with an AutoShare cargo van, we think we have everything we need to start (and hopefully finish) the subfloor. Our house isn’t level,…
Replacing Hardwood: Part 4 – Leveling the Floor
I feel like I’ve read every article and seen every video on installing hardwood flooring. The most common advice I see if that the finished floor is only as good…