One of my younger brothers recently bought a new house that his family will eventually move into. The house was built in 1900, it has been some kind of Episcopalian Spiritual Retreat for a while, and there is a little meditation house with a closed-off room that he wanted to open up. I was glad to go up there for a few days over my Christmas break and take care of it.
The little house is little. There's a deck, maybe 5' x 8' on one side, then a room with a kitchenette and bathroom in there, maybe 8' x 16'. Then another exterior door, and another exterior door to get into the meditation room - an all glass former porch. The whole thing is maybe 300 sq ft.
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| Starting point for the offending wall |
That's a perfectly good wall. They wanted me to put a big hole in there. Bathroom is on the right. On the other side of that wall is the meditation room. Let's break on through to the other side!
Day 1 started with getting into the sheetrock. I popped off those 1x4's and we punched a few holes to see what it looked like. I was surprised to find insulation back there. After I let my brother and his wife get some aggression out on that drywall, I went in for some math.
Specifically, I drew lines where I wanted to make the edges of the opening. There's a light switch on the left and a perpendicular exterior wall on the other side that I had to avoid. On the right, I had to be sure and make it look like an opening so leave enough room for some molding in there. The ceilings are different heights int he two rooms, so there was no way I could take it all the way up either.
Once I got the drywall down on this side and all of the insulation removed, I discovered an electrical wire where there should not have been any electrical. I thought that switch was going to be powered from either the top or bottom instead of going through each stud. Oops! Well I can make some adjustments there.
The other side of the studs had some blackboard, so I think it was originally an exterior wall. Then a layer of drywall on top of that, which was unusual. The drywall and blackboard were each 1/2" thick, so that was a really solid wall! I decided to remove all of that side of the wall up to the ceiling, and replace the drywall after putting the new framing in place.
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| Demo day |
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| Now that's a hole! |
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| From the meditation room |
So drywall went down, insulation came out, pull the electrical wire from the switch, then cut all of the blackboard and drywall from the other side and all of the studs have to go. That means we can start rebuilding, finally.
Of course the air compressor we brought had a faulty quickrelease. I also brought the framing nailer but forgot the finish nailer, and no other nails at all. So all I could really do was cut but not assemble anything.
I decided to run the electrical over the door framing, and put an outlet box up there. Michael was talking about putting a wall mounted tv up on the nearby wall, so I figured an outlet was the easiest way to junction those two wires together. So I cut king studs and put a hole in the top of each for romex. Then cut jimmy studs, cut a header from 2x4's, and put in cripple studs above those, each with a hole for romex. And that was all I could get on Day 1.
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| Nothing is nailed in place there, but it all fits |
Day 2
Really I think if I had the right nailers and all of the tools worked I could have finished this up in one day. We fixed the air compressor at my parents house that night, so for Day 2 I came back with the finish nailer too. First I nailed up all of the framing, installed the electrical box and wired that switch up again. Then I had some 1x6 pine to wrap the opening. Again, I cut those on day 1 and just had to finish nail it in place once the compressor was working.
We also stopped on the way home from day 1 to pick up some 1x4 pine for molding around the doors. So at this point I could cut and install those on the inside of the opening.
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| That's a good looking hole |
I did cut and install drywall on the other side to cover the headers, but Michael picked up 1/4" thick drywall when I wanted a quarter sheet (2'x4') of the regular half inch stuff. Oh well, we put 3 or 4 layers of that thin stuff on there with a crapload of mud and it came out ok, but still a bit thin. I hate installing drywall with a passion, and mudding/sanding the stuff is something I am actively terrible at, but have to do it more often than you might expect.
While the mud was drying, I cut and installed the 1x4 molding for that side. And of course, that's when a gasket blew out and the finish nailer wouldn't hold air pressure anymore! Bad enough I broke the air compressor on day 1, in my 2 hour workday of day 2 I broke the finish nailer so I couldn't even finish the job.
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| Bottom half from the room |
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| Terrible mud & tape drywall job and the top piece of molding didn't get nailed |
Overall this was a great project. I scored some serious brownie points with my family for helping out, and my brother might have learned a thing or two. My dad came up for most of day 1, so it was fantastic hanging out with him and my brother for that long. On day 2 my wife & kids came up and we left his house to head back home to Raleigh.
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| We hiked to a pond on the property |
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| The eldest and my mug |
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| All the kids |
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