Renovating Denver - One House at a Time

Front Porch Masonry

The mason has been working on the brick walls/columns for the front porch. Once this is done, the porch project is practically done. The front of the house will only need some paint work and the addition of the window at the top to be done!

The mason carefully picked out the bricks he’s using. The are probably about as old as the house, they came from a demolition in Denver somewhere. The color is really, really close, maybe a tad more orange, but you can barely tell. He plans to match the mortar to the same red color as is used on the main house. Once he’s done, you will barely be able to tell it’s brand new. That’s the idea

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We have passed most of the major inspections (electrical, plumbing, mechanical and framing), so we just have the insulation inspection and then we can start the drywall. We started doing some minor insulation on the ceiling of the first floor. This is mostly for acoustical reasons.

We are starting the bulk of the insulation tomorrow. We had the supplies delivered today, now we just need to figure out how to get it up correctly. This stuff needs to go on the cathedral ceiling in the master, on the top of the exterior wall in the master, and in the attic floor. Wish us luck!

Almost Ready for Drywall!

Finishing up a few minor things before we are ready for drywall on the inside. Still need to get AC inspection, we’ve passed the electrical and plumbing rough inspections. Then the final framing inspection - and we’re ready for drywall. Mike spent the day scraping a few walls of wallpaper and falling plaster as well as pulling weeds in the backyard. Backbreaking!

I have been working on finishing the deck - caulking and painting the white. We think we’ll keep the exterior color scheme to white, a few shades of greyish purple and the red brick. We are soon installing a window on the upper (attic) portion of the front of the house. The master bedroom runs along the front of the house, so that window will allow light into the vaulted ceiling area. We originally had skylights planned for that room as well, but we bagged that - maybe forever, maybe until we replace the roof. There should be plenty of light in that room, so maybe skylights are overkill anyway.

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We also picked up our kitchen cabinets and they’re being stored in our garage. To save a few bucks, we rented a Uhaul and picked them up ourselves at the distribution warehouse. I’ve only opened one box so far, but they look great!

Pocket Doors

Got the pocket doors installed this week! The pocket doors will close off the front room of the house. That room will be an office for now, and maybe a bedroom if needed. The single pocket door by the front door was purchased from dealer in Iowa. It arrived in great condition, already stained, sealed and glossed up.

The double pocket doors were purchased from Queen City Salvage in Denver, on Brighton Blvd. These doors were covered in many layers of paint, and it took many many hours and days to get these puppies clean. They are in OK condition, we will stain/seal them soon.

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Also, the door for the master has been cut out. The mason had to come do that. Now, we’re ready to install the French doors, but I think we’ll wait until we’re certain they won’t get dinged up by the drywallers/other contractors.

 

More Photos

Here’s a quick photo update! Sorry I don’t have more time to reflect - but things are moving along.

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Interior Walls / Air Conditioning / Electrical / Plumbing

It’s all starting to come together. The main walls are up on the first floor. We took down a wall separating the dining area from the TV area. This required a huge header to carry the weight the wall was bearing. Tony brought in these cool old jacks to use to support the weight while they built this massive header. We are also preparing to tear out the concrete pad in the backyard.

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We decided to open up the wall separating the sunroom and the kitchen. This will let more light into the kitchen and allow us to move some kitchen things into the sunroom (like the fridge!). We hired a mason, because it required a steel lintel to support the weight of the bricks above. This will eventually be drywall over, so he used “shit bricks”. I did not know this was a technical term

Work continues on. Our plumbing inspection passed today. The air conditioning and electricity are pretty much done. This week we are building another wall or two, installing closet doors, cutting the opening for the master bedroom French doors, and finalizing our kitchen. More updates soon. Oh and here are some final pics of the deck with handrail - still to come are 3 masonry columns around the beams.

 

Woo Hoo! Something’s almost done! (Almost)

The decking for the upper front deck is going on! Now you can step out the window and stand. The handrail will probably go up tomorrow, then the mason needs to come to finish up the brick columns and half walls. The electrician has wired the lighting already for this project.

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With the decking on, we could finally take down the awful awning covering the second story windows. Looks much better from the outside and inside!

Some more pics of the deck:

Framin’ and Strippin’

Just about done with the new master vaulted ceiling. What a project, but it’s totally worth it. Even without the drywall yet, we can tell it’s gonna be awesome.

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We are strippin’ the old pocket doors we found at the salvage yard. I bought this stuff called Citrustrip. It’s orange and smells like oranges. It’s supposed to be safer than other strippers. It seems to work pretty well. We’ve found the best way is to let the stripper sit on the door for 24 hours before using a putty knife to scrape the gooey paint away. A small wire brush works well to get the goo out of the cracks and crevaces. Cool, one side down, only 3 sides left!

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Working on the Inside

We have been working on the interior framing, and are almost finished with the second floor. This floor will have a master bedroom suite with nice walk-in closet, a new master bathroom and French doors that open to the 2nd level deck above the front porch. We have decided to vault the ceiling in the master bedroom area. This means we have to sister the existing roof beams to make them stronger so we can take out the current ceiling beams. Check out these photos:

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Here are some shots of the master bathroom. There will be a huge shower (maybe steam?), 2 sinks and a toilet. Sorry, no tub - we thought a sick shower was better than some skimpy shower/tub combo. I’m happy with our choice. There will be a jetted tub in the other bathroom. Check out this sweet old metal tank we found behind a wall in the bathroom. Something to do with the radiators, maybe an expansion tank? We’ll reuse it somehow, maybe a planter outside?

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Here are some shots of the framing for the second bathroom. This bathroom is shared by the 2nd and 3rd bedrooms on this level and only accessible through each bedroom (no common hallway entrance). This is a little weird, but the only way to make a 2nd bathroom work on this floor! Also a shot of the doors for this floor.

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We have started to think about stripping some of the paint on the trim and doors. Everything is white right now. I bought this orange citrus paint stripper that seems to work well. We tested one area of the staircase:

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We were planning to open up all the walls on the first floor. We are definitely taking down this wall, which used to have a pocket door (at one point in time)

We have reconsidered and might re-incorporate pocket doors in the front room. That way, we could leave the doors open most of the time, but close off the room for office use or possibly for a guest bedroom. When we pulled down the plaster we saw there was already a pocket frame (no door though!) built into one of the walls. We went to the salvage yard and found a pair of 30″ pocket doors that would work great for the new pocket door wall. The existing pocket door frame holds a 48 x 90 inch door … it’s a mammoth and will be difficult to find probably. There is one online (in Iowa) that I’m looking at, have to see how much $$ to ship.

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We started tearing down the wall between the sunroom and the kitchen. Well, not tearing it down, but seeing what was behind the plaster and drywall. We found exposed bricks under the drywall in the sunroom. And we also found a window. This made us think we want to open this wall up a little more (get rid of the column between the doorway and window). This would open the sunroom up to the kitchen more. I use the term “sunroom” loosely, I guess. It’s certainly not a sunroom now, there is no sun even though it faces west. Need more windows and doors with glass!

 

Last thing - we started tearing off the old laminate flooring that was covering the beautiful wood floors. We kept going back and forth on whether we wanted to lay new floors or whether we should tear off the old flooring and refinish. Mike answered that question when he started pulling the floor up. There is heart pine with a beautiful patina finish under the stuff, some came up easily after prying nails off, but some was harder to pull up, as it was glued to the floor. A few shots:

 

Building the Deck

The front porch/deck has been going up this week! The first step was to get the ledger attached to the brick face. Then the deck supports were constructed and installed. Below are some photos of the framing process, Tony used his truck at one point to raise the main support. One of the photos below is an upclose of the *awesome* awnings. Just kidding, I can’t wait for them to go, but this photo does have great detail of the dentil molding and the corbels, which are staying.

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We have been hammering out the plans for the second floor. Now that we decided not too finish the attic, we want to create a master bath and a second bath on the upper level. Here are some photos in the master bath area. The photos show a wall in the middle of the room which will be torn down. We are really combining a closet and a bathroom for this space. The bathroom will have a curve in the wall, which is great architecturally, but a bitch when laying out a bathroom. We decided to lose the master bathtub, in lieu of a large master shower. I know this might seem silly to do, but we’ll put a jetted tub in the second bathroom. There just isn’t the space in these old houses for everything.

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More wallpaper found! This came from the main staircase area on the lower level. I think the entire hall may have had this paper, we found some upstairs as well. I love the gold sheen in this paper and would love to emulate it somewhere in the new interior design. The last is a victorian wallpaper reproduction I found online, it has a similar feeling, although not totally the same at all.

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A Case of the Mondays

When I got to the house this morning, Tony (our friend/contractor) said, “We’ve got some problems”

Uh-oh. The plumber who started the project is in jail. For 18 months.

What can we do other than find someone new? Hopefully we can find someone who can pick up where he left off.

So, at least the deck/porch materials got delivered today! We chose GeoDeck for the deck, it’s a composite material that does not need maintenance. We ordered this really nice steel blue color, and I love it. The deck is pretty much ready to be built. We just need the mason to come and tuckpoint and prepare the area where the ledger will attach to the house. Some of the bricks were a little loose, and luckily, the mason arrived late this morning to set up his gear.

We will need an expert mason for several more projects, but at least for now he can start where the ledger needs to go. We are also having the mason “cut away” brick to enlarge the window opening on the second floor to accomodate French doors.

He will also brick up the columns for the porch and build a half wall around the porch. Precision is critical - so it was great to have the mason and the deck builder collaborate on exactly how it will be built.

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