A little less insulation, a little more drywall

Well, we passed another inspection. He didn't really have any comments, once I pointed out that we weren't actually planning to put up any vapor barrier, thanks to the rigid insulation we had so carefully attached to the concrete.

Two-for-two! Whooo!

The bad news was that, since we passed the inspection, we could start drywalling.

Ugh.

I don't enjoy drywalling very much, to tell you the truth. Hell, I don't think DRYWALLERS enjoy drywalling. It's finicky, repetitive, labor-intensive, involves large, unwieldy, and heavy pieces of drywall - oh, and it's freaking dusty, too.

There IS a good side to drywalling, though: it's not insulating. And we get to start actually covering things up, too. This means the end is in sight! All that's left is mudding and sanding the drywall (over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over), installing the doors, painting, installing the bathroom fixture, carpeting, flooring, more painting, and then trim and... then we're done. So, yeah.

June? Maybe?

But you didn't come here to hear me whinge (and if you did, don't admit it - seriously), so on with the pictures!

First thing yesterday morning I hied my ass down to the tool rental place and picked up one of these:



Let me tell you, that thing was worth every penny of the $28.50 per day or whatever it is we paid. I have no idea how people manage to drywall without one, to be honest. Unless they have a crew of five, that is...

At any rate, after some organizing and futzing and general dilly-dallying, we put up the very first piece of drywall in the basement:



Six hours later, when we finally quit for the day, we'd done one side of the office ceiling:





Yes, that really did take us that long. (Okay, we stopped for lunch.) But it was right back at this morning, and I'm happy to say we managed to finish the entire ceiling in the office. Here's what it would look like if you lay down on the floor (as if, for instance, you'd spent two days drywalling and were really tired) and looked up:



Oooh, dots! Pretty!

Sadly, we didn't get the bathroom ceiling done, largely because it was 6:30 and the War Department had had enough, but we're hoping to get that wrapped up this week - and then I'll have more pictures!
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Basement renovation tips

I will be the first to admit that I've made a few mistakes over the course of this basement reno. Actually, that's not true. The War Department would be the first to admit that I've made a few mistakes over the course of this basement reno and she would also be in something of a hurry to point out that, in truth, I've made more than a few.

That being said, I try hard to not make the same mistake more than... a couple of times, really, and to learn from those mistakes so as not to repeat them... more than a couple of times. At any rate, I thought that it might be worthy to share some basement renovation tips with my readership in the hope that I might educate, as well as entertain.

Oh, who am I kidding? Nobody reads this thing to learn anything, they just want to laugh at my pain.

This then, is the first edition of a new feature here on the OurBasementReno blog...

Don's Renovation Tips
(Also known as "Don't Do What Donny Don't Does".)

The tip for this inaugural edition has to do with one of my favorite jobs, framing, and a job that's quickly climbing the ladder towards least favorite, insulating.

See, the thing about insulating is that it's a lot more finicky than you'd think. You can't just stuff insulation willy-nilly into the voids, you have to cut it to fit within the space in addition to cutting it fit around any electrical boxes or other oddities. And of course you have to do this while wearing gloves, a dust mask, and usually a sweatshirt or other covering garment to keep the insulation from getting between your skin and clothes. Which means it's both itchy AND hot. This spells fun, kids!

So the best approach to insulation is to cut it as little as possible. Of course, the only way to make sure that you're not cutting it too much is to plan ahead while framing. Ideally, you want to make sure that as many of your voids are 16" on center as possible, and you want to position your cross-braces so that they leave just the right amount of room (on one side or the other) for a 46" long bat of insulation. Pretty simple, right?

Guess who didn't do either of those things?

This guy!



(I got the Carhartts for Christmas from Amy. I think she figures if I look more like Mike Holmes, I might ACT more like Mike Holmes. I figure it can't hurt... And yes, great suffering jesus, that's a terrible picture of me.)

Any way, the long and the short of it is that we spent a lot more time fiddling about with the insulation than we needed to simply because I was more concerned with my braces being at an aesthetically-pleasing level that at a height that made sense for installing insulation.

But we're done!





For now. We can't insulate some of the walls just yet because we won't be drywalling one side or the other for a while and there's something about not allowing exposed insulation in the building code. I dunno, something about fire hazards or something. Whatever.

Oh, and while we're talking about drywall, get a load of what's in the basement right now:



Joy! That's four sheets of moisture-resistant AquaBoard and 12 sheets of good old fashioned drywall! There is a light, I say, a light at the end of yon tunnel.

Tomorrow morning, I get to call the inspector and book our next inspection! Further joy!

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Bitchin' and whinin'

I'm pleased to announce that, after Saturday and Sunday, I have yet another task to add to my ever-expanding list of jobs I find incredibly annoying and really not fun.

That's right, you can now add installing insulation to such classics as drilling Tapcons, digging holes, cleaning concrete, and drilling Tapcons. (Yes, Tapcons deserve to be mentioned twice.)

But it's not all pissing and moaning around our house. The good news is: we've started insulating!

The bad news is that putting insulation up is about as much fun as... well, rubbing yourself down with a fistful of glass fibers, really. Ooooh! Scratchy!

Now, I could go ahead and tell the story about my new buddy at Rona (we call him "Thunder Bay" because he's, uh, from Thunder Bay) and how he not only made us doubt ourselves and our intentions in seeking out the insulation that we were seeking, but also tricked me into buying a piece-of-shit saw that I really didn't need (it was only $3.00, so I'm not that pissed), but, well, that kind of is the whole story. So... never mind.

At any rate, here are the pictures. First up, the ceiling:



We really wanted to get Roxul Safe'n'Sound for that, what with its superior sound-dampening qualities, but we couldn't find anything thicker than the standard 3.5" stuff for regular studded walls. The only stuff they had for 2x6 construction was the pink stuff, which meant we also had to buy spacesuits (the disposable hazmat ones) in a generally vain attempt to lessen the amount of exposure we would suffer to the fiberglass. Fortunately, the pink stuff IS the non-combustible, noise-controlling variety, so we should be code-compliant.

And, last but not least, the walls:





Hell of a colour scheme, ain't it?

Yeah, we didn't get completely done yesterday, but that stuff is a lot more finicky than you'd think, and what with almost half of the voids being not-quite-16" on centre, we have to cut down almost every single piece we put it.

That being said, it looks pretty good to me. We should be able to book the inspector for later this week!





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I love the sound of TapCons in the evening

It was back to work in earnest tonight, and that meant my absolute most favorite job of all - TapCons!

Golly! Gee! Barf! Wurp!

But I'm getting ahead of myself. Before we could start hammer drilling, we had to find a solution for the bathroom floor. I don't think I've explained the problem here (though god knows I've bitched about it to enough people in person), so maybe I'll start with that and then segue into the pictures, mmkay?

So before our hiatus we were working merrily away on the subfloor, what with the foam (and finger) cutting and the plywood sawing and the tapcon swearing... er, drilling, when we started wondering about the toilet flange. (Or, as they call it at plumbing supply stores, the "closet flange". Sounds a little bit snooty, if you ask me, but then I suppose calling it the "shitter thingie" wouldn't quite cut it either.) When we poured the concrete for it, the concrete came up to the edges of the flange. This was as our plumber intended because somehow, someway, he either forgot or was never told that we intended to put a subfloor in the bathroom, the finished height of which (including cork tiles) would be about two inches. Fortunately, they DO make extensions for "closet flanges", but unfortunately (and of course) the extensions have a maximum height of an inch and a half - after which the toilet gets wobbly or something, I don't know.

Which meant that we kinda needed to reconsider our options. Our plumber recommended that we just tile the floor instead, which would take only about an inch, inch and a quarter of height. The problem with tiles is that a) the War Department doesn't want tiles; and b) (like there needs to be a 'b'), to put tiles down we'd have to remove the paint from the concrete floor (or the bed of thinset wouldn't adhere). Removing the paint would require renting a serious piece of machinery, and probably involve a weekend's worth of hard labour. Boo to that.

The other option was to jackhammer the concrete around the toilet flange and have Leonard come back and redo it. Ha ha ha ha ha!

Shyeah, right.

So we needed to find another way of insulating the concrete from the subfloor and still have enough room for plywood and tiles. It was when we were poking around at Rona when we found some big-ass rolls of this stuff. Essentially, it's the same material used to insulate ducting, but made to go under concrete, or between concrete and carpet. Well, we figured, if it works between concrete and carpet, it will work between concrete and plywood. The Building Code only requires vapour barrier (a stupid idea when you're just going to put holes in it anyway), and this stuff is air-tight anyway. Best of all, it's only about a quarter of an inch thick and still has a respectable R-value for insulating the floor from the cold of the concrete.

So we spent Saturday and Sunday picking up materials and cutting out the pieces for the bathroom. After dry fitting them on Monday night to make sure they'd work, we put them down and started putting in the TapCons!

Here's the bathroom floor all clean and ready to go:



And here it is with its shiny new jacket of rFoil:



And here it is with the plywood on top and about half of the TapCons in place:



Just so you can appreciate the sheer joy of TapCons, I took a quick picture of the tools necessary to actually put in each one:



Visible in that picture are:

• Steve's green hammer drill, used to make the hole into which the Tapcon goes.


• Amy's yellow drill, used to make a little countersink to make sure the head of the TapCon is flush with the subfloor.


• My grey drill, used to drive the TapCon into place


• The shop vac, used to suck all the crap out of the hole before driving the TapCon into it (so that the dust doesn't compact into the bottom of the hole, thus preventing the TapCon from going all the way in - that's a good time right there, that is).


• A spare packet of TapCons because I always underestimate how many I'm going to destroy trying to get them to go in straight


• A small pile of used masonry bits, munged TapCons, and snapped driver bits


• A hammer, used for flinging across the room at something when you snap your last drill bit five minutes after Canadian Tire closes.

Good times, good times.

Tomorrow night, we hope to finish the TapCons in the bathroom, which means, come Saturday, it's time to insulate! Wooo!




If anyone needs me, I'll be downstairs, patching up the hammer-shaped hole in the wall.
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Happy New Year!

I know, I know, I know. It's been almost... holy shit, a MONTH?!?!

Uh, oops.

Heh, I really meant to post before Christmas and mention that we were taking a little hiatus from renovations until after the holidays, but what with the trip to Toronto, the running around shopping, and everything else (more on the everything else in a bit), I just plum forgot.

Sorry.

At any rate, after we ran into something of an issue with the height of the toilet flange and the proposed subfloor in the bathroom, we decided to take a hiatus from renovations until after the holidays, what with the trip to Toronto ... well, you know.

The long and the short of it is that we don't have any progress on the basement to show you, but I do have updates on the condition of the fingers! (Yes, I said fingers...)

First up, here's what my finger looked like about the time we decided to give it all a rest until the New Year:



Kinda gross, but definitely better, wouldn't you say?

And here's what it looks like as of, oh, about an hour ago:



It's coming along nicely, though I have a lump of scar tissue right at the tip that makes it feel like everything I touch has a tomato seed stuck on it.

And here's what Amy's finger looks like as of Wednesday, December 19th.

Happy New Year, everybody. Regular updates should resume shortly.
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