Five years in the making - Time for a remodel!

Since we have been in our home for about 5 years now, we decided that it was time to do a remodel of our Master Bedroom.  For what ever reason, that was the only room that we didn't have anything interesting as far as the ceiling goes.  We were supposed to have a tray, but when they started building it, they trayed the ceiling DOWN, which meant that the ceiling would be at the 9ft level, and the tray would slope down toward 7.5 ft.   Unacceptable in my opinion, so I had them stop.  That was 5 years ago and I have been thinking about doing something with the ceiling ever since!

Here is a picture of what the bedroom looked like before.

The cottage look worked for the Cape Cod home in Homewood, but Clair wanted to try her hand at something different.

I wanted something different with the ceiling and Clair showed me some pictures of what she liked.
I had a vision, HOWEVER, Clair had the master plan!!  Wait 'til you see what happened.

(**Pay no attention to the dates on these blogs.  They are arbitrary and are sequenced so that all of the posts are in sequential order.  The FIRST part of this project started the second week of January and took 5 weeks.)

It all started with the ceiling - Bedroom Project Phase 1

It all started when I took the drywall down off of the ceiling.  One of the hardest parts of the job was to remove all of the blow-in insulation from the attic so that it wouldn't turn in to a "snow fall" when I started to take down the drywall.  It was practically impossible to get it all out of the attic, so as you can see on the floor, there was plenty of insulation falling all over the place as I took parts of the ceiling down.

Check out my time-lapse YouTube video of the tear down:
Youtube Video

Home Run!!

The unfortunate part of this project is that there were three home runs that went to various sections of the house.  One of the set of circuits came through the ceiling fixture in the bedroom.  Since the fixture was going to have to be completely moved, this was going to add to the work.  One of the home runs had wire going from the electrical box to a junction box about 60 feet away.  A challenge indeed!

Re-Run

Believe it or not, one of these conduits was completely empty, so that was awesome - I just eliminated it and focused on the other three and how I would re-route the circuits for the second floor and the south east part of the house (consisting of the bathroom and master closet).

Garbage control

In typical fashion, I didn't get a dumpster.  I didn't want to draw any attention to the fact that I was just going to do a little drywall patch work in my bedroom, so I packaged all of the garbage in 55 gallon heavy duty trash bags.  Over the next 4 weeks, all 11 bags eventually were taken by the regular garbage man. :-)

At this point, I believe it is sometime at the end of January - Notice the snow on the porch.

Ready to rock!

Well, this is what the ceiling looked like when I pulled all of the drywall down.  All that is left to do is to remove these rafters and raise them up about 18 inches.  BUT, there is a problem.

The right side of the rafters are integrated into the structure of the wall, so I will have to cut them out...  Which will make the rafters shorter than what I need.  Paul comes through with exactly the number of 2X8 boards I need.

New ceiling height

The new rafters are put into place and the old rafters are cut out.  I left 18 inches on either side so that I can fabricate the soffit from those pieces that are already fastened to each wall pretty well.  Building the soffit this way will also make it easier for me to fabricate the soffit by myself, since I do all of my work solo.  :-)

You will notice that I left one of the home runs that goes to the second floor - since that will be the most difficult and require me to get enough wire to complete that re-run since I will be lengthening the run because of the added height of the ceiling.

I was originally only going to raise the ceiling 10 inches, but decided that I could definitely raise it about 18 based on the 2X12 roof rafters and how they will intersect the room.  What I didnt count on - after everything was done - was that I actually had a 2X14 hip rafter that protrudes into the room!!!!  See the next pictures - What to do!?!?!?!?

Drywall time

The vertical part of the soffit was put up, and drywall started to be hung.  Everything is starting to take shape!

And finally all of the drywall is hung and taped!

But WAIT - Whats that over there in the corner?

Yes, thats the 2X14 Hip Rafter PROTRUDING INTO MY PERFECT ROOM!!!

Coffer Time!

I almost dont want to mess around with what turned out to be a very, very nice job done by the drywallers.  (Yes, I didnt do my own drywall.  I wanted this to be perfect, and my drywall skills are a little dated.)
But, its time to put up the supports (2 X 6 lumber) that will eventually support the 1X6 stock that make up the box beams.

There is nothing like starting with a completely level situation.  Everything else fits into place nicely!

Here is that hip rafter that was protruding into the room.  Almost gone.  A little crown molding and it will be gone!

The ceiling fan will be hanging from one of the box beams.  Since the beams will be painted and there will be seams, I didnt want the vibration of the ceiling fan start to create stress cracks in the seams of the box beams, so I had an electrical box fabricated so that it fastens to the electrical box at the ceiling level and hangs from that!

One of the corners of the room from the bottom

Paint Time

To make wood work look that much better, I always believe in spraying woodwork.  I had a friend of mine that does painting for a living stop by and spray the box beams for me.  While prepping for this, I masked the carpeted floor so that no paint would get on it.  From the looks like it, it was air tight.  The furnace kicked on!

The ceiling turned out great!

I primered all of the walls and put up the ceiling fan

And THATS only Phase one!

PHASE TWO BEGINS!

So, after the ceiling was done, there was a little lull in the action because the cabinetry we were about to install in the bedroom was still on order.  If I recall correctly, we still had three long and grueling weeks to go before anything would show up.

In the mean time, I took care of the little things that make a big impact - like paint the room, replace the outlets with some cool decora style outlets, install special switches to integrate into our whole house automation system and lighting.  Yes, you definitely need lighting to "make" the room!

The cabinets arrive! Time to set the Bases!

The cabinets arrived early one morning.  I was so excited, I took off work early in order to start the installation.   This was going to be another frustrating moment, because once I install the base cabinets, I needed to schedule the counter top people to come measure and then fabricate the piece.

I started pulling back the carpet and mounting the cabinets.  Of course, I schedule the counter top people to come out and measure the NEXT day after getting the cabinets, so the pressure was on to complete the installation that evening!

Because the cabinets will sit further out from the wall, I had to fabricate "stand offs" in order to mount the cabinets to.  You will see how this takes shape soon.








Here is a picture of the base cabinet mounted to the stand off.  The stand off is mounted to the wall.  In usual TJ fashion, you could mount a truck to these babies and they wouldn't budge.







Another pet peeve of mine is the lack of "level" this newly constructed house of mine has.  Its not off much, but Im kind of a freak about it.

 Now, at the ends of each base cabinet, will be a pillar made out of painted wood.  Because the pillars only come in certain lengths, I fabricated some blocking at the bottom (that will be covered by base molding) in order to raise the pillar to the counter top height.

I learned the hard way that the surface of a table saw can be unforgiving when feeding painted wood through it.  While, I did order certain size pillar stock, I did have to cut it down to size. and depth.

I also had some problems with the pillars and the quality control.  As you can see below, there were some major inconsistencies with the sizes of the pillar stock.  Of course, I needed to modify everything to make sure it was perfect.




One side was 3 inches, which is what the whole pillar should be, but the other side tapered down to 2 3/4 - totally unacceptable.



I cant imagine how they did it, but Im guessing that the jig they put these things in for fabrication must have been off.




A hard to visualize top view of the pillar on the right side of the cabinet. (Below)




















Pillar installed on top of blocking

Now that I have the pillars installed on both sides of both cabinets, I needed to fabricate a wall that the fireplace would attach to - between the cabinets.  I made this out of 2 X 6 stock.

Throw the melamine plywood on the wall, install the base board molding and pull & cut the carpet against the cabinet, Pop the fireplace on and I would call this part complete!

Now we have to wait for the counter top to come in!  Another 2 weeks!!!!

The counter top is in! Its time for Book Cases!

We had Cambria installed on top of the base cabinets to separate the bases from the book cases.  The color is white with a faint ribbon of color through it.  

The toughest part to figure out was how to mount the pillars.  Not that it was that tough, but like everything I do, I wanted to be able to mount a truck to the things and have them not move an inch!  Of course, the exact spots where I needed to mount them to the wall - there were no studs.

So what I wound up doing was mounting drywall anchors to the wall and attaching a piece of 2 X 2 stock to the wall - reinforced with liquid nails.

Those puppies arent going anywhere!

On the right, is the mounted pillar.

Only 3 more to go!

Here are some pictures with the pillars mounted.

On the right, I attached some 1X4 stock to the top shelf.  This will actually act as the top plate for the book cases.

You will see below and to the right how the top plate is mounted.  Screwed and also gorilla glued.

<- The finished product.

Essentially, this is the book cases.  Just add shelves, and we are done!

HOWEVER, we need to add some molding to the top, and bottom of the pillars.  This is where I spent most of my time.  The compound miters and coping I had to do was tremendous.  I had to fabricate an additional 5 inch pillar from scratch for the top of each pillar as you will see below.

At the top of each pillar, there is a buffer piece that will help separate the crown molding  and vertical component that extends to the ceiling.  I fabricated each buffer piece (and carried  this theme throughout the rest of the trim build out). Part of that piece is to the right ---------------------------->

The finished trim for one of the book cases is below.

The final look is below with top plate installed and buffer piece installed.

Next, I needed to fabricate a piece that would look like the pillar is continuing to extend to the ceiling, but also provide a finished edge along the front.  Again, I made this piece in my wood shop and installed it on top of the book case.  Below are some pictures of what this looks like.

The picture below shows the buffer piece under the vertical piece (laying on the floor)

Here is one book case complete

Here is a picture with both complete - All that is missing is crown molding. It will prove to be the toughest and most time consuming (per liner foot) crown job that Ive ever done.... 

... and Ive done A LOT OF CROWN in my life time.

 The complication with the crown molding is the fact that there are multiple cuts on one board.  The fact that it is pre-painted wood doesnt help either!

I wanted to make the crown perfect, but also didnt want to kill myself, so as I did with the other pieces, I fabricated, glued and pin-nailed the crown in my shop and then fit it into place.

The crown molding fits right into place.  Could you believe I actually had the patience to take pictures on this very last cut?  This was really the most difficult crown molding job Ive ever done - Did I mention that yet?

The final product turned out pretty good, but it is Clair's touch that brings it all together.  Without that, it is just a white set of book cases. And make no mistake - I had no design input here - This was all build from an image Clair had that was adapted from a Candice Olsen design.

If you want to see some better, more professional pictures of our bedroom, check out the following websites.  They are on Rate Your Space on HGTV, and on the DIY Network.