Upstairs remodel

[Snipe Hunter]

We bought this house a year ago last fall with plans to gut it and rebuild it. I started but then I got hurt so I'm back at it now. I was tired of looking at the sheetrock and 2Xs in the garage. So was the wife. I did manage to finish the upstairs hall bath. I made it bigger. I also moved the laundry room from the basement. We had a real big 4th bedroom. It's now half it's original size to fit the expanded bath and laundry room.

Now we're enlarging the master bedroom and master bath. We're breaking a cardinal rule; Never turn a four bedroom into a three bedroom. But, we couldn't find a three bedroom with a big master bed and bath in the area or at the price we wanted... so we're making one.

It's hard to get good pics of small rooms but here's the new laundry room and hall bath. I also did the downstairs 1/2 bath. All the bathrooms will share design elements. Same tile on each floor, same vanities but different finishes, same lighting and plumbing fixtures.

Here's the hall bath:
It's cluttered because as of today, we'll be using it till the master bath is done.


Here's the laundry room. You can only really see half of it in the photo:

[Snipe Hunter]

This is the master bedroom and bath.

The wall there will be demo'd tomorrow and rebuilt just this side of the window on the left. Everything is coming out. The fiberglass tub/shower unit will be replaced with a 6ft x 40in tile shower. The toilet and vanity will be replaced but in the same spot. The house has laminated joists so I can't cut them for new plumbing so I have to keep everything just about where it is. There will be another (30") vanity just this side of where you see the tub. It's plumbing will be hidden in the wall behind the tub to the dry-stack behind the toilet. The new door will be near the window and a shallow medicine closet will be to it's right. There will be a linen closet behind the 30" vanity accessed from the hallway. I'll post a pic of the drawing tomorrow which will tell the story better. The wall on the right will move 7ft to the right (into the adjacent bedroom). The remaining part of the old bedroom will become a 14ft by 7ft walk in closet.





This is a view from the bathroom looking the other direction. Those closets are coming out and a window or (maybe two) will go into that wall as we are loosing half the natural by moving the bathroom wall.



Sheetrock off the closets.


I'd like to get all the sheetrock off and walls down and the room cleaned out tomorrow. Once it's all cleaned up, I'll gut the bathroom. Then I'll start rebuilding walls.

[MikeBob]

Big project!!! Keep the pics/progress coming.

[Snipe Hunter]

Next year, we'll do the downstairs. We'll be opening up load bearing walls. Lots more fun. It's a sick habit. We did this with the last house too. I'll buy kitchen cabinets this time. No more scratch built kitchens. I can buy them cheaper than I cam make them.

[Snipe Hunter]

Sorry about the lousy pic but this is the dwg. The red is demo (aside from he stairs), yellow is new.

[paulmaine]

Should your bathroom be cool or cold you can add an electric heater.  We have a 500 watt/220 volt heater underneath the cabinet bottom; that is where there are a few inches of space that are usually closed off   It has a metal covered heat outlet at floor level and uses a wall thermostat.  Heater in air is from inside the cacinet.  We both love the heat in the winter-heats up quickly.

[brnhornt]

Wow...and I thought my project was ambitious! :O  Looks great and thanks for letting us follow along!

[Snipe Hunter]

Should your bathroom be cool or cold you can add an electric heater.  We have a 500 watt/220 volt heater underneath the cabinet bottom; that is where there are a few inches of space that are usually closed off   It has a metal covered heat outlet at floor level and uses a wall thermostat.  Heater in air is from inside the cacinet.  We both love the heat in the winter-heats up quickly.

It should be ok. There will be two floor registers in the bathroom.

[Robert Adams]

Looks like one of my projects. There is nothing wrong with turning a 4 bedroom into a 3. The rule is don't turn a 3 bedroom into a 2. 

      If we were going to stay here forever I would add on to the back of the house instead of turning ours from a 3 to a 2. But as it is it'll stay a 3 but not have as big of a master as I'd like. 

  For our house I have eliminated the hallway and incorporated it into our master bedroom. The hallway was redundant and really didn't serve serve a purpose and wasn't used. Course houses had odd designs in the past. 

     I'd much rather build a house from scratch than remodel though. It's cheaper, faster, easier and you get a better product when you build new.  

      Speaking of bathroom heat. Those ceiling heaters were very popular in the late 70s and 80s but I rarely see them from the 90s on. They never really did much but make noise and use electricity.



          Very true with the kitchen cabinets. I bought boxes and made the drawers and doors and fronts. Have over 30 linear feet of cabs and spent about $600 on cherry. In all total the cabs work out to about 3k. Undermount slides and lots of drawers. Now it would cost me more to buy to get the equivelant I wouldn't mind being able to order cabs and just install them next time... My cabs were on the low end of cost as I'm a penny pincher and look for the best deals...

[Snipe Hunter]

     I'd much rather build a house from scratch than remodel though. It's cheaper, faster, easier and you get a better product when you build new.  

   

I don't know what the RE market is like where you are but I couldn't buy property and build a house here for what I'll have in this property. Not even close.

I'm on a 1-1/4 acre, wooded lot about 400 yards from the bay. The only way I could buy something that large here is to bid against developers to buy it. They'll pay a four hundred grand for the property and plop two 550k homes on it. I bought the house for $420. That was about 30k under market but the house needs 30k put into it at a minimum. $420 - $450 doesn't buy a nice updated home here in the 2000 sq ft range. $500k would but not on a large wooded lot near the water. It will be worth 500k - 550k when its done. It would cost 275 to 300k to build and another 200-300K for a piece of property, but you couldn't be choosy about the property. There just isn't much available unless you want a long commute. There are some properties with old homes that would need to be torn down. The services would also have to be upgraded. Many still have 60amp services and shallow, low yield wells. There's 50k right there. Plus the property and the new house. It's a tight market here. You have to be real careful where the house is. I'm in the only decent school district and neighborhood in the area where a place like this was affordable. And around here, school district means an awful lot when trying to sell a home. 

One of these days, I'll post a link to a practice home inspection I did on it.