Let's put on some 3d wall tiles

We've been eyeing these wall flats at Inhabit Living, specifically the braille design as it looks really cool. The tiles come in 18x18 size and they have to be put on the wall either with mastic or with contact cement. The tiles are flexible but relatively had, they just feel like cardboard.

I've decided to go with the mastic route and started putting them on. It is fairly straightforward, but it is time consuming to ensure that mastic is spread properly and tiles are set properly. Here is the work in progress:

The hardest part is ensuring all corners stick the wall properly. Sometimes a corner refuses to stay in place and keep popping up probably because I didn't spend time to bend all to make them flat prior to installation. For those persistent corners, I used a couple finishing nails as installation instructions recommended. 

I've also had difficulty in cutting these tiles for the edges or around outlets. The instructions recommend using a razor knife, but it is impossible to cut through bubbles correctly without damaging them using a knife. Then I realized that oscillating cutter is the perfect tool to cut these 3d tiles without messing up the bubbles:

After two days, here is all the wall tiles in place:

Still, I need to

-caulk the edges and between tiles to minimize the seams.

- prime it

- paint it.

We'll see how hard it will be to prime and paint this 3d wall with a brush, not a sprayer...

After a looong time, here is a quick update on the 3d wall tiles.

Painting this is a total pain in the neck. I had to do two coats of paint with a brush and had to paint every single bubble one by one to ensure they look uniform. Next time, I may want to hire a painter with a spray gun and let him take care of it!

After all done, here is what it looks like. From distance, it almost looks like it is not painted, because I painted it off-white. We were initially planning to paint all of it to off-white and paint some of the bubbles with bright colors like red, orange and yellow randomly. We've never quite executed on that. We might some time in the future...

Kitchen is finished (almost)

The kitchen remodel is pretty much finished. Backsplash is in, even the floors are cleaned up. Now I got to peel up those blue protective covers and start putting the handles on. But before that, here are some pics of the outcome.

Update after moving in:

We've finally removed everything , and here's the finished kitchen:

Finally .. wall is being removed

After getting all the permits and stuff, we're finally executing on the wall removal project.  I am tired of writing the same stuff over and over again, so I'll share the pictures and you can get the context from previous post.

First of all, this is what we saw when we removed the paneling on garage-bonus room wall in order to reinforce this wall:

It says "E-41 Fairbrae". So it turns out that our house is not an E-11, it is an E-41. We were wrong. Now we know thanks to that 50 yr old chalk marking.

Then Michael drilled all the holes in the slab in order to put the new bolts and hold-downs in:

We've repeated the same for the small section of wall between entry and kitchen:

Finally, we've added plyboard on these walls and closed them!

Now, let's start talking about actual wall removal instead of shear reinforcement.. Here is a picture after removing the wall between bonus room and living room:

Note that the post is currently missing too (hence the supports under each beam), because we needed a new post. The existing post is about 1/2" shorter than it needs to be in order to fit exactly between that post anchor on the foundation and the steel beam support thingy. 

Here is what it looks like after the new post is in place. Also note the bottom sill-plate for the new wall is in place (left lower corner of the pic), and it is nailed to the foundation (without puncturing any radiant pipes thanks to the infrared thermometer):

And finally the new wall completed:

Another problem you'll encounter during the removal of this wall is rerouting the electrical. I wish I'd taken a picture before disconnecting the electrical, but following picture will give you an idea:

Basically, someone designed the electrical in these houses as:

- power on this circuits comes down from the roof into this wall.

- It comes down into an electrical box, where  the line is split into two:

       -One line powers the outlets on this wall as well as one outlet on the left side of the fireplace.

       -2nd line goes back up in the roof and it powers the water heater/radiant heater!

This sucks, because we need to find a way to continue powering the water heaters and the outlet next to fireplace. Luckily, our electrician Sergio was able to fit a shallow junction box in the ceiling to continue the circuit without interruption all the way to water heaters, and he routed electricity to the outlet next to the fireplace through the outside from the garage outlet. 

Of course, there is still a lot of filling, sanding and painting to do, but those are all minor stuff...

Radiant pipes, how to avoid hitting them?

Part of our remodel involves putting in anchor bolts to reinforce existing walls and nailing new divider walls into concrete slab. So, how do we make sure we don't damage any of the radiant pipes during the process.

Actually it is relatively easy to map out your radiant pipes:
1- Go get an "infrared thermometer" from you local home improvement shop. A $30 one will do the job
2- Turn off your radiant heat for a day, and let the slab cool down.
3- Come back after a day and turn on the radiant heat.
4- Give it 30 mins-60 mins for the pipes to warm up. Don't wait too long, otherwise the heat distribution will become uniform.
5- Slowly slide the infrared thermometer across the slab 2-3 inches away.

You'll normally see 64-65 degree readings. But, if you cross a hot  pipe, the thermometer will show 75 degrees or so. Just take a painters tape and mark those hot sections.

I've just marked the hot pipe locations, and my contractor avoided from nailing the new wall into slab at those locations. Meantime, we've also discovered that there are no radiant pipes under any of the internal wall we've touched.

Wall Removal - Plans, Permits and Budget planning

Initially, the folks at the city suggested that if it is not a load bearing wall, then I can simply sketch a plan and get my permit. So, I've sketched a brief plan and went to the city for a permit application. I was immediately greeted by the structural engineer as my permit involves wall removal, he looked at it and pretty much said "No waaaay!". The city engineer argued that I have a lot of walls running perpendicular to the front elevation, but only a few walls running parallel to the front elevation as there is a lot of glass instead, so removing this particular wall, even though it is not load bearing, would reduce the resistance of the house to lateral shaking in case of an earthquake.

While  I wasn't happy with this outcome, his argument made sense. He suggested if I remove that wall, then I have to close atrium windows with 1/2" plyboard to make up for the removed lateral resistance. Of course, I have no intention to replace my floor to ceiling windows with any kind of wall, so I said I'll think about it, picked up all my papers and left the city department without any trace ;).

I wasn't satisfied with the answer I got, and I've decided to find an independent structural engineer to discuss the problem in hand and potential solutions. One of the Eichler specialist architects I talked to recommended Brian Dotson Consulting Engineer. Brian was cool, and we had lengthy discussions on how we can engineer a solution that would be as safe as keeping the wall from an earthquake resistance point of view, and something that the city would accept.

Brian has  come up with the following solution, ran the calculations and provided the plans for the permit application. Here is the engineering plan:
- Remove the wall between bonus and living rooms, keep the load bearing post.
- Anchor this load bearing post by bolting it down to the foundation.
- Reinforce the wall between garage and bonus room (which is a parallel wall 10' away) to make it a shear wall for added lateral resistance. Reinforcement involves:
            - Bolting it down to the foundation with new thick bolts and washers
            - Adding hold-downs on both ends of the shear wall
            - Covering the wall with 1/2" plywood.
            - Nailing the upper sill plates to the ceiling.

We've decided to pull the trigger despite the increased cost, and our contractor Michael Pellegrino has applied for the permit using Brian's plans. The city did not accept the plan as is and required us to reinforce a section of the wall between atrium entry and kitchen in addition to the reinforcements Brian proposed. Again, the cost went up, but we still wanted to remove the wall, and decided to go for it. Michael got the permit, and we moved on to the actual implementation phase.

Oh by the way, if you are planning to do something like this, reserve 5K for it. With all the engineering, permits and work involved, this one ended up as the most expensive component of our remodel after the new roof.

Wall Removal - Comparing options

Here comes the most exciting part of our remodel: Removal of the wall between bonus room and living room. In our model, this wall is spanning across 3 beams, and removing the wall requires dealing with the load bearing post holding up the middle beam. If you look carefully, there isn't a single beam there. There are two beams meeting there and being held up by that post. Before we finalized our decision on this, we've considered the following options:
Option 1: Remove the wall, but keep the load bearing post.
Option 2: Remove the wall, remove the load bearing post too. Run a cross-beam across to carry the middle beam.

Option 2 also requires reinforcing the concrete slab under the posts where the edges of the new cross-beam is supported, because the load is going be 50% more on each of those posts. This involves breaking into the slab and pumping extra concrete. We didn't like this option as it will likely result in damaging the radiant pipes.

So, we've decided to go with option 1, and we'll keep the post in the middle of the living/dining area! Imagine things you can do with a post in the middle of a room! :)

There are obviously two ways to handle wall removal:
- Follow your intuition, skip the permits.
- Go to the city, pull a permit, and suffer the consequences.

We wanted to play safe on this one decided to go with the more painful route of getting permits for the wall removal, because we didn't want it to be a red flag for a future re-sale of the property. That said, we've decided to move on to the next stage of seeking permits

Redesigning the floor plan.. opening up walls

If you haven't already, take a look at one of my earliest posts describing the floor plan in this E-11 Eichler. Did I say E-11? It turns out we actually have a E-41, but I'll get to that later.

So our original floor plan has a fairly large kitchen/family room, a separate (relatively small) living room, a bonus room, and four bedrooms. Family room has atrium and backyard windows. Living room has backyard windows and bonus room has a huge slider door to sideyard. I guess here is what architects/builders had in mind in 1959 when they built this house: The family is going to eat and hang out in the kitchen/family room area. When there are guests, people are going to dress up and sit in the formal living room. The bonus room is for storing junk, and you can easily haul in additional junk into that room with the oversized slider door exiting to the sideyard.

We'll repurpose the rooms for our way of living, and here is the plan:

- Former kitchen/family room: Party room! Did you notice that people always hang out in or around the kitchen when there is a party? We'll have the kitchen here, throw in a few bar chairs and a sofa. We may also add a small table. Of course, we'll also have meals as a family in this room either on countertop bar or on that small table.

- Former living room and formal bonus room: We think having a bonus room is the first step to becoming a chronic hoarder, and it is a total waste of space. Do you know how much $/sqft we paid while buying this house?! So, we'll combine bonus room and former living room to create our living and dining area by removing the wall between bonus room and living room. This way we can throw a TV on the fireplace, throw a sofa right across, and set a nice dining area in place of bonus room. While sitting on that sofa, you get the TV in front of you hung on a nice brick fireplace. You turn your head right and see a full wall of glass to the backyard (no fireplace towering in the middle of your backyard view like a medieval defense outpost as you'd see in some floor plans). You turn your head left and you see the nice dining area and whatever you got in the sideyard behind that oversized slider. (ok, this is a weak point, we got to plant some good looking stuff on that sideyard. Right now I see stacks of construction debris).

Of course, we plan to close off the boiler/washers area by putting  a new wall and creating a hallway/engine room towards the garage with all the boilers and stuff. By the way, Mr. Eichler, I think putting the boilers inside the house was a stupid move as they suck all the oxygen out of living spaces.

Net net, here is what our floor plan is going to look like after opening up that wall:

 

 How are we going to open that wall? Well, that is the big project. Please read on..

Ikea cabinets are in place!

We've achieved a major milestone today. Cabinets frames are installed!

Here is the full story on cabinets:
I spent a couple days in the last two weeks assembling the kitchen cabinets Ikea delivered. I had about 12-13 pieces of cabinetry and it pretty much took a total of 10 or so hours to assemble all. A good chunk of that was spent on just sorting and identifying the right pieces out of the stack Ikea delivered. Ikea unloaded everything I ordered shrink-wrapped on a large pallet and left it in my garage. As you may expect, the parts you need first were placed at the bottom of the pile, so I pretty much had to re-sort everything.

Once you get to the items you need, then assembling the cabinets is fairly straightforward. It takes about 20-30 mins for each cabinet from unboxing it to completing frame. High cabinets are a bit bulky and heavy, so you probably need a helper to carry/move them around.

After I assembled the cabinets, our contractor Michael (mikep-at-garlic.com) came over, first put in drywall, and then started installing the cabinets one by one starting with the high cabinet for built in oven/micro in the corner. Easier said than done! Lifting and installing cabinets is a lot of work not to mention the hassle of dealing with issues like sloping floors and walls. It took a few days to install all the cabinets, and we'll wrap it up tomorrow by completing the cover panels around the island.

Tomorrow, Ikea's countertop contractors will come over to take the measurements for countertop cut. Here is the sink that will be installed under the countertop:

We're going with a 30" single  bowl sink on a 30" cabinet. We were also interested in zero-radius sinks for a really modern look, but they all come with four ridges on the bottom going from the corners to the drain, and that is necessary for proper draining per a salesperson I spoke with. Anyway, I saw this nice sink on e-bay. It has relatively sharp corners and no ugly ridges, so I pulled the trigger. It was a bit pricey ($160) for a piece of steel, but it looks like sinks are outrageously expensive for some reason.

My weekend plan: Start putting the doors and drawers in...

Foam roof and skylights are being installed.

Our foam roof install work has started a couple days ago. Here is how Abril Roofing is installing our foam roof:
- Remove all the gravel, leave the tar paper on.
- Raise the roof flashing by ~2" to add extra height for the foam
- Raise skylight curbs accordingly
- Reposition drains
- Put all new skylights (I've got Keith from MasterCraft Builders doing the skylights in coordination with Abril)
- Apply foam
- Apply base coat
- Apply top coat with some granules. Why the granules? No idea..

Removing all the gravel involves a bunch of people on the roof tearing out pieces as well as a powerful vacuum setup that is ferried around on a truck! Here is what that vacuum setup looks like:

I can't really describe how noisy that machine is. When it is running, it is noisy enough to suppress any conversation on the entire street. On day 1, this machine suckep up all the gravel on my roof. Here is a snapshot of the roof after removing the gravel. Note that some sections were removed all the way down to the decking:

After removing the gravel, Keith from MasterCraft builders came over and installed 4 new skylights for us. Here is the 2x3 one that we've installed on the kitchen:

I must say that skylight makes a huge difference by bringing in a lot of indirect light.

Abril has immediately applied the foam on my roof on day 3 to make it watertight at a minimum, because we're expecting rain on day 4 :). After  the rain is over, they'll apply the base and top coats on the foam.

More updates to come later..

Gerry the tile pro at work!

We found a great tile contractor. Gerry has come in, inspected the job that was partially done by the previous contractor, and has started fixing their mistakes right away! He replaced the poor cuts around the edges, doors, closets and he is applying the grout. Kitchen floor is coming out nicely as seen below.

I'll take more pictures after it is all cleaned up. 

We're now progressing into the master bathroom, hall bathroom and the hallway itself. We're holding off the living room area for now, because we first want to remove the wall between bonus room and living room.

By the way, you can reach Gerry at gonzalez0077@yahoo.com if you are looking for a tile installer especially for large tiles.

Need to find a new tile contractor...

Well, I ended up firing our tile contractor. Why? I found out that he was stealing materials. I've been buying the fancy thinset for him to use, and apparently he's been swapping it with a much cheaper thinset to make an extra $5-10 per bag of thinset. It is just disappointing when people try to screw you over for a few bucks while they can make thousands from the job and future referrals. Anyway, people are free to make their own decisions. I just hope those tiles will hold well with the cheap thinset.

Tile installation in progress

Just a quick update on the tile installation. Kitchen/family area install is complete and ready for grout application.. More to come later..

Floor demolition complete, prep for tile installation in progress

Our tile installer and his team has completed removing all the VCTs and carpeting in the hallway. They've been scraping the mastic for a day or so, and here is what the floor looks like after removing VCTs and scraping most of the mastic:

While most areas are clean enough to get proper thinset bonding, some areas still have too much mastic like the area closer to where I am standing while taking the picture above. Therefore, Jake and his team are going use a grinder on those areas to clean them further.

After all the grinding and additional cleaning, we've applied some RedGard to prevent against cracking of grout over time as the concrete slab develops cracks or as existing cracks grow (and yes there are cracks on our slab). We've applied only one very thin coat of RedGard, because I've read on the "Internets" that it's got some insulating capabilities (note that it is a bad idea to put insulation on a radiant heated slab). So, just in case, we've had a very thin roll put on just to give some cracking protection. This is what it looks like while it is drying:

Next... setting the chalk lines and tile installation! Stay tuned..

Panel upgrade and kitchen electrical complete!

The panel upgrade was completed today, and we have power! PG&E finally connected the power today (not yesterday as scheduled). Here is the picture of the new panel prior to meter re-connect.

Note that the additional circuits for the kitchen are not in yet.  However, some circuits have already been upgraded. Specifically, the 220 volt circuits going to the kitchen for oven and cooktop thru existing conduits. Let's talk about conduits... There is the original 3/4" metal conduit under the kitchen island as seen i the picture below.

The second 1/4" conduit is for telephone line. The original 3/4" conduit carried a 220V 30A 3-wire circuit on 10-gauge wires. We want to have our cooktop on the island too, however most cooktops require a 40A circuit. Frankly, even if you crank up all heaters to max at the same time, then it gets close to 30A, so for all practical purposes 30A should be enough, but I am sure city inspector would disagree. So we've run new 8-gauge 4-wires for a 40A circuit plus a 20A circuit for island outlets.

Similarly, we've pulled a new 40A circuit for the oven through the existing conduit. 

What about the additional circuits to the kitchen in order to bring it up to code? We've decided to run them in a conduit in a trench. The conduit will come out of the ground right infront of the 2' kitchen wall in back elevation, terminate at the outside junction box and then the wires go into the kitchen wall. Here is what that junction box looks like:

Note that the conduit and trench is not there yet. Sergio and his team will be digging the trench and laying the conduit pipes next week.

The box is kind of an eyesore, but I think it will blend in once I paint over it. The alternative way of running additional circuits is through the roof. The downside with the roof approach is that it is harder to service (especially if you foam over it) and leak risk is relatively higher especially with flat roofs.

Kitchen has been rewired to code too. Here is what the new kitchen wiring  looks like:

Note that we've also added an outlet to be hidden behind the wall cabinet above the sink. This is for future countertop lighting needs. 

More to come once we dig the trench and run the new circuits.

Update on Nov 2nd:

The trench work is complete. Sergio and his team has laid the conduit and ran wires through it.

Electrical panel upgrade

While flooring work is going on, we're also upgrading the electrical panel. The old panel is the original 100amp Zinsco panel from late 1950s. Apparently this panel was very popular during those days, however they're now known for their failure to operate properly and carry a higher risk of fire / electric shock. Well, that panel has been working since 1950s, so the odds are that it will continue working fine for the foreseeable future. Nevertheless, kitchen remodel requires additional circuits, and just the oven and cooktop take up 40+40=80amp of the panel, so this is a good time to get the panel upgraded to a 200amp one while we're here.

The new panel is Square D brand , and our electrician Sergio from S&R electric will perform the installation. Here is how the process works:
- Pull a permit from city (without permit and city inspector OK, PG&E will not connect power to your new panel)
- PG&E disconnects power
- Remove old panel
- Put in new panel
- Inspector OKs
- PG&E reconnects power.

Here is the old panel coming out:

Once the old panel is out, the new panel goes in. Note that this one is much bigger, and it is surface mount rather than embedded into the siding. Our electrical contractor Sergio recommended going with a surface mount panel as it would be easier to pull new circuits from it in the future.

More to come later on panel upgrade..

That old VCT is coming out!

Here is what the old VCT floors look like:

I've got nothing against VCT, and VCT can sometimes be really nice (i.e. redneck modern blog with cool shiny black Armstong VCT). However, previous owners went with a brown colored VCT, and thart brown looks really bad in my opinion. It is currently everywhere other than the bedrooms. The good thing is that it is newer VCT, so we don't have to deal with the original 1950s asbestos tiles and mastic! Previous installers apparently removed all.

What's the plan? We'll rip out all the VCT and replace it with modern 12x24 tile. Our choice of tile is the Sintesi Glamour Grey (Brochure).

Our tile contractor will remove all the VCT, and lay the tile. The team have started removing the VCTs in the kitchen area yesterday.

Removing VCt is difficult, scraping off the old mastic is even more difficult. Kitchen is halfway done. There is about 900 more sqft more to go! We'll update as we remove the floor, prep it and start laying the tile!