Dealing with Mold in a basement? Take a look at this before and after.
This is from a project that we completed around 2005 but we hadn’t posted this directly on the WNY Handyman site.
We had some mold issues due to neglect, improper grade, tree and shrub growth, a block foundation, plugged gutters, and downspouts draining straight down at the foundation.
Corrected water problem (outside grade, downspouts, gutters).
Removed tree, overgrown shrubs, and trimmed growth back from house.
Bleach and water treatment to remove the mold. More Information can be found at www.epa.gov.
We have been working on our cottage project for just about 10 months now. In fact, it was father’s day weekend last year when we first looked at the listing and went under contract. Over the course of the past year, we have completed (or started) many projects.
We may have been at work on this for 10 months, but please understand that these are ‘cottage’ months. This is a seasonal place and the winter months were off limits (Late October through March). In addition to that, much of our time is spent scouring the beach for glass and rocks along with canoeing, campfires, various outings, and general chat with our neighbors and visits from friends. Given that schedule, this project should be completed (or ready for another renovation) in about 5 years time. I think I will understand what bridge painters go through at that point. Finished? Go back to the other side and start over!
In the spring of this year, we went off of our well water and tied into the new public water line. Since I knew that would be the case, I decided to force my plumbing hand and cut out the old galvanized lines rather than winterizing those lines. A galvanized line that had well water running through it for the past 70 years probably wasn’t my wife’s idea of a line that was suitable for sanitary drinking water.
During my plumbing work, I discovered the cause of a smell coming from the bathroom. It wasn’t a horrible smell, but certainly not pleasant, and I assumed it was the well water stench. Turns out, it was worse than I though (methane is deadly, after all). There was no trap in our shower drain line! This allow the sewer gas (from our septic) to head right back into the cottage. The bath is adjacent to the kitchen so the situation was not ideal. I assumed this smell was due to the well water, when in fact, it was the sewer gas. Good news. New shower + new p-trap = no more smell!
Back in the day (1940’s) things were built well. They might not have sized some things properly (headers and such), but the structures themselves were so stitched together, that demo isn’t simple (it shouldn’t be). I have heard people ask how you can have a window in a load bearing wall without a header. Look at the structure. Tongue and groove sheathing (1″) that had 4 nails in each 1″ x 6″, along with true 2″ lumber, and 5/4 window jambs and you will see why things held together.
Since people love to see before and after renovation photos, I have included a few of ours below. I would call most of these before and during rather than after since things are still a work in progress. When the kitchen is completed, I’ll add that post to the mix.
Here are some in-progress photos of our little cottage.
The cottage kitchen is coming along quite nicely. We built our own cabinets and then decided to use a Wagner power sprayer to give them a finish that was nicer than a “brushed” finish. Here is a shot of the current kitchen state. New floor, new wall covering, new cabinets, new butcher block counter (just set in place). More to come on the cottage kitchen.
My wife and I had a wonderful trip planned on our 15th anniversary. We were going to head to IKEA and purchase materials (cabinets, countertop, portable island) for our cottage kitchen. Since the closest IKEA is a few hours away, I called ahead to be sure the items were available. Boy, am I glad that I did. As it happens, weather and tight inventory management by IKEA, resulted in ZERO stock for the 3 primary items that we were after.
Because of this, I decided that I should build the cabinets from scratch. After all, I am a handyman with a leaning toward finish carpentry. I have assembled enough RTA Kitchen Cabinets to have a better understanding about the various construction techniques than most.
The cabinets that we needed weren’t going to be installed in a traditional way. I am going to use wall cabinets as a base cabinet and customize a platform to bring the counter up to the standard 36″ height. A 30″ wall cabinet combined with a 4″ base and a 1 1/2″ countertop would get us close to our desired height.
Since the IKEA cabinets are out of stock, I decided to build the base cabinets as a traditional base cabinet would be built and simply make the depth at 12″ instead of the traditional 24″ depth of a base cabinet. To be honest, I wasn’t looking forward to making the factory built upper cabinets look proper as base cabinets. Building from scratch gives me the opportunity to play with the toe kick set back depth and my counter overhang so that the shallow cabinet doesn’t look like it wants to tip forward.
The reason we are using the shallow cabinets as the base is due to the fact that our cottage kitchen is only 6 feet across! (see picture)
About 20 years ago, when a member of a handyman book club, I purchased a book that detailed the construction of your own cabinets. Looks like I will be breaking out the book and finding some time this winter to build the cabinets.
I’ll post the after (or during) pictures when the time comes.
If you are looking to build your own cabinets, you might consider the following book (PS: We get a small commission from Amazon.com if you purchase the book)
In our latest project (Lake Erie Cottage) we decided to pull back the layers of flooring that existed and see what we would find. The cottage was very well built in the late 1940’s so my hope is that we would find a hardwood underneath that would be suitable to paint. My fear was that we would simply have a layer of plywood subfloor.
As I mentioned, the cottage was very well built. Because of this, it wasn’t simply a layer of sub floor that lay under the wall to wall vinyl. This was built as a normal house was (not a seasonal cottage). The sub floor material was tongue and groove on a diagonal and it was covered with a 6/4 (1 1/4″) pine floor. The pine has a wonderful grain to it, but it is not a stain grade material. In fact, you can still purchase a product that is nearly identical. I used the same material when skinning an old painted porch.
Most feel that it is a shame to cover a wood floor with paint. However, the grade of material is very blotchy, has streaks of gray, and many knots that don’t take stain well. You could stain this floor, but it might not provide the payoff that you would hope. Because there is such a strong grain on this floor, it shows through the paint. In fact, if you were to paint this floor with a brown paint that is colored very similar to a darker stain, most people would think that you had wonderfully refinished floors. You would be surprised.
A wood floor painted with a darker paint will give the impression of a very uniform floor with a dark stain. The pine lumber shows a lot of grain pattern. Since this is our cottage and we want a rustic/modern/clean look, the color we chose was a bright white.
The flooring that was down was 2 layers of wall to wall vinyl. In the late 40’s there were products (asbestos laden in most cases) that would lay flat when cut to room size. 60+ years later there wasn’t a curled corner on the product. On top of that was a more modern vinyl (1968) that did what a modern vinyl does…curl. To combat the curling of this vinyl the prior owner used transition strips around the entire exterior and at the seams. I was happy to see that since the alternative would have been to adhere the vinyl to the wooden floor. That would have been a horrible mess that left us very few options and a TON of work.
One interesting find was the use of newspaper in place of a rosin paper between the vinyl and the hardwood. It was cool to see the bedroom flooring that was done in 1948. The newspaper was our time capsule. The main living room was redone in 1968. Again the papers told us as much. What I also found interested were the headlines (Erie, Pennsylvania papers). I am paraphrasing here “Trouble in the Middle East” and “Romney Decides to Run”. Timeless, aren’t they?
After cleaning everything up and doing a small amount of filling, we primed the floors and then followed that up with 2 coats of a commercial floor coating from Sherwin-Williams. The Sherwin-Williams product retails for $58/gallon. In my opinion, it was well worth the money. The coverage was fantastic and the semi-gloss finish provided the exact look that we were going for. They don’t even call this a paint they call it a “coating”. It is smooth and not at all tacky like some lower priced paints seem to be for many months. It doesn’t require a primer, but we already had some of the area primed and felt it certainly couldn’t hurt. The S-W coating is a latex base so clean-up is simple.
If you are looking to paint your wood floors, I would encourage you to do so. Many older hardwoods (the 2 1/4″ oak from the 30’s comes to mind) are so thin that you don’t have the opportunity to sand. Many people try to, but the wood is so thin (1/4″-5/16″) that they end up sanding through the top of the “groove” section of the flooring. This will be a splintery mess. Don’t attempt that yourself, simply paint those floors with a QUALITY floor coating or paint. Spend the extra money on a quality product, you won’t be disappointed.[/fusion_builder_column][/fusion_builder_row][/fusion_builder_container]
The before and after living room pictures from our recent project don’t appear too dramatic from ground level. It is only when you look up that you realize there was quite a bit of work done. The house had water coming in for many months. The ceiling needed to be dropped 4″ and leveled across a span of more than 15′. Our contractor utilized a method that included a level outer track and steel studs for the project. Steel studs were an ideal choice here since they are straight as can be. In addition to that, they are lightweight which made the leveling work much easier than it would have been with lumber.
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