New adventures with Beechwood Handyman

We are very excited to announce that after 30+ years of doing serious DIY work we are looking to extend our services to the neighbourhood, as of the Summer we are providing services in Waterloo as the "Beechwood Handyman" so far it has been a truly rewarding time, helping home owners get jobs done which have been hanging around gives a real sense of achievement and self worth.

check out our brand new website and logo - still under a little development, as always we welcome any comments.

www.beechwoodhandyman.com

Addition of loft bedroom - Post #4 (Installing the two Velux Skylights)

I can't believe that its been almost 8 months since my last update on the loft / bedroom reno.

That being said work and soccer were very busy this year and we did go back to the UK for a holiday. Working in the loft during the Summer is unbearably hot (Until the skylights were installed in the fall) and unbearably cold in the Winter (Until the insulation is installed, ongoing!!).

In this post I will update on the installation of the two skylights, I wasn't looking forward to this but it all worked out in the end. Most of the post will be photo's its much easier to see rather than explain.

First stage is working out where the skylights will go, I used a few odd pieces of insulation to ensure that they looked right in the room before I stated.

Once your happy with the location, the one truss needs to be removed, make sure that its cut as square as you can.



Sorry can't easily rotate the image in my Blog editor, any suggestions?
Once the truss has been removed you need to add support for the missing truss and also add additional support for the skylight, take extra and make sure the 4 sides are square and the right size.



This is the moment of truth, once you cut a hole in your roof your committed!! I double checked all my measurements before I got my recip saw out.
As I spent time making sure the opening was square and the right size, cutting the hole only takes a few minutes. 




Next step is to cut the shingles approx 2 1/2 inches around the perimeter so the skylight can sit flush on  the roof.




Rather than using the galvanised nails supplied I used deck screws to secure the skylight, make sure the skylight is square before you start nailing / screwing. You can see the blue marks I scribed on the roof before the skylight went in place, makes it much easier to centralise the unit. The blue marks show the corners of the cut out.



Image from inside the loft room with the two skylights fully installed, sorry I didn't show any details of the flashing install, once I was on the roof I wanted to get the job done and my camera was on the inside.

In the next post, and I promise it won't be 8 months I will go over the insulation for the room.

Cheers

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Kitchen make over - Post #6

Its been a little while since I gave an update on this project, so lets go over the final stages.

In the last post all the units were fitted along with the island, as you can see in this first image. Once the island was securely fitted to the floor the dark wood casing was added, a nice contrast to the light cabinets on the main units.

The next stage was to trial a wall covering, before the back splash was decided upon the wall was painted to give a good idea of how it could look with the chosen colour.

In this last image for this post the counter tops have been fitted. We went with quartz rather than granite, quartz has a few benefits over granite. Firstly it is a little more hard wearing, you can place hot pots and pans without any issues, it does not require any maintenance or sealing, it is not at all porous so has better antibacterial properties and also it is a little more environmentally friendly. The cost is a little higher but not that much that it makes the decision a tough one. Another benefit is that you can get another section at a later date which matches your current selection. 

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Back online!! - Next DIY project

Well I had great intentions of Blogging regularly, it worked well for a while but then sadly fell apart when things got busy.

That being said I recently bought a new Video camera, mainly to do some home movies particularly of Jamie at soccer but the camera has a neat "time lapse" feature. I am sure all have this feature now but its new to me!!

This is the first attempt at a little video editing and time lapse of the latest home project, I am sure there will be more to come.

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Great give away.

I am still hoping that one day I will have enough followers to warrant give-aways, good dialogue and who knows even retire doing something even more enjoyable than working for someone else.

Until that happens I would like to draw your attention to the following give-away at a great blog i follow: -

Concord carpenter - Bosch pocket driver

As an avid DIY'er and tool lover this pocket driver looks like a great asset to any home workshop or professional one for that matter.

Let me know what you think?

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Addition of loft bedroom - Post #3

Welcome to the third update on this project.

As a quick update, above our garage we have a large loft area with real potential for an extra room.

Prior to this post the floor had been structured with 10x2's glued and nailed to the existing 2x6's.
In this first image you can see the first 8x4' floor board in place. I choose 3/4 OSP. Even though 5/8ths is good enough I like to add a little extra, this adds a little more stability and also allows for a hardwood floor in the future. Also note in this image the vapour / gas barrier. As this room is above the garage you must ensure that there is a full gas barrier to avoid any exhaust fumes from vehicles below, this also doubles as the vapour barrier. Don't forget it needs to be in the "Warm in winter" side of the structure hence placing it directly beneath the floor.

This second image shows a little added structure to support the far wall, as the flooring 2x10's were placed either side of the existing 2x6's there was almost a 4" step from one side to the other, I wanted to ensure that the wall was well supported so I added these 2x4's every 16" to give the wall plenty of support. The wall would eventually partly support the roof, as with most roofs they sag a little in the middle, I wanted to make the walls fairly straight so later on I would jack the middle part of the roof up about an inch and a half, without these supports there was a risk of forcing the the floor to bow downwards.

Once the floor was laid the next task was to start on the three knee walls. After the first one was installed I needed to add a referance line around the room so that they would all be square to the first.

As you can see I used a laser level to help with this task, a great little tool which saves allot of messing around with chalk lines or spirit levels opposite you can just about see it in action.

The final image in this post shows one of the side walls and the long end wall.

As mentioned above I jacked up the middle of the end wall almost 2" this was a little challenging with the creaks and groans, but it was well worth it. Without this being done the wall you see when you walk in to the room would show this bow which I know would bug me.

Stay tuned for the next stage.

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Kitchen make over - Post #5

OK, after much procrastination here is a further update from the Kitchen Reno.

In this post I will show the cabinet install, a very happy time for Mrs B.
When installing cabinets, its always a good idea to start with the upper cabinets and in a corner. Its much easier to handle the cabinets without having to lean over the base units.

In this first image you can see where I have screwed a temporary 1x4 level across the bottom of the cabinets, this makes the install much easier, each cabinet simply sits on top with the 1x4 taking the weight turning the task into a one man job. Not shown here but in an earlier post I fitted 2x4's to support the top and bottom of the units, this avoids having to find the studs, saves allot of time and also guarantees a really secure install.

In this second image you can see a few more, hopefully, useful tips. They definitely were for me. Firstly use two levels, this allows you to keep an eye on the unit in both axis. Also make sure you secure them with clamps, if you don't they will fall off unless of course you have 3 pairs of hands, most people don't. For units above the range its a good idea to use an adjustable support bar, again with a clamp, this supports the unit allowing much easier securing when in place.

The third image shows all the upper units fitted to the "stove" wall, hanging the doors takes seconds, thankfully these units came wit the quick release door hinges. This part of the project, wall units, takes a fairly short amount of time, many people have commented on the fact that I have installed a kitchen, that's the easy part, all the work is done behind the scenes! This part of the project only took around 2 hours.

The Base units are next.

The first image for the second part of this post you can see the starting point for the base units. Again the same approach was taken, always begin with the corner unit. Take time to make sure that the units are level across the tops. I really took time to ensure they were as level both side to side and front to back. When the counter tops are installed you don't want them on a slant. The last thing you want is for your eggs to roll off onto the floor when cooking your breakfast!

The next image shows a few more of the base units installed, I made sure that there was sufficient clearance between the stove and the two adjoining units.

In the last but one image for this post you can see all the base units fitted and doors hung, a really exciting time for Mrs B.

Finally for this post, the island was assembled and placed in its final position, we decided to secure the island, many people have them movable. As ours had a microwave installed I didn't want any movement risking issues with the electrical work.

In the next post I will go over the next stage, colour and counter tops.

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Addition of loft bedroom - Post #2

As promised here is an update on the loft reno project. In the initial post I outlined the rough plan of the project. In this second post some nasty stuff found in the area and a little about the base structure.

Unfortunately I don't have a good image of the wall between the house and the garage loft but what the previous owners had done was a definite no no.

To help insulate between the cold space in the loft and the adjoining bedroom they had added insulation to the wall, this in itself isn't such a big issue but to hold the fibre insulation to the wall they had made two major mistakes. Firstly they had stapled the insulation to the wall, severely compressing it making it effectively useless and secondly to help stop drafts, I assume, they had stapled over that sheets of thin plastic. In addition to using the pink insulation they had nailed some old suspended ceiling tiles. Not the greatest plan but what makes the whole thing a real problem was the tumble dryer exhaust. This was vented straight into the loft space which as you can work out pushed, over time, many gallons of warm moist air into a super cold area during the winter. And as I am sure you can guess there was a build up of mold, seen in this second image.

So the first part of this project was to have a damn good clean up to remove all the old, now damp insulation and soggy, mold invested ceiling tiles. Always take care with mold, seek advise if your not sure as it can be dangerous. My loft was well ventilated and with a mask and gloves I very carefully placed all the contaminated pieces in large plastic bags for disposal.

After the clean up I was able to start structuring the floor. Thankfully when the house was built the original owners specified the structure to be strong enough to support a second floor addition. The steel RSJ ("I Beam") was significant in size. The existing floor / ceiling was made from 2x6 joists, obviously these would not support a new floor and they would have to be strengthened. Based on the various structure guides on the Internet the addition of 2x8 would be strong enough.

I decided to go with 2x10 joists, these were glued and nailed to the original 2x6 joists and would give ample strength. The reason for going stronger than code was two fold, firstly I always like to make sure that the floor will not "bounce" with kids its always a good idea, and stronger is always better. Secondly to tie in with the height of the existing second floor 2x10 would allow an almost perfect height match.

In the next two images you can see a few of the joists added and the start of the insulation. Getting these 2x10 (16ft long) pieces of lumber into the loft space was hard work, there was very little space to move and you have to be very careful not to drop them onto the ceiling when putting them in place as they could easily fall through and end up in the garage. In total I used 22 joists, this part of the project was quite challenging more for the physical aspect than the technical difficulty. One thing to bear in mind when laying joists is the natural bend in all lengths of lumber. Firstly you should always have the bow facing upwards, over time they will tend to settle and if the bow is upwards they tend to settle to being straight.

Another big tip is to have them placed in order of bow, to make sure that the joists of equal bow were next to each other I stacked them on top of each other in order to make sure that my floor wasn't up and down across its width. This may sound like overkill but when I measured the difference in bow from the best to the worst joist was over 1/2 inch. If the worst was placed adjacent to the best floor would feel very uneven, by having them staged removes any gross changes in height.

In the next post starting the knee walls.

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Kitchen make over - Post #4

The last post in my kitchen Reno series outlined some of the tear down and initial rebuild of the two outside walls.

In this post some of the exciting, well exciting for Claire, items start to happen. It is always a good sign when things start to be installed after spending weeks taking apart.

Today I will go over the starting and almost finishing of the hardwood floor.

As a quick summary the old floor was fully removed. This allowed me to fix a few things.

• The existing duct work was full of major leaks and in many parts not secured, I would guess that 30% of all the air was being wasted under the floor.
• The house being approx 20 years old obviously had many "holes" mice carcases and piles of dropping were very evident so a thorough clean up was required.
• Insulating the area to the outside under the floor, when this house was build they neglected to add proper insulation on the outside walls where the joists are, this is likely why we had so many mice. I used a mixture of Polystyrene, caulking and spray foam, also a little tip, for the larger holes I loosely filled with wire wool before spraying foam insulation, Mice apparently will not chew through this as the wire wool aggravates them.
• As we decided to go with a hardwood floor the existing 5/8ths floor needed to be beefed up to 3/4, so the floor needed to be changed anyway.
• Water pipes, the existing pipework was a tangled mess, there were far to many joints, 90's and generally far to much pipework! There had been some changes over the years so it allowed me to simplify it and add shut offs where required, I like to add shut offs, you never know when you need to isolate a line and fix a tap, adding shut offs makes life much easier for the future. Also the outside water tap, they way it was set up previously was hidden under the floor and when turned off shut off the cold water supply to the basement washroom.

The first image shows the area, with my helper as always!!, almost ready to start laying the floor, some important things before the sub-floor goes down: -

Check and double check, ohh and check again that all the electrical and plumbing is run to the correct location and labelled. Once the 8x4 sheets are laid they are not coming back up. To do this properly you need to glue and screw the sheets every 12" minimum.

I started my floor in the middle of the room, this according to every text book and Internet article is the wrong place to start, but I had my reasons. if I started from the left had wall I would have to some how match the exact starting point for when they joined where the short stud wall split the kitchen and dining room, I didn't want to risk having them out of line as there would have been a gap in the next few rows after the stud wall (I can explain better if any doesn't understand, let me know?). I couldn't start on the right side as the step wasn't anywhere near finished and I would have had to tear out the temporary kitchen you can just see in the third image on the right.

So I choose the middle, the only issue with this was that the two center rows would need to be back to back and consequently needed nailing on the back side of the pieces of wood and not through the tongues. I choose to also glue these two rows and not put the brown paper underneath. I felt comfortable taking this approach as this center row would be covered mostly by the island and dining table so the sight on nails wasn't an issue. And as mentioned in a previous post, hardwood floors become marked very quickly when you have kids and any sign of nails soon get lost!!!

One of the things about taking on these type of projects is tools, yes I had to buy many new tools. For the floor I needed a hardwood floor nailer, and you guessed it this was run by compressed air so I also had to buy a compressor, thankfully my garage has room :0)

One thing which never concerns me is purchasing tools, as a rule I always buy mid or high end tools. The better the quality the longer they last and "good quality" tools are generally easier to use, will last longer and more accurate. When time permits I will be writing a few articles reviewing some of the tools I purchased during the many renovations, I am really looking forward to that.

In the next post we start installing the cabinets!!

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Second major project - Additional Loft Bedroom.

One thing I have found in the last few years is that I need to have jobs to do, I feel comfortable knowing that there is plenty to do and I need to be busy. Maybe I should get some hobbies!!
The next Reno being undertaken is the addition of a 4th bedroom above the garage. Don't worry I haven't forgot about the Kitchen Reno that's pretty much complete, more posts to follow on the progress of that project.

Our garage is a reasonably good size almost 21' x 27', with no rooms above it. On the face of it its a pretty straight forward task but not for the average handyman. The beauty of our house is that the roof line of the garage loft allows for a room to be added without any changes to the roof. This definitely makes the task a whole lot easier.

The plan is to turn the open space seen in the second image into a room approx 16' x 14' with two descent size closets.

At the time of this posting I am partway through laying the floor, which in my opinion is one of the most difficult parts of the project, large wood with little space to move, more to come on that part!!

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Kitchen make over - Post #3

In the last post I concentrated on the garage wall which houses the range (cooker for any UK followers). In this post I will go over in a little less detail the sink side.

This wall took a little more work as it had a few more issues and changes that required overcoming, namely: -

• Plumbing changes.
• Heating duct changes.
• Swapping a door for a window.
• Bulkhead work.
  

This first image again shows a starting point, not a great photograph unfortunately but it shows the original kitchen cabinets larder unit and door / window.

This next image shows the plumbing which needed to be re-routed (twice) you can see that this wall was taken down from its original place, I originally re-run the water pipes, two on the left, but the plans changed a little when the wall size changed and bulkhead adjusted the pipes had to be re-routed straight into the bulkhead above.

The next image shows the wall stripped back to the outside structure.

You can see the temporary sink on the right hand side, Claire was pleased with this set-up. You can also see the nest of electrical wires in the ceiling, the original installation didn't have any wiring secured to the joists, it was left lying on top of the ceiling.

This next image was taken during the application of the spray foam, you can see where the door has been removed and window installed.

The final image for this post shows all the drywall fitted and mudded, you can also see the joists at the front of the photo, the original kitchen extended into the den which didn't make any sense at all, the joists have been cut back approx 18 inches to make the den a better size. Even though the kitchen was made smaller the new layout and removal of the wall between the kitchen and dining room made it feel much larger.

In the next post the easy stuff starts, new floor and kitchen cabinets!!

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Kitchen make over - Post #2

Well as promised below is another update on the kitchen renovation.
To summarise the project started as a cabinet replacement and turned in to a full blown rebuild. I ended up taking down all the drywall, ceiling, floor and insulation.

In this post I will run you through the East wall (Garage side) of the house. This first image (Same as the first post) you can see our starting point. On the surface it doesn't look too bad, the cabinets were made from a pretty good quality and the doors are as solid as you can get but they were not the right type, colour or layout. After removing the bulkhead and peninsular cabinet, I was surprised to see that there was no vapour barrier or adequate insulation between the house and the garage. Not a good starting point. The amount of cold air that was coming into the house was huge which made keeping the area warm almost impossible and potentially very dangerous should any car exhaust fumes leak in. One thing to note is that our house has a wood burning fire place so we do get a fair amount of negative pressure in the house which makes this problem even worse.

This second image basically shows the wall prior to adding the insulation. To get this far was allot of work. All the electrical wiring had to be re-routed correctly, some of the old wiring was fed over some of the studs and there were a few crossed hot and neutrals. I did spend allot of time marking all the wires and making sure that I knew were all were fed from and to, once the spray foam was added I was glad I did it was worth the extra effort.

I also carefully measured where all the cabinets were to be installed so I could add 2x4's horizontally to take screws rather than trying to find studs once the drywall was fitted. I notched out all the walls to take these horizontal supports which is fine as the wall was made from 2x6's, I made sure that they were all fitted tightly to make sure that the structure wasn't compromised.

This next image shows the first sheet of drywall fitted to the wall, a huge mile stone in the project, its good to turn the corner and start the assembly process, you can see that my faithful helper was at hand all along the way.

Behind it you can see the spray foam insulation. Not the cheapest part of the project but I think its definitely the way to go. This was done by "Insta Insulation" they took about two hours to complete the job and after it was done we had to leave the house for 36 hours.

I used 12x4 sheets of drywall which makes perfect sense for a 12 x 12 kitchen, but they are not so easy to move around. That being said after a few sheets it did get much easier.

This final image shows the east wall fully drywalled and "mudded", not sure if that's a real word.

And once again my faithful helper not far away!

This image also shows the floor which as you can see is still to be done at this point. I wanted to leave that until closer to the end as dropping tools on a hardwood floor isn't a good idea, the floor has now been laid for around 6 months and I needn't have worried, it seems that the kids don't have the same concerns about dropping hard objects on a hardwood floor. At least it now has some character.

In the next post I will walk through the next stages of the project.

If anyone would like more details then let me know?

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Kitchen make over - Starting point.

When we moved into our new house, last summer, one thing I didn't realise was that the existing kitchen was not acceptable, and a new one had to be installed. You should always seek full clarification from your significant other before buying a house :o)

The image shown here is after a little investigation and the bulkhead had already been removed.

The first task was to remove all the existing cabinets so we could buy and add some new ones, if only it was that simple!!

After taking off a few of the upper cabinets it was quite apparent that the previous electrical installation was not at all safe, there were several wires that were run over the studs and could have easily been damaged when the new cabinets were installed. Also there was inadequate vapour barrier and a large amount of damage to the insulation from mice. Yes we found close to 30 mice carcasses in various stages of decay once the old drywall was removed.

Within a few days we ended up with what you see opposite, no floor, walls or ceiling.

Always my favorite part of any DIY project is clearing the old so you can start the new.

As much as this can be a little daunting it is often easier to start with a clean plate rather than trying to work around what is existing.

Some of the main things this allowed me to do was to make sure that all the electrical was run safely, adequate support could be fitted for the new cabinets to be screwed to and good insulation installed on the two outside walls.

More to follow

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