c1711 House Renovation

[bgreenb]

My ideal house if I could snap my fingers would be an expanded gambrel with cedar shingle siding and cedar shingle roof.  4 bedrooms, 2700sf.   On 3/4 acre.  With a detached barn shop

 

[Alan G]

13 hours ago, bgreenb said:

We also did a hot roof - 2" of closed cell foam on the underneath of the roof sheathing, then fill the rest of the rafter bays with open cell.

We are planning to do a hot roof when we renovate and currently it's just called out as all closed cell to R49. It's a lot of closed cell. We are on the edge of climate zone 5 here is Michigan. 

Was the 2" closed and rest open a suggestion from the foam installer? No concern of the vapor perm of open allowing vapor from the conditioned space through to the 2" closed cell on the roof sheathing and condensing? Or does the 2" insulate enough to not allow it to condense? 

Doing an closed/open split would be a big savings on a whole roof!

[Guest]

4 minutes ago, bgreenb said:

My ideal house if I could snap my fingers would be an expanded gambrel with cedar shingle siding and cedar shingle roof.  4 bedrooms, 2700sf.   On 3/4 acre.  With a detached barn shop

 

I think that that same as what we call a Dutch Colonial around here.... the roof is similar to a barn, correct? 

[CandorLush]

Stupid firewall, I don't want to do this thread the injustice of looking at the pictures on my phone so I will refrain until I get home but man does it sound cool hah

[bgreenb]

1 minute ago, Mike. said:

I think that that same as what we call a Dutch Colonial around here.... the roof is similar to a barn, correct? 

Yes, for all intents and purposes they are the same, but a dutch colonial usually refers to a gambrel where the lower roofline is curved (concave), whereas a gambrel usually just indicates the two rooflines, both straight.  

Dutch colonial (this one is pretty exaggerated...usually the curvature is less pronounced):

Gambrel:

 

2 minutes ago, Alan G said:

We are planning to do a hot roof when we renovate and currently it's just called out as all closed cell to R49. It's a lot of closed cell. We are on the edge of climate zone 5 here is Michigan. 

Was the 2" closed and rest open a suggestion from the foam installer? No concern of the vapor perm of open allowing vapor from the conditioned space through to the 2" closed cell on the roof sheathing and condensing? Or does the 2" insulate enough to not allow it to condense? 

Doing an closed/open split would be a big savings on a whole roof!

Yes, typicall a "hot roof" refers to the entire rafter bay filled with closed cell.  In my case I had stressed to the foam installer that I was looking for cost savings, and he said this was a method he's used in the past for more economical installations.  The idea is exactly what you said:  the 2" of closed cell insulates enough to avoid the sheathing/condensation rot problem.  We are climate zone 4 marine, might be slightly more temperate than Michigan so in your case it might be better to err further on the side of closed cell.  In fact, if this were going to be my house I probably would've paid up for closed cell all the way through because I'd be seeing the returns for years to come.  But I wanted to compromise a little.  

[Eric.]

1 minute ago, bgreenb said:

Yes, for all intents and purposes they are the same, but a dutch colonial usually refers to a gambrel where the lower roofline is curved (concave), whereas a gambrel usually just indicates the two rooflines, both straight.  

Dutch colonial (this one is pretty exaggerated...usually the curvature is less pronounced):

Those are both cool looking houses.  And I hate houses that look like that. LOL  I'd trade my plastic box for either of those in a heartbeat though.

I've always been drawn to Craftsman style houses.

[bgreenb]

3 minutes ago, Eric. said:

Those are both cool looking houses.  And I hate houses that look like that. LOL  I'd trade my plastic box for either of those in a heartbeat though.

I've always been drawn to Craftsman style houses.

Yeah I like craftsman too.  There are just so few around here they stick out like a sore thumb.  I know nothing about the history of craftsman/arts and crafts.  Did it originate in california?  Seems like there are a lot of them there.

[Eric.]

22 minutes ago, bgreenb said:

Did it originate in california?  Seems like there are a lot of them there.

No idea, but they do seem more prevalent there than anywhere else, especially northern CA...from the little I know.  There are quite a few very cool Craftsman bungalows scattered about older parts of St. Louis.  In much cooler neighborhoods than the one I live in.

[Guest]

I don't think they originated in california....  in fact according to the wikipedia it originated in Boston

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Craftsman

That being said, it really took off in California and the midwest.

 

[bgreenb]

So...to rewind a little bit, while all the trades were here doing their thing it became clear that we had a plumbing disaster on our hands.  I won't go into the details because it's only gonna make me mad, but suffice it to say a bunch of the plumbing had to be redone from scratch.  This meant two things...first, the project was going to be delayed by about a month, since we obviously couldn't close up the walls until the plumbing was done.  Second, the plumbing was going to be a lot more costly than I had first imagined.

So I had to find some savings somewhere and also figure out a way to make progress during that month when we couldn't really make progress inside the house.  So I decided to build the kitchen myself from scratch.  This actually didn't completely come from nowhere.  I had always planned to build a kitchen in my own house at some point, and I figured this would be a good practice run for that.  It would also allow me to try my hand at spraying for the first time, since I obviously wasn't going to hand apply a finish to an entire kitchen.  @K Cooper:  this was the aforementioned area from which the extra poplar came for the window trim.

Design.  Since I continue to put off the process of learning sketchup, I did the design the old fashioned way, with graph paper.  When I had it all finalized I laminated all the sheets both so that they wouldn't get destroyed and so that I could make quick notes in marker during the build and then wipe them away.  The design was actually kind of difficult because that kitchen fireplace, as awesome as it is, really boxes in the kitchen layout.  Cabinets layout would be roughly "U" shaped, where three lines of the "U" follow the L shaped kitchen wall, with a window above the sink and a fridge on the extreme right, and then the other end of the U would be a peninsula with a dishwasher and room for a few stools on the other side.  Then on the other side of the doorway to the family room, there would be a separate tall cabinet bank with a built in wall oven and microwave plus a couple of tall pantry cabinets.  The thought was that all the "prep and clean" stuff should be in one area, and it was ok for the oven and microwave to be off to the side because all you're doing is putting the food in and shutting the door.  

Style.  This was easy.  I knew I wanted to go with white shaker style kitchen, both because it's popular and because it's what I personally like and would build for my own house, so might as well use it for practice.  I also went with inset doors and beaded face frames, because why not add extra time and hassle onto an already stressful and time consuming project, right?   For the exposed cabinet backs and ends (basically the peninsula) I did frame and panel to match the doors.

Materials.  I decided to use prefinished maple 3/4 ply for the boxes, as I found that it was fairly common practice in white kitchens to have the inside of the cabinet boxes (other than ones with glass doors) to be regular prefinished material.  This allowed me to avoid the hassle of finishing the insides of the boxes, obviously.  I went with poplar for the face frames, doors, and drawer fronts, which I regret.  It's just too soft.  The stuff dents when you look at it funny.  If I build my own kitchen I will use hard maple, which also takes paint well and is much harder obviously.  I used MDF for the panels simply because it's cheap and takes paint so well.  I realize this is an arguable decision in a wet area, but I thought long and hard about it and decided even in a heavy use kitchen, it's unlikely that the cabinet door panels are actually getting wet enough to matter.  I would not use MDF in a bathroom at all just because of the humidity.  I used soft maple for the drawer boxes, as my lumber supplier actually sells premade drawer stock:  hard maple milled to 1/2" with the bottom dado already cut.  A nice time saver and really not much more per board foot than rough maple.  I used all blum hardware:  soft close hinges and soft close undermount drawer slides.  

Cost and Time.  I decided to track my hours on this one, and obviously I was keeping track of all spending for tax reasons.  I ended up at about $2000 in materials, all in.  Including hardware.  For hours I ended up at about 120, including finish prep, finish application, and install.

Construction Methods.  

- Face frames:  I dominoed everything together, then made a bunch of beading stock at the router table and applied the beads to the already glued up face frames with pins and glue.  I left the stiles wide at the corners of the U and anywhere that met a wall for scribing and fudge factor.  

- Cabinet boxes:  Dadoes for the bottom panels, rabbets for the 1/2" plywood backs and the 3/4" top rails.  Glue and screws in the dadoes.  Tongue cut on the front of each vertical piece which fit into a groove on the face frame stiles.  Pocket holes on the horizontal panels that screwed into the face frame railes to pull the face frame tight to the box.  West system epoxy in the face frame grooves.

- Drawer boxes:  dovetail fronts using my leigh jig.  Rabbeted backs with brass screws through the rabbet into the drawer side.  Screws are invisible unless you were to take the drawer out and look.  

- Doors and drawer fronts:  done at the router table with Freud cope and stick set.

Order of operations here is huge.  I never really understood why the standard practice was to build face frames first and then cabinet boxes to fit the face frames.  But after consulting with my kitchen consiglieres @Mike. and @Llama, they convinced me that it was the right move.  Now that I've done it, it's clear to me that it's by far the best way to build a kitchen (or any large cabinet project).  Top 3 reasons: 

1.  Once you build the face frames, you now have a template for your entire project.  You can effectively throw your drawings in the trash and work directly off the face frames for the rest of the project.

2.  It's *much* easier to keep a face frame square during assembly than a huge cabinet.  And if your face frame is square, then it will pull your cabinet square as you glue it up.  If you build the box first and it somehow ends up slightly out of square (not unreasonable), then you'll be fighting it the entire rest of the way.

3.  Space.  Cabinet boxes take up a TON of space.  Face frames, doors, and drawers don't.  So you can effectively build the entire kitchen minus the boxes without having to trip over these huge boxes.  Then at the very end you build the boxes and can get everything out of the shop when you're done.

Finish.  I knew I wanted to spray, as mentioned above, using my new fuji MM4.  I had heard good things about ben moore advance paint products, and in general I love ben moore products, but the more research I did the more people I found who weren't satisfied with their results.  Very long cure times, not as durable as advertised, etc.  I knew I wanted to use GF high performance top coat, so at @Mike.'s suggestion I decided to go all GF and use their milk paint as color under the GF top coat for a beautiful, durable finish.  I'm indebted to Mike for walking me through using the MM4 and the milk paint/GFHP.  I'm happy with the end result, and I'm not sure I'll ever hand apply a finish again .  Both products were dead simple to use, and the result is good enough that a layperson won't know it's not a professional finish.  There are some things I'll do better next time, but in general I'm happy with it.

Anyway, now that I've dumped a novel on you, here are some pics.  I didn't take a ton of pics because I was tracking hours and trying to be efficient, but here's what I have.

Design sheets:

 

Face frames done:

Dry fit of one wall of cabinets:

Dry fit of the separate bank of cabinets.  The left side is two tall cabinets.  The right side has cabinets on top, then a microwave in the higher opening, oven in the lower opening, and a drawer on the bottom.

Lots of door parts with joinery cut:

Doors and peninsula panels:

This picture speaks to my point above about space.  Here is the entire kitchen, minus the actual cabinet boxes.

Again, didn't take all that many pics, but I'm happy to answer any questions anyone has.  Moving on to the installation - that was a challenge.  Kitchen installation is a challenge in any house, since we're not exactly building in shop conditions.  But in a 300 year old house, even with my best efforts at leveling the subfloor, it was still about 1 1/2" out of level from one end to the other.  So I split the difference and shimmed the left end up 3/4" and cut 3/4" off the bottoms of the right end.  Took a little while to get right, but not terrible.

Here's the other section:

And the finishing touches:

NOTE:  The last two photos were taken before I had completely finished everything, hence the missing kick plate (I was waiting for HVAC to finish up the last part of the ductwork that would form the kickspace heater) and the fact that the reveals were all slightly off.  I went back and did all the hinge adjustments later after these pictures were taken, and I assure you the reveals are all perfect now  

 

 

 

 

[CandorLush]

2 hours ago, bgreenb said:

Yes, for all intents and purposes 

The grammar nazi in me wants to hug you for getting this right

[Guest]

6 minutes ago, CandorLush said:

The grammar nazi in me wants to hug you for getting this right

What do people normally say? 

 

Building face frames first was not intuitive to me either, until I took a visit to my cousin's cabinet shop.  The entire process goes so fast when you have the face frame done.  

 

[CandorLush]

1 minute ago, Mike. said:

What do people normally say? 

 

Building face frames first was not intuitive to me either, until I took a visit to my cousin's cabinet shop.  The entire process goes so fast when you have the face frame done.  

 

All intensive purposes is the common "eggcorn"

[Eric.]

47 minutes ago, bgreenb said:

my kitchen consiglieres

 

LOL

 

 

Absolutely top notch, beautiful work and completed in an insanely short amount of time.  Would have taken me at least twice as long.  I've always believed in you, Cosmo, and now we all know why.  Fantastic work.

Those MDF panels make me wanna slit my wrists.

I want that fridge.

12 minutes ago, CandorLush said:

The grammar nazi in me wants to hug you for getting this right

I'm pretty sure B meant to say "for all intensive purposes."  That's the correct way to say it, supposably.

[Guest]

Just now, Eric. said:

 

LOL

2 minutes ago, CandorLush said:

All intensive purposes is the common "eggcorn"

I'm pretty sure B meant to say "for all intensive purpose."  That's the correct way to say it, supposably.

Irregardless it is a good looking kitchen. 

[Eric.]

Just now, Mike. said:

Irregardless it is a good looking kitchen. 

Looks like it could withstand a nukular bomb, even if it happened all the sudden.

[CandorLush]

25 minutes ago, Eric. said:

Looks like it could withstand a nukular bomb, even if it happened all the sudden.

 

26 minutes ago, Mike. said:

Irregardless it is a good looking kitchen. 

[Eric.]

7 minutes ago, Lester Burnham said:

your

Lester thought he could slip one passed us.

You're up.

[bgreenb]

8 minutes ago, Lester Burnham said:

suppose 

@Eric. you missed part of ice's joke. You should of paid more attention. 

[bgreenb]

One thing I neglected to mention.  In the "install" pic, you can see the 3/4" gap created under the frame and panel back left side of the peninsula by having to shim up those cabinets.  I covered that by milling some extra wide quarter round shoe moulding and tapering it from 1.5" to 3/4" to cover up that gap.  You can see it wrap around the corner and terminate in front of the dishwasher in the second to last photo.

[Eric.]

Just now, bgreenb said:

should of

Doh!  Good advise.  I was distracted by my planner.

[Eric.]

1 minute ago, bgreenb said:

One thing I neglected to mention.  In the "install" pic, you can see the 3/4" gap created under the frame and panel back left side of the peninsula by having to shim up those cabinets.  I covered that by milling some extra wide quarter round shoe moulding and tapering it from 1.5" to 3/4" to cover up that gap.  You can see it wrap around the corner and terminate in front of the dishwasher in the second to last photo.

Speaking of gaps...what's with the huge one at the bottom of the entry door?  Was there a threshold going in there?

 

Just now, Lester Burnham said:

It's all right, I could care less.

For God sakes I need to pay closer attention.  You guys are to good.

[Eric.]

Just now, Lester Burnham said:

Let's nip this in the butt and let this shop wizard get back to kicking all the ass on this house.

Alls you have to do is surrender.  All though, I can pretty much guarantee B is as entertained by this sidetrack as we are.

[bgreenb]

4 minutes ago, Eric. said:

Speaking of gaps...what's with the huge one at the bottom of the entry door?  Was there a threshold going in there?

Second to last pic?  That's the threshold.  It's black, so it looks like a gap in the photo.

[bgreenb]

1 minute ago, Eric. said:

 I can pretty much guarantee B is as entertained by this sidetrack as we are.