Month: December 2018

When I began my renovations, over 2 years ago, my plan was to update all the switches and outlets with Legrand Adorne products.  This was a very costly decision, but I was determined to make it happen, partially by buying the pieces cheaply (or at least cheaper) on EBay and also by stretching out my purchases to only what I needed room by room.  Well, because we’re accelerating to a house sale in the near future, I can’t leave the house only partially updated.  So that is requiring me to buy all the Adorne pieces that I need quickly.  I’m still doing ok on pricing, but the scale of my purchases are pretty significant.

While finishing up the second bedroom/former office, I realized my lack of product.  I rushed and found a lot of 10 wall plates on EBay.  $70 right there.  That will cover the two bedrooms, but I still have the living room and kitchen.  I found a series of lots of wall plates and ordered 14 more – another $70.  The next day, I checked my house diagram against my “inventory” and realized I needed 22 outlets and 19 switches yet.  Holy shit.

I found a seller with outlets and bought all 22 that I needed – $100.  That actually worked out well, because the seller was having a free shipping promo if you bought 6 or more.  That saved me over $50.  Of course, I would not have even purchased them if I had to pay $50 in shipping!

I just bought 2 fan switch controls for the living room and guest bedroom – $75.  So now, I’m on the hunt for light switches.  Normal price for them is about $6.  That’s $114 at the worst.  Then at some point, I will need to confirm that I have enough wall plates for both switches and outlets.  Early on, I bought some stainless steel plates for super-cheap.  They aren’t super-cheap anymore.  Whether I will be able to utilize the metal plates in all the noticeable places is to be seen.

With the new goal of moving out, there’s a renewed urgency in updating the house, now not so much for my own enjoyment, but for a potential new owner’s.  One of the mid-term projects I had planned was to replace the carpeting with a hard surface, in this case, laminate.  It’s tempting to say hardwood, but they are not the same thing, and it’s best to be accurate.

The house is a mix of tile and carpet.  Tile in all the open areas and carpet in the living areas.  That is three bedrooms and a living room of carpeted space, plus the master closet and linen closet.  A lot of time passed between the decision that this would need to be done before the house was listed and actually moving on the project.  And the result of that procrastination is that I didn’t really get any competitive bids.  I chose one place and went with their installer program.  I was set up with an appointment for the contractor to come out and measure the rooms and provide an installation quote.

In the meantime, I roughly measured the rooms myself and whipped up a spreadsheet to get a rough idea of whether the project was even financially feasible.  I budgeted $2/sft for the flooring and $.30/sft for pad.  My room measurements came to 675sft, around $1500 for materials.  Even if installation was $2/sft, that still puts me under $3k.  That is reasonable.

I went to the store to see if there was any product within my budget.  There were a couple of options between $1.49 and $1.99, so I was satisfied.  While there, I priced out pad.  The store had a very persuasive display demonstrating the different types of pad and the sound effects of each.  When you knocked on the foam pad, it was a very loud, hollow sound.  When you knocked on the next levels up, the sound was very muted.  Now, I was a little skeptical at how accurate that sound was on the foam pad, but I was still sold on getting mid-grade padding.  Foam pad is $.25/sft, while mid-grade pad is $.65/sft.  Now my material cost is almost $1800.  Ok.  Still doable.

The contractor comes out and measures the rooms.  He arrives at 800sft. Additionally, he adds in mouldings and transitions, which I knew would be part of the install, but had no idea how to calculate.  Then there’s the cost of moving furniture, which is actually pretty reasonable at $20/room.  Then there’s the overage.  You should have 10% overage to handle things like angles and partial boards and you know, the unexpected.  Bottom line, the install is going to be $2500 and the materials will be around $2500 as well.

From an initial budget of under $3k to an actual budget of $5k.  Well, I guess that’s always how things go.  Is it going to add $5k of value to the price of the house?  That’s not the actual question that should be asked.  The question is, will the current state of the carpet result in a $5k reduction in price?  Or will it cause potential buyers to walk away?  If I was a buyer, the answer would be yes, so this is a project that has to be done.

The contractor asked what the timeline for the project would be.  Based on all my previous projects, I know if I don’t say “right now”, I simply won’t do it.  So, installation is going to happen in a week.  It will take 4 days – one room a day.

With the guest bathroom mostly done and my computer stuff moved out to the new lanai office, my former office is now clear for work.  The first step as usual is the removal everything from the walls and ceiling.  So the massive fan came down and all the ikea shelves were taken down as well.

Then the tedious process of removing the popcorn ceilings.  this time I attempted to take my time and do smaller sections, but as usual near the end, my arms got very tired from holding up bags of water-soaked popcorn texture.  It made me think that there needs to be a means of collecting the ceiling debris without gaining weight.  This idea is partially in my head as a plastic chute that reaches from the scraper down to a garbage can on the floor.  I think I can create something like this with plastic sheeting.  When it’s time to do the other bedroom, I’ll be ready for it.

After getting the ceiling scraped, the next step is priming and painting.  But, there’s another couple of issues to address as well.  The closet of this room has some fixes that need made.  First, it is my failed attempt at a centralized wiring closet for network, phone and cable.  I had it all planned out.

And it turned out a lot shittier than I planned.

So all that needs to come out.  I will relocate the router and UPS to the laundry room, on the wall next to the security system cabinet.  The video and phone cabling will remain in the attic.  I have the coax splitter and equipment shelf on order already.

The other issue in the closet is an almost-hole in the ceiling.  I assume my wonderful handymen put their foot down in the wrong place while they were futzing around in the attic.  I never even noticed it for months and months.  So that will need cut out and replaced.  That will be done at the same time I patch up the holes I made with the conduit.  (What was I thinking?  It’s so trashy looking.)

When I first bought the house in 2005, the guest bathroom was used by the owner’s two children, one of which was a typical little girl that loved bright colors.  The bathroom was painted a bright lime green.  I lived with it for quite a while like that, but then changed it to a shade of orange to match some marble bath accessories.

Well, it’s time to change it up again.  When I changed the hardware on the cabinets, I went with an antique bronze color, which was a better look against the plum-colored cabinets than nickel.  I have matching Adorne plates for the switches and outlets as well.  But the wall color is going to be brighter, the popcorn ceiling is going to get removed, and I’ll probably convert the florescent light fixture to LED.

I have a pretty tight schedule for completion and after the first day, I’m already behind.  Day 1 was supposed to end with the popcorn off the ceiling and letting the ceiling dry.  It actually ended up with all the hardware removed off the wall and prepped for patching.  This is an example of poor planning.

*Weeks go by*

And now I have the ceiling done and painted, and the walls painted, which involved removing the toilet to paint behind it.  I still have to swap out the power outlet and switches with bronze Adone pieces, install a new curved shower rod, and I also now want to change out the faucet and shower hardware to matching bronze.

For the lighting, I did leave the soffit in place, unlike the master bath where I pulled it out.  This meant I could replace the florescent light fixture with a simple LED shop light fixture.  That may be solution in other places where florescent lights are used, like maybe the kitchen.

I’m going to learn a new skill with this project, mixing and applying grout.  The toilet was secured with a grout base, which was all broken out when I pulled it off.  Without that base, the toilet wobbles just a little bit.  It should be easy, but doing anything the first time always leaves the opportunity for mistakes.

With the grout applied, the toilet is solid.  However, the color of the paint isn’t as good as expected, so the room needs repainted.  On the plus side, when I replaced the toilet, I used a new rubber seal instead of a wax ring.  They claim it can be repositioned, and I’m guessing it can be reused, which is great since the toilet needs to come back off for repainting.

After another night of painting, which included removing and replacing the toilet, I’m now ready to replace the outlet and switches.  The outlet is GFCI protected, so it was convenient that I could change out all the switches with the breaker off while having a work light powered by the outlet.  Then I turned the breaker back on and cut the GFCI circuit to change the outlet.  I flew through the changes so fast, I didn’t realize the outlet plate was made for 3 modules, while means there was a gap.  So the next day, I pulled it apart and swapped the GFCI outlet with a standard outlet and put a USB module in the bottom so it all fit.  That saved me about $30 instead of buying a new metal wall plate.

So, aside from wall hardware like towel and paper holders, this project is complete.

As mentioned on another post, I originally designed one of the bedroom closets to be my “wiring closet” and my attempt at setting it all up was pretty lame.  One of the worst parts is that technically, by code, you can’t have a power outlet in a closet.  Probably something about flammable clothing and enclosed spaces and electricity and on and on.  So that meant, I had to run an extension cord into the closet to the UPS, which fed my networking equipment.

At the time, I wanted it to be a centralized place for cable, network, and phone connections.  As time has gone on, the cable and phone connections have become much less valuable, since they have more or less become obsolete.  Further, these are not connections that change often, if ever.  There’s no reason for needing them to be in an easily accessible place.  Lastly, the networking equipment has been reduced since my original plan.  Where before I had a cable modem, router, and switch, now I only have one device that does all of that. 

So the new plan is to place the router and UPS on a shelf in the laundry room, next to the security system.  There is a power outlet high on the wall to feed to security system, so that is a perfect place to also power the router.  It’s a good central location for WiFi, too.

The first thing I did was purchase an 8-way passive coax splitter for the cable.  In my original design, I had purchased an active splitter, but was quickly disappointed that it didn’t support the extended bandwidth required for digital cable.  So I was out that money, and eventually just had a tiny 4-way splitter hanging from the ceiling.  When the splitter came in, I went right up in the attic, pulled the coax cables back up into the attic and connected them all on the new splitter.  Everything worked and that was phase one complete for the relocation.

The next step will be pulling the phone wires back up into the attic.  The wires are all joined together on a joined patch panel, and I’m undecided if I want to keep that or not.  In any case, the wires will remain in the attic.

The biggest part will be done last, relocating the network and router.  Currently, I have the network wires dropped down from the ceiling, terminated at a patch panel, then patched between the panel and the router.  My initial thought was to just terminate the drops and plug them right into the router from a hole in the ceiling.  I’m so glad I didn’t act on that right away because I thought up a much cleaner solution.  I will install a work box in the ceiling and terminate the runs at keystone jacks, then patch those from the ceiling jack to the router.  So instead of having a patch panel, I just have jacks in the ceiling.  No ugly holes.

So I have four network runs and I’ll need one coax jack for the router.  That should be a piece of cake.

And then I tried to execute my plan.  I cut a hole in the ceiling and installed the work box.  Then I climbed in the attic and tried to locate the box.  I couldn’t find it.  Back downstairs and stuffed a long zip tie up there.  Back up.  Still don’t see anything anywhere.  Back down.  Pull the box out and see there’s a sheet of wood right over the hole I cut.  Sigh.  Drill a hole through the wood and stuff the zip tie in it.  Back up in the attic.  Still don’t see a zip tie or hole anywhere.

This is getting pretty frustrating.  I take measurements of my outlet hole relative to things like the AC vent and the lighting fixture.  I go back up and by the same measurements, my outlet hole is just on the other side of a large wood structure, capped with drywall.  I go out to the shed and get an old, old drill bit I had used many years ago.  It’s like 18 inches long for drilling through ceilings and stuff.  I drill a bigger hole in my outlet, then use the bit to see if I can get to the drywall above it.  Just barely.  I try as hard as possible and then head back into the attic to see if I pierced it.  I didn’t.  By this time, I am completely worn out from squeezing through rafters and joists and balancing on 2x4s.  But I kept trying.

Next, I grab my drill, put a hole saw on it and came in from above.  Once I cut the hole, I peeked down to see if I could find the holes I made coming up from the outlet.  I didn’t see them.  I tried to make out what I was looking at and noticed the the surface below the hole seemed yellow.  Then a sick realization dawned on me.  I went back down and walked around to my front entryway.  I had just drilled a hole in my ceiling above the plant shelf.  The plant shelf was inset on the wall and was above the point I installed my wire outlet.  So that means I’ve also drilled a hole in the floor of the plant shelf as well.  I could see beside the large hole I drilled in the ceiling a heavily damaged part of ceiling where my 18” drill bit but barely managed to touch.  This is a total disaster.

Back up in the ceiling, I get more aggressive trying to locate the outlet hole.  There was a AC conduit hanging in the way and some sheet insulation and a bunch of blown insulation in the way, but I did eventually see light from below.  There was about a 1/4” of space between two wooden beams that I could slide wiring between.  And so I did.  Until I realized that two runs from the back bedroom wouldn’t reach.

So now, I had to hack up an extension for those two runs to reach their destination.  Back down and up a few more times and I ended up creating one extension and breaking another.  All I want is Internet back on my desktop.  Please.  I give up in the attic for the night and terminate the two runs from the office.  I struggle the UPS and router up on the shelf and connect the network runs.  Miraculously, it worked.

At this point, I have to extend the network lines from the bedroom, re-terminate the bedroom jacks with Adorne jacks, terminate the bedroom lines at the other end and install the face plate.  Then I can worry about fixing the holes in the ceiling in the other room.