Day 581: To Bare Studs and Back Again

Confession time: Life has gotten away from us once again. The title says "Day 581" but you know it's well beyond that. 328 days beyond, in fact. Yes, I managed to fall nearly one year beyond on these little updates. But fear not! A new burst of energy has emerged and I'm here to claw my way back to the days when the date in the title matched the date on the clock. So let's begin...

This post will be a little journey into the land of stud bare and back again.

When we were last in the bathroom, we had deconstructed most of the space and gotten the plumbing roughed in. The exterior walls were the centrepiece for the next steps: windows and insulation. With that in mind, we finished what was left of gutting the slopes - including the bricks that didn't seem to serve any purpose and the batt insulation doing very little in that slopes.

Batt insulation in the slopes and bricks below

Nothing like some casual demolition in fine work duds.

The window in the bathroom was sized to fit the width of the doorway while the bottom half was filled in. With the shower moved to beside the window in the new bathroom layout, we ordered a double hung window with frosted glass for privacy and an operable window on top for additional ventilation if needed. On the other exterior walls, a couple of boxes went up in preparation for the vanity lights.

Old doorway filled in with new window

Stud bare and electrified.

Similar moves were taking place down in the kitchen, with all of the plugs on the exterior wall set up and a new pair of double hung windows going in.

New windows plus appliance plugs.

Again, stud bare and electrified.

You'll also note the wires dangling from the ceiling, waiting for recessed pot lights to be installed after the ceiling is drywalled.

We were now ready for insulation and went with some closed cell spray foam again to capitalize on the gutted walls and maximize on R-value. Basically, take the photos above and cover them all with minty green.

Bathroom window wall

Bathroom vanity wall

Kitchen NW corner

Kitchen SW corner

The house is balloon framed, which means there are ridiculously long studs extending from the foundation walls all the way to the roof line rather than the second storey being built on top of the first. This allowed the insulation to be continuously sprayed from the kitchen walls to connect right to the bathroom walls, helping to create a more complete thermal barrier and prevent air leaks.

View from the kitchen sink up into the bathroom above. The insulation on this wall now forms a complete seal from the slab in the basement, up the foundation walls and continuing up this entire wall all the way to the slopes.

Finally, right before we took off to New Brunswick for a couple of weeks, we had the contractor who had come in to tear down the kitchen wall and put up the beam return to drywall the kitchen. Both being perfectionists, it was good to pass off this task to someone else so that we didn't spend hours mudding and sanding and re-mudding and re-sanding. Boy what a difference it makes to get those walls finally closed up!

North and west walls with a hot mess of a floor.

Beam and half wall covered up with some fancy temp lighting.

Looking out to the front door from the half wall

How many right angles can you count?

You got a glimpse in those last few photos of the floor progress. Another example of the crazy domino ride we call house renovations. But how a kitchen reno turned into a complete redo of our main storey floors is definitely enough to fill up another post...