I've been framed!!

Well, another good weekend of progress! This weekend's tasks included disconnecting and moving the old air conditioning condenser from its awkward location at the rear of the house to the back of the yard for pick-up (freeing up space for my much anticipated deck), removing a swath of plaster on the backside of the fireplace, and taking advantage of the warm, sunny weather on Saturday to do some weeding. But the thing that I am most happy about was the erecting of the rear bedroom wall! The old walls at this location, which formed the back of the two tiny, unusable closets in this bedroom, were removed for several reasons. First, because the old door was set into the room at the face of the closets on the room side, and the new door is being installed inline with the old wall location at the landing, a new rough opening needed to be created, and thus one continuous wall, rather then two separate walls with an opening in between, was required. Also, the old studs here were installed 'flat', to minimize the thickness of the wall assembly, which meant that the thickness of the existing wall was not really built to accommodate the jamb of the new door. And finally, the existing walls lacked a sole (or bottom) plate, resulting in several of the studs being loose. Friends Jimmy, Brody, and Chris were on hand to offer much appreciated assistance as needed. The framing did not take too terribly long, and will now be continued around the new HVAC ductwork on the bathroom and bedroom sides. I'll post plans of the existing and proposed soon to illustrate the changes that are occurring here and in other parts of the house. Once these walls are framed, I'll be ready for the ceiling to be leveled and drywalled.

Knock, knock...

Well, I'm happy to report that some progress has been made in the way of additions to the house. While so far much of the renovation has been focused on the removal of walls, doors, electrical fixtures, etc., it is nice to actually be putting something new into the house. This weekend David and I were able to install one of two new bedroom doors. The front bedroom of the house will be getting the least amount of overhaul (new carpet, new paint, new lighting). While I would like to eventually replace the existing ceiling at some future date, this is the one room in the house that works well for the most part, with a closet that amazingly is deep enough to hang clothing in (quite a novel concept). But because the existing 5-panel doors throughout the house weren't really congruent with the contemporary look that I'm going for, not to mention that they were thin, had ugly (fairly new) brass skeleton key hardware, and didn't latch, the doors warranted replacing. Because this is a smaller house, and I wanted to allow natural light to be shared from one space to the next, I opted for full-lite frosted glass doors. I purchased Feather River interior doors from Home Depot with a primed finish with their privacy glass option. The frosted finish on the doors offers enough opacity to ensure privacy. A second door will mirror this one on the rear bedroom across the landing. Another benefit of installing a new door here is that I was able to reverse the hinge side of the door. Now, rather than having to either shut the door or squeeze past it to get around the end of the bed, the door opens in the opposite direction, making it easier to move into and around the room. In a few weeks I should have the new hardware for these doors -- stainless steel lever privacy sets from Omnia. As for the old doors, I've already donated four of these to Community Forklift, a local non-profit organization which takes and sells donated surplus, salvaged, and green building materials, and hope to do the same with these.