Metamorphosis of 2644 South Park Drive: Week 15: Stairs and Other Things

The major items this week were framing, HVAC rough-in, and plumbing rough-in. We begin this week's blog with a few framing photos. In this photo, the elevator machine room has been framed in. The BP is inside the machine room searching for the elevator.

The stairs have been framed! The stairs are in two flights separated by a landing. In this photo, the lower flight takes off from the living room and runs to the landing where the BB is standing. Some of the windows for the addition are on the right, wrapped in plastic, awaiting installation in the next couple of weeks.

This picture was taken from the landing and looks up to where the BB is standing at the top of the second flight.

A view of the second flight looking down to where the BB is standing on the landing.

Under the stairs there will be an access door to space under the staircase and landing, which we will use for storage. In the front three feet or so of space under the staircase, we will install a rod and use it for a coat closet.

This photo shows how we have dealt with a head space problem protruding into the BB's office. The lower part of the "box" in this photo is framed headroom necessary to provide adequate clearance for the first flight of stairs that is immediately below. We decided to build a frame on top of this head space, which will lead to a table top 30" from the floor. The BB will use the table top as a work table. And the cubby hole between the table top and the top of the head space frame can be used for miscellaneous storage.

The HVAC rough-in included installation of the furnace that will provide heat to the upstairs. It is a gas-burning 95% efficiency furnace that will provide heat through ceiling registers in each of the upstairs rooms.

In a corner of the master closet, the HVAC folks installed this air return, which will provide air to the furnace. The furnace filter is attached to this return, which will make the filter easy to change and also will provide filtering at the air source rather than at the furnace--both positive features.

It seems that no sooner have we gotten a roof on the house that we begin poking holes through it. In this photo, two large stainless steel pipes on the left provide venting for the basement furnace and the gas fireplace in the living room. The two smaller white PVC pipes on the right provide venting for the upstairs furnace.

This additional vent, not visible in the previous photo, is for the vent-hood that will be over the gas range in the kitchen. For technical reasons that only the BP understands and rarely discusses with others, the range vent is considerably larger than the vents for the furnaces.

This photo, taken from the kitchen, shows the vent pipes serving the basement furnace (the left pipe) and the gas fireplace.

Somewhere in the chain of ownership of this house, there was a genius who installed an exhaust fan in the downstairs bathroom and vented it nowhere. In the center of the photo, we have corrected this omission by running vent pipe from the exhaust fan through the bay between the upstairs joists and downstairs ceiling joist and out the rear of the house. The exhaust fan is now fully vented. In this photo there is also some plumbing pipe installed by the same genius, some of which we can actually use for venting, but the rest of which we have felt it best to abandon.

This week the plumber began roughing in the plumbing to the upstairs bathroom, including water supply and waste drains for the two-sink vanity, the toilet, and a walk-in shower.

Our California granddaughter, Tessa, age 7, flew up to stay with us this week. She was a joy to have with us and was eager to help any time we visited the construction site. In this photo, Tessa holds up an example of the safety rings that were permanently installed in the roof when the roofing shingles were installed. These rings, near the ridge of the roof, provide stable rings for safety ropes and obviate the need to nail temporary safety equipment to the roof.

Tessa was eager to be useful. Her first choice was a nailing gun, but she cheerfully accepted the alternative of a broom. Her comment was that there was a lot of stuff on the floor, and it really needed sweeping. Our contractor put her to work. The labor laws were not violated because this fell more in the realm of wish fulfillment than child labor. Tessa was not fooling; she managed to sweep sawdust and debris into neat piles in every single room!

Ditto. The BB and Dylan admire Tessa's progress.

Ditto

Mid-week, Tessa's mom, Amy, and brother, Grayson, flew up to spend the rest of the week with us. During the entire week, Susan and Chris opened their home to Amy and the kids, and the four cousins and their parents and grandparents had a wonderful time. In this photo, Amy and Grayson get their first look at the construction site.

Grayson tries on a real construction hard hat. It looks like he has put it on backwards, but he assured us that this was not the case. The black band is a really cool Star Wars eyeband.

A view of one of the basement walls. This is what grandkids do when the BP takes too long to explain a technical point that is otherwise enthralling.

An earlier photo of the front porch that shows what we thought were massive white beams holding up the roof structure. These apparent beams extend from the side of the house out to the vertical black ironwork. On a hunch, our contractor opened one of the apparent beams, and the following photo shows what he found.

Just to the left of the center of this photo, you can see that the massive beam was, in fact, a false beam inside of which was a pathetic 2x4 nailed to the house siding. If this had been offered as the answer to an exercise in engineering school, it would have earned an "F" grade. On the other hand, this structural travesty has survived nicely for 87 years, so who knows? We decided not to tempt the fates any further, and our contractor added new structural support to replace the old.

This photo shows the structural additions. A 4x6 beam has been added to replace each of the former 2x4s, and the 4x6 is anchored to the house at a mini shearwall. The false beam panels will be reinstalled so that the visual effect will be exactly the same as the original look.