A new bedroom

The Crofton rental house was a two bedroom house when we purchased it. To make it more attractive to renters we decided to add a third bedroom in the basement. There are large windows in the basement, two of which were in rough shape and needed replacing, so we decided to locate the bedroom such that it would have one of these new windows as well as an original fixed one on the other wall.

Our initial plans were for a large 16 by 12 foot room with a regular sized closet located so as to hide the cast iron plumbing. This, however, prevented movement around the basement stairs in one direction and obstructed access to the bathroom plumbing. So we opted for a smaller room, with an angled entrance to allow a four foot passage between the door and the stairs and moved the closet to the other side of the room to stay away from the bathroom plumbing.

Starting to frame up the walls

The photo above shows the first wall in place. Note the use of pressure treated lumber to raise the sill off the concrete just in case we experience issues with moisture. The basement perimeter has been completely ground out and filled with hydraulic cement as have all cracks in floor and wall and this, combined with drainage improvements outside, appears to have corrected the slight seepage issues we had initially. The ceiling was made from the existing 1/4 inch plywood that has been taped, plastered, and skip troweled to give a stucco appearance without reducing the ceiling height too much. We installed 4 LED pot lights - which were quite inexpensive (less than $100 for four) and very simple to install in 4.25 inch cutouts as they simple snap into place on spring loaded arms.

Doorway framed and door hung, knee wall in place so we can add electrical outlets and insulate the concrete wall.

Framing complete, insulation in place and closet framed out (on left). Note the angled doorway wall.

Our new tenants plan to put either a large armoire or a desk in the closet nook, so we decided to leave it quite open with an option to put on a door in the future. We also made the closet extra deep at about three feet.

Most of the drywall cutting was fairly simple but there were a few trickier cuts. We used a knife for most cuts and snapped the drywall and cut out the outlet boxes with an oscillating tool.

Rani screws in some drywall

We watched some excellent YouTube videos on dry-walling from Vancouver Carpenter and tried to put into practice what he suggested for tackling corners (inside and outside) as well as flat and butt joints. I made a hawk from plywood and bought 4 inch and 3 inch drywall knives to add to my 6 and 12 inch ones.  This project was the first one that Rani has helped on, after getting out of her quarantine. She has been a great help! 

Mudding the closet

Outside of bedroom with taping underway

Taping and mudding the flat joints.

We had some nice weather so took a break from dry-walling to install the two new windows in the back of the house.

Old window comes out. The window sill was rotted so we put in a new one of pressure treated wood

One new window in place. The blue stuff around the window is a butyl tape that seals the window frame to the underlying sheathing. 

Thermoproof is a local company that makes excellent vinyl windows. The window has been trimmed out with comb-face and sealed again with plenty of caulk.  

Back inside, we finished the plastering and sanding in a few days (3 coats) and then painted. 

Painting with our favorite colour - Burmese Beige, which we also used in the main floor bedrooms

Repainting the yellow trim on the original window. Rani actually did this job - I am just touching up.

After trimming out the windows inside, the next job was to install the floor. We used an underlay that allows for airflow underneath in case of moisture issues and is also waterproof and insulating.

Putting down the vapour barrier underlayment. You can see the cap we have added to the knee wall also in this photo.

We chose a "Canadian Walnut" laminate flooring made in Germany that has lovely colours and looks quite close to real wood due to beveled edges and varied grain and shade.

Flooring laid and window trimmed out

The last step was to install baseboards and a threshold. We also painted the outside of the room in a brighter whitish khaki.

Room finished - note electric baseboard installed.

We don't have a great picture of the room interior, but the above photo should give an idea of how it looks. We are happy with the results and were able to remain within our materials budget, with the exception of a bit more cost for lumber and trim wood than I had estimated. The project took about four weeks to complete.

    

Refinishing the wood floors

The wooden floors in the Crofton house were not cosmetically attractive, but much of this was caused by a layer of glue that had been used to fasten down a foam backed carpet. I remember a similar approach to laying carpet in the house I grew up in in the 1970's, so suspect that during the heyday of wall to wall carpeting, the hallways and living-room had been covered in a tasteful orange, yellow, or green covering. The good thing about this is that there was little damage to the maple floors. 

Living room walls have been repaired and gas fireplace vent installed in the wall. Ready for floor refinishing 

Living floor detail showing stains and glue, plus old varnish

The bedrooms are floored in Douglas fir and these had not been carpeted as far as I could tell. There were some scratches from beds and deeper grooves from a door that was a bit too close to the floor.

Bedroom floor in the middle of wallpaper removal. The old floors had a nice red patina but were water stained and scraped up

After much research on YouTube and in various blogs, I decided to use an old fashioned drum sander to take off the old finish and get the wood flattened and ready to varnish. The main alternative would have been a large multi-pad random orbital sander, but I had read that these were very slow and frustrating to use on floors that had a lot of marks or old varnish. I also rented an orbital edger.

Drum sander waiting for its first use in the hallway. 

 

Orbital edger - a quick and powerful way to sand the edges in the hands of a professional

On one excellent set of videos by Ben from HowToSandAFloor (e.g, his demo on drum sanding) I learned that the orbital edger is the most dangerous sander as far as doing instant damage to a floor - even worse than the big drum sanders, which can put a big groove in a floor in a second of inattentiveness! Ben is absolutely right and I quickly decided that the edger was not going to be a tool I would use on this job. In addition to being hard to control and cutting unevenly on the relatively hard maple floors in my amateur hands, the sanding disks clogged up extremely quickly with old melted varnish. Not being able to use the edger safely meant that I spent many hours hand scraping and using my small Bosch random orbital sander with the most aggressive paper I could find (40 grit) to finish the bits I could not do with the big drum sander,

N95 respirator helped with the dust, although the drum sander did a pretty good job of transferring the dust to its bag

The trick with the drum sander is to always keep it moving and to NEVER stop or change direction with the drum in contact with the floor. You start walking forward or backwards with the sander and gently tilt it down to make contact, like and airplane taking off or landing. It took a couple of days to get comfortable with this and by the end of a three day weekend I was feeling relatively confident. 

Drum sanding the living room maple floor after one pass - the dark areas on the edges will be finished later

I sanded first with 36 grit, then moved to 60 and finished with 100 grit. To run each grit over the living room took well over an hour, because you go both up and back on one pass and then move over about 4 inches at a time to overlap the last 8 inch pass. It took me at least twice as long to do each room as I had expected. You also need to unload the dust bag quite frequently and I filled two garbage bags full of sanding dust. 

Hallway after 60 grit sanding. Note the new drum sander sheet ready to fit

First pass in the master bedroom. All that lovely red colour has been removed but will come back over the years as the UV light ages the wood.

Bedroom floor - I am emptying the dust bag on the sander and cleaning up between changes of sandpaper

I was extremely concerned that the drum sander would be too vigorous a machine for the softer Douglas fir floors, but I was wrong. Maybe because I had practiced on the maple floors first, I did not have an issue using the coarse 36 grit drum on the softwood floors. I did make sure I kept moving smoothly and quickly with the sander. Note that the coarse grit paper is mandatory if you have a varnish on the floor because the finer papers will simply gum up and become useless almost immediately if this varnish is not removed first.

The random orbital sander at work on the edges in the bedroom. I also used a hand scraper and had to keep this very sharp using a file in order to remove the old varnish quickly. 

 Finishing the edges took another couple of days of scraping and sanding before I was ready to apply a varnish.

Living room floor ready to varnish. Note a few stains to the top right of this picture. These may have been caused by a dog. I tried to bleach them out with oxalic acid and while this did lighten the stains it also lightened the surrounding wood. I should perhaps have bleached the entire floor...

I chose water based varnish from Varathane that I had used in our own house with good results. It is not as hard as an oil based varnish but dries clear, does not yellow, goes on easily by brush or roller (although this can cause bubbles). It is also better for your brain in that it does not produce too evil an odour.

Living room floor varnished with gas fireplace ready to install

Hallway with first coat of satin varnish

Second bedroom ready for its final coat of varnish

I was very happy with the final results in the bedrooms.

Once the varnish was on I could see all the imperfections of my sanding - mostly small drum marks from starting and ending each pass but also lighter drum marks in the middle of the floors. If I was to do this again, I would rent one of the American Sander 3 pad random orbital sanders and make a pass with this at maybe 80 grit over the entire floor. This would also make finishing the edges quicker than with the small handheld random orbital.

The project was not all that expensive except in terms of labour, which as I mentioned above I grossly underestimated. The time spent could have been reduced by at least a day, though, if I had rented the big random orbital sander as well as the drum sander. I used a bit over 3 gallons of varnish at about $70 (Canadian) per gallon and the sander rentals and sand paper came to about $150. 

Paddling to De Courcy Island

 It was a peaceful day here weather-wise and Wednesday had been spent applying rather toxic basement oil paint, so I decided to get out of the reno house and paddle out to De Courcy Island. 

I left from the Cedar boat ramp, which is the closest launch spot that is freely accessible to De Courcy.

Cedar boat launch - note the amazing quantity of drift logs on the beach - there were hundreds also floating just off the coast

I paddled across to the north end of Link Island, passing Round island on the way. Link island links De Courcy to its more northerly neighbour - Mudge Island.

Tiny houses on Round Island off Cedar. The water today was lovely and clear

Link Island sandstone formations

More 'modern art' in the bluffs on the west side of Link Island

Paddling down Link Island, you come to a gap where, at least at this tide, I was able to pass between Link and De Courcy islands. I stopped to admire a beautiful stout little wooden launch at a property in the gap.

Amity is a lovely wooden boat that appears to be used to get to and from this waterfront house. Everything is off grid on De Courcy and there is no ferry. I could hear a wind generator running above on a tower poking out of the trees

I paddled down the east side of De Courcy, passing through an oyster lease area inside of Long Island and coming ashore on the float at Pirate's Cove - a place I usual sail to

Boats near Pirates Cove

I walked around De Courcy and met a number of the locals, several of whom are spending time out here because it is less limiting with the Covid restrictions than being in Vancouver or Nanaimo. The island is home to an eclectic mix - several of whom 'discovered' the island while cruising on their sailboats. Some residents I met came here in the 1960's and 70's as children on their parent's boats.  

Around 3pm I headed back to Cedar, making a circuit of De Courcy by paddling up its west side. This island, like Gabriola, Galiano, and Valdes, has some lovely sandstone erosion on its west side.

These formations almost look like writing

In places there are quite spectacular cliffs and overhangs

More lovely textures and colours as the sun peeked through the clouds

I see a vulture carved in the rock

I had the ocean to myself on the return trip, except for one larger RIB that was heading up through Dodd Narrows.

A refreshed slightly retro kitchen

The kitchen was probably the most solid room in the house. It had a worn but functional countertop, well built cupboards that had been repainted but were chipped and scratched, and original floor tiles with some staining. The Formica backsplash was in perfect condition. I was initially quite tempted to leave the counter and backsplash in place and repaint the cabinets. I thought I would tile over the existing tiles with stick on equivalents. 

Original kitchen in MLS listing photo - countertop is same colour as backsplash but damaged in one place where someone used it as a chopping board. Walls and ceiling are same colour as cabinets. Floor tiles are a speckled white with some serious staining where the old fridge was located.

The first job was to update the electrical. There was only one socket on the counter and it turned out that the other circuits had brittle insulation that fell off when I tried to replace the sockets. I installed two 20 amp counter circuits that will allow four appliances to run simultaneously and replaced the existing 15 amp one with a ground fault circuit to code. I ran new wire to the fridge socket because the old had become dangerous as well as to the ironing board plug and to a socket where the stove will go. I installed new light fixtures saved by a friend from their old cottage in Brentwood Bay.

'New' light fixture

Retro fixture over the sink replaced a fluorescent tube light 

I wanted the kitchen to look like a 1950's kitchen so with the help of friends I picked out what I thought would be an authentic green colour for the cabinets. Around this time I decided to hire my friend Lorne to help speed things along by prepping the house for painting.

Lorne did a great job of cleaning up the old kitchen

Trying out a sample colour.

After painting the ceiling white and the walls a light beige/grey, I bought a small tin of sample paint and applied it to the cabinets.

New cabinet colour and proposed tile sample

In a fit of enthusiasm I applied the sample to a large number of doors, not realizing that the paint would not stick properly to the old (probably oil based) paint. Doing this was useful because it made me realize the colour was not the best idea, but it took me half the afternoon to scrub off the old paint so I could put on a suitable primer before repainting.

The paint peeled off when scraped with a finger nail or rubbed with a wet cloth - Ughh.

I ended up mixing a bit of the green paint with a white kitchen and bath paint I had bought for the ceiling. I hope you will agree that the resulting ivory goes well with the beige/grey walls.

Plan B - doors are now painted ivory and walls and frames are grey/beige. I eventually painted the panels above the window ivory too. Note the Formica backsplash has been removed to add the new circuits. 

The next job was to tile the floors. I decided against using stick on tiles on the grounds of cost and longevity. It was actually cheaper to install the same porcelain tiles I had used in the bathroom, which run about a dollar a square foot. Of course the labour is greater and one has to purchase mortar to set the tile and grout, but the mortar costs $15 for a very large bag and I already had grout from various other projects. It took a couple of days to tile and grout the floor. The 1950s curves made for some tricky cutting and none of the walls were quite at 90 degrees to the others so there was a lot of careful measurement and cutting needed.

Cutting around a heat register and the curved wall

Tiling job done - I used a darker grout mix than in the bathroom for variety. Note the Formica counters and sink have been removed.

After the floor tiles were in and the grout set, I decided to tackle replacing the counters. I pried off the old Formica, which was not easy because it was very well glued to the plywood. I used a heat gun and spatula to work it off. I would have left it in place, but I wanted to reuse the aluminum trim and this was not tall enough to handle the extra thickness.

I chose a black Formica and used metal shears for the rough cutting.

This oscillating multi-tool blade was used to trim the Formica because I do not have a suitable router bit. It worked fine but took a bit longer than a router or laminate trimmer would have. You can see the wet contact cement applied to the plywood counter. 

Trimming the installed counters

Counter installed and original aluminum trim reinstalled along edges - Oops- forgot about the sink...

Sink cutout done and sink trim ring installed. This sink (original from 1950) is attached very differently from a modern one and clips onto the trim ring from underneath.

Old sink cleaned up and back in place - Note large subway tiles ready to be installed.

The final kitchen project was the subway tiles. I went with 4 by 16 inch white tiles like those that I had used in a previous backsplash job. I used a dark grout to make them pop because I did not install a line of accent tile this time.

Tiles going on - if you look carefully you will see I screwed up around the socket and light switch and made the tile cut-out too wide. I had to re-do 4 tiles after I thought I had finished the job because the socket and switch have to sit on top of the tile.

Job done

The final kitchen does not look startlingly different from when we bought the place but it is a bit cleaner looking and hopefully will hold up well with the tile floor and new counter.

Update - one month later - The Formica lifted in a few places after I installed it. I thought I would need to remove the top and re-glue it, but discovered that an iron applied at low heat with a couple of layers of paper between it and the surface re-activated the glue and a bit of pressure allowed me to re-adhere the spots that had lifted.