Master Closet

The walk-in closet is part of the addition.  And what good would a walk-in closet be without closet built-ins?  I picked a symmetric his/hers layout. Each side has several clothes rods, as well as a chest of drawers, an upper cabinet, overhead storage, room for shoes below and so on.

I added a stool in the middle to have a convenient spot for getting dressed.

These cafe doors give the closet some privacy while still allowing the space to feel like part of the bedroom.  Plus I like the style.

Once assembled, I moved myself in. All of my junk fit into just half of the closet.  Focusing the storage in the closet keeps the clutter out of the master bedroom, making room for a large bed without feeling too cramped.

Flooring and Final

The flooring in the bathrooms uses the same marble as for the tub surrounds.  A layer of anti-fracture membrane gets painted on the floor to help prevent the tiles from cracking if any cracks should develop in the floor.  After cutting the tile to fit, the floor layer is set in place using thin-set mortar.  Spacers make sure the tile is properly aligned.

This is followed by grouting, removing grout haze, and sealing - with requisite pauses at each step.  With the tile complete, the toilet could finally be permanently installed, with a fresh wax ring to form a tight seal and some caulk around the base.

Same deal for the guest bathroom.

The baseboard trim in each bathroom was made from strips of the same marble as the flooring and installed only after the floor layer had dried.  The toilet seat in the guest bathroom was also upgraded to an automatic filtering and deodorizing  seat to keep things smelling fresh.  It also has seat-heating capability.  Between that and the humidity-sensing exhaust fan, the bathroom is pretty high-tech.

Next up was the hardwood, which I wound up using for the rest of the house.  The flooring material is a natural strand-woven click-lock bamboo, installed as a floating floor.  Bamboo has a nifty look as flooring, and the strand-woven variety is more dent-resistant than most hardwoods.  By floating the floor, it should be less-susceptible to heat-related problems from the radiant system.

The first step is to lay out  a 6-mil plastic sheet to serve as a moisture barrier.

Over the moisture barrier, but beneath the wood, a thin foam underlayment helps to cushion steps.

Finally, the wood planks get laid out, gluing the tongue-and-groove short ends while clicking together the click-lock long ends.  Spacers around the perimeter allow an expansion gap for the finished floating floor.

The end result is quite pretty, and goes a long way towards making the home feel complete.  The color in this photo is a bit off - the next photo is closer to the natural bamboo's true color.

Here is a shot of the master bedroom floor.  Once again, I'm happy with how the various colors are coming together.

One final flooring task remained.  Building codes limit the height of the finished floor relative to outside an exterior door, and with all the build-up from radiant heat and finished flooring, I needed to build a landing at the front and back doors to meet this code requirement.  I opted to use brick for these landings, using the back door as the experiment and carrying the lessons forward to the front door.  I started by cutting bricks to size, then laid out a mortar bed and pounded the bricks into place with a mallet.  Returning the next day, I filled in the cracks between the bricks with more mortar and carefully wiped away the excess while it was still wet.

After this and several other small changes (air gap for dishwasher, pipe insulation, getting the door to the garage to swing shut on its own, and many more minor annoyances), I was ready for final inspection.  By some minor miracle, I passed final inspection on the first go!  My permits are now closed, though there's still much work to be done on finishing details.

A Little Splash of Color

While waiting the required time between pouring the floors and installing flooring, it was a great opportunity to finish off the drywall and paint.  Starting things off was coat of primer for the entire house.

Careful taping prevents cross-contamination between areas that need to be painted different colors.

The ceilings were refreshed with a few coats of bright white throughout the house, to help with lighting and make things look sharp.

The kitchen was painted way back before cabinets were installed, but here's a re-post of one of those shots.

For the living area, a warm beige with a few moss-green walls helped to spruce things up.  The green works particularly well with the bamboo flooring (I know - I'll get there next post).  After painting, I also installed some white 2" wood blinds on all the windows.

The addition, which will be open to the rest of the living area, was treated to the same beige.

The bedrooms were treated to a spectrum of soothing tones, while still remaining colorful.  Here's a grayish-blue for the master bedroom and its walk-in closet.  Apologies for the dust spots on the lens.

The choice for the second bedroom was a twig-like brown.  Finding a brown that didn't look gross took many color swatches.

The third bedroom is a muted green.

As seen previously, the guest bathroom is aqua.

And the master bath is a deep-bluish purple.

Space-Age (Radiant) Heat

It's the middle of summer, so I won't appreciate the benefit right away, but radiant heat was the next major project on the agenda, as it must be done before any flooring can be installed.  New floors meant moving everything out of the house and into the garage.  Here's my makeshift bedroom out there.

First up is a layer of R-5 foam board insulation, so that the heat travels upwards into the room instead of out through the foundation.  Note the holes one foot on-center.  Those holes become support columns for the radiant layer once it is poured.  The insulation had to be glued down with foamboard adhesive to prevent it from floating back up during the pour.

Next, I used a router to cut grooves in the insulation.  The grooves help hold the tubing in-place and reduce the total height of the final assembly, keeping my floors from growing too tall.

The radiant tubing is PEX, a slightly-flexible but very-durable plastic tubing.  Unlike copper, it has a bit of give to it and is less likely to be damaged by expansion or contraction in the concrete.  It also costs considerably less than copper, making it a good choice for a modern hydronic radiant system.  The tubing is held down with special foam-board staples.  Each room gets its own heating loop.  The winding path of the tubing gives the water more distance to transmit heat to the floor, and the close spacing makes good use of the entire floor as a heating surface.

All of the radiant loops come together in the utility closet, just under the high-efficiency hybrid water heater.  The green unit includes an integrated heat exchanger, circulator pumps, and control unit.  The hydronic heating loop is kept separate from domestic hot water so that there is no risk of contamination to the potable water supply, but gets the heat indirectly through the heat exchanger.  The gray object is an expansion tank that keeps the pressure steady across temperature variations.  Attached to the control unit is a radiant manifold.  Each heating loop connects to both ends of the radiant manifold, which provides flow meters and balancing valves.  Air gaps, pressure and temperature gauges, a pressure relief valve, and a fill/drain valve round out the setup.  As you can see, it's quite a lot of stuff to have crammed into such a small space.

Once the tubing was all laid out, it was time for another inspection, followed by ordering the pour.  The material used here is GypCrete 2000, a gypsum-based cement-like product.  Some guys show up with a truck and do the whole house in a day, for a reasonable fee.  The GypCrete is hard enough to walk on within a day, but it needs about a month to dry completely.  The GypCrete also serves to level the floors, providing a good surface for final flooring installation.

After the drying time had elapsed, I sealed the GypCrete with the supplied sealer, which rolls on much like a paint.  Firing up the radiant heat loop, all I hear is the faint hum of pump motors and the water heater firing.  The radiant heat is configured to operate as the primary heating source, with the forced-air system serving as a backup on really cold days, or if a quicker temperature change is needed.  I look forward to trying it out more-extensively this winter!

Guest Bathroom

The guest bathroom is pretty much a mirror image of the master bath.  I started by painting the room a relaxng ocean-green hue.

Then I started lining the tub surround with backer board.

For the guest bath, I chose an elegant beige marble.  I cut the tiles and affixed them with thinset, trying to do one row of tile each day until the job was done.  I added a pair of shelves, cut from the same marble, similar to the ones I made for the master bath.

Next, I grouted and sealed the tile, followed by caulking.  I was really pleased with this tile and the way it balanced the color of the room.

A small medicine cabinet fits into the short wall.

I installed a vanity, long mirror cabinet, and lighting fixture similar to the ones I used in the master bath.  Faucets, towel bars, and other finishing details rounded out the picture.  I'm holding off on installing the toilet until the floors are done.

The Great Flood

Just as the addition was getting underway, the aging hot water heater developed a leak and had to be tossed.  I was just gearing up to replace it, but being stuck without hot water for a week while the replacement arrived was a tough proposition.  The new water heater is a 199K BTU hybrid tankless water heater - fancy Korean tech.  It is 98% efficient, and it has a small built-in tank to avoid "cold water sandwich" issues present with other tankless units.

Lifting the unit into place solo was a bit of a challenge, as it weighs roughly 100lbs and needed to fit into a rather narrow closet, but I toughed it out and got it positioned solo.  There are no fewer than 8 connections to this unit: water in, water out, T&P relief line, condensate drain line, combustion air intake, exhaust, gas line, and electrical cord.  I had planned ahead for the condensate drain line when the A/C was being installed, so that went relatively smoothly.  The air intake and exhaust required cutting some fresh holes in the roof for the PVC pipe.  All in all, I spent the better part of a weekend getting this unit up and running.

The water heater works like a charm, with an endless supply of hot water.  It should even have enough excess capacity for the hydronic radiant heating system that I plan to install.

Addition

The addition was a major effort.  I called in contractors to do some of the heavy lifting - pouring a foundation, framing, and a torch-down roof.  The new area is located behind the garage, on the site of the old patio.  It provides an extra room, adds a doorway directly from the garage to the house, adds a large walk-in closet for the master bedroom, and adds an exterior storage closet at the back of the house.  The start was a bit hectic, so I didn't manage to snap a ton of photos of the foundation and framing, but here's a view peering in from the back of the house at night.

This process also involved adding a new window for the master bedroom, since the old (broken) window was located at the same spot as the doorway to the new walk-in closet.  I carefully chipped away the foam insulation where the new window would go, taking care not to damage any wires, then pulled the wires out while the window was framed.

The new bedroom window overlooks the backyard, which should eventually be a nice view. There are also new skylights in the kitchen and bathrooms.  The exterior door just off the kitchen was relocated to the addition, and a new door was added between the addition and the garage.

Once the framing was up, I set about the electrical work.  Drill holes, run wires, add electric boxes.  Nothing fancy here.  I also ran the usual data cables to the addition, and wired it into the home security sysem.  Making good use of the soffits over the bathtubs, I passed some flex duct through to a vent in the addition.  With the electrical in-place, it was time for another inspection.

Next up was insulation.  I couldn't get a reasonable quote on spray-in foam this time, so instead I bought some fancy polyiso foam board insulation and spray-foamed it into place.  It looks very space-age, and provides equivalent R-value to the sprayed-in stuff.  Here's the exterior wall of the main room of the addition.  The insulation also needed an inspection.

The ceiling was styled with exposed beams to match the rest of the house as closely as possible.  The addition has a higher ceiling than the rest of the house, giving it a spacious feel.  The notched 2x8 beams that pass along the bottoms of the rafters were quite an ordeal.  I had to measure and notch them precisely, then lift the entire 17-foot beam into place, hold it with one hand, and hammer the nails in with the other.

With the insulation inspected, it was time to hang drywall.  At this point it is starting to look like a room.  The exterior was finished with stucco and a new roof rounded out the contracting work.

Here's a view of the other side of the addition, facing the kitchen.  With the drywall up, it was time for yet another inspection.

After the inspection, the tape and mud process begins.  This shot is the corner of the walk-in closet.  At this point, the addition is pretty much caught up with the rest of the house, which is in various stages of tape/mud/paint.