Archive for the 'Remodel' Category

As a part of our ongoing home improvement adventure, we are installing solar panels. Between the state and federal rebates, the increasing cost of electricity, and the improvements in solar technology, it is an investment that will pay for itself in a decade or two. Maybe less, if California really starts paying for excess production.

And, of course, Solar scratches my techno-geek itch. In particular, the system we are installing uses per-panel micro-inverters that leverage IP-over-powerline to network with each other to synchronize phase and deliver power back to the grid. As well, it makes the system easily expandable in that we can drop new panels in without having to replace a costly single inverter.

Apparently, when this is all said and done, I’ll have access to a web site with a set of schematics that show our panel layout along with individual and overall power generation statistics.

Of course, being that we live in an Eichler, the path between concept and final installation has to have at least one adventure.




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While making my own low voltage cable light fixtures, I searched high and low for a little piece of hardware that would elegantly connect between the suspension cables and the wires down to the lights.

No luck. Everyone wants to sell you a cable lighting kit or, at best, the only “parts” are $40 bare MR-16 halogen lamp fixtures.

No thanks. Until I could figure out a solution, I simply bent a few bits of heavy gauge copper wire and made hangers like the one at right.

It worked OK, but clearly needed to be replaced with a real solution.

The answer?

Spend less than $10 on parts and make my own connectors. Well, $10 on parts and $225 on the tools necessary to solve this particular problem.

What follows is a description of the tools and some photos of the various stages. If you have even the remotest amount of metal working experience, there’ll be nothing new here (and probably lots of opportunities to make fun of me).

But, as pictured at left, I achieved success!

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When we lived in New York City, we had these awesome cable lights with hand blown glass pendants and, in the middle in the picture left, an awesome little beaded center piece lamp over our living room table.

One goal of the remodel was to make sure that we had a place for the pendants to finally hang again after being in boxes for the past decade.

The glass pendants are hung above the bar between kitchen and living room and the bead shade was hung over the kitchen table.

But the shade was too small to hang by itself. Thus, we needed additional fixtures.

At first, I soldered a couple of stiff copper wires to the bottom of some 12v MR16 compact fluorescent lamps. Plenty of light, but obviously not terribly pleasant to look at a couple of random bare bulbs hanging about.

I have always been enamored by the cheese grater light fixtures in That 70s Show.

As we were heading to IKEA for other reasons, we decided to poke about the kitchen accessories area to see if anything Light Fixture-esque struck our fancy.

Christine found some ORDNING stainless steel cutlery caddies that seemed pretty close to ideal.

Cheap, too.

So we grabbed a couple and I picked up some silver lamp cord from the local hardware store.

Assembly was trivial:

• Solder ends of lamp cord to ends of lamp
• Tie not in lamp cord just above lamp
• Feed lamp cord through center bottom hole of ORDNING
• Solder stiff copper wire to other end of lamp cord at desired height
• Bend copper wire in a hook to hook over suspended power cables

The end result is clean, simple, and provides great light. Better yet, the interior of the ORDNING has wonderful concentric rings from the machining process.

The blue light at the top of the cabinets is from blue LED rope lights that extend across the top of all cabinets.

Simultaneous with the flooring going in, the construction crew installed cabinets. Actually, the cabinets were roughed in first to ensure that the floor tiles could be cut correctly.

The image at was taken from the top of the bar cabinets between living room and kitchen and shows the island, the refrigerator cabinet, and the big storage cabinet on the left.

Behind the island are cabinets all along the wall. Though not visible in this image, there are now cabinets hanging on the wall in the corner by the fridge cabinet.

(This is actually an HDR image again. Much better than the original images. Would have required massive lighting to expose this properly otherwise, I think.)

The cabinets are rocks solid and the hardware is really nice. Soft close doors/drawers and the slides are top notch. We picked out some curved hardware to go on the front of the cabinets, to tie with the curved handles on the appliances on the curve at the front of the island.

Our friend and professional artist, Trudy, is making custom glass panels for the cabinet doors and custom glass tiles that will be installed in a row along the backsplash over the kitchen counters.

Trudy also made the exquisite stained glass piece seen in this picture. Some detailed images can be found here and here.

The past few weeks, the remodel has been in turbo mode.

Every day, coming home from work reveals yet another item checked off (or nearly so).

A couple of weeks ago, it was the floor tiles. At left is the living room with tiles completed, but not yet grouted in.

The tiles used are 24″x24″ slate tiles that are about 1/2″ thick. I.e. large. And heavy. Each tile ways around 35 lbs.

Thus, each palette of tiles weighed about 2200 lbs.

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For the past couple of months, our real kitchen has either been full of holes or otherwise under construction.

As a result, our refrigerator and the rest of our make shift kitchen has been in our atrium.

As we couldn’t move our stove into the atrium, I picked up a camp stove to see us through. Specifically, I wanted something that had at least two burners and we very easy to use. I already have a Coleman dual-fuel stove
, but it is a bit bulky and, though it can run off of unleaded gasoline, it is not exactly “push button” easy to light.

After reviewing a slew of stoves, I settled on the Coleman 2-Burner Fold ‘N Go InstaStart Stove.

It is compact, surprisingly solid, and very easy to use. It also spits out a ton of heat. Seriously. Beyond easily boiling water, frying foods, cooking pancakes, and the like, I have also successfully stir-fried in my very heavy cast-iron wok (seriously — 12+ pounds of cast iron)!

My only complaint is that the adjusting the stove for a low flame is trickier than it should be. If you simply push and turn the knobs, you’ll always end up with a flame that is bigger than desired. However, by simply pulling on the knobs as you turn slowly, the flame height can be set quite specifically to as low as you want.

Great stove. Very attractive design, too.

The 16 oz propane tanks run about $4.50 each and last for about one week with near daily cooking (or, at the least, boiling of water).

Normally, when you are redoing an interior room, you would typically hang drywall once the wall is insulated and all interior infrastructure is installed.

Not so in an Eichler!

At least not in earthquake country.

An Eichler is a textbook example of post and beam construction.

The house sits on a slab and there are numerous vertical posts that then support large (typically redwood) beams on top of which the roof is built. The framing and walls are typically run between posts, but non-structural interior walls are often used, too.

While Eichler houses typically fare very well in earth quakes, with no shear walls to cause the house to shift off the foundation (a common failure mode).

However, the whole house can be subject to shear forces that can cause catastrophic failure.

Thus, since the original construction, building codes now require that a certain amount of shear strength be maintained.

In particular, any exterior siding work must use siding the runs the full height of the house and must be nailed to the house with #8 nails spaced at certain intervals.

For interior walls, any wall that does not have internal cross bracing, must be finished with plywood that is attached with a certain gauge of nail at a certain spacing.

So, we end up with structural plywood and structural siding.


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A couple of weeks ago, our roof was mighty torn up.

Cutting through the multiple layers of roofing and creating Conduit Canals over the top, obviously the integrity of roof was basically naught.

And, of course, the first rain of the season was to be about 5 days after those torn up photos were taken!

The day before the rains came, the roofing guys came out and filled the channels with foam and then put sealant on top of the foam.

One day later?

It rained.

No leaks. Not a one.

Excellent.

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Update: It is raining pretty hard today (Saturday after these photos were taken) and, in fact, the inside of the house is dry. No drips or leaks anywhere (yet — gotta keep an eye on this). Awesome.

This is what the roof of an Eichler should look like. Or, at least, an Eichler with a foam roof that is a couple of years away from needing recoating.

Aside: Eichler’s, by the way, were a mid century modern design by Joseph Eichler. Mostly post and beam (though not all) with an emphasis on an open floor pan facing the outside with an open to the air atrium in the middle. Sort of Levitt-with-style for the west coast. Eichler owners get Eichler specific spam and there is an entire network of web sites devoted to Eichlers.

Fairly smooth, unbroken, sea of off-whiteness. Reflective. Waterproof. A solid roof over our heads to keep us dry, out of the sun, and warm in the winter (sort of).

Of course, being an Eichler, the roof is much more than just a shelter over the house. Since there are no unbroken walls — just windows — between the walls, almost all electrical and any re-routed plumbing ends up on the roof.

Or, more specifically, in the roof.

Thus, as of yesterday morning, my roof looked a lot like the picture at the right.

Big-ass Holes cut everywhere. Electrical conduit canals all over the place.

And wouldn’t you know it! Rain is in the forecast for as soon as tomorrow and most likely on Saturday! Awesome!

Since the original wiring wasn’t really any great shakes, any kind of a remodel — especially a kitchen remodel that involves new appliances — requires moving or replacing much of the wiring.

Which requires cutting through the roof and dropping new conduit into the walls.

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At the beginning of the year, we gave our house a colonoscopy to see why the kitchen/laundry drain tended to back up.

It didn’t go well.

Given that we had to rip out the kitchen island to fix the pipe, which required ripping out the tile, and the kitchen electrical was a bit haphazard, and the lighting sucked, and the position of the fridge was in direct conflict with the door to the garage, and the kitchen cabinets were starting to get a bit tired…. and… and…

… well …

… clearly, we might as well rip the kitchen out and fix it. Including changing a couple of walls.

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