DIY? Nah!

Well, we decided to skip the part of the DIY process of building a new room that both the husband and I hate "doing it yourselves". Taping, mudding, sanding, and painting. We have done those things several times in the past in other rooms and other houses and did not feel like repeating it in this house with additional small humans and way less time on our hands.

So, we started the search for someone to do our most hated DIY chore of finishing the walls and we found someone that I may have actually met at some point in my life even though I don't remember it. A friend from high school has a brother in construction and he had the best quote by far of the people that 1) called us back, 2) showed up, and 3) sent us a quote.

He'll be coming out next week to start on the walls. In addition to the walls we asked him to quote installing the cork flooring and again it was too good of a deal to pass up so we won't be taking on a flooring installation for the first time ever. We picked out the flooring and the paint and sadly, we ended up picking a neutral light tan that flows well with the colors in the rest of the house. I kind of wanted to step out a bit more and get some color in that room, but I'm a big color chicken who is now color shy due to the blue color selection in our master that I'm still not happy about. We are living with it because painting vaulted ceiling walls twice is no one's idea of a good time. Maybe in another 5 years we'll be ready to try again in there.

Anyway, we selected Wicker by Valspar from Lowes for the walls and Lisbon Cork Tobacco Road from Lumber Liquidators. We've replaced the carpet in 3 of our bedrooms with hardwood from LL and have been very happy with the quality of their products thus far and hopefully we feel the same with the cork flooring.

That's our news for now. We have the paint and will be picking up the flooring next week before he comes to start the work on the walls. I'll have more updates as changes occur without us having to do more than click the shutter button and write a check.

And then there was drywall - days 4, 5, 6, etc.

Well, I totally did not understand the amount of work left to do before we could drywall the rest of the walls around the windows and exterior door. There was a lot of very frustrating work getting the window reveals to be equal all the way around due to uneven walls, ceiling, and floor while the windows themselves were perfectly level and plumb. You don't even want to see the mess underneath the drywall in order to get everything straight and even. There were many, many days of trying to get it all correct and we finally reached the point where we could finish out the drywall on the walls.

Other than two little strips to go in the outside corner, it is done and ready for tape and mud. We've decided to hire someone to do this messy job because we've done it enough times before to know that we don't have the patience for the thin coats required to make everything look smooth and clean. We also both hate sanding drywall and all the mess that comes with it. It is well worth the money to have someone else do this job to get all the edges straight and clean and have the seams look seamless. Plus, all those corners around the windows won't have any trim to cover up any boo-boos that we might make. We're going to just install baseboards after the floors are installed. If we want to add trim later we can do that, but it currently isn't in the plans.

We'll continue on with the DIY on the painting and flooring after all the taping, mudding, and sanding is complete. We discovered during this weekend that if we leave the slider open to the kitchen it keeps this little room nice and warm without the need for an extra heater. I'm hoping that once the drywall is all seamed up and we have some soft cork boards on the floor it will hold the heat in even better. That means we won't need to install a small heater or floor heating at all. We'll still leave the slider installed so that we can open up that room during the summer months leaving the rest of the house free to run A/C if we want.

So, here is where we are on our list since we haven't visited it in a while.

• Tear out the existing screening, door, and framing
• Remove the ratty, green, plastic carpet
• Remove the siding that is inside the screened porch
• Frame out the new walls with 2x6 wood so we can pack in more insulation (plus the corner beam is a 6x6 so we thought it would be better to have the wall depth match and cover the beam)
• Install HUGE new windows (which will have a nice deep sill on the inside thanks to the 2x6 framing) and a new glass door that is bigger than the teeny tiny one we have now
• Install siding on the outside that matches our current siding (Although, we have discussed changing out all the siding for something with more interest. We're tired of beige and white houses. That is further in the future though.)
• Tear-out of the old plywood inside the room - nope, just going to drywall right over it
• Additional tear out of the ceiling "siding" and all the exterior trim that can be removed
• Run new outlets and wiring for the room since it was a screened porch and currently has one outdoor outlet
• Move the exterior light next to the slider outside to the deck - Um, yeah. The husband kind of gave away our old light so we'll be shopping for a new one
• Reinsulate the walls and ceiling - this will only be insulate the new walls because the original walls do have insulation
• Drywall - 98% done
• Taping, mudding, and sanding  of the drywall (slated for February)
• Paint - there have been suggestions for painting it purple (those are still being provided by the little ones), but I'm thinking we may end up boring and pick a white with a warm tint (although now I'm leaning towards the same taupe in the kitchen to keep things consistent).
• Install electric underfloor heating - decided to tie into the heat duct that runs up to our youngest daughter's room - Doesn't appear to be an option now and we have decided to skip adding any heating and possibly putting a small space heater or electric baseboard one in if we find that the room gets too cold for use in the winter. No heating needed!!
  
• Find some kind of flooring that we can agree with (husband wants tile, I want cork) - After researching over the winter and gaining more flooring knowledge we are agreeing on cork now and will be installing the flooring ourselves for the first time ever. Install cork flooring.
• Install a ceiling fan (already purchased and hardware and wiring are ready to go) to keep the room cool during the warm months if the sun is beating down or we want to open the windows.
• Figure out some kind of table and seating arrangement (banquette, benches, round table with chairs, etc.)
• Decorate