House Project: Ceiling and Attic Work
We live upstairs again! Yay! I’ve fallen in love with our house all over again!
We need to update our master bedroom sheets and bedskirt!
After a month of work – ripping out the second floor ceilings (and some parts of walls), installing new ductwork and lighting, then getting new ceilings and having the walls repainted – it’s all complete. Ahh.
And the best part? It doesn’t smell like animals on the second floor anymore.
We’d like to buy or make a headboard for the guest bedroom.
That’s why we did this entire project – when the FHA 203k contractor took out the existing attic insulation in April, we found that the ceiling was covered in animal droppings. Flying squirrels lived up there while the house was vacant and they WENT TO TOWN. Hardly any surface was untouched. Because of this, it already sort of smelled upstairs, but with the insulation gone, and it heating up in the house (yay, summer!), you noticed the smell even more.
The contractors just wanted to cover all that in Kilz paint, but that’s gross – when the ceiling is soaked through (and not to mention, scratched through), maybe just replace it? Painting it would just seal all that nasty stuff in and keep it in the house!
Eventually we’ll redo our bathroom – replace the drywall and tile shower with a mostly glass one, get a double sink, and new tile.
So we told the contractors not to put insulation in, and our plan was to do all this work in the fall. But, when we had our inspection to pay out the rest of the FHA 203k streamlined work, the inspector didn’t approve that the insulation was never installed. Makes sense – it’s definitely something a house needs.
The problem is that we were at the end of our six-month period to get all the work done when we found out we didn’t pass inspection (our mortgage was sold twice since we got it, and I had a REALLY difficult/frustrating time figuring out which bank would do the inspection/pay the contractors – so this inspection was delayed months that we could have been working, grrrrr). So we had to get an extension then move fast to get it done!
Looking from the master bedroom door, down the hallway toward the bathroom and guest room.
Which is why we spent all of August working on this (truthfully, whenever we did this, it hopefully would have gone at this pace, because I can’t imagine leaving the upstairs of the house such a mess, and living on another floor, for much longer). We had our inspection yesterday, and I’m positive we’ll pass this time.
Most importantly, Data seems happy!
And just so I have it all in one spot, here’s a compiled list of posts about our work, and what the contractors did.
Posts about the work we did:
Click here to see our work list through August 24
- Moving everything out of the second floor
- Ceiling demo
- More demo and surprises
- New wood joists and beams and Kilz painting
- More Kilz painting
- Joist repair
- New ductwork (and more demo and surprises)
- New lights, insulating the ductwork
- Lighting/electrical, taping the ducts, subfloor blocking, installing the catwalk
- Finishing the catwalk
- Prepped the rooms to be painted
- There’s no post, but we spend the week of August 29 installing lights, vents covers, electrical face plates, fans and doors
The work contractors did:
- installed new baffles
- installed new insulation and subfloor over dining room
- installed new ceilings entire second floor, partial dining room, taped, mudded and sanded
- installed attic insulation
- (a different contractor) painted the entire space
We actually do have a few things left to do related to this project – install new linen closet shelves, cover a hole in the basement, etc. But, they’re small things compared to all this!
Themocracy
Good luck with the inspections! I love that photo of Data in the sun.
I’m so glad you guys chose to do things the right way – it was a major ton of work, but I’ll bet you feel so much better knowing your house is fresh and clean from the top down, literally! Good job – it looks great!
We do!!!! I can only imagine all the things we fixed that would have been ignored if someone else did the work! And thank you! 🙂
It looks fantastic espec your bedroom…its huge!
Thanks! The panoramic does make it look a bit bigger than it is! But it’s a good size!!! 🙂 Just needs more closet space. Ha. That will be a future project 🙂
It looks beautiful! I’m so happy for you guys. You worked so hard and it turned out great!
Thank you! 🙂
WOOHOO!!!! Congrats!! It must feel SO good to have all of that major construction behind you – and to be living in a house not filled with animal droppings!
Thank you! It really does! Everything feels so fresh and clean upstairs – I hope to keep it that way. Ha!
I’m reading backwards, so I’m looking at the finished product photos now. It looks great! I didn’t realize that the contractor had just been like “cover the animal toilet with paint, nbd.” That would bother me!
Thank you! Animal toilet, ha. Yep, that is basically what it was. What, you don’t want to live in a house with that for a ceiling?! eek.
I’m catching up, WOW your hard work has truly paid off! It looks amazing! I’ve always wished I got the “handy gene” from my Dad, but alas…I break more than I can fix. HAHA!
Thank you!
LOL! We all can’t be handy! I’m not! I just follow directions 🙂