Exterior refit and small bathroom - pricing

in progress - the old house had ZERO insulation, sheething, or moisture barrier . We stopped stripping the siding at this point and went and did insulation, plywood sealing it, and wrapped it, siding goes up mid-week when the rest of the house is finished with this refit work. Amazing...our electric bill is going to plummet with the new insulation and windows...

 

Roofing, siding, windows, gutters, etc. all done - had to insulate the whole exterior in the process, put in new OSB, wrap it, then do the siding... that made a big difference in how the house felt - constant temperatures instead of rooms changing temp, was able to lower the thermostat a degree and still feel the same.

then we started round 2, converting the garage into an office. And while we were at it, we added a bathroom and a sound-proofed theater/guest room. That is now complete, including refinishing most of the floors in the house to make it a little more seamless between old and new spaces.
Sound-proofing is EXPENSIVE and messy work, causes challenges in lots of ways. We're not sure it worked yet as we have a basic door that doesn't have the soundproofing stuff on it yet, but if it does it should reduce sound transfer about 60db! But I do have the projector up, 120" electronic screen should arrive this week to allow for movie nights and ROCK BAND nuttiness.

round 3 is in planning - changing the bump out from a small 8' wide x 5' deep bump to most of the length of the house (maybe 25' wide x 5' deep) - this will let us create a real master bathroom/closet, with a big soaker tub and nice shower, double vanity, big walk-in closet, etc. And we'll do ther other old bathroom (gut and refinish it, no wall changes) at the same time.

round 4 might happen at the same time as round 3 - add that front porch and rear screened porch. But the economics these days may say that $30k worth of porches isn't as important as the 550+ sq. ft. and 2 br/2 ba we just added...

craziness. I admire those of you that do it yourself, it's a big job just to manage the contractors and pick out everything...

FYI: the guys I'm using are Sam's Siding, and they are GREAT. While the name indicates siding, they can do everything, and only sub electrical, plumbing, and HVAC (and their subs are GREAT too). Cheaper than others, great quality work, ALWAYS on time, etc. The owner (Sandro) is a pastor in his church, and almost everyone that is on his crew is also in his church...

 

bootay!

great job. please post more pics. i love this shit.

 

pics of the in-progress - the garage was a recessed single-car on the left side of the house, we added space to make it protrude 2 feet (so added 12' or so to it) and converted it. The theater room is 9' ceilings, 8' in the rest.

pics of the completed have to wait for me to finish some network cabling so the place gets tidied up a bit . with a merger going on, my wife interviewing for jobs, and 2 4 year olds, there's not enough time in the day...

tomorrow night I'll get on my main PC (currently in a closet waiting on the network cabling) and get some other pics, the ones of soundproofing are kewl. walls are 3" thicker than normal in that room (including ceiling) with all kinds of stuff used to help isolate that room. and once the 120" screen is up in the theater this week (hopefully before duke/unc), I'll get some really fun pics .

 

the network hub whips ass. i cant wait to see the pics of the soundproofing job and the wiring.

 

The shed picture above was built to match the house (all hardiplank, shingles, etc.) to handle storage (cheaper than a smaller home depot plastic one), the stuff from the garage was moved into it, then garage was converted and finally they cut into the house when the new space was all sealed up tight, made the new doors, and bammo. It was almost zero impact on our lives, other than contractor trucks always around and a big dumpster in the front yard, I've lived through FAR more impactful remodels...these guys are great.

pics of the bathroom add-on, opposite side of the house. Given the small space we have to work with, we went through a huge number of options on how to lay this out, all have issues but this keeps the # of doorways down in the bedroom and makes the bathroom/closet area feel more spacious. We'll do heated floors in this bathroom, nothing else too special, but it gets us a large walk-in closet, a shower, a soaking tub, double-vanity, etc. All the requirements.

The front of the house won't look right until we get that front porch built (not even talking about the rear), but that might wait out some of the current economic craziness... we'll see, I'm sure we'll end up doing it as the nice weather will be compelling.

 

you gonna do a glass block or stain glass window at the tub? we did the generic glass block and now i'm kinda thinking about going for the stained glass look. i like the way you configured the space in that bedroom. it opens up the bath area big time. corners are so over-rated anyway.

 

good question - I was assuming glass block, but stained glass done right might be groovy. That corner has a lot of visibility to the street and a neighbors office on the front of their house, so it needs to be 100% vision blocking.

Yeah, corners must go . I just like regaining the area between those two doors (currently a closet door) as a great place for a TV or armoire or paintings or whatever...

 

Looks like a great job to flex your construction muscles.

 

Pics of the soundproofing.
Studs covered in thick barrier paper (VERY heavy), special heavy tape used to seal the barrier paper edges to each other + overlapping the paper.
metal clips with insulating rubber hold metal channels that the drywall connects to - isolates the drywall from the studs to prevent noise passing, adds an air gap.
Drywall is 5/8" thick (more than normal), two layers of this are used with Green Glue sandwiched in between.

The j-boxes for electrical outlets, etc. are ALL wrapped with a sound isolating putty pad, blocking air flow/sound flow through these.

Acoustic caulk is used everywhere.

Door has a weatherstripping treatment around edges and a sound barrier that drops into place when the door is closed to get the bottom of the door sealed tight too.

Windows are untreated, don't care much about neighbors, I just want to keep my wife and kids from waking up .