Structural changes and a stud finder that actually works

We're finally back on track for the kitchen expansion after dealing with the rotten wood and Powder Post Beetle issues. Here's a quick review of the structural changes:

• Open up the wall between the bathroom and kitchen (done). 
• Reinforce the opening with a 4" x 6" header beam (done). 
• Build the new bathroom wall about 30" back. This makes space for the fridge and a pantry (done). 
• Cut out part of the bedroom to build a hallway and a closet. The hallway will have doors into the bedroom and bathroom. 
• Open up the wall between the kitchen and living room (done). 
• Reinforce the opening with a 4" x 6" header beam. 

This makes a nice open space between the kitchen and living room along with a bar facing the living room side. Moving the fridge really opens the kitchen up and moving the bathroom entry away from the kitchen is a huge plus. 

Off to the Rebuilding Center with some stuff to donate. I was careful not to damage things when I removed them so that they could be used again. 

What a great place. They have just about anything you could imagine and it's all priced very reasonably.  Lately it seems like prices of salvaged materials have gone through the roof and it's nice to have a place that doesn't operate like that. 

I built the wall in two sections so that it would go through the door. This also allowed me to carefully measure the opening it was going in and account for it being out of square. It was much easier to wiggle  the two pieces in separately. 

Bam!

Ok... On to the stud finder. I've had a number of these things over the years. Some of them came free with another tool, some of them I purchased. None of them really worked. I've seen some that make claims to greatness online selling for $100 or more, which sounded like too much, but I was almost ready to try one. I decided to give the Zircon i320 OneStep a shot. It was $40 and I'm very happy with it. 

Scan started.

The bars on the screen show when you start across a stud edge. 

The bars and the red light indicate exact stud center. 

Reenactment.

It also has a deep scan mode for finding studs on the exterior, metal stud mode, and a warning if you scan over any wiring in the wall. 

*Insert stud finder joke here*

Back to the kitchen. I sheeted the new wall with 6 mil plastic and taped the edges so that I can work on the bathroom without the dust or odor getting into the kitchen. I moved the fridge to it's new home and the kitchen suddenly seemed twice as big. Now we're waiting for the stove to be delivered. 

Notice my state of the art locking mechanism on the door. I lock our shed up at night by parking in front of the doors. Some day we'll have nice things...

Future home of a big open space. 

Things are coming together nicely now after that last setback. Today, Chance and I are going to finish the concrete form for the back deck and fill it with the gravel base. Annie and I also decided that we're going to wait on the metal roof until next year, so we're going ahead with the solar panel installation as soon as the installer is ready. 

The Bugs

A few weeks ago, Annie noticed that a bird had built a nest in a vent on the side of our house. I'm not sure why someone put a vent on the side of the house, but it was now home to some baby birds. They sounded so cute and they made a perfect alarm clock every morning. That was all great until Annie walked into the little office room upstairs and found it crawling with hundreds of thousands of tiny little black bugs. 

It's hard to tell the size from this picture, but the thing they are crawling on is a small zipper on a plastic bag. 

We had to take all of our stuff from that room outside and every time we touched anything, they would start to swarm up our hands and arms. Annie got online and determined that they were Bird Mites, also known as Bird Lice. 

They were still coming in through the vent, so I went and removed the exterior vent cover and bird's nest while Annie cleaned the room out with water and vinegar. 

Fortunately, these things aren't hard to kill and they die or go away if they don't find a new host within a few days. We quarantined all of the items from that room outside for about a week just to be safe. 

The next surprise came when I started deconstructing the downstairs bathroom. 

It looked like there had been a slow leak behind the shower for quite a few years. The floor was rotted out and a number of studs were completed rotted at the base and not even supporting the wall anymore. As I got to removing the damaged lumber, I noticed a fine dust coming out of some of the pieces. It was a lot like sawdust. I didn't think much of it at first, but as I took things apart more, it became more apparent that something was eating the wood. 

I called a pest control company out to look at it and it turned out to be Powder Post Beetles. They seem to have only eaten around the damp wood, which is common for them, but they have been known to eat entire houses. I'm glad we caught it when we did, but it's been a lot of work fixing the framing they destroyed. 

Chance looks through the giant hole we just cut in the house, trying to figure out the next step. 

Once the affected wood was all cut out, we started piecing the house back together. 

We had to cut the rotten / eaten subfloor back a few feet and replace some joist sections.

Finally, we were able to get back to doing what we had set out to do a few days earlier. We opened up the the wall between the kitchen and bathroom and put a support beam across it. The new wall will go back about three feet into the bathroom and the extra kitchen space will house the refrigerator and give us some extra storage. 

First post in!

Deconstruction doesn't mean you don't still get to use a sledgehammer from time to time.

Finally! Now just two more beams left to do...

So the pests are all dealt with and remodeling is back on track. I'm just now finalizing the plans in Sketchup and I'll post them soon.