House plan help/input

[tbrooks]

just kind of an idea, but the er.. second bathroom between the two rooms id suggest move the toilet to the hallway wall, and put double doors on it as a shared bathroom for the rooms. as for the flooring, id say go with some oak or something, maybe stain it yourself?

I believe you mean the bath between the 2 bedrooms? I would have liked to have bedroom access to those, but I would have to increase the size or eliminate the hallway door, which I don't wanna do either. Not really a big fan of oak flooring, and definitely not a big fan of sanding it lol. I would love to have some of the engineered wood, that has a hand scraped look, but that is way beyond my budget. I'll probably end up using something I can salvage, plane the backside and coat with poly.

Swung door take up so much space, have you investigated the option of sliding doors mid way, not in the room corners.

I believe you mean, what we call a pocket door here, it slides into the wall. I have installed many of those. I'm not really sure yet, but I maybe making my own doors, and they will be to thick for that. I would love to put a hanging door on a track, that mounts on the wall itself, but I don't really like that for a bedroom or bath. It may go on the laundry and/or pantry.

I appreciate the ideas though, gets my gears turning, and its hard to think of all the possibilities.

 

[Awk08]

Not really a big fan of oak flooring, and definitely not a big fan of sanding it lol. I would love to have some of the engineered wood, that has a hand scraped look, but that is way beyond my budget. I'll probably end up using something I can salvage, plane the backside and coat with poly.
.

I sanded and refinished 2 floors in a house I lived in 10 years ago, the living room got stain/poly, between the 4 of us and 2 rottweilers it looked like shiit within a year.
the bedroom I did a linseed oil finish, although it lacked shine, it brought out the woodgrain much more, and probably to this day looks great, and sheds spills like a newly waxed car.
I will definately do the linseed oil again someday, although the hand rubbing off the excess with steel wool sucked. the end result was worth it.

 

[tbrooks]

ooo, thanks for bringing that up. I have used different penetrating oils, but never on floors. After some research, that seems like the route I will go. I've used a lot of minwax antique oil finish and it works awesome. I used a few gallons on my kids bunk beds. At $15 a quart (locally), I switched to poly after the first 2 coats, but it has held up awesome. I think its even helped preserve and hold the bark, none has come off yet.

 

[Blaaster]

My lounge/dining area is polished timber, it has a poly finish and is an absolute nightmare for collecting scratches from careless people dragging chairs.

I fitted soft tips on the end of the chair and table legs to save the floor, but somehow a small stone (which must have been brought in on someone's shoe) got imbedded in the tip.

The result, multiple deep scratches, before the culprit was identified. I had to fill the gouges with beeswax.

 

[tbrooks]

Well I talked for awhile and dropped off a copy of my plans with the property managers that we do some work for. One is an interior designer and the other is an architect (husband and wife). They liked all my plans and are gonna mull over them for awhile. Had some good news, I put some engineered hard wood, hand scraped look with aluminum oxide coating. I put the same flooring in a few other places, working for them. They always order +10% on materials, and I'm good with waste, so the have quite a few boxes of it Its wide planks (7-8") and looks something like this, and its only $3-4 a sq ft

And I think I will be doing a sliding door on the pantry and laundry that share a track, so only one can be open at once. Something like this

And I also came up with my lighting for the livingroom and hall. I can't find a picture so I guess its a somewhat original idea. I will make my own "can" lights. Just use a cheap plastic/ceramic fixture and use a galvanized bucket like a shade. Kinda like this, but mounted to the ceiling and a smaller bucket

I'm gonna play with putting a hole "pattern" in one, with my shotgun and see how it looks

 

[Blaaster]

I really love the look of that timber door.

 

[tbrooks]

Mine will be similar. probably with a diagonal "brace" for looks, but more along the lines of this color

I'll get a pic up in the next few days of my shop, thats where I'm gonna get the "barn wood" for this, but here in this video, near the end

you can catch a glimpse of it, its just not a very good picture. It does show too where all this work is gonna happen. The second green house is where, and I will be extending it over to the carport, and redoing the carpot to tie it into the house

 

[harley1-5]

you and I have similar taste I love the sink,and the rustic look

 

[jus_me]

That sliding door ^^ looks great. That would add some character to any home.

Btw; what is your ceiling height and is it the same in all rooms? any sky lights in living room or kitchen? a long while ago I had a place with very similar floor plans. It had a peaked ceiling in the living room / Kitchen dining area and dropped down going into the hall way and bed rooms. The back corners of the bedrooms were always cold. The living room/ kitchen were always warm even though the ceiling was very high.

 

[tbrooks]

Its all 8' ceilings, truss construction, thats why I can span the 28' for the kitchen and living room. I could turn the roof system on my addition and make a vaulted ceiling, but that complicates things and I don't wanna deal with it. And no skylights, I hate them honestly. What kind of heat source did you have? I think the transoms will help alot with the heat, and the thermostat will be in the master bedroom for that zone. Nice thing about the transoms is if I have windows in them I can adjust them according to how each room feels

 

[tbrooks]

Oh and thanks harley, I can't wait to get this started and see what all my ideas look like! Still gonna be a few months for sure right now my list looks like this:
Tear down 3rd house and store materials
Use ^^^ metal roofing on first house
Get new well installed
Get new septic installed
Take down carport
Relocate 10x20 metal building behind house
Relocate pumphouse to new well
Start digging footers
inbetween ^^^^ all that have as many yard sales as possible to get rid of all the po stuff. She had 6 sheds, 3 of them metal 10x20, all about half full of stuff. Plus the 3 houses, the 2 small ones don't have much. So right now I've been in the process of organizing things. I've got all the sheds cleaned out and everything I'm gonna yard sale located in one shed. Trying to get the house organized and find some tables, so I can just have the yard sale in the house and the one shed. Already got some of the furniture on CL, so hopefully it will go and make me more room.

I've got to talk to some well guys about the well. She had a problem with orange water. I did too when I lived next door, at one point it got really bad and we had some guys send a camera down. They ended up putting a liner in, but we still had orange water. The next house down, same problem. It gets better the more you use it, but never completely clear. I'm sure they could use a good cleaning too. All 3 wells are only about 60 feet, and its in a marshy area, and I think thats part of the problem. I'm hoping a deeper well would help.

 

[harley1-5]

we had the orange water issue when we lived in maryland

 

[jus_me]

We had forced hot air (propane). I would go broke just trying to heat the place.

 

[tbrooks]

Here's my barn wood

 

[tbrooks]

Woo hoo! It maybe a little early, but I made some extra$ off CL, so I went and got my guest bath vanity before it got sold, and found a sink while I was out

The lighting is crap so I had to use flash, doesn't do it justice. I'm gonna cut the top, so only about 3" of the bucket sticks up, and I gotta get about 7" of something under it to get it to height. I was gonna use a galv. bucket but I found that brass one and was all over it lol

 

[tbrooks]

Bad day for some of my plans. I had the day of due to weather, so I was over there cleaning up the house. Had my 15mo old daughter with me. Everything was fine for the first few hours, then I smelled something horrible. It was her diaper lol. Got her changed, walked over to throw her diaper away and turned around to her standing on the floor furnace screaming. She got a nice little grid pattern on her hands and feet. she was only there for a few seconds before I snatched her up. Normally she's had shoes on, but I had to change her outfit and hadn't put em back on yet. Really got me rethinking these floor furnaces though. I'm not sure where to go from here. Electric bills are really high in that neighborhood. My worst bill was prob about $450, that was with a wood insert, 2-220 wall heaters and 2 space heaters. My buddy has a maybe 1500 sq ft 2 story, with mainly propane and makes up the rest with a large elec window unit, and his bill was usually about the same as mine. Granted it gets cold her, but we only have 1 or 2 nights a year in single digits and probably less than 20 in the teens. I have a propane central furnace somewhere, that I took out of a small house, but I'll have to find it and check and make sure its big enough, and still in good shape. And although I don't, the old lady wants another kid and I would hate for that to happen with a crawling baby. I'm sure we could make it safe, but it would be a pita. So if I go with another heating option, that could change eveything. Decisions, decisions

 

[Herpderplol]

We had a propane furnace at our old house and it was very expensive to heat in the winter. Granted last winter was over a month below 0 consecutively.
our bills last winter were often over 400

In our new (to us, built in 60s) we have base board water heat that runs on propane also, but our bills are crazy lower. all utilities combined i think under $200 now?

main thing is insulation. our old house was a shedhouse and the whole basement was cinder block. we had a wood stove the last 3/4 years
so we kept the upstairs often at about 63 degrees. which is cold, but we could get it about 72 in the basement

i dont remember everything about the house you have said, but i suggest in floor heat warm feet and for the most part you can keep it warm enough for a low cost

 

[tbrooks]

I haven't messed with any in floor heat before. I understand the basics, but there's a lot of plumbing involved that I don't know about, at this point anything is possible. Since I've insulated it better, I've been very happy with the propane fireplace and small wall heater we have in the house we're in now. We also have a propane range, and it costs us about $1200 a year in propane, its about a 900 sq ft house. No other heat. Elec is $150 a month in the winter. Proper sealing and insulation makes all the difference in the world. The biggest problem I can foresee with any different heating system is where to put it. There is only about 30 inches of crawlspace so I would be looking at adding a mech room, which I could prob just stick on the back somewhere. Any other opinions on heating. Pellets are pretty much unheard of around here, and the only way I would do wood is a boiler system, which is out of my price range. The in floor would be a possibilty for me I guess I have a roll of 3/4 pex I found cleaning out a crawlspace, so thats a good start lol. I've read before about diy distribution manifolds, and personally I see no reason to do different zones so that would simplify things.

 

[tbrooks]

The bad part about radiant would be install in the existing portion with the 30" crawlspace

 

[harley1-5]

what about forced air with cielling vents?