A Couple Quick Car Projects...

The Altima has been a great car.  We haven't had to do a thing to it except change the oil, since we bought it over a year ago.  So, when the driver's door power window started activing funny, I figured it was about time for something to go wrong with this otherwise perfect car!  The Altima has an one touch auto-up and one touch auto-down feature on the driver's door power window.  Which mean you just hit the button in either direction once and it will either full open ot close without having to keep holding the button.  Shannon and I both love this feature, however the auto-up feature stopped working the other day.  It wasn't a huge deal, because the window still worked, but I didn't like having a broken part on the car.  I did some research online and this is what I found:

Window Programming Instructions:

1. Push the ignition switch to the ON position.
2. Open the window more than halfway by operating the power window switch.
3. Pull the power window switch and hold it to close the window, and then hold the switch more than 3 seconds after the window is closed.
4. Release the power window switch. Operate the window by the automatic function to confirm the initialization is complete.
5. Perform steps 2 through 4 above for other windows.

It turns out that the window just got de-programmed!  After following the above directions, it was back to normal!

I had one other part on the Altima I needed to install.  Sometime during the winter, the engine splash shield had got cracked and broken and was hanging in pieces under the car.  I called the dealer and they wanted $55 for the part.  I didn't have any luck finding it used at a junk yard or on eBay, so I did a Google search which landed me at RockAuto Auto Parts.  They had the part I needed and shipped to my door it was only $20!  The part installed easily and fit great, I just needed a couple retaining clips from my local Nissan dealer, which they gave to me for free!  You can see below that old splash shield has seen better days!

The Suburban wasn't exempt from any repairs this time around either.  The retaining strap (or prop rod) for the right rear barn door, wasn't working any more.  This would prevent the door from staying open and would just keep closing on you while you were loading it.  It turns out the retaining strap had the "U" shaped end broken off of it.  The dealer wanted $45 for it, but I found it at O'Reilly Auto Parts for $23.  The installation took about 15 minutes and the door is back to normal!

The Big 3-0!

As some of you may or may not know, this past July 2nd marked me turning 30 years old.  Shannon and I had talked about maybe having party with friends and family to celebrate the event.  She joked about having a surprise party for me, but I told her that my friends would never be able to keep a secret and that I would sense something was up and it would never work.  However, due to the flooring project, work schedules, and that my birthday always falls on the 4th of July weekend, we decided that a large party at the house was not going to happen.  We ended up having a BBQ at my parent's house on the day of my birthday and planned on going to Buffalo Wild Wings the next weekend when I wasn't working and having dinner with the family, to include my parents, brother, and sister-in-law.

We got to the restaurant, placed our orders, and were talking when in walks my father-in-law, brother and sister-in-law, and my ex-step-mother-in-law!  I thought that was very nice of them to show up for dinner, but didn't know they were coming.  I figured Shannon must have mentioned it to them and told them to swing by if they had a chance.  That didn't make as much sense after about about a dozen more of my friends and family walked in!  I just fell victim to a surprise party and didn't have a clue!  It turns out that Shannon got phone numbers from my cell phone when I was in the shower a couple times and made plans for the little dinner get together to be a surprise party!  I know my face was very red, my beautiful wife got me and I was happy as can be!

Everyone had a very good time.  Maeve got to learn to play Big Buck Hunter and she enjoyed shooting the Buffalo the most!  Will was a very good baby and almost made it the entire night before he crashed in my arms!  I would like to thank my amazing wife for throwing me the impossible surprise party!  I would also like to thank everyone who came out to celebrate this with me, it really meant a lot having you all there!

Summer House Project - Final Post! (#9)

06/29/10

After getting up, my Mom came down and helped me with getting things cleaned up.  The entire upstairs of the house was covered in saw dust, dust, and had tools and pieces of wood everywhere.  After a couple hours of cleaning, we had the house looking real good.  We then moved the furniture back upstairs and installed felt pads on the bottom of the furniture so it wouldn't scratch the new floors.  We got the house cleaned and back together just in time for me to pick up the girls at the airport.  Here is the final product:

The stairway before and after:

Overall, I am VERY happy with how the flooring turned out.  Shannon was also very impressed and happy to see her design ideas come to life. 

I would like to again thank my Mom and Dad for helping me get this project done.  Dad, I don't think working 10-14 hour days for 5 days in a row was what either one of us had planned but it paid off in the long run.  Mom, thank you very much for watching Bubba, making us dinner, and helping me clean the house.  I couldn't have done this without either of you!

Summer House Project - Post #8

06/28/10

We started out last full work day by installing the last couple of rows of flooring next to the fireplace.  We were only about 3/8" of an inch out of square moving across the 20 foot width of the area we installed the flooring in.  That also doesn't take into consideration the chance that the walls themselves are not 100% square either.  Either way, the small difference is not even noticeable and we have officially installed all the flooring!

The first part of the day we spent installing the transition pieces in the doorways to the bedrooms, bathroom, and the sliding glass door.  This involved installing a channel onto the floor, cutting the transition piece to length and snapping it in.  The first one was a bit of a challenge, but by the time we got to the last one, we were getting good at it!

When we finished with the transition pieces, we moved onto the stairway.  Since we changed the way the stairway and railing are installed, this involved some custom work to get it finished off correctly.  We had to install a piece of baseboard, up-side-down, along the wall the railing was on, cut it into the stairway molding, then install a couple pieces of laminate, upright, on the top stair riser and stair tread edge, and then finally install the stair bull nose molding along both edges.  This doesn't seem like much, but it involved a lot of planning, measuring, cutting, fitting, trimming, and finally installing.

When we got the stair detail done, we were officially finished with all the NEW installation.  I was very amazed that we got this done in the amount of time that I wanted to.  Dad went home after the stairway work was done, but I stayed up until about 0300 hours installed baseboard, air return vents, and picking up tools.  Shannon and Maeve were coming home around 1300 hours or so and I couldn't wait to get the furniture moved and house cleaned up for them to see!

Summer House Project - Post #7

06/27/10

I woke up on this day very excited.  I really wanted to start laying more floor and seeing how far we could get.  I was starting to get a little worried about if we were going to finish on time or not.  Shannon and Maeve were going to be home in 2 1/2 days and we still had a lot of work to do.

We started out in the kitchen and then started working toward the hallway.  The kitchen took a little bit of time, just because of the amount of cuts that were needed to get around the cabinets.  Once we hit the hallway, we started to really pick up speed.  I was sweating we were going so fast.  Dad would lay the boards out on the underlayment and I would start at the north end of the house and work to the south getting them locked in.  We really made some progress in a short amount of time.

At the end of the day we had pretty much completed the entire floor.  We had to do a few more pieces around the fireplace, but other than that we were sitting pretty good.  I was very pleased with how the floor was looking.  With more of the boards installed, visually, it was easier to see what it was going to look like.  The next installation day should go pretty good, we have to do some final trim work and the stair nose molding, and then we will be as done as we can be!

Summer House Project - Post #6

06/26/10

Finally, after a couple days of prep work, we are finally ready to lay some floor.  We started laying the floor on the west (dining room) wall and were going to move across the house from there.  The way the cabinets are set up, we will actually being working backwards (from east to west) in the kitchen, but this gives us the chance to make sure everything is even and level before going down the hallway.  The boards went together really well and are very easy to work with.  Cutting the boards was also easy, the boards are only about five inches wide, so the miter saw will cut them in one pass.  After a couple hours of planning and cutting boards, this is what the dining room looked like:

I was very happy with how it is starting to look and how easy the floor is going down.  I had kept all of my laminate flooring tools from when I installed the floor at my townhouse and having those helped a ton.  We just kept cutting and snapping boards together and every hour or so we would get a little farther:

By the end of the first day of installing the actual flooring, we had the dining room totally done and just started getting into the kitchen area.  The nice thing was that once we were out of the kitchen, the speed at which we were installing the floor would increase because we wouldn't have to be making as many cuts.

I was both happy and impressed with the floor so far.  The quality of the Pergo flooring was top notch and we haven't hit any snags in the installation so far!  I was also looking forward to the next day so we could get some more installed and really start to see how it was going to look.

Summer House Project - Post #5

06/25/10

This day started out with continuing to remove the 1/4" underlayment in the kitchen.  As I mentioned before, this involved cutting the old underlayment, prying it up, then removing a ton a staples that were holding each piece down.  We got the entire underlayment cut out and the staples pulled with in about six inches of the cabinets, but we couldn't get any closer using the circular saw.  After getting all the underlayment out and looking at the old green linoleum, it made you wonder if dropping the hot pan in the middle of the floor and burning the linoleum inspired the kitchen remodel or if someone lived with the floor burnt for a while?!

 

To get closer to the cabinets, we needed a tool that would cut well, but wasn't very big.  We talked about using a utility knife, rotary tool, or a reciprocating saw.  However, what we decided on was an oscillating tool.  I purchased the Dremel Multi-Max Oscillating Tool.  I went with the Dremel brand since I own other Dremel tools and really like them and I figured it is popular enough brand so I would be able to find the blades easily.  I think the kit cost about $100, then I bought a few extra blades on top of it.  I have to say both Dad and I are VERY impressed with this tool.  The offset multi-purpose blade cut right through the underlayment with out damaging the cabinets.  The process took a little bit of time, but the end result was just what we were looking for!  I would recommend this tool to anyone!  Since the floor project, I have used this tool a handful of times on other projects!  I don't know why, but sometime during the project, I nicknamed this the "Winger Tool."

When we finally got down with getting the underlayment up in the kitchen, we started working on leveling and repairing the area in front of the fireplace.  The major repair just involved cutting another piece of plywood for the underlayment and stapling it down.  The leveling involved using a synthetic floor stone.  This looks like a ready mix concrete, but is synthetic and can be sanded and sculpted.  The floor stone sets up pretty quickly, so we had to work in small areas and wait for it to dry, and then work in another small area.  Dad made the reference that is was like frosting a cake with sticky frosting.  Just when we were getting finished with the floor stone, Mom had brought Will down to see the progress!  He could really cruise in his sit and spin with no carpet!
 

 

After we got the first bit of floor stone down, it was about time for dinner and time to call it a day.  Later that night before I went to bed, I got the belt sander out and sanded some of the areas in the kitchen were the old linoleum was and in some areas where there was a slight difference in the thickness of the underlayment.  This made a pretty big mess, but it would insure that we would actually be installing flooring in the morning!

Summer House Project - Post #4

06/24/10

As I mentioned at the end of my last post, we were very close to getting the railing finished, but just ran out of time.  Today was the first "official" work day of the summer project and it really didn't start until after noon when I got Shannon and Maeve dropped off at the airport.

When we got back to the house, the first thing we did was get the old railing taken down.  After that was down and out of the way, we started getting the new railing mounted to the wall and newel post.  The installation went pretty good (although we did break one of the screws off in the newel post, but we got it out!) and everything fit perfectly.  After the railing was totally mounted and secured, we cut the "filets" (the pieces of wood that go between each baluster) and got them nailed in.

I think the end result is a HUGE improvement over what was there before!  The new railing is very good looking and very secure.  I think the newel post alone really makes the railing!

After we got the railing totally done, we started on tearing the carpet out.  Dad and I had a process going where he did the cutting and I did the rolling and binding of the old carpet.  We then moved to the carpet pad, which worked about the same way, but required us to hand remove hundreds of staples that were used to secure the carpet pad to the underlayment.  After a couple hours, the carpet and pad were totally gone.  Once all the carpet was up we did notice an area by the fireplace where the underlayment had got wet and needed to be replaced.  We also had to do some leveling work around the fireplace foundation so it would be level with the rest of the floor.  So far, nothing too major that needs to be repaired!

The next step involved doing some demo in the kitchen.  It turns out when the previous owner remodeled the kitchen about ten years ago, they laid a 1/4" inch underlayment on top of the existing underlayment, then installed the new linoleum and cabinets on top of that.  Since I wanted to have all of the floor upstairs the same level, that 1/4" underlayment needed to come out.  Dad and I used the circular saw set at 1/4" depth and started cutting it out.  We could only get within a few inches of the cabinets and walls with the circular saw, but we got the majority of it out using the saw.  After we pried up the first piece we were very shocked for a couple reasons.  First, the UGLY, green, original to the house, linoleum left under the newer underlayment and second, the fact that each sheet of underlayment was held down with hundred, if not thousands, of staples that had to be pulled out by hand! 

We only got a couple sections out, with staples pulled, on the first day, but we knew we would be in for quite the challenge in the morning!  Not only did we have to get the rest of the big sections of underlayment out, we had to get all the staples pulled, peal up the old linoleum, then trim the remaining underlayment out against the cabinets!

Summer House Project - Post #3

06/23/10

With this post, we are finally almost done with the pre-project prep work.  The day before Shannon and Maeve left for Texas, I had Mom watch both the kids at her house, so Dad and I could get started on the railing and newel post.  I really wanted to have as much time as possible to laying the floor once Shannon and Maeve left, so as much work as we could get done on the newel post and railing, the better.

The first step was to work on getting the underlayment/sub floor cut out and exposing the floor joists.  We decided to cut out a six foot strip of carpet around the stairs to make it easier.  The house has a 1/2" layer of underlayment and a 1/2" layer of sub floor, so we staggered the cuts on each layer so the seemed didn't overlap.  Once we had all this done, we could figure out how exactly we were going to mount the newel post.

It just so happened that we had two floor joists running right where we wanted to mount the newel post.  This was great news, because we could just sandwich the newel post between the joists and bolt it in from the other side.  This did require a little bit of trimming on the newel post, both reducing the profile and about two inches off the bottom.  Once we got the newel post cut down, we got it sandwiched in and bolted.  This thing is now VERY sturdy.  If this newel post comes down, it will take the floor with it.  Once it was bolted in, we trimmed and fastened the underlayment/sub floor back down using a pneumatic stapler.

Once we got the newel post mounted, we started on the assembly of the railing.  We had to cut each one of the balusters 1 1/4 inches, and then with the help of a few ratchet straps and using screws and brads we got it assembled. 

We didn't have time to get the railing mounted or the old one taken down, but we were very close.  Our next workday was a shorter one, since I had to bring Shannon and Maeve to the airport, but we would finish up the railing then!