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Progress Report on the Home Renovation

Bob meets up with general contractor Ron Gan to discuss the progress on the project. The plaster has been taken off the load bearing wall to reveal the studs. The wall eventually will be removed to create a large open living and dining space. Down the hall an old hutch has been removed so the bathroom wall can be bumped out. Inside the bathroom Bob points out the old cast iron piping, which will be reused. He shows us how furring had been added in front of the two-by-four to create depth for the plumbing. Inside the former kitchen, Gan explains how the space will be combined with the back porch to create a large master bedroom. The wall will be taken out and replaced by a steel beam. The old hot water radiators will be replaced by cast iron baseboard heat. Where a tiny bedroom and pantry once were, a long galley kitchen and breakfast room will be created. Bob points out an archway that was added in the 1930s, which will be removed. The old wiring is still in good shape and will be saved while the receptacles will be replaced by new grounded outlets. Ron explains that the next step is to start shoring up the wall so it can be removed and replaced by a man-made engineered wood beam.

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MacMillan-Bloedel Parallam Wood Beam Factory Tour

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Progress Report on the Home Renovation

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Progress Report on the Home Renovation

computer-generated transcript - may not be 100% accurate

" Whoa!"

" Hey, Bob!"

" You've taken down all the plaster in here, huh?"

" Yeah. How you're doing today?"

" Good. How are you Ryan?"

" Good. Well, this is nice to see. You've got a real ahh----big step taken here in terms of stripping our wall. And we have this whole bearing wall stripped down. We have some of the partition wall down."

" Yeah."

" We have the bathroom gutted ahh----and eventually, we will be removing all of these structural walls from here to here, right?"

" Right."

" And replacing it with a big beam going across there."

" Boy, that's nice. We're gonna end up with some wonderful big space in here."

" Yeah. This should be a real nice room here. I don't know how we're gonna use it yet, but----"

" Well, living dining room,----"

" I know, well."

" I mean, the whole thing will be about 30 by 20, not bad. And then what have we done here?"

" Well, we took out this old cabinet that was here."

" That's right."

" Okay. The hutch----"

" Right. The old----the old hutch and----"

" No pennies? Or did somebody already find 'em?"

" Ahh. No pennies and no gold coins yesterday, but you never can tell."

" So, this will allow us to kind of cheat the bathroom wall out this way."

" Right."

" You still have a corridor here."

" Right."

" And then the bathroom will be that much bigger."

" Right. We'll get a linen closet in there and it'll be real nice."

" Ai, what a disaster?"

" Okay. This is the front of your finest bathroom. As you can see here and [unk]"

" Oh, this is a 90-year-old space and at least we've got good solid cast iron in the wall, which is a lunch deck that I hope we'll be able to reuse."

" Yeah. I think we can use all the vents in the main drain to enable us to save us a lot of money and ahh----"

" But the distribution will be replaced with new----new piping."

" All new----all new copper, right."

" Yeah, exactly. And this is how they created the wet wall here. They added this bearing strip in front of the full dimensional 2 X 4, so that they had, you know, enough depth to keep a hub----"

" Right."

" cast iron pipe in there."

" Right."

" Maybe we ought to replace the window too."

" Yeah. I see, I think you're right, you know, maybe we will do glass block or something. I don't know."

" Yeah."

" And this is the old kitchen."

" Right, which is about 12 X 14 and the architect's plan calls for creating a large master bedroom here that incorporates the back porch."

" Which I think, well, this is gonna be filled or have a nice full dressing area back here and----"

" Yeah."

" Ahh, some closet----"

" Closet against that wall."

" Some windows overhead."

" I'm glad they took out this window. It's amazing how big the window is. The window opening and yet when the window was in place, it was still grungy. It doesn't seem, you know, it seemed like a large opening."

" There's the header, the lintel----"

" Right."

" This piece of wood is probably a good 6 inches deep and it looks like it's 6 inches and it goes all the way across there, bearing the loads from up above, the load of the rest of the masonry back wall. And our plan is to remove the whole section of masonry wall so we can open this all up."

" Yeah. What if we go to our local junkyard and find ourselves a real nice shield beam and save ourselves some money."

" At the salvage yard? Yeah."

" Salvage, yeah."

" But it's still gonna be a big job to get that----get that steel in placed around."

" I agree."

" Boy, we lost a few partition."

" What about this?"

" These are old hot water radiators ahh----it did a great job when they had a small little bedroom right here, but now they were opening this whole space up. I think we'll have to replace this with some cast iron baseboard that you did in here."

" They're still in good shape, though. This could be used elsewhere."

" Ahh, it could be but probably not in this house."

" Fair enough. Well, these rooms were so tiny. This was a little closet, another little closet, what they called a bedroom which was literally 2 steps up to this wall here. And then this was a deep pantry that gave off the kitchen. And now we've removed these walls and we've created a space that's only about 8 or 9 feet wide, but it's 20----25 feet from one end to the other."

" Yeah, this is gonna be nice. It could be a real nice Galley kitchen----"

" Yeah."

" And we'll have a nice eating area over there----"

" Yeah."

" Till exit out through that wall over there."

" And then 10-foot ceiling height really is gonna make for some dramatic spaces."

" Then we still have ahh one of this 1930s remodeling arches in the way here."

" Yeah."

" That's coming out, right?"

" That's' coming out and----"

" Yeah."

" You know, I've never really seen this stuff?"

" This is the metal beating that was able to be shaped into the arch and plastered over and----"

" Yeah."

" You don't ahh----you don't really need it."

" And then here we have some old BX and I think that we can save a lot of this stuff, Bob, ahh----"

" Oh, yeah."

" Looks like it's a---- looks like it's in good shape."

" That armored-"

" Yeah."

" cable wiring is very safe. It hasn't been hurt by the demolition or anything."

" We'll----we'll replace the switch and of course if the receptacles----"

" -Now, you can't' keep this."

" we can't use these and we'll have to turn those into new grounded receptacles."

" Sure."

" But we're gonna save everything we can."

" Yeah."

" Okay?"

" What about on the second floor, the other flat? Have you done any demolition up there yet?"

" Well, we don't have as much workup there. We have a wall that's similar in scope to this that we're gonna have to demo. We're gonna do that later."

" Yes."

" Ahh, the rest of the apartment is just cosmetic work."

" Yeah."

" But at this point, we're pretty much ready to start showing things up here for the removal of this wall."

" Right."

" And ahh----the eventual installation of ahh----a new beam up there, right?"

" We're ready."

" And we'll carry the load with what's known as a parallam beam. This is made out of wood, man-made beam. What they call an engineered-beam because they can really carry a lot weight."

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