You won't believe what this 1880s farmhouse USED to look like! | 1880s Farm House EP1

Wow that's a lot of money this is the the i-95 for mice that was a joint that's actually a dead moose in there where the hell is that cut all the way through and then tacked together with this so almost half of this house in the middle here is being carried by three nails on that side it's free nails on this side no joist hangers Wow look at all this beautiful space very important your knock your breakers listen I mean when you see a handyman special like this don't assume they know how to do electrical they don't know how to do anything else but if you're not in the budget to reframe your whole house and this is the way to go now we have a door that's a big road or innovator one bathroom nothing here's the secret weapon better to learn how to do this yourself but look at the water damage your hose where it gets interesting that is crazy look at this that is fantastic this is not even four feet wide Oh welcome to my old house this is the project we picked up a couple years ago it's kind of like a bit of a retirement plan almost before we started our YouTube channel and now it's turned into just a goldmine of opportunity to share with folks what you can do if you want to buy an old beast like this and turn it around and fix it up make everything brand new and what's gonna happen with your asset verses mortgage value and all that kind of business so we got a real old Pig here that needs a whole lot of love and a whole lot of lipstick and so what we're gonna do is we're gonna go through all these different aspects of renovating you can see we have a main body of the house plus this little addition which is perfect because my wife and I are empty-nesters now so what we're gonna do is we're gonna fix up the loft as a bedroom it has a bathroom in the front but it needs to be completely overhauled and we're gonna move our front door from this location around the side two major reasons it's noisy out here there's a lot of road traffic and we have this huge open field and the wind in the wintertime comes barreling through and every time we open that door I swear it cost me $100 in each so we're gonna redesign the whole main floor area and create a living space for us so that we can gut and then rebuild the entire home on camera for you guys and we can go through this whole process together we're talking all new wiring new water systems we're bringing in structural engineers so we've got trees in the basement of structure oh my god there's no venting on any of the plumbing everything's a disaster I don't think there's been an electrical or building aspect in this home in the entire history of his life so we're gonna change all that and get everything back up to speed so that we have a big beautiful house on this gorgeous acre property loved living in Canada because wherever you want to you can get ten minutes out of town and be in the country and have lots of space so we're gonna transform the inside of the house and hopefully in the next couple of years we'll be able to get outside the house and fix all this too fencing and the new pool new deck new shed the list is endless I'm glad I've got such a good fixer-upper because it's going to work out really well for the channel so no more working on other people's homes for the next little while I got to get my own work done let's go on take a look inside and see huh [Music] this edition has been absolutely useless really it's a second-story loft and it has this great big space down here but everything's been chopped up in hallways and entrance ways and you can see behind me this used to be a secondary door the way this is built that's extremely cold they don't have the proper heating they didn't frame it right I mean there's a lot of do-it-yourself or mistakes in this project so what we're doing is we're peeling this thing back taking it back to the frame so we can understand what they did and how they did it so that we can turn this into a livable space the goal here ultimately is to move the staircase to this location over here get different access upstairs so that the stairs is in an area where they have windows and open this area up entirely so there's an actual front foyer to the home there's a lot to do we've just got a little bit started I understand now the basic gist behind their building technique so far it's not looking too scary but you never know what we're gonna find so one of the things we noticed when we started tearing everything apart is that there's a lot of different levels of flooring going on here so we're not sure what the original space was used for but this window here it's single pane glass that is not a thermal window so I don't think they ever really designed this base to be a four-season living area but that's what we're gonna convert it to and part of our job here is get rid of this window close it all up we're gonna put in our staircase here the idea is to try to create a landing near the top where you can walk into the bedroom straight on because the ceiling does have a slope and it introduces the slope at about a 5 foot wall height so if we take the stairs all the way to the outside corner we're gonna be ducking around a corner that's the problem they have right now with the current stairs when it comes down here our goal is to have a nice landing maybe a piece of offset glass to separate the entranceway from the staircase nice big open easy to move your furniture around there we go well with the location of the staircase where it is right now it forces the entrance to this room to be actually on the wind side of the property and since it's out in the country there's a ton of cold wind blowing through here in the wintertime so the idea here is to be able to rip the stairs out get rid of that door and put a brand new front door right here now that's the original plan but remember when you're dealing with a project like this first goal is to peel it all back find out what the scope of work is going to be then we can make our final decisions okay so we've got our ceiling removed we understand our structure we know this isn't carrying any load so what we want to do is we want to take off the wall drywall first the idea here is the bigger the piece the better there was a joint right there on that stud and having a big wrecking bar like this makes us so much easier because you don't have to fight too much with what's going on I know there's no mechanical in here and then jiggle alright here's the goal if you jiggle the drywall the screws that are in the surface the head of the school popped through the paper and the drywall loses all of its strength and then you can just grab it and it comes up in pretty good pieces oh here we go this is another layer this wall actually was originally outside corners it didn't there wasn't a door here originally so somebody framed this door on here and didn't open that back up to the frame [Music] you put more screws in a small space than in the big one so I know this is a hollow wall so one of the secrets that I have for getting rid of drywall just punch it through from the other side [Music] [Music] just a bit of a jiggle that's how it works there [Music] Wow that's a lot of money you know it was a pretty normal back in the day especially in the older homes there used to be a different kind of culture you know you had your adult spaces and your kids spaces walls and doors everywhere to kill the drafts look at this all we did was take the drywall off look how much bigger the space is there's nothing structural going on here the end of the day this probably could have just been a half wall or a railing but if you wanted to save some money you could you just put a half wall in here what made moving furniture and stuff up here a lot easier very important to turn off your breakers listen I mean when you see a handyman special like this don't assume they know how to do electrical they don't know how to do anything else now I'm gonna want to have some power on later so if I can maintain the integrity of this box then that would be fabulous that way in case they did some creative wiring and there's still power to this at least you're working safe let's do it yourself for renovations you might think you've turned off the power you don't really know so unless you're turning off the power to the whole house just play it safe because man you never know where they're gonna find a power lead somewhere in the basement and fish out all the way over to here and it's totally unrelated to this how are part of the house okay time to rip out a wall okay so we're gonna rip out a stub well now the idea here you want to just check for two things hey you're going up against the stairs so generally speaking there's gonna be a few locations where they've nailed this side of the staircase into the wall so just have a quick look there's enough movement there there's no nail in this particular step so I'll teach you how to take out a stud this is made where there's two nails from the top plate and two nails from the bottom plate and then they stand the wall in place so the way to remove a stud quick and simple is actually take one of these bad boys from Stanley this is my favorite wrecking bar and this is just batter up right hit right down near the bottom you don't have to be crazy with your force just enough are you gonna be bending over the nails and knocked the bottom loose couple little shots like that alright and then you pull it towards you you're pulling it off the ceiling now you see the separation here and you give it a twist and again that's simple always under control don't free wild and crazy again [Music] [Applause] [Music] that's got a couple of extra nails in it a couple extra twists and you're good to go so just because you see a lot of wood doesn't necessarily make it structural I'm not sure why there's a double plate here I think it's just a creative process that this person went through they built a wall basically what you want to understand is this the foundation of the house all the way around that can carry all the weight of the whole house and in most cases depending on the width of your house your floor joist is will transfer from outside of the house to the other side of the house all the weight that's on that on that second level if the span is so long that it needs to have a supporting wall in that supporting wall weight will be transferred as a point load down to something else that's also structural and that's not a floor joist it's usually a steel beam or it's all the way down to the floor and the concrete in your basement and they've poured a foot in there so if you look in your basement and take a look if you have no steel and your house is only 16 feet wide chances are they're just going straight across and nothing on the main floor is structural if there is a structural wall of course all of that can be removed and re-engineered there is no limit to how much open space you can have it really comes down to getting a good engineer and opening up your wallet look at all this beautiful space and the best part is it is exactly 16 feet wide this structure because of this whole flooring system in this decking this is not gonna be as easy to come out now both of these studs stop at the plate so I'm gonna just hit the top of this in that direction until it gives up the ghost short-swing remember if i miss you got to think what's my follow-through there we go mission accomplished so now we're gonna take out the stairs should be pretty straightforward and I'm hoping to be able to reuse the stringers I have the same rise and run going on for them a little new location is we'll just do that oh that is a lot of screen here we go do not do this without eye protection I've seen it a lot of times these nails are come firing out real fast all right yeah that's a good sized nail yeah they didn't nail the other side because they put that they put the frame in first and then slid this wood in right here okay [Music] Hey look at that was actually nailed in it shouldn't be that easy sometimes you just need some therapy you just want to hit something really hard that feels good who needs a gym there's a little piece one's gonna give me more trouble in the hole give me an idea how old this house is back when they built this they had one pair of clothes they worked in and one pair of clothes for something you can see you have a structure here it is not doubled up so the floor joist has come all the way across and tie into this one but this has not doubled up these are just blocks and this has probably only been put in here so that they can build the ball that me wall above it so I would say that this is a little too weak especially said the only thing else will end up having to put another two by eight on there get rid of this little nailing block add some joist hanger probably on each end oh yeah so that's the way it is just sandwiched in between the two picking up one two three three other choices so almost half of this house in the middle here is being carried by three nails on that side and three nails on this side no joist hangers Wow all right so this wire here is a it's a copper wire and this is put in it says fourteen two says right there and nmd insulated probably back in the 60s maybe early 70s but probably the sixties and this is when the wiring was first done and then it was closed up there's no evidence here have any lath and plaster I can't tell exactly how old it is because back then they never put dates on it nowadays the new wires all stamped with the date that was manufactured so an inspector can tell the difference between why that just went in and wire that one in five years ago so be careful out there this is my stiletto tool it's a gift from my son Matthew he spent a summer doing framing on new house construction it's good for him learn how to work like I'm in and it's got a hammer it's got magnets it's got all kinds of different claws and jaws so you can pry and pull nails or any situation you got to deal with this thing is just awesome solid titanium cost a bloody fortune but man is it ever handy everything's friendly out of the way all right so that is now no longer attached up here never the same day twice in my life every day is a new day I'm looking for a career and it's not boring I'll tell you this is something to consider one two three four five five minutes well there we go we're pretty much done opening up the space now I think before we go any further right take a little break and we'll clean this up very important clean as you go you don't want to let the garbage build up to the point where just gets mentally wears you down to see so much debris in the room right all right so we are currently in a position here now where we've removed the stairs and the interior walls and we know exactly what we're dealing with so with kind of X we know what our scope will work yes all right we're gonna pull off the rest of the drywall and expose all the rest of studs probably guarantee we're gonna be reinsulated I think the good plan here because the space is so huge now would be to added some furring strip onto the studs and let's get these balls up to our 20 insulation value so we want to go and add another two by two on these studs at least we have a sixteen by nine for ya now so now the options are limitless right design your way we can build a nice front entrance put in some wainscoting probably have a bench for kids and the little cubbyholes and that sort of thing now there's no limit what was really once a small cramped space that was absolutely useless now it's becoming an actual room in the house this is awesome hi I love tearing things apart so if you're like me you bought yourself a home that's way too old for its own good and you're trying to restore it and bring it back to life and make it function in today's modern climate and modern construction techniques and so I've got 140 year old crawlspace here and it's only a couple of feet deep and it gets worse as it goes along so today we're gonna show you how to flash and bat now this is a little controversial so I'm sure we're gonna have a lot of opinions in the comments section welcome all of that conversation because it's hard to get really good information online so we're gonna break this down into steps for you step one of course was to vacuum up all the spiders wherever you got a damp cold space where you going to have rodents soon we're gonna have lots of bugs and you're gonna get lots of spiders so I'm not much of a spider fans I like to clean it all up step number two I want to not have to work in the dirt it's a little freaking me out so I'm gonna put down some vapor barrier and open that up on the floor so that I can crawl around on it and when I'm done I'm gonna tape all these joints together to create one continuous barrier but for now I'm just going to use this as something to stay out of the dirt [Applause] okay that's actually a dead moose in there I love my job alright so when you're using spray foam in your house you got two options you can call the spray foam company and you can call them to come in here from with their truck and bring your hoses down and they can do your crawlspace for you that's gonna cost you a couple thousand dollars or you can go to the store and you can get one of these kits in my case I needed two there are about three hundred and change depending where you live I'm sure so for me it's a little over six hundred dollars to spray foam this whole crawlspace and it's a twenty by thirty space so that's pretty good deal now I think every company every building store in North America should carry this product line it seems to be the only one that's in a box this is a closed cell not an open cell so for those of you who care to research the difference between that I'll let you do that on your own time I like the clothes salad I think it's a superior product but you do have to be careful of course yeah read the instructions those aren't instructions by the way that's just a notice telling you to read oh here we go instructions this is a book don't eat it don't drink it don't be dumb dude you're dealing with some dangerous stuff kids let's make sure that we use all of our safety gear here there is a time and a place to be careful and this is definitely the place we're gonna need one of these they give you a whole bag of these things these are not syringes these are just expansion Foam spray nozzles you can replace it so system like this you can use you can close it up you can take off the nozzle throw in the garbage you can store it in the cool dry place follow the instructions and you can use it another day in another place so you can also buy bags of these nozzles as well so you can get good bang for your buck and have one of these handy we're gonna put on the gloves because we're gonna get right to this so you know the handle has a closed position and an open position it's kind of like a safety okay that stops the flow of foam up to this point and then you can change your tips every time you turn it off this stuff sets up really quickly so you don't want to leave it for ten or fifteen minutes with the gun in the open position and not using it it will dry right there then you're done and this whole kit is garbage all right the kit here no yeah y-yeah it is counterclockwise when you can get to it open cylinder valve no more than three turns if you are a he-man half one half to half three half one half to half three [Music] you can see when I spray foam the area that was done last week that it'll fill up all those gaps real easy [Music] this is definitely a two-stage process if you need to do three you need to do three some of this area here I might have to do more now I'm done for now where I'm sitting I'm going to close the gun off okay and then I can reposition this is a painstaking process it's all the work is getting in the right position once you're here the job itself is pretty simple [Music] I'm just making sure my rim choices are coded properly all right now we're into the second coat here emphasizing closing up all the gap [Music] remember the directions said not to spray more than two inches a twenty one time this is why this is a multiple code application because they're gonna be places here that are more than two inches just because of the nature of the stone and the way the application goes now the amazing thing is when you're this close to the foam you really feel the heat pouring off that's why they suggest you don't have it too thick when you put it on I can't emphasize this enough read your instructions you can feel how warm this is it's like sitting next to an electric baseboard heater so we're gonna get out of here we're going to let this cure for about ten minutes and then we're going to come back and we'll put on the batt insulation so when you're working from the crawlspace if you're working in a situation like I am a stack stone or anywhere else where you've got a gap that you have to fill one of the ways you can do that is by using this rigid insulation all right now that's not to do the insulating that's to create a backer so that when I'm spray foaming I can have something that holds the insulation spray foam and that way I can can be consistent with my one and a half inch depth you can see that holds the foam really well here we go so we're gonna install our batt insulation now now this is an insulation blanket so it comes with the installations already kind of adhered to the backside of a vapor barrier this is a three foot by 50 foot roll look a billion story in my area also carried a four foot which is good because our minimum code here is four feet from the frost line all right so obviously in unraveling this and that in the crawlspace would be insane it's way too much product so we're gonna open this up well cut down a piece that's manageable and then both go into the hole and tape install it [Music] [Applause] all this backup it's gonna be a little awkward to work with I cut it down but even with that there's a lot of product fuss around with my whole isn't exactly three feet tall everywhere yet so what I'm gonna do let's try to lay this into position [Music] [Music] what I want to do here this metal strap that comes on it is traditionally used for basement installation we want to just cut that out of the way so that we can lift this insulation up and over our wall into our rim joist cavity onto our plate is our example okay so here's our example here so now I have my three put a link it up against the wall I'll sit over top of my room plate [Music] really what I wanted to show was this blanket rep comes down here and it has this plastic extension if you install this on your wall in the basement this is designed to cover the rim joist insulator but in a crawl space we want to do is tape this the plastic vapor barrier you have on your floor to create a continuous vapor barrier [Music] okay wow it's really heating up in there that's spray foam while it's curing and all this insulation it's really warm that's encouraging so on this video we demonstrated I guess we did about 15 linear feet okay and it took us about 15 minutes so you get an idea of how quick this project can move along and how much time and material you gonna have to invest in it definitely worth it because once we're done in here the space down here all we need is one supply of heat run for every 300 square feet of crawl space about a five inch pipe and this will be just as comfortable as it is up in the living space well now our crawlspace is all insulated and sealed up well what started out as a simple demolition ended up to be this massive reveal we've got layer upon layer upon layer upon layer we had four different kinds of flooring we had to pull out of this house I think the house is almost three or four inches taller now it's just amazing as far as I can tell I think there's still a couple of areas where it ties into the house at a bit of a concern but my holes in the wrong spot here and I was getting a little claustrophobic and kind of antsy to move forward so what we're gonna do is we're gonna open a hole and the other side of the crawlspace and the other corner where there's not very much access so we can finish all of that hard-to-reach space from above the floor and that way we can close this up and get moving on the project right away well welcome back to our 1880s edition remodeling we are stripping this bad boy back to find out what the hell they did when they built it and to be able to move forward with some sense of modern construction technology god help us the only thing that we've got here that I know is going to be good are the joists themselves although they are 24 inch on center they are very very hefty and because everything is done tongue and groove back in those days usually on top and underneath there's lots of structure but they've been repealing things back and peeling things back and changing structure and it makes you a little nervous you know so we're gonna do a little exploration today find out what we need to do so that I can sleep at night knowing that no one's ever gonna have this collapse on them one of the things I can point out before we get moving on our tour is the electrical ohoho spaghetti ville here we are we've uncovered all of these junction boxes in the ceiling we have wire from the 40s and the 60s and the 80s and everybody's come in here and trapdoors so that they could reach down and run their wiring it's an absolute screw up nothing here was ever up to code there's never no attempt to do anything safe it kind of makes you think like what the hell are we doing in here with the hydro even on anyway we're gonna just go by the old adage that it's been here since 1880 and it's probably not gonna burn down tonight so everything we do from here on in is try to make it safer before we start closing things up so what you have here is a exterior wall and it's a paper backed wrapped insulation and there's nothing wrong with that um the weird thing is is that two of the walls here have the paperback installation and the other one is more of a really old-fashioned rigid fiberglass insulation so I'm without the paper I'm not sure what came first chicken or the egg here but it's a little strange right away the structure you take notice here I mean this is all coming down this is a really thick plastic it's actually probably there's probably a Super Six quality so I'm thinking the last time the renovations were done here must have been in the late 70s I know they had this thick plastic back then I'm not sure why whoever put this up stopped here because when we pulled the drywall off the drywall went right up to the floor and so y-you would have stopped your vapor barrier here not continued up into the joist cavity I have no idea but that's just one of those signs that says whoever did this eh didn't care B was selling the house or C was just that stupid I'm not sure which you can see up here this is kind of fun this is the the i-95 for mice one two three four five six holes really excited to pull all that old insulation out and have a look at what's going on behind there there is a fire stop in this wall which is amazing all right I mean this gives you a little bit of a structural rigidity oh yeah there's all kinds of dirt in here whew loving it so before we go and pull the rest of this down man there's a sand box in the bottom of that plate before we pull the rest that down we'll have to mask up for the purpose of demonstrating what we're doing here today I'm gonna take my life into my own hands and breathe some dirt here we go now I have five nails nailing this floor joist into a balloon frame two by four I'm just asking myself the question is there any living chance in hell that's gonna be acceptable that means there's no point low at everything here is just sitting on nails generally speaking the shear strength on a nail is so strong that that is actually overkill you'll see that in the old days the cladding on the walls they used to have it on the inside as well and that cladding was part of the structure when you see that you'll find that there's only two nails in the board because it was all resting on the on the Tirra cladding but this if it's holds up like this I'm actually pretty happy with it there's no sense to do any additional blocking I think I'm gonna just grab some some structural screws that are designed to carry a lot of weight just throw in an each choice just for good measure so I can sleep at night all right so I just wanted to point out there a really interesting wiring technique here pull this out of the way you can see what we have here is a 14-2 insulated wire and a handy dandy roofing now the idea here is the notched out at the front of every one of these studs set a wire in there and then use nails to hold it all in place I mean kudos for the effort I really appreciate the thought of making sure the wire didn't get fall out of the little knots there so it wouldn't get pinched by the drywall but dear God what in the hell are you thinking all you had to do was drill a hole folks if you're renovating your house and you don't have the technology available to drill a hole don't do your own wiring please please oh yeah yeah looks like all of the electrical and this entire addition is gonna have to be ripped out and redone again there's nothing in here that's salvageable so we are reeling an existing huge space that had no function at all in this EPS this is a really ancient 1880 home which in our country is pretty ancient but depending where you live you might find that rather new we've got some pretty solid construction here but we're moving a staircase over to this area we're gonna lose the window and just make this space functions a little bit better what we got to do is transfer our line from this wall upstairs we can cut the floor and then we can reframe a new box so that this becomes a stairwell really all in all it's not that tricky of a process we're gonna have to just cut a couple of floor joists throw in some new structural cross points here and then we'll just build the stairs in the space that we have provided so the C system here is real simple make sure your wall as though and then find the point directly a above the plate of that wall where the floor is drill a couple holes he's gonna put a 2x4 on the floor up there screw it down and run the saw down that and then before you know what we're gonna have a great big hole here and then we will build a couple of platforms and start throwing in some sticks hey Matt you're not standing there right anywhere near where I'm cutting a hole thank you [Music] so right now Matthew my son is upstairs with a 2x4 and he's just drawing a marker line on the floor edge of that hole the edge of that hole and then he's gonna plunge his saw in there and then we're gonna rip open most of that floor should be a lot of fun to watch [Music] okay [Music] [Music] so generally tongue room is a nail through the petanque holy cow that's not a whole lot of strength in that can you grab those let's just remove them up and set it down that is awesome more dirt in my face here that was a joint so the next step in creating our stairwell is to get rid of this is it kind of in the way [Music] basically what we need is some temporary structural support we're cleared up the area no one's a lot up there till we're done restructuring so all that's left up there is really the weight of the beam itself most of this flooring ties all the way across from outside to the next choice there's another one dead bugs fall on them that's what we want to do we just cut this 2x4 the floor underneath of us is structured almost identical to the one above so I know that is solid wood in both of these situations yeah this is just temporary you don't need any fasteners for this life is actually kind of simple here yeah so I'm going to show you here is a technique for cutting a floor joist with the skill saw and the way we do this we just hold our little triangle up against the wood and that'll be my straight line and that removes all the dangers I'm cutting the nails because I can line up and then all I got to do this [Music] [Applause] [Music] ah here we go [Music] now now that we got that other way we can train trimmed this all up with a reciprocate her and get a little bit more exact and you know we're not gonna have a massive piece of wood to contend with so now it's a one-man job all right so we got an update for our staircase turns out I was a little bit zealous and my expectation to be able to make the staircase work not a big deal what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna do a trip to the store I'm gonna buy us a little bit more material and we are gonna do a double curved staircase in this space almost like a spiral staircase going upstairs it's gonna be awesome so we're just going to come back and once we got our materials we're gonna assemble it all and then we'll do a quick time lapse to show you the whole building process you're going to be able enjoy this a lot [Music] there you go well welcome back to my 1880s farmhouse renovation project dear Lord we are biting off a big chunk here last time we had during the house we were showing you we were doing some demolition and we're looking at rebuilding our stairs and of course it's typical when you're in this kind of situation the plan change so we are redesigning our whole approach for this higher part of the room we're changing our staircase it's going to be a staircase that's two different landings of the turns on it just to fit it into a tighter corner we don't want to lose the access to that from the door and move it just quite yet because that involves a whole lot of exterior work so we're going to modify the staircase so that we can have it in a tighter space and keep the entranceway the way it is from now and then we'll get to this one another video another day we've got a big cedar hedge my propane tanks are out here there's just too much going on and I got to be able to finish something before I move to the next project so we are gonna frame the inside of the wall so that when it's time to put in that new door all the structural work is done in advance and that is a great tip now I just wanted to give you an idea of what I'm dealing with because it's a little bizarre this is the original exterior of the original part of the house and we're in the addition the addition was also done probably early 1900s okay just by the look of the layout this is still balloon construction it's 24 inch on center it's a little ridiculous it's one and a half inch softwood lumber tongue-and-groove floors so they didn't have a change in the design style or the construction technique but you can see that the way that renovations have been done in this home since it was built was very much to just leave everything intact and build onto it and you see this all the time so there's my exterior wall I've got interior framing on this side of the wall on the other side of the wall I've got another level of into your framing over there which leaves a huge cavity in behind there so every time there's a critter that makes its way into this house which is all the time because the foundation isn't sealed up yet there's a virtual highway running around my building here that we have to maintain all the critters with it's unbelievable I've got I've got a evidence of animals in there I've got acorns I've got remains it's just nuts so let's just talk about real quick how to think of this space is finished so you can go back to the beginning and then move forward with that's not gonna have you doing things over and over and over again first of all we have challenges because all of our exterior walls are not straight they're all bowed under the weight of the building and all of the floor joists are are not sitting on anything they're all just nailed into the side okay so there's lots of sag there's lots of movement there's lots of pressure so I don't have anything plumb in the entire building so when you're thinking of renovating an old space you might want to do what I'm doing here which is one some aspects of this room I'm not making any smaller I'm actually going to laminate a two by fours on the side and add a little bit more insulation then a vapor barrier and I'll follow a little bit of that curve it's not really a big issue if it's just drywall and and that's it not an issue but in some areas like in my bathroom I've actually reframed the entire wall inside the old wall because my foundation is so thick I'm trying to bring my insulation level in line with what it is in the crawl space so that gets me a lot closer it also allows me to plumb it off so I have a nice plumb wall everything in that bathroom is going to be needing plumb and square so I'm plumbed in a brand new wall it allows me to put my plate for that wall right underneath all the floor joists package so that way I can actually transfer load directly right down to the floor and again I can seal it all up and know that I've got it plumb I've got no air moving I've got proper level of insulation and the other thing I get to do is I don't have to remove all the old crap full of all dust and mice droppings and everything else they're just gonna build right across in front of it and forget I even exist it's a bit of a cheat but since I'm adding enough insulation on a brand new frame wall I don't have to remove the old stuff in order to put in the new stuff and that made it real quick and simple well here we are in the bathroom this is kind of fun because what we have here is a more than standard sized bathroom it's five feet and seven inches I'm working on my own house here so I've pulled my own electrical permit I'm gonna update my wiring from just a plug in a switch to all the modern amenities so before we get started let's talk about the legal implications of wiring in your own home if you do wiring and it doesn't get inspected and it's not on a permit in a lot of cases if you run into any kind of issue your insurance company is gonna run for the hills on you so disclaimer if you own your own home most jurisdictions let you do your own electrical work in your house depending where you live you might have to call in for a permit so double check in your jurisdiction before you go ahead and do anything like this because this stuff this stuff is dangerous and if you don't do it right you could run into a serious problem now in this particular case I'm working in my own home I did call the ESA which in our area is called the Electrical Safety Authority you put out a few bucks and you get a permit in a lot of cases is based on how many electrical fixtures you're doing so it's a real simple application process it's less than $100 in most cases and it's definitely worth your time and energy to do it if you're comfortable doing this sort of thing but what I'm gonna do is I'm just gonna run my feeds get my rough-in passed and then I'm gonna actually hire an electrician to come in and wire to the panel my panel is a little outdated and it's a little outside of my toolbox now knowing how to do your proper electrical roughing will save you a ton of money and these staples on the package will tell you what wires that they're rated for so this is good for a 14 - and a 14 3 wire which is what we have which is lovely and generally speaking our Building Code requires us to have a staple every five feet and if you don't use staples you'll see how flimsy this stuff can be we've seen it all the time we pull a wire wall off and we've got a compressed wire compressed wires are dangerous because they heat up and they can cause a fire which is why when you're putting in your staple you don't bury these little tabs into the wood and that leaves tons of room for the wire to move around so it's not under any kind of compression now in this particular bathroom I'm gonna be putting a strapping on the ceiling so I'm gonna put 1 by 3's every 16 inches or so so I have a channel that I can actually run on like electrical right up against my floor joist and then wrap underneath and come across now in order to bring this wire down we do have to go through the plate drove my auger been here here's my box and this is a two gang box means I can have two different functions on it we're gonna have one for our lights and we're gonna have one for the fan the other power for the thermostats gonna be in a separate box put that on in just a minute these boxes come in two different kinds this is called a welded box which means the sides don't disengage it's a different kind note that's called the ganga box and the sides actually have little screw locks you can disengage them and you can build on and add them longer and longer and screw them back together those are really common in a lot of commercial applications simply because people are always changing their mind about their electrical needs that drop ceilings it's really easy to make adjustments but in a residential environment if you buy the welded box just save you some time and energy then you put that on your stud and you screw it in you're good to go if this is a gang a box with screws you then have to go grab some 2x4 and screw that on to the other side of the box according to code and that has to be attached to the drywall and that makes sure that this side plate never comes disengage from that box it's a lot of extra work and you're only saving 20 cents so I say get the welded box make your life easy one more quick mention before we get going any further because you're in a bathroom we have to watch the golden rule that is 36 your electrical switches have to be 36 inches from any contact with water all right that's very brutal so just in case you're wondering my switch is gonna be exactly 37 inches from the edge of my glass which is more than enough box now you can just push that into the software lumber like that mount this thing so don't ever move so now I've got power to my box and this one feet is gonna take care of the lights and the fan I drill a nice one-inch hole so I can run two wires from every one of those holes so now we're going to run our pot lights but I need a second hole because I don't want to run more than two wires in the hall put a bit of a curve into this bad boy and then it's a lot easier to grab when it gets up there [Music] pinch quarter turn slide off and what you do is you pinch it on the hole that corresponds with the wire it's almost kind of way too easy right so you hit the 1414 wire and you don't damage the copper up through our hole for the light snow now what we do is with these we're actually going to tie them together a couple of twists alright put them up in the ceiling here so that they don't fall out now trust me when you've drilled your hole it's real easy to pull this out and then identify these wires and then pull them all down well here we are we've got our electrical rough in all completed now time to call the city inspector get them a heads up so he can come by for a quick inspection make sure I've done everything that makes him happy and that I can close the walls and he'll actually sign off on a piece of paper giving me permission to close which is awesome in the meantime I'm gonna run my exhaust for my fan and we're gonna work on a part of the other aspects of this house and try to get the rest of this thing ready to close as well whoo so much to do time for me to get back to work Wow I know it looks like we got a lot to do but the reality is this we've got some insulation to do a little bit of framing we've got a cutter hole for our door and install that sucker a little bit of wiring we're basically ready to close up and finish the space can't wait to get it done so here's the problem with this kind of house construction it's typical balloon construction which means that underneath here we've got a stack stone wall and we have these boards here traveling straight through down onto that stone and that's the point load okay that carries all the weight of the house these floorboards here is the subfloor and flooring all in one what they do is they cut around these and slide it in kinda like finishing a deck now the outer side of the house they've got these wonderful barn boards is solid one inch thick and they clad the entire home and these boards actually transfer all the weight and keep the house from sliding left and right so this is a stability it's part of the structure so remember when you're working on these old houses that stuff is structure if you're gonna remove it understand what you're doing and how you're gonna replace the structural component but here's what happens we have a stone wall downstairs underneath the crawlspace which means we don't have a thermal break so we have cold air and hot air mixing coming up through these gaps hitting this wood gets incredibly soft what happens is mice from outside feel the heat coming out and they start eating and they eat a hole right through now that's the vinyl siding I'm touching on the other side and these holes are all over the place so what we're doing is before we worry about our thermal brick we need a rodent break so what we have to do is take this blocking stick it in here and create some nice solid dry wood order business [Music] let's bust into here Wow that is actually a really good review I'm gonna pull this little piece off here all right okay kids here we go this is nasty so this whole gap because it's right to the outside stuffing a little bit of this crap and there isn't gonna work as soon as you stuff it you compress it and the insulation only works when it's not compressed so the way we fill this gap is right here ah and then you can just shove this in here and have perfect control and then you just spray and you start in nice and deep and this will seal up the old and the new two together when in doubt just max it out so then what we have to do because these cavities and balloon construction are not the same size as insulation we're gonna have to cut it install everything in horizontal all right and that's fine just a little bit extra work not a real big deal if you're wondering what the plan is here because that's only our 13 we're going to frame inside of this wall and instantly it again before we put in our vapor barrier when you're insulating an old house there's no such thing as the best way to do it you've got to do it well and you want to limit the amount of air transfer and heat loss and try to control your moisture but there's no perfect way to do it because the building techniques themselves are actually flood so it's kind of like we're gonna do a great job and somewhere in the next hundred years someone's gonna have to come back and do a lot of rebuilding but if you're not in the budget to reframe your whole house and this is the way to go [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] they're really easy to tape together with your vape repair so you get a vapor and an air barrier the back of the box has already got a gasket on it so when you're gonna use it it's one of these just you push your wire through stick your wire through and it leaves it nice and sealed behind it well three-way switches are not new in the world and they're required by code in some situations but in a lot of cases if you're renovating your house you're getting open-concept that's the thing nowadays so whenever you have an open concept you're gonna reduce the opportunities for light switches and you're gonna make it rather awkward to have to go turn the lights on and off unless you want a three-way switch what you need is to use a 14-3 wire and that is going to have a black and a white and a red so what I have here is a box it is a plastic box because it's going on the outside of a house and in our area we use vapor barrier on the inside of our homes and so plastic boxes are really convenient because you can tape your box to the plastic what we're gonna do is we're gonna run our three way three wire from that box to the other location now in our area Electrical Code is required we want to have a staple within a few inches of the box and then we need a staple or a hole in a stud every 5 feet [Music] give yourself extra because you can't splice it together if it's too short and this 14 3 wire has generally only used for these three way switch situations all right so the way this works this is the 14 2 wire here and turning into the bottom of the box and this is our 14 3 leaving our first box traveling over to our other box and the wire forward and then it'll just push out of the way for you and this wire is going to travel up to the first light location that's in our ceiling so it's going for the light fixture here we go now here's just a quick recap you have your set power supply to your first location which is a 2 wire you bring a 3 wire which is the black the white end the red from one box to the other side of the room to your other box and then you take your supply line from that box to your fixtures ok nice and simple if you wire it that way when you go to put on your switches there's three ways switch switches are gonna have little black screws and on those black screws you put the black wire and everything will work out really easy for you and when you call your inspector he sees you've missed a staple he may not be very kind about it and just fill it and say call me when you're done all right there we go that's the three-way switch done so remember when you're doing this kind of work always drill a nice big hole use your staples get everything done properly call for an inspection okay remember nowadays most insurance companies if you have a fire related to work you've done in your own home and you haven't called for an inspection you will not be covered on your insurance so do not fool around with this all right welcome to my new front door this is a balloon construction house we're not exactly sure what we're gonna find beneath the siding because this house of course is one hundred and thirty forty years olds and is layer on layer so our first job here today is to pull all this siding off and exposed back to the original siding of this house which we hope is still there and hope we're still in decent shape and then we'll see what we have to do to go from there yeah man let's do this [Music] I'll go this way you know pull it pull it out of the trap there you go pull it across what you'll see is that way this is installed is it has a locking locking here on the bottom so you'll lock it in and then you nail the top so you get the whole two rows there you need to sleep with your shovel and pop the nails out wow this is some old stuff nasty okay this entire house was sided with an insulation exterior layer at it for our value yeah but the reason the house is cold is because the bottom foot and a half zero resolution value at all all right it's all exposed it's all above great this time just frozen be careful you don't buy a product to solve a problem that isn't gonna do the job hi yeah this would have cost a fortune I guess that's how you that's how you do it somewhere in the middle ish [Music] Oh stepped on the nail kidding ah but all that dust is protein Oh watch your face no you watch my face the locking system on the vital works pretty good so we're just using a couple of shovels to pull it is uh well this is where it gets exciting not too aggressive at the bottom here oh yeah here look at this see oh that's rotten oh yeah it's not even at the bottom yet this is the effective snow load in the moisture bringing up oh they got in behind there they couldn't get any further they made a tunnel going down there's a hole hope you fun to get there it's came in four by eight panels and they didn't do a seam tape so even with the completely exterior wrap if they just tape the tape the hedges they want to got rid of all that air like Oh air leak I'm expecting to find gold places where the mice have been able to travel freely in behind the vinyl and then they're gonna be hunting around looking for heat loss chasing out places wherever there's heat loss you have condensation we have condensation you're rotting wood now none of these my Center went to school to learn that but they instinctively and they know if they follow the heat they'll find a way into the building oh I got a nice hole right here yeah I know I had to block that one from the inside nasty [Music] can't get the other part from the other side hey let's reveal the original part of the house you again don't go cutting up okay oh this is exciting look at a hole over there ready for this there's your rigid foam no rabbit could walk in there you can see here we're it we're almost April and even in our climate I mean the grass is showing but there's still ice next to the building so our ice in the wintertime usually gets up to about here so what you're looking at is for the first hundred years of this house this original exterior cladding was covered in snow and ice and that is the stack stone and mortar joint obviously it failed somebody came along and repaired it dug a hole putting this exterior phone but that didn't stop the mice because they you saw the hole here going into the inside of the house right now we've we've since then we've closed up the hole from the other side spray foamed all that good stuff but if we don't get around the exterior of the house and close up all the holes like this sooner or later I'm just gonna eat their way back in we're gonna contract out to a milk and we'll get some blaster rows have to be replaced so we'll contract out to a local milk we'll save a couple of the boards for the profile and we'll have a few new blanks ripped down and we can reinstall the wood brilliant the rest of the wall is in this kind of condition we can just sand and fill and paint it [Music] so as you can see they're originally with the door here unbeknownst to us so that changes our approach a little bit so originally I think our doors gonna go somewhere around here and our plan was to remove these boards where our door was going so that we can install our door with our brick mold flush up against the board so we're gonna continue with that I just gonna drill my four corners from the inside and then I'll outline it and then we're gonna throw on our laser line and we'll remove all the panels here I think believe the rest is poured on today just for good measure but we're definitely gonna end up removing all of it putting new siding [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] now we have a door I don't think there's any wood on there that we can save a that we want to save no we're not gonna try to recent salvage any of this what does this weigh about 150 pounds jeez Louise let's go yeah that's where that works one two three [Music] this is just magic stuff right if you haven't seen this before I'd be surprised what I'm doing is I'm gonna create an area of blue skin inside the building then we've got a membrane you're gonna see what I'm doing is I'm creating an environment here where the water gets in its gonna run down it's gonna hit this plate and instead of coming into the building because the house is sloped and it's sloped in it's gonna come into this area here and then be directed out so the other thing you want to do is you want to seal up the side of your house this stuff actually stretches around pretty good so now the house is sealed up yeah when we put the door and we're gonna use these cedar shims pull it every six inches that'll give it some strength we'll foam that gap we're good to go so I'm a little spoiled right here today cuz I got my helper doing all the heavy lifting but if you don't have somebody to help you I'm going to show you a little secret what we do is we attach the two-by-four near the top of the door across the frame you open remember the jamb size on your door is not thicker than your whole wall package so you can actually set it in place and then we can put another 2x4 across in front that allows you to manipulate the door and get it level in square and shim then everything just the way you want it and then you can remove once you've got to screw it and then you can remove all this extra framing brilliant reliever so really all you have to do here set up your level let's have a look yeah that looks pretty good this is the benefit of having a laser you can use a level to create plumb as much as you like oh you're installing a door and you have a laser you are guaranteed perfect result every single time you want to get these things in here but every 4 inches so when anybody steps on this there's a direct load transfer from this plate into the shim to the wood and that will keep everything from breaking apart than opening up gaps over time that will cause nasty drafts [Applause] [Music] [Music] yours couldn't crazy that's awesome okay so last part is the filming and of course I love my gun this is the kind of thing that every homeowner DIY or should use and the trigger on this gun gives you an incredible amount of control this gets rid of the air gap in the draft [Music] [Applause] so the only thing left to do with this door is to install all the hardware and line up that hole there okay safety know when drilling through metal always wear safety glasses even if she can't see what you're doing smokey yeah okay let's plate facing the door so that closes and it will shut a deadbolt we drill their own hole and we want to hammer it with something boom boom with something hey that's what tape measures are for perfect okay [Music] I'll we back it up and burn it in before you drive it through that'll keep from splitting very nice oh let's double check one more time nice very nice okay one two three four five six waiting for a green light and there it is haha we got it burn and that is that so there we go simple that was about as simple as it gets finally something that worked the first time okay well sweet now that the door is installed just matter waiting for electrical inspection next time we come back this room's gonna be finished Wow is it going to be amazing [Music] here we are got a finished face finally listen guys for everybody who quickly went to the end of this video to see what this looks like here it is front entrance this house has never looked so good home we're just gonna go real quick through a couple of the details because if you're planning a project like this at home knowing the end from the beginning is key first of all we have a lot of pot lights in the ceiling we always put our pot lights on dimmer control different time of the day different lighting requirement to set the right mood we also have really high baseboards let's take a look at this over here we've got a five and a half inch baseboard it's a solid wood this is not MDF okay it expands and contracts much better than MDF which only tends to expand it never tends to really contract properly it also comes with a great shoe mold which covers all the details in this 140 year old floor now for the stairs we decided to go with a carpet with a solid white kickback you'll notice no riser on the outside it's a very ultra modern look and I think it really complements the home looks amazing going up to the loft which will be in another video but we do have a luxury vinyl plank flooring and of course all the build outs and window trims nice and simple right listen if you love this kind of information I know it's been a lot of information in this video we covered almost every aspect of renovation or an old house so you can make it look brand new subscribe click the like button bell for notifications okay this journeys gonna be amazing this is the first step on our 1880s farmhouse we're gonna be covering every aspect of the home inside and out even the roof so don't miss the ride click over here to subscribe and join our channel ok and then you can click over here and take a look at the playlist we've got awesome content with all kinds of different innovations to help you get inspired for your next renovation

Channel: REALITY RENOVISION

Views: 518,924

Keywords: jeff thorman, home renovision, home renovision diy, renovation reality show, remodel reality show, renovation show, home reno, home remodel, renovating old houses, how to renovate an old house, century home renovation, century home remodel, how to install a front door, how to wire your home, home demo, home demolition, how to insulate walls, crawlspace insulation, moving staircase, farmhouse renovation, wiring diy

Id: -EvrvzvsXHs

Length: 74min 21sec (4461 seconds)

Published: Fri May 29 2020