Starting on the Non-Structural Framing

Welcome back to our home renovation and remodel project. Last time was a little more disjointed because we were trying to figure out some things to do as we are waiting for the electricians to get in here and do what they need to do. But today, they are here! We have Chris and Chris from Signature Electric rerouting and moving a lot of the electrical things that re in our way. If you followed my shop move, they were the ones who wired my shop, and I thought they did a really nice job on it. To help give some context of where things are at with the remodel, I thought first take a walk around and talk about where we are with the structural things. 

So, on this wall, we will have a header coming in here, and this will be the pathway from the great room into the new dining room. So there are some electrical wires that will need to be moved before we can do that. After those lines are rerouted, then we can put our floor down, get it all glued in place, and get that finally done. 

On this wall, we’ve got our beam in here already, and they’re moving the electrical out of our way, but this did not align quite where we were expecting. It’s actually a little bit further into the hallway down below the wall, meaning that there’s nothing for this post to bear on down there. We’ll get the structural engineer to look at it, but we will probably put in an LVL that’s about seven feet long, just to have one big mass in there, and then it’ll land on either side of the opening. 

We have two openings here; the one on the right was the old entry into the great room, and that will get closed up. The other opening is the new entry, and we’ve got our LVLs in there already, and we just have to put hangers on there. 

This area is the breakfast nook, so we will be putting a table here, and chairs will go on the outside. And then the archway into the sunroom is next to that breakfast nook area. Both of these are non-structural, but we have been playing around with framing them out as well. 

We are trying to get our layout down so that we have all of our casings and trim figured out, and this is a very trim intensive job. We will end up with a split casing in here, so it’ll be two members, an inch space, two more members, and then the casing on the finish will be double beaded. 

So it’ll be beaded on the outside and then beaded on the inside, and that’ll be the center of our switches.

But today is going to be, unfortunately like last time, all over the place. Donavan’s going to finish up the opening to the great room, get those hangers in, and get the temp wall down. 

Meanwhile, I will head downstairs and continue prepping the cavity for another beam. If you look up into the cavity here, this drill bit indicates the side of that post upstairs, and there is nothing here for that to bear on. So we need to get something that spans from our foundation through all of this cavity and over to where the other post is located upstairs. So I’m cleaning up that area right now, removing some spray foam and getting some nails out of the way.

Donavan just cut the last bit of subfloor, so that’s going to be ready to go in once the guys are done with their wire rerouting. 

Next up, we’re going to do some framing of the pantry… 

And the archway into the sunroom.

So that’s going to be the progress for today. Another one of those oddball days where things don’t go as perfectly as planned. Here in the sunroom area, we started to put in these faux beams, which divide up the space and differentiate things. So this one will separate the breakfast/informal dining area from the sun room, and then there will be another one which will separate the breakfast nook from the kitchen area. 

As far as this situation here goes, our structural engineer is on vacation this week, so next week he’ll get back to us with a beam size to go down there into the basement to carry both sides. As you can see, Chris and Chris got a lot of stuff cleaned out from these walls. This spot is completed cleaned up and everything is rerouted and gone out of here.

Over here, most of this stuff is out of the way. We have a few things which are going to stay for now because the kitchen we’re using is on the other side of this wall. So some of this has to stay until this wall completed goes away. Overall, some pretty good electrical progress! 

So that’s going to do it for this one. Let me know if you have any questions. Otherwise, happy woodworking!