Demolition

The first step was demolition.

The first step of demolition was the walls that created the storage closet.  The room is roughly 23' by 26'.  A fairly large space,  and I was concerned over whether or not the storage closet walls were load bearing. A load bearing wall is used to support the structure of the building,  and thus if removed, greatly effects the soundness of the structure.  Load bearing walls are typically exterior walls; and interior walls under or above major structural components.

In a room this size it wold be possible that interior walls would be load bearing.  Adding further cause for concern, is that the wall operates through the peak of the room.  Before demolishing the walls,  I had to determine the likelihood of the wall being load bearing.  If load bearing,  then a portion of the wall and/or braces would need to be constructed.

1. Found blueprints:  though not overly helpful,  the walls here didn't appear to be in the orginal design of the house. 
2. Support Beam:  Luckily for us,  the room below is the garage,  and the floor trusses and support beams are exposed.  Measuring the location of the support beam,  and the above walls would give us a pretty strong indication that the walls were not load bearing.  Working under the assumption that a load bearing wall on the second floor would need to be directly above a load bearing wall or other support structure on the first floor.  The idea, of course, is that you can't have a wall supporting the weight of the house,  if the wall it self isn't supported.  In our case the support beam and the storage room walls about a foot off.  
3. Fairly confident from the first two steps that the walls weren't load bearing,  I began removing the drywall.  After exposing the studs,  it became apparent the walls had been built out of scrap wood, most of the studs didn't even extend from floor to ceiling, but were rather two boards nailed together. this was another strong indication that the wall was not load bearing.  I read on a contractors forum that the best way to determine if a wall was load bearing,  was to saw into a stud,  and the the blade started binding, you had a load bearing wall.  While this contractor had a poor sense of humor, (i.e. I hope no one took his advise at face value), the concept does hold some weight.  If the wall were weight bearing,  then it would be plausible that the weight from above would be "pushing" down on the studs.   Although you shouldn't go cutting into studs as a way to determine if a wall is load bearing,  seeing that most of the studs were scrap wood,  not even reaching from the top to the bottom give me a pretty good indication the walls were not weight bearing.  

Demolition of dry wall can be fun.  I let Zach do some demolition,  but one of my goals, (to make carrying drywall to the dump easier) was to try and get large sections of drywall out at one time. This required finding and removing the drywall nails,  then pulling the section of drywall off the wall.   The prior dry-walling had been done so poorly,  but of the nails could be found rather quickly and pulled out using a crowbar and a hammer.

Demolition of the studs was another story all together.  While the previous builder used entirely too many nails for the drywall,  his use of nails on the framing was hyper accelerated.  The builder must have operated under a theory (when in doubt,  use 5 more nails).   Not only were there too many nails, but there were nails of many different types.  With some of the nails rusted,  and impossible to pull out once the heads were broke.  This made the demolition both a careful process of trying to pull nails,  and a brute force process of ripping the studs from the floor and ceiling.

Carpet:  The carpet was low pile and glued directly to the 3/4 sub-floor that separated the room from the garage below.  After removing a couple of sections of carpet,  we quickly realized the glue was still a good adhesive as it stuck to our shoes,  clothes,  and anything else that we sat on it. I am sure the heat of summer helped,  since the floor has been much less sticky once it cooled down.   We decided to only rip out sections of carpet when needed.  I did try sanding the glue to make it less sticky,  but the best process was to spread a layer of saw dust.

Here is a picture of Tyler helping to rip out some carpet.

This picture was taken upon entering the room.  As you can see you clearly enter the room where the ceiling is lower,  you then must navigate past the storage area.  before entering an area of the room where you can stand up straight.  

This picture shows the storage area and how it dominates the room.  The wall of the storage room is basically in the middle of the room;  while the other wall is just past the height of the room.  In the picture you can see that the entrance is even forced even further towards the lower ceiling.  (the entrance is just off camera,  to the right of the back wall.) 

Here is an interior shot of the storage room.  This was a good sized storage room,  and held a lot of stuff.  However,  the square shape of the room, and the placement of the storage closet entry against one wall work against the possibility of using the space efficiently.  To use the space effectively,  we had to keep enough floor space open to allow access to the room; even the back wall of the room. Also, the door placement against the wall,  reduced the amount of space that could be used against that wall, because the area had to be kept clear to support ingress and egress from the room.

In the first post,  I wrote about "usable space".  I would define the usable space as:  those sections of the room where I can stand comfortably.  4' from the back wall, the ceiling is only 5' tall.  With Shannon at 5'10" and me at 6'2", I consider the areas with ceiling under 5' unusable.

While the children can play in those areas without,  I can only operate in those areas,  whilst playing on the ground.  Further,  the placement of the storage room,  takes up a sizable portion of this "usable space."  As mentioned above,  most of the "usable space" in the storage room couldn't be used for storage,  it had to be kept clear to move in and out of the storage room.





Solution:  Media Room!

Playroom Renovations Post 1

With the arrival of our new housemate,  it is time to re-finish off the room above the garage.  This space will eventually add over 500sqft of usable space to the house.  Currently the space is mostly unusable for the following reasons:

1. Poor ventilation makes the room hot in the summer with stagnant air.  
2. Poor use of the existing space with an over sized stoarge closet dominating the center of the room.
3. No heating,  making the room virtually unusable during Seattle's long and below room temperature winters.  
4. Cheap flooring that provided little padding and squeaky steps.  
5. The room is primarily an attic space with sloped ceilings.   The sloped ceiling make the navigation in the room difficult.  With the aforementioned storage closet that dominates the middle of the room,  entry to the room is made where the ceiling is lower.   The door jam at the entry is even lower,  almost guaranteeing that Shannon or I will hit our heads on entering or exiting the room.     

The renovations will accomplish the following

1. Storage space will be moved from center of the room to the lower ceiling edges.  The actual floor space used for the storage will not be reduced significantly and due to a better configuration of the storage space, the areas will be more efficiently used.  This should increase the usable storage space.  Using the edges of the room for the storage space,  will also limit the usable areas of the room to those places where Shannon and I can operate safely without damaging our heads (+1).  
2. Increased ventilation.  By addressing the poor ventilation the room will be more comfortable on hot days.  The ventilation will also be designed to allow the electronic equipment to operate at a lower temperature.  Existing windows will be replaced to increase airflow when required.  
3. Heating will be added as necessary to make the room more usable during the colder months; At this point, baseboard heaters in the main area should be sufficient to keep the room adequately heated.  
4. When removing the existing carpet,  sub floor will be re-secured to existing floor joists.  This should damper movement along the existing floor brads and reduce "squeaking"