Hello all, boy do I have work ahead of me.

Hello all.

As you can imagine, I have joined this forum because I have started a reno job on my house and I am seeking help.

But, I don't need help yet (well, actually I do)...I have joined this forum in anticipation of all the work ahead of me. I figure I have about 2 years of renovations as I take my early-1990's (or late 1980s) house and modernize it. The goal is either to make the house into something we love again, or make it catchy enough to the eye that someone will be willing to buy it. The house is large enough that my understanding is that the style of the house isn't going to affect its price too much, but it could alter someone's willingness to buy it. Anyhow....

I have laid out a plan to take a month to reno each room. That said, a couple of bathrooms might only take two weeks, while the kitchen/dinningroom area has gotten 3 months alotted to it. Still, with that time budget it will still take 2 years. By that time, our oldest kid will be in college (about the right time to downsize).

As for my skill-set, all I have in my favour is the belief that anything can be fixed, and a fairly good natural aptitude for manual skills. Back in college I had to renovate a dumpy little house (the most we could afford) with two bedrooms into something a family of five could live in. By the time I was done, I had pretty much done all the electrical, plumbing, bathroom installation (even jackhammered up the basement floor to make a bathroom in the basement), roofing, siding, windows, doors, hardwood floors, complete kitchen reno etc etc. This was all before the internet. However, this time around, I have to make all these reno jobs look professional. Back then, I am pretty certain some shabby jobs would have escaped my realization.

On a cosmetic level, this current house's most "make it or break it" reno job will be the cabinets in the kitchen. I have started practicing the stain-and-varnish removal on the laundry room cabinets, which are identical to the kitchen cabinets. Right off the bat I have stumbled on a successful protocol, and now I have one beautiful and smooth, completely unfinished, laundry room cabinet door. But, this wasn't going to be my first job. With about 50 cabinet doors to do in total, I am thinking of waiting until spring/summer for that (for ventilation reasons). So, my first question is: in a dry and cold environment (Alberta, Canada), is there some time frame between stripping a door and getting new finish on it? Could I strip these doors slowly over the winter and then start the stain process in the spring summer?

On a more technical basis, the biggest job will be replacing the grey-pex line plumbing. This is all embedded in the walls and ceilings. The ceilings in this house are really intricate in design. In fact, the area of town is somewhat famous because a real artisan-of-a-ceiling-guy used to live in this region and did all the ceilings in all the fancy houses. Now he is dead. So, these ceilings are irreplaceable. I don't think there is any branch points in all this pex. I think there is a 1-to-1 ratio between stems leaving the boiler in the basement and all the water outlets in the house. So, do you all think I should be able to connect new white-pex to the old grey-pex at the water outlets and then shimmy the lines out of the walls so that I can pull the white-pex into the boiler room without disturbing the walls/floors/ceilings? Or is that an obvious disaster waiting to happen?

Well, that's my long winded introduction. Please to be here. Thanks for any responses this generates; they are warmly welcomed and greatly appreciated. But, time for me to go to bed so I can go to real-work in the morning to pay for this money pit.

Good night

John

to House Repair Talk!

Remember, pictures are worth a thousand words.

Hi John and to the forum.

I have done a few homes like this while living in them. Getting your projects lined up properly is key. You want to get the dirty work out of the way as close to the same time as you can or you will be cleaning and re-cleaning for the whole 2 years.

Pulling PEX with PEX i have never seen done and like most things it will "depend". What's wrong with what is there now?

I would suggest starting a thread in the right section for each of your projects and maybe even one master thread showing all your work as you go. you could also add that to the fixer upper thread I started as it is open to all.

Looking forward to helping where i can, I know the rest of the folks will do the same.

What you have for plumbing now Is likely Quest not Pex.
And yes they make Quest to Pex connectors in at least three different styles.

I will indeed startup some threads in the appropriate sections and post pictures to give people a better feel for the situations.

As for the plumbing...maybe its not gray pex, but I thought it was. I will have to look into that further. At one point a pipe did fail in the upstairs bathroom like the gray-pex would be predicted to do. It caused some staining to the ceiling on the main level (which nearly gave me a heart attack LOL). Copious painting of that ceiling was able to fully conceal this though. I was away at the time it failed so my wife had a plumber fix it, but I think he merely spliced some white pex to the gray plastic pipes.

At one point a year or so ago I decided to attempt the gray pipe replacement, but then got side-tracked by life. I was able to splice white pex directly to this gray piping with standard metal barbed connectors and crimp-bands. They seemed to have matching diameters, wall thicknesses etc. I was able to shimmy the new lines through the wall spaces by attaching white to gray and pulling gray pipes out. But this was merely from the boiler room to the laundry room (which sits immediately above the boiler room). So, there was minimal wallspace to traverse between the two rooms.