Name: Seth & Allison
Type of Project: Kitchen/Family Room renovation
Location: Ventura, California
Type of building: Mid-Century, multi-level, single family home
The Renovation Diaries are a new collaboration with our community in which we feature your step by step renovation progress and provide monetary support towards getting it done in style.
With the demolition finished, this place looked like a blank slate. Happily, we received our permits back from the city a few weeks earlier than they’d originally forecasted and were able to start right in with framing.
After removing the existing linoleum kitchen floor, we discovered some structural issues with the floor joists and ended up having to reinforce each one using new 2x10s and then replace the entire subfloor of the kitchen. Also shown: new parallam beam and window framing.
Left: refrigerator nook framing; right: dual wall oven nook framing. Also shown: new kitchen subfloor.
Looking into family room and kitchen from the front door. Foreground: pony wall framed out, which surrounds the entrance to the staircase leading to the basement floor.
This week our electrical contractor finished roughing in the entire house to comply with Title 24 energy efficiency. We also had to upgrade the panel since the previous panel was original to the house and not even grounded. We also added a mixture of LED, low voltage and incandescent can lights throughout the interior and exterior of the house. Since our plumbing fixture locations changed, we also had to have plumbers rerun new water supply lines, gas supply lines and drain lines to accommodate our new kitchen layout.
Looking into the kitchen from the family room.
Estimated time for project: 8 weeks/two monthsTime remaining: 5 weeks
(Images & Diary Text: Alllison Gibson)
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Well done, it looks like everything is going well. Looking forward to you having a kitchen - I suspect you more than I :-)
Looking great!
Looks like it is going well. Hang in there.
I enjoy following this renovation and resonate with most of the design decisions, however I fail to understand the choice to leave the parallam beam exposed. If warmth is desired I would wrap it in reclaimed wood and make it look like an actual beam.
@michow: Parallam beams aren't cheap and exposing the true building materials is consistent with their design concept. I think a beam clad in reclaimed wood would look out of place in a house like this and would make more sense in an older home that would have been built from dimensional lumber.
@ARCHIcritique: You might be right about reclaimed wood thing, however their inspiration pages do not show any exposed building materials, other than concrete floors, which I love. I personally just don't like the aesthetics of an exposed beam of this type. It reminds me of the extensive use of plywood as finish materials in some homes, which I personally think looks cheap in some (most) instances. I respect their choice; it is their house after all! I will wait until the end and see how the finished product looks. :-)
It looks great! Are you cleaning the space before you take your picture? It seems that there is no dust.
@michow and @ARCHIcritique They are probably going to recover the beam with gypse?