At day’s end, I had completely removed the drywall, cleaned out the empties, and was ready to frame things in and cover up my work. The first thing that needed to be done was to insulate that back wall. Still can’t get over that it wasn’t done when the house was built. As Jay mentioned in his comment, the building inspector was pretty lax here! The handles were removed from the glass doors and the gas was shut off tight. There is an outlet in the left hand niche that needed to be extended to the new wall. That was turned into a junction box and a pigtail was brought out to accomplish that. We’re going to install a HDTV antennae outside so a coaxial cable was run at the lower corner for that. We’ve cut our cable a while back and use Roku for our TV. Currently an indoor antennae allows us to get all of the local channels but it’s not the best. An outdoor mounted one will fill the bill and satisfy our viewing habits.
Next up was framing the openings. These pictures show the now insulated fireplace hole. The flue was stuffed with as much insulation as I could get up it.
One area that was a bit of a problem is below the firebox. There wasn’t enough depth for any wood but I was able to run a half dozen big, sheet metal screws through the OSB board and into the bottom of the firebox. All that remained was to add some framing members to the left hand, upper niche and the wall is complete. I’ll make our own base board with a channel to conceal the coaxial cable needed for the antenna and have one of Mike’s crew come in to apply the drywall, tape, and texture it. We’ll paint the walls and probably replace the lighting and the next project on my list will be a new media center. It’ll be nice to get into the furniture work again rather than construction!
A modern, smooth wall — good bye 90’s!
Woodworks by John 