Kailua Cottage Renovation: Steps along the way

Renovating the cottage in Kailua turned out to be a pretty big job. There were a handful of big jobs -- like replacing the roof, making structural repairs, interior and exterior painting, installing new floors, tiling in the bathroom, renovating the kitchen, installing lights, fixtures, and appliances, and so on. These big jobs gave us plenty of work to do, but that was just the tip of the iceberg. There were also a thousand little jobs to do. Because the cottage is old, much of the hardware is out-of-date, obsolete, or otherwise unavailable. As a result, many of these small jobs were surprisingly difficult and took a surprsing amount of time and energy to complete. In the end, we found that in order to get a good result, we had to do all these little jobs as well. So we did.

This article documents, in pictures and commentary, just some of steps we took along the way.

If you want to see the basic Before and After pictures, check out: "Kailua Cottage Renovation: Before pics" and "Kailua Cottage Renovation: After pics", respectively.

Here are pictures illustrating some of the things we did to renovate the cottage in Kailua.

Replacing the roof

To save money, I tore off the old roof. Then Cathie and I hauled it away to the dump using Shaw's pickup. We hired Surface Shield Roofing to make the necessary structural repairs to the roof and apply the new roof. A crew of guys came out and swarmed all over the roof. Within two days they were done. Overall, they did a good job. We were happy with the result.

I tore off the old roof. The old tar paper was brittle and blew all over the place. It made a huge mess.

Our pile of old shingles. We borrowed Shaw's truck to take old shingles to the dump.

The sheathing on the lean-to was rotten and weak, so I tore it off for replacement. While removing the sheathing, I stepped on a improperly supported cross-member, which broke away. I fell through the roof and impailed my shin on a rusty nail. It cut a deep gash in my leg. Thankfully, Lori applies some "dragon's blood" to the wound and it eventually healed up nicely -- even without stitches. Still, I have a nice, bright red scar to remind me of that day.

The boys at Surface Shield roofing replaced all the rotten rafters, decking, and fascia boards.

There was a substantial amount of repair work to do.

We (that is, Surface Shield) put rolled roofing on the lean-to. I was so pleased with the result that I decided to use the same solution when replacing the low-pitched roof on my garage back in MA. 

We (i.e., Surface Shield Roofing) put new asphalt shingles on the main body of the roof. Overall the result looked great.

Exterior Repairs and Paint

We hired Jordan to clean, repair, prep and paint the outside of the house. He worked for a solid two weeks and generally did a good job. Unfortunately, while Jordan worked outside, I worked inside, so alas, I only have a few pictures of his handy work... even though he did a lot of work.

There was quite a bit of termite damaged wood that had to be replaced. In fact, the planking for the entire back end of the garage had to be replaced.

The entire exterior surface of the house had to be washed and scraped, primed and painted. 

Overall, Jordan did a pretty good job.

Cleaning out the trash

The first thing we did to get going on the interior was to clear out all the junk.

We took out all the old furniture and tore out all the old carpet.

We called "Bulky Pickup" to come haul it away. Good riddance!

Prepping the Interior for Paint

We then turned our attention to cleaning, repairs, and generally prepping for interior paint. Even after clearing out the trash and ripping up the carpet. the house was absolutely filthy. So we went after it. We cleaned and cleaned and cleaned and cleaned. We scraped down every surface in the house, then vacuumed over and over to get up all the cockroach, termite, and lizard corpses, feces, and eggs. We fixed all the termite damage and made other repairs. We scrubbed the walls and cabinets and every interior surface at least twice with soap and water, then we gave it all a final wash down with TSP. It took more than a month of effort just to clean and prep for paint. 

Here are some pictures taking during that month-long cleaning process...

The kitchen. Among other things, the cabinet door under the sink was damaged and had to be replaced.

The island, with the "room divider" removed. The kitchen floor had two layers of stick down tile, which ultimately were removed.

The living room. Spent hours removing staples and nails, which had been used to hold the carpet down.

One of the filthy bedrooms. In addition to unsticking the painted-shut windows and replacing and reglazing broken windows, the window guides had to be replaced due to termite damage.

Another view of the back bedroom. The closet was missing its shelf and baseboard. 

The original countertop couldn't be saved, so I built a new one. 

This odd-screened window serves as a vent for the stove/range. The framing was badly damaged by termites, so I rebuilt it and installed a new screen.

I added shelving to the island to provide more useful storage.

The original island top couldn't be saved, so I built a new one. In the end, we finished this surface with an oil-based paint, topped with 3 coats of satin polyurethane. 

Throughout the kitchen and bathroom, the cabinets and drawers had multiple layers of old shelf-liner that had, over the years, managed to glue itself to the shelving and cabinet backs. We spent days and days, with a hair-dryer and putty knife scraping off the old shelf-liner, inch by painstaking inch. In the end, we managed to re-use (restore?) the cabinets and drawers, but it isn't clear the result was worth the effort. We saved some $$, but it was a lot of work and in the end, the cabinets still looked kind of old and beat up. If I had it to do again, I'd probably rip and replace the cabinets. 

A cabinet after being cleaned. The green color is the original (lead) paint. The yellow is traces of glue that just wouldn't come off. We primed and painted the whole thing, and in the end got a good result.

The cabinets under the kitchen counter and sink. These things were just loaded with cochroach eggs and feces. Cleaning it was disgusting. 

More cabinets in the kitchen. These slats were a cockroach haven also.

Under the sink, "after" cleaning.

There was substantial terminte damage to trim throughout the house. Where I could, I ripped and replaced the damaged wood. In other cases, I had to patch up the damage as best I could with wood fill. In some cases, it took 2 or 3 passes with wood fill to get a decent result. And even then, some of it was pretty sketchy. Luckily, once I hit these patches with paint, they mostly blended into the wall. The picture above, shows a patch work-in-progress.

Painting the Interior

Once more or less cleaned the inside of the house, we were ready to paint. Because the cottage is single wall construction, whereby the walls are comprised of vertical tongue and groove planks, rolling would have been difficult (due to the need to get into the grooves), so I decided to try something new -- spraying. We bought an "airless paint sprayer" and gave it a shot. It took a while to get used to but in the end it worked great. 

Since we were spraying we had to mask off the window (and anything else we didn't want to get painted (e.g., lights, faucets, sinks, etc). I found a video on YouTube that showed a good technique for masking large areas (e.g., windows). The technique worked great. 

The masked front door. 

The masked living room windows.

The masked shower, sink, toilet and windows.

A masked outlet. 

Now we were ready to paint. So we dawned our masks and head-gear and got busy. 

Cathie and me with our masks and head protection. It was summer and Kailua was hot. Temps were easily in the ninties inside the closed up house, so I wore a head band to keep from sweating all over everything. Later, my buddy Tunji showed me the cool way to do it, with a bandana. 

Cathie takes a selfie, while I try to figure out how to operate the paint gun. 

Painting a cabinet shelf

Painting a closet door. We set up a painting platform in the living room.

We applied a primer coat and a top coat to everything, including the ceiling.

The bedroom bookcase after paint.

The front bedroom door after paint.

The back bedroom after paint.

The back bedroom closet after paint.

The kitchen cabinets after paint.

More cabinets after paint.

Living area bookcase after paint.

The living room after paint.

Another view of the living room (and front door) after paint.

In the end, I was pretty happy with the paint job on the body of the house.

The kitchen window waiting for paint. After spraying the body of the interior, we painted all the windows by hand. That turned out a lot of work. Primer, Top-coat, inside, outside, windows-up, windows-down. 10 windows total! Ugh!

A bedroom window awaiting paint.

Installing new floors

Once the painting was done, I turned my attention to installing floors. First, I installed laminate wood (Hawaiian Curly Koa) flooring throughout the house -- kitchen, living room, hall, bedrooms (and closets). When that was done, I turned my attention to installing tile in the bathroom and kitchen (counter-tops/backsplash). In retrospect, I should have done the tile work first. Since, once the floors were down, we had to take great care to keep them clean, while tiling. 

Floor installation went reasonably well, but it wasn't all that easy. One problem that showed up was that in trying to layout the floor (to avoid having a small strip of wood along the end-wall, I based my calculation on an incorrect board width. I thought the boards were 5" wide, when in fact they were only 4-7/8". I only discovered this mistake after laying half the living room floor. Luckily, the error wasn't too costly, though it definitely pissed me off and added stress to the process.

Fitting the floor around the curved island was also a challenge. Also, managing to continuously fit the floor throughout the entire house (kitchen, living room, hall, bedrooms) as a single seamless sheet was also a bit difficult. And finally, rather than use a random length pattern, I used a uniform board pattern. Only after working on the floor for a day or two did I realize that the uniform pattern, forced me to make twice as many cuts as a random pattern. Nevertheless, we managed to do it.... and we got a very good result.  

Installing lamanate wood flooring in the living room. We used Pergo XP Hawaiian Curly Koa.

Spacers are used to leave room for expansion and contraction. Later, we added 3/4" quarter round to the baseboard trim to cover the gap.

Fitting the flooring around the island was a challenge. Bending the quarter round trim around the island was even more difficult. After much head scratching and failed efforts, I ended up using a flexible pvc quarter-round trim. We heated the trim with a hair-drier and managed to bend it around the island. After much work, we got a satisfactory result.

Tiling the bathroom

Before installing tile in the bathroom, I first had to remove the pre-existing stick-down tile. There were two layers of it, and the bottom layer was painfully sticky and messy. I eventually got it up. It turns out I also had to reinforce the subfloor in the corner, near the toilet. In that spot, the subfloor was basically unsupported and flexed every time I sat on the toilet. Finally, because there was some uneven transitions between pieces of subfloor, I used applied some thinset to smooth the transitions. Except for this uneven transition, the floor was level enough that I didn't think it was necessary to apply a floor leveling compound. Also, the mosaic tile we used was flexible enough to forgive any small amount of wave there might be in the substrate.

Once the subfloor was prepped, we were ready to start tiling. 

I haven't done a lot of tile work in the past, so I bought a book and tried to follow it as best I could. It wasn't the greatest book, but in the end it did the job. 

After cleaning and leveling the floor, I put down a layer of Red Guard to prevent cracks and waterproof the subfloor.

Next, we laid 1/4" hardy board to provide a rigid base for the tile.

I borrowed Tunji's tile saw and cut all the necessary pieces to finish off the mosaic sheets along the walls and threshold. The little black diamond pieces were the most difficult to cut. I cut over a hundred individual tiles. Luckily the saw made it relatively easy.

A view of the floor after laying the mosaic tile sheets in thinset, grouting, and sealing. In this picture, the baseboard trim (3/4" quarter round molding) still needs to be installed. Overall, we got a good result.

By the way, installing the threshold between the bathroom tile and the hall wood flooring was easier said than done. Fitting the threshold piece was difficult enough, but even worse, once I had layed the tile, I realized my sheets were shy of just fitting under the threshold. So, after the fact, I had to cut a series of little black diamond pieces of tile and fit them into the edge of the floor. That was a pain. But in the end, it worked out just fine. 

Tiling the kitchen counter and backsplash

As the project wore on and on and on and on, I began to worry that we might not finish before we had to leave the island. So, we decided to call in some help -- Babatunji. Tunji is a good friend and a was a great help. He took the lead on the kitchen countertop and backspash (among other things), and did a fantatic job. In the end, we finished the project with a week to spare.... a week which I desperately needed just to recover from the stresses and strains of the project.  

Before tiling, I had to build custom edging for the countertop. We ended up finding a nice piece of 2x2 lumber from Reuse Hawaii that I shaped to do the job.

Next, I coated the countertop and backspash with Red Guard to protect the countertop base from water (and mold) and prevent cracks (especially in the backsplash).

Then, we put down hardy board to provide a stable substrate for the tile.

Then we installed the tile.

Tunji installing the backspash tile. He built a temporary support to hold the tile on the wall, until the thinset had time to dry. This worked well. Another tricky part of the job involved installing quarter-round trim tile along the edge of the backsplash and at the transition between the counter and sink. 

Overall, we got an excellent result.

Other stuff

Once the big stuff was done (cleaning, painting, wood floors, tile floors, tile counter and backsplash), there was still myriad things to do. Our "punch list" ran on for pages and pages.... new appliances, clean shower, install toilet, new window latches, window screens, garage tarp, new lights, switches, recepticals. The list went on and on. Even worse, it seems that everytime we took on one task, it invariably identified another. For the last few weeks of the project, we worked our tails off and stressed out trying to whittle down our "to-do" list. With Tunji's and Ray's help, Cathie and I eventually got there, but alas, it wasn't an easy or pleasant experience. The process would have been a lot easier (and more pleasant), had we not had a deadline. Sigh, I hate deadlines.

Here is a sampling of *some* of the other steps we took along the way.

Remove and replace the broken framing mechanism for the louvred windows.

Clean the glass jalousies for the window, including painstakingly scraping off paint with a razor.

Result: beautiful new windows.

Install new pulls on all the cabinets and drawers.

Install new magnetic latches on all cabinet doors.

Install new door knobs (and locks) and strike plates on all doors.

Replace old window latches with new (clean) ones. Getting the old latches off was at times difficult. (Had to use a screw removal kit for a few particularly difficult latches).

Replace broken and cracked windows (2) and reglaze as needed (several).

Remove leaky faucet in the kitchen and replace with a new one. To remove the old faucet, I had to use a chisel and hammer to break the old plastic nuts that held the faucet in place. That trick worked well.

The new faucet, though plain, looked great.

Replace old outlet recepticals and install new cover plates. After installing the new wood flooring, the quarter-round molding cut into the space needed by the outlet face plates, as a result the molding had to be custom cut to fit the available space. It was definitely a hassle, but the result looked pretty good.

Replace old switchs and add new face plates.

Install new lighting througout the house. Here in the kitchen, a new outlet box had to be installed to accomodate the larger light. This required me to cut out the old-fashoned "pancake" fixture box, cut open the ceiling, and retrofit a larger (modern) outlet box into the ceiling, securing it to the rafter above. It was a lot of work for one light, but we wanted the bigger, brighter (if retro) light.

Remove the crusty old fan and replace it with a new one.

Install new light fixtures throughout the rest of the house. Because the wiring was old, most modern lighting options wouldn't fit the available "pancake" fixture box. As a result, we ended up selecting these retro lights -- which tend to catch bugs. However, it was a reasonable compromise, considering the alternative was to spend days tearing out the old fixture boxes and installing new ones. In this picture you can see the old fixture box (dark disk) that we had to work with.

In the bathroom, we kept the original fixture. But we still had to paint it.

Outside, we installed a new porch light and removed the old (weird) junk that was there to control the flood light.

I installed a new (single) flood light, after accidently breaking the screw assembly for one of the lights, while trying to screw it into the old (crusty) housing.

Paint (prime and top coat) and poly (3 coats) the island countertop.

Make and install curtains to cover the island shelf space. Cathie picked the fabric and her mom, Iris, sewed them up for us. 

Restore the old aluminum trim for the island. This turned out to be a nightmare. We couldn't find replacement material and so had to use the old trim. We tried (multiple times) to paint them, but never got a satisfactory result. In the end, we used sandpaper (100 grit) to scratch a "uniform" brush pattern on them. It worked out reasonably well, but it was far from perfect. Considering where we started though (with pretty worn out trim), we were satisfied with the result.

Buy and install appliances. We bought a new range and new refrigerator. Naturally (Murphy's Law), the frig door was mounted backwards, so we had to turn it around. Again, another task that turned out to be more difficult than expected, because the $%^&**&^ screws were too tight. Eventually we got it. 

Adjust and re-install the shelf above the range.

Install the toilet. I had to do this twice. After the first attempt, I realized the toilet was wobbly. After taking it off again, I realized that the original toilet flang had not been screwed to the underlying floor joist, but was floating freely. As a result, the toilet wobbled when you leaned from side to side. So on the second attempt, I secured the flange, then installed the toilet. It worked much better then. Also because we added a layer of tile, we had to use a special *extention* ring. Finally, we also replaced the toilet handle, valve and flapper. Oh yeah, and Cathie spend at least an hour cleaning the toilet to make it look brand new.

Install new toilet roll holder...

... and towel holder.

Clean and re-grout the shower floor.

Clean the shower tile (and re-paint the upper walls and ceiling). Cathie spent almost a week in this shower meticulously cleaning this tile. 

Replace the old shower fixtures, especially this old down spout. Unfortunately, while trying to remove this down spout, I broke the interior nipple (pipe) tying it to the pipes inside the wall. Because of this mistake we had to call out Stan's Local Plumbing to come to our rescue. 

Stan and crew came out and cut open the closet wall (in the bedroom) to gain access to the pipes. They replaced them all, and out fitted us with new fixtures all around. 

In the end, we got a good result, but I wasn't 100% happy with Stan's Local Plumbing. He ended up charging us much much much more than originally estimated. If I ever do work with Stan's Local Plumbing again, I'll be sure to get a rock solid quote ahead of time and clearly understand the cost ramifications of any extra work they do. It was a painful lesson to learn. 

While we were at it, we had Stan replace the out-bound water heater pipe, which was badly corroded.

We installed new screens on all the windows. This was another relatively expensive item, but it really helped clean up the look.

Install new screen on the front door.

Remove old (rotten) tarp on garage and replace with new.

Install garden trim along the south side of the garage.

Fix the rotten egg smell in the hot water line. When we ran the hot water, it smelled like sulfur. It turns out this was caused by bacteria that had grown in the hot water tank, while it sat off and unused for many months. To fix the problem (kill the bacteria), we opened up the tank and poured a couple pints of hydrogen peroxide. Then thoroughly flushed all the hot water lines. It worked like a charm. Google/YouTube is a great source of info for solving these kinds of problems. :)

Install new handles one the utility sink in the garage. Even this simple task gave me fits. The first solution failed miserably. The handles would eventually loosen up and fall off. This was very frustrating. So I eventually, removed my first fix attempt, returned the handles to the store and got another kind (ones that attatch by screwing them in on the top of the handle). These worked much better.

Fix washing machine. When we started the project the washing machine didn't work right. It would fill with water, but not finish the spin cycle. I traced the problem to a broken switch in the door latch. I fixed the switch (with a zip-tie) and the machine worked fine. Then, to make the machine look good, we needed to peel off the old protective plastic coating that covered the control panel. The original owners never bothered to remove the protective plastic. This turned out to be a nightmare. The machine was so old (several years at least) and the plastic had been on there so long, that it simply would not come off. We worked and worked and I cursed and cursed. Eventually, Cathie used a razor, a rag, and acetone to get the stuff off. It took several hours. Ugh.  

Clean up back steps and install new carpeting.

Clean up and organize the garage. Wash down the shelves.

Patch the hole in the kitchen wall, where the gas line once came through.

Re-install the interior doors, but first re-cut them to fit (now that we added new wood floors)

Install the closet doors and while your at it, fix the old rollers so they actually roll. (Well done Tunji!)

Clean, caulk and paint all trim, nail holes, cracks and other misc touch-ups throughout the house

Caulk cracks in the ceiling

And last but not least....

Plant the baby Papaya tree in the backyard. Thanks Lori and Tunji for this little fellow. Someday, we hope he's as big and happy and healthy (and productive) as the trees in your grove.  

That's it. It was a *lot* of work. But it's done and we're quite satisfied with the result.

If you want to see the basic Before and After pictures, check out: "Kailua Cottage Renovation: Before pics" and "Kailua Cottage Renovation: After pics", respectively.