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Loft Closure

Spent a little time tonight finalizing the coffered ceiling layout, I added two larger bulkheads at the end of the room to match the beam sizes to help balance out the space. SWMBO has approved of the design, so now I need to figure out where lighting is going to go and work at. The Electrician should be here either late next week or the next. Sounds like we have quite a snow storm coming Tuesday, so may be looking at a delay of a week or so.

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https://3dwarehouse.sketchup.com/mo...aa1e-2369e8d03877/Coffered-Ceiling-semi-final
 
I'm liking the layout...

Have you considered dropping the tops of (some of) the cross beams a smidge and then running backlit lighting into those (so it bounces off of the ceiling)? I'm not sure it would be enough for detailed lighting but should work for ambient... I think.. (cardboard mock ups may be required to verify :) ). You could make the bottom of the beams clip in to replace the lights easily.

Just throwing more bad ideas out while you have everything ripped up.. and I was thinking about how to integrate lights into that layout in a non-intrusive way (other than the obvious can lights between the beams).
 
That is a good idea guys, each boxed area will have other trim, so could create a pocket for led strips, maybe in the center boxes or around the the outer perimeter.

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More progress this weekend and today. This past weekend I removed a bunch of old cables and wiring that was for the old septic system. Also pulled out the air duct installed by the previous owner that they cut the bottom 3" of the joists to move the wire from.

Today the contractor got the beam installed and man did it straighten out the floor upstairs. :thumb:
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They will be back tomorrow to double up all the joists in the loft area to get it flattened out, and start framing to close it off.
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Ted Calver said:
Nice! How did they get that monster up there... brute force or something clever?
Click to expand...

He had a lift rental on my estimate, but it was lighter than he initially thought, about 300 lbs. I saw the 3 of them carrying it down to the house on the security cam. They may have been able to lift one end at a time and done without the lift, don't know if he had one or not. They used a couple of 20 ton bottle jacks to get it all the way up level and then added cripples under each end. My 6' opening to the sunroom lost about 8" of width, but I'm ok with that. I'd rather do that than have a column in the room to cover.
 
The guys started doubling up the loft floor joists today, hopefully they will get the loft closed up by the weekend.

I loaded up Kerkythea and it's plugin, which Dave Richards recommended to play around with for the lighting. I found it pretty easy to use and gave me a good idea of what the lighting may look like where I want to install the new can lights.

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Here are a couple of renderings with the lights in those locations.
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Came home to the loft area closed up today. Very happy with the contractors work. There is just an extra sheet of plywood on the floor, it's not connected. ;)

We've got some electrical plugs going in under the Windows upstairs and one in the center of the room for my wife's desk. Maybe some built-ins under them and in front of the chimney.
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Floors in the kitchen felt a lot more level and sturdy last night. They jacked up the beam/floor with a house jack temporarily and poured the concrete pad.

There were also two joists with splits that got shored up, to double them up.

Electricians should be there tomorrow to get new lights and some new plugs added.

I need to repull my surround sound wires and add another t.v. cable for the loft.



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I spoke with the contractor this morning. He said when they leveled the floor in the kitchen, they jacked the center of the beam up almost 2" to get the ceiling level again in the kitchen. The new support post is sitting on a 2' x 2' x 1' concrete pad. They sistered two joist under my kitchen island to level it out, it was down another 3/4" in the middle. He said he was framing houses back when ours was built and said it was typical of the wood back then to be of poor quality and it's just gotten that way over time.


Electricians showed this morning, and hopefully will be done today. I've got some speaker wires and a tv cable to run and they can start re-hanging drywall downstairs and getting things patched up.
 
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Great to be the observer and not the doer eh Darren. Good move though i know you can show them a thing or two about drywalling this way you don't get to have the pains from doing.


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Has been nice, but a bit frustrating at times too. There are a couple of shortcuts the took that I'd have done a bit different, but overall a good experience and will plan to have him do some future work for us.

The electricians got all the wires in, but still need to do the cans and cut the boxes in for the new plugs. I called to see when he was starting drywall and he Sid as soon at the electrician finished. So that gave me this evening to get my speaker wires and tv cable in, just finished those up, so we're good to go.

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Drywall went up today, still have some patchwork to do on the walls, but getting a lot closer. The electrician has a couple of can light to cut in, which he'll finish on Monday. The ceiling will be finished smooth, no texture, since we are doing coffers to it.
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