Northfield Construction Company » Residential Remodeling

Kitchen Remodel

Ray Cox — Mon, 14 May 2012 17:32:07 +0000

We finished up our kitchen remoding project. It looks great and should serve the owners well over the next decades. The cabinets for this job are custom made cherry cabinets finished with a very light stain. The home is in a wooded rural setting and the cherry gives a very organic feel to the cabinets. The designer called for some cherry ceiling trim. The ceiling trim has plinth blocks in the corners and a ceramic tile is routed into the wood. The tiles have a leaf motif that also provides a nice attachment to the woods around the house.

The countertop is a material called paperstone. I’ve not used it before but it seems to be a great product. It doesn’t have the cold feel that stone countertops can have. The range hood is a stainless steel unit that vents up and out the sidewall. The owners selected a drawer type microwave oven. You press a button and it opens, press another and it closes. It can be locked to keep children from opening it. When there isn’t an easy location to place a microwave oven above the countertop, this drawer type unit makes a lot of sense.

The Crossing Condominium

Ray Cox — Mon, 07 May 2012 15:37:26 +0000

Two weeks ago we started finishing work on one of the concominiums at The Crossings in Northfield. The Crossings are located just north of the Second Street bridge along the Cannon River. The unit we are finishing for a client is a two bedroom, two bathroom model. As with all the living units on the east side of the building, this one has fabulous views of the Cannon River and Carleton College. I can imagine nice mornings sitting on the patio deck overlooking that tranquil scene.

We are using cherry cabinets, doors and trims in this unit. We’ve removed some walls, added a set of pocket doors, and are working at installing final finishes now. Workers are laying the ceramic tile in the bathrooms and will start shortly on the wood flooring. In short order the countertops and plumbing sinks and trims will be installed.

Kitchen remodel project

Ray Cox — Mon, 23 Apr 2012 14:13:50 +0000

We are in the final phase of the work on our kitchen remodel project. The cabinets have been installed, the existing wood floor patched, new interior doors installed, and much of the painting has been completed. We are working at installing the new wood trims at the existing windows and new patio door. The exterior deck is complete and looks great. We used Trex for the deck surface. The railing is a combination of Deckorator posts and rails and Trex steel balusters. I like the dark color of the balusters as you tend to “look through” the railing when looking out from the house. The custom countertops should arrive shortly allowing us to complete everything.

Kitchen Remodel

Ray Cox — Tue, 03 Apr 2012 21:43:15 +0000

The base cabinets for our kitchen remodel were set in place last week. Yesterday the folks fabricating the countertops came to measure. They did it the old fashioned way by creating a template from hardboard. The countertops are a product we have not used before so I’m excited to see them in place. The ceilings and walls have been finished as well. We have also been working at updating the exterior deck. It is receiving a new top of Trex material along with a new railing.

Water control work

Ray Cox — Mon, 26 Mar 2012 13:47:14 +0000

We are just about finished with our basement water control project. The perimeter of the basement concrete floor was sawn and removed and we installed rigid plastic drainage pipes. With the pipe covered with rock things are draining very well. This particular house has a significant amount of flowing water under the floor. We are capturing that water and directing it to the drainage piping. The homeowner had been using a couple of sump pumps to try and keep up with the water flow, but that only paritally worked. The site has enough grade elevation change to permit gravity flow from the newly installed draingage piping. So we brought in a small backhoe, dug a trench, and installed a solid drainage pipe from the sump basket. Now water flows freely under the basement floor into our perimeter drainage piping system, and out through the drain pipe without ever having to be lifted by a sump pump. This is a drainage system that will operate without electricity and should serve the homeowner well for many years.

Structural Repairs

Ray Cox — Tue, 10 Jan 2012 17:03:29 +0000

Our structural work on an older home in N orthfield is wrapping up. Just before New Years we completed the installation of the beams, insulation and drywall on the ceiling. The drywall was finished an painted last week and we are now busy installing the milled wood trims on the beams. We made the trims in our shop and gave them a coat of primer and finish paint. The carpenters are fitting everything in place. Then the painters will do one final coat of paint on the walls, celing and trims. This has been a lot of work and quite a disruption for the homeowners, but the end result should be worth it.

Eastside Porch

Ray Cox — Thu, 22 Dec 2011 21:39:25 +0000

If you’ve been to lunch or dinner at the Ole Store you’ve probably seen our crew at work on our porch project across the street. We finished the foundation work and capped it with a concrete floor to create a water tight, solid floor structure. We are now working on framing the roof system. We are hand cutting the rafters which we typically do on a small roof like this. To maintain a low profile on the porch we are using a hip roof that slopes on the front three sides.

Structural Repairs

Ray Cox — Tue, 20 Dec 2011 20:31:43 +0000

We slowly lifted the floor joists back into position on the older East side home that we are working on. The floor joists had cracked and sagged over the years which resulted in quite a slope to the upstairs room. We went slowly with the lift so that we didn’t damage the walls and floors.

Now we are busy installing proper structural supports in the living room. The architects specified microlam beams in several locations. But in two locations they specified microlam beams with a steel flitch plate sandwiched between the microlam layers. We constructed this in the shop by drilling holes in the steel plate and bolting the steel plate between the two microlam members. We countersund the bolts so that they will not interfer with the finish trim to be applied to the beams. It is a bit of a job lifting these beams in place, but they will surely take the load once the jacks are removed. At the perimeter of the room we have fastened a microlam ledger to support the new beams. At set locations we also fasten the ledger beam to the existing wall framing using steel angles and through bolts, making everything work together.

Structural repairs

Ray Cox — Mon, 12 Dec 2011 12:42:23 +0000

We are helping out a client with a structural ceiling problem. For many years the owners had dealt with a sagging floor upstairs. At one time they had drywall installed in the living room ceiling using furring strips to level the ceiling. The most recent problem started when a pipe in their living room ceiling started leaking. The plumbers cut open the ceiling to repair the pipe. Once that mess was started the owners decided they should address the sagging second floor joists once and for all.

The first order of business was to remove the existing ceiling finish material and expose the structure above. When that was done we discovered 2×6 joists. Some of the joists had been severely notched by long ago plumbers. Another joist was cracked and had a splice patch nailed alongside of it. Because of the framing, plumbing, existing finishes, etc we will be installing a series of support beams under the joists. But first we are slowly jacking the joists up to try and remove some of the floor sag.

Exterior Siding Work

Ray Cox — Thu, 01 Dec 2011 17:35:08 +0000

The siding, windows and exterior work we are doing for a East side Northfield client has moved along nicely. The windows have all been installed. Much of the soffit and fascia work has been completed and the siding is being installed. We installed new house wrap under all the siding which will help protect the materials under the siding from moisture, while still allowing the home to ‘breath’ if needed.

One of the challenges in remodeling older homes is compliance with current building codes. The one major issue we had to deal with on this home was the bow window in the main bedroom. The existing bow window had four separate windows. None of the windows was wide enough to meet current egress regulations. So we had to remove the bow window and replace it with a newly framed bay window….with three separate windows. This allowed us to gain the necessary width to create a legal egress window for the bedroom.