Thankfully, I planned around accessing almost everything: the main line is hanging under the ceiling, the soffits mostly open up, and with the exception of around the spigot shut off, I may not have to remove the main portions of the ceilings at all.  Fingers are crossed.

Magnets have been a huge benefit for us in this house: creating magnetic soffits really have given us the ability to sneak access panels in where no one would be the wiser.  It makes me a lot less worried about needing to fully backslide and pull our bead board ceilings entirely, because just about everything can be popped off for work.

This is one that I should have considered swapping a while ago!  I was tripped up by gravity, even though I’d been doing all the maintenance necessary.  In the autumn, I’d turn the hose off at the interior valve, and I’d open the valve outside to eliminate cracking from pressure changes and allow the spigot to drain.  Without a bleed valve on the inside, that was the best, if only, way to allow water to escape or expand with freezes.

Theoretically, I was okay!  But our spigot didn’t go straight out the side wall.  It went into the drywall (the one basement wall we haven’t opened), turns up for about 6”, and turns again to exit through the rim joist.  Those two extra turns are what killed us.  Water was never able to drain fully beyond the interior shut off valve.  It stayed in the pipe before the turn, and when exposed to the sub-zero air from the open spigot, it froze and cracked the PVC valve.

Naturally, I cannot keep plumbing that isn’t safe for potable water.  This was a DIY likely from the 80s or 90s, and it’s showing its age now.  I’m going to swap from PVC to PEX.  I already hired plumbers to replace the PVC, and they start next week!

While we’re at it, I’m treating my husband cold-water-drinking kids to a fridge line.  The automatic ice machine will make our lives a teeny bit easier… and I’ll add a Moen leak sensor there too.  Luckily, the ceilings to remove are pretty minimal, and I’ll have a handful of access panels to add for the new hose spigot and fridge water line.

Once I knew these would be in the hall, I got a set of hardware for all the pieces that'd be there. The bronze fits nicely, and these perfectly fit with the one on the broom cabinet and some square ones that look like a more polished version of our kitchen.  I swapped those out right away.

The bigger issue was getting the proportions right and installing these in a way that the bathroom shut off valves could be accessed in an emergency. I knew almost immediately the valves would be managed with a magnetic access panel: no need to reinvent the wheel when I knew this works!  Once I knew how much space was reasonable, I put together a base for these to sit on. The stack of two was only 60" tall, so I wanted to elevate it a bit. I used 6x lumber to raise them 5 1/2". The same amount that would be on the soffit above.

Above these cabinets is an array of plumbing for the kitchen and the water heater. Above the walkway is a duct for the kitchen. Figuring out how to soffit these without it coming down into the walkway was a bit of a puzzle, but I accepted that if the ductwork was painted out, I could reduce the size of the soffit by several inches! So, I framed around the plumbing only. This gave me a very square area that was easy to frame and to install bead board.

Across the basement, we have two types of ceilings: sheetrock and bead board. The sheetrock ceilings are all one plane. This is in the two bedrooms and the bathroom. The spaces with soffits all have bead board: the halls, the office, and the library. Years ago. I made an angled soffit for the office, and I was able to use some of the bead board left over on the soffit in the hall.

The cabinet sides once installed were surprisingly rough. These were laundry room utility cabinets, not necessarily made for their looks! So, I added drywall and trim up the side to frame in the chimney and make these fit snugly in the hallway. A little edge band makes these overlay doors look more custom and inset in the cabinet.

The door to the access panel slips in on a board installed in the top of the cabinets. Tucked in with magnets, it's impossible to see that it is removable with the doors closed. It's the perfect secret hidey-hole when it's not for getting to the plumbing valves.

Even with the two salvaged cabinets, the broom cabinet, and the library full of shelving... I wanted a bit more closed storage. I found that a small Billy bookcase and a wide Billy from Ikea fit the remaining wall perfectly. So, I added these too! Sometimes, even with a whole room of bookshelves, it's nice to have some closed storage. These are the perfect cabinets for things like board games and craft supplies!

With hardware that matches the rest of the hallway and a nice expanse for working, I plan to add a wooden top to break up the expanse of white through this hallway.  I have a few other spots that need tops, so I’ll do a batch of them together! Overall, I found a way to add more pockets of workable storage into this house without losing the bungalow charm in the process.

The first half I worked on was a little pull out broom closet between the freezer and the pocket door wall. The pocket door wound up a little further into the office than I initially wanted, so this felt at first like wasted space I wanted to recapture. Having a little broom closet though is a huge bonus! Packing in pockets of storage everywhere helps us have a spot for everything that anyone can find.

I mostly built the broom closet by installing salvaged plywood as the wall cladding. This pushed the wall out far enough that I could use drawer slides to work the pull out mechanism and keep the door casings consistent downstairs. I had to install the slides onto the plywood before attaching it to the studs. Since I only had about 6" of space to work with, I had to be very strategic about where and how every piece went in.

Once I had the wall in, I had to build the pull out itself. I used pegboard and a simple wood frame on the back as the main base for the broom closet. The tricky part was getting it installed on the drawer slides. I cut two rails for it to attach to the slides, and I made the rails smaller than the slides, so the wood frame could fit around them. Because of a duct that runs through this hallway, I had to install these rails before attaching them to the pegboard.

With the pegboard framed and ready to hang, I wanted to build a box onto the hanging side as well so anything that fell off a hook would still come out of the closet instead of getting trapped next to the freezer. I used pocket screws to attach the back, top, and bottom through the pegboard and into the frame behind.

With the new cabinet nearly done, all that remained was installing the front, finishing paint, and adding hardware. Above the freezer is a small cabinet set back several inches. With this broom cabinet, I lined the front to meet this cabinet front instead of lining up with the front of the freezer. The freezer cabinet is also a little narrower than the freezer itself, so I assembled the front of this broom cabinet in two pieces. One lines up with the freezer, the other corresponds with the little cabinet above.

I kept paint in the hallway white: this helps all the different storage pieces from the freezer to the salvaged cabinets I was about to move over as a cohesive unit through the hall. It all blends, and with no natural light in this little hallway, the light moves through easily no matter if it's from a hall sconce or light from another room.  The bronze hardware all coordinates in this hall, and it plays well off the raw brass on the doors and the light fixtures.

I'm already impressed at how well this little storage nook is working out for all of us! And I find it strangely satisfying tucking in a broom on a hook and hiding it away. It's a system that is both practical and necessary in our little house.

There isn’t a great reason for this to have sat for so many years, other than using the office we had and allowing this space to exist in whatever capacity we’ve needed.  Largely it’s been the chaos space as other rooms in the basement have needed the flexibility.  This really is the last little pocket in our basement.  Now it’s the office’s turn!

With a good starting point and all the structural repairs done, I knew getting anything else done would require installing the wall separating the office from the little hall heading to one kid’s bedroom.  When I repaired the joist under the kitchen and added the mini-beam, I knew this would be the next step.

As with most old houses, ours isn’t exactly… straight.  This side of the house dips pretty significantly toward the chimney, so a level header was essential for having a door that flows well on its track.  Part of the prep work here was making this already shortened door even shorter.  But I didn’t want to hack more off the bottom or top, since a full 4” was the right size, so I removed the top rail, trimmed the panel and the stiles, and reinstalled the rail.  It was an interesting job, but I also knew the pocket rollers would provide any structure that was needed afterward.  Before installing those, I added some metal strapping to the top just to be sure.

With the door size right, I had to figure out where exactly it would sit so I could float the door in the space.  I found where I wanted it to start and end on the pre-installed top plate, and marked liberally on the adjacent wall and the top plate.  Then I used a level and the door to lock in the best height for the top of the door: just the right amount of space that it wouldn’t bind on the slightly sloped floor, but enough that it would leave a reasonable gap between the floor and the bottom of the door when closed. Finding the level height is one of the most important parts to pocket door installation: without a level header, the door won’t stay put.  It will naturally follow gravity to one end or the other.

To get the header assembled, I cut a second 2x6 to hang level below the top plate.  With cribbing in place, I was able to get this level by using my mark on the wall and starting with two measurements: the one where the door needed to end installed at 6 3/4” below the top plate, and another measurement 4’ away.  This was easy to find by measuring down with my level this landed at 5 1/2” below the top plate.  That’s a 1 1/4” difference over only 4 feet, but it does track even if we’ll rip our joists apart trying to lift the dip out.  With these measurements, I subtracted 3 1/4” for the thickness of the 2x6 at the bottom of the header and the door hardware.

From here I built cribbing in three more spots, and installed the pocket track.  Each piece of cribbing reduced in height by 1/2”. They went from 3 1/2” down to 1 1/2”. Before hanging the door, I still had to get the framing for the surrounding walls in: this is why I used 2x6 for the wall framing: this gave me plenty of space to have flat stud walls along each side of the door.

The rest of this process is pretty standard, for me.  I hung the door with the same pocket system used in the kid’s room two years ago, only with one door in the pocket instead of two.  Since I didn’t need to frame in one side of the doorway yet, I left it open to maneuver the hangers onto the door track while these were installed on the door.

Once that was done, I was able to get the last side of the door jamb in, and I used the door to ensure it was plumb before cutting and installing the base plate for that wall. When in doubt, use the thing you have to measure.  It ensured a good fit and the door, along with its casing, is just right.

Our dining room buffet has been crooked since we bought the house.  Doors have never closed quite right, and the bottom drawers stick a bit.  But last summer they seemed to be getting more cranky about operating: it could be the humidity or the pre-teens rough use.  I still knew it was a problem to fix.  Getting proper screws into the hinges helped, and getting the center rail adjusted to hold the center cabinet doors straight was a big step.  Still, nothing in the buffet could be truly better without re-cracking some plaster and lifting the whole thing from below.

Our house had been lifted back in 2017: it was the first major project we embarked on here… and we hired a contractor who knew exactly what to do instead of doing that job ourselves.  I learned a lot then, and from a few subsequent projects elsewhere.  This time, it was my turn.

Our dining room buffet sits right next to our chimney, on the opposite side of the structural beams that surround the stairs.  There are three joists that sit around the chimney, under the buffet, and under part of the kitchen.  This is where one joist -thankfully under the kitchen not the buffet- had snapped.  I elected to add a small beam, not fully structural, but definitely supportive under these three joists along the chimney.  We had explored this back in 2017, but this is exactly where the water heater used to sit.  Moving the water heater gave us a few things: space along the chimney to work, less plumbing and ductwork due to keeping clearances around the gas plumbing, and a reinforced concrete pad that we used as the footing for our posts.

Our posts aren’t fancy: they are screw jacks rated for permanent use.  Each can hold a minimum of 20,000 lbs, so with two we should be in good shape for a very long time.  With my mom’s help, I got the screw jacks installed plum and the mini-beam sitting along the chimney.  Over the next few days, I gradually lifted the mini-beam by turning the screw on the jacks.  With these bolted to the floor and the beam, we’re in.

The next big step was getting the broken joist sistered to a new one.  This joist is a little complicated: it sits across three supports, and with the failure of the beam in the middle (one side of the stairs), the span was too long for it to hold across the stairs to the main support beam.  Overtime, it split.  When we did the fixes in 2017 to the beams, the joist was mostly holding together, and it didn’t change the dip in the kitchen.  Sistering it wasn’t the priority then (making sure the porch was held in my more than the roof, however… was.  It got two footings where it had one post-on-grade on the middle.).  Even though it was largely stable, adding the mini-beam made me want to make sure this was as secure as possible.

Sistering was tricky though, since there was not a good way to run a new piece of lumber from end to end along the joist.  My biggest priority was connecting the split section to where the joist was still in good shape.  I cut a notch into one portion of the new joist, and I added a second section with a matching notch along the rest of the joist.  Then I scabbed a bridge over both.  This has secured the joist well!  It no longer dips in the middle, and both the sister and the original joist rest on one end of the mini-beam while continuing over to the beam along the stairs.

Next up, I’m finally getting the office walls buttoned up with another pocket door.  I love these space-saving solutions, but to hang it I really wanted to make sure we were structurally sound.  I started by fixing a 2x6 to the new joist pair where the wall will sit.  With the mini-beam as high as it will go, and a slight slope still in the floor above, The plan is to get the walls well secured so there will never be a risk of future issues.  And the pocket door will slide smooth as silk.