Computer Room Renovation

Complete gut to the studs.

One of the features that attracted us to the house was the comfortably-sized computer room in the addition. All that was needed, we thought, was a coat of paint and a new carpet. I was preparing to paint when I noticed that the switch plate did not fit tightly against the wall. Well, one thing led to another and soon the room was gutted.

It's funny how a device box protruding about a quarter inch from the wall could lead to my first renovation in our new house and awaken me to the fact that our new house had a multitude of problems. My first plan was to simply replace the box with a shallow one, but I could not make sense of the wiring. I figured that it would be easy enough to remove a section of drywall to trace some of the wires, since I was going to be painting anyway.

open wall

There were three junction points where power first came into the room: at the light switch, behind a blank plate above the switch, and at the thermostat for the electric baseboard heater. There are methods of tracing wires that don't require demolition, but I wanted to see exactly where the wires went for myself. Besides, I figured that I would now have the opportunity to solve the problem of the protruding device box, which was my reason for this minor demolition in the first place.

substandard vapour barrier

Upon removing some of the drywall, I revealed vapour barrier that was too thin, being only four mil instead of six, with seams that were not taped. It ws then that I decided to remove all the drywall and redo the vapour barrier.

With all the drywall down and the too-thin vapour barrier removed, I had a good look at how the addition was framed. The exterior walls were 2x4 construction whicb only allowed for R-12 insulation. Wtih the walls opened up, I had a real opportunity to add more insulation. I chose add horizontal 2x2 strapping with batts of R-12 insulation carefully separated in half, allowing roughly another R-6 with a bit of a thermal break.

original carpet


The original floor covering in the office was carpet tiles which had a very institutional feel to them. We chose to replace the tiles with a berber carpet with the pad attached. The baseboard molding was also comprised of the carpet tiles. We would replace that with...wait for it... oak trim. This was going to be our forever house, so the last thing we wanted to do was skimp on the materials.

Left to right: My first attempt at coping the corner was a dismal failure. Fortunately, fancy corner blocks made the job much easier. However, there wasn't much I could do about a badly positioned doorway.

window frame


The window was trimmed out with 1/2" thick oak.  The sides and top were cut to be flush with the drywall. The bottom sill was cut to overhang by about an inch, with the side wings each extending about an inch past the edge of the casing molding.

Unfortunately, I made a big mistake by installing the box frame in place one piece at a time instead of pre-building it to make sure it was square. And sure enough, the trim work is not square, so installing blinds inside the casing is not really a viable option.

A number of deficiencies in the addition became known to us during this project and in the months that followed. The addition is far from meeting the minimum code requirements. There is no access to the crawl space. The framing is only 2x4 with minimal insulation. The electrical work is a mess. The foundation for the addition is of questionable quality. Walls are not straight and the ceiling sags in places. To address these issues would take such extensive work that we resigned ourselves to the fact that the addition would have to be torn down and rebuilt properly at some point in the future. Therefore, the work I did in the computer room is merely temporary.

Project completed in 2003