Days of Shades

Looking west (and a tad north) before we reorganized all the tools into the studio:



And the same direction but a bit south, showing the tool bench in the spot where computer stuff will likely live:



The wall directly behind the new minimalist stud wall is the one I get to destroy.

Saturday dad and I built a wall! I'm more excited about it today than I was then -- for all I'd been looking forward to it, when push came to shove I ran up against my chronic perfectionism and a recalcitrant body that spent all weekend trying to decide whether to be ill or not. Building things when you're getting vertigo every time you stand up or lean over isn't fun, and I had enough sourceless muscle fatigue I had trouble lifting the nail gun. :( I felt like a total wimp, but at least dad knows it's not normal for me.

I'll go into more detail on framing the wall if anyone's interested -- I think it's interesting, but I'm not sure if anyone wants to read it. ;) The big exciting moment was standing it up. We lifted the framed wall at a diagonal, pivoted it 90 degrees into rough position, pushed it up until it wedged against the new top plate... and then lifted the entire roof assembly over an inch with a floor jack, so we could shove the wall into place and drop the roof back down on top of it.

Pumping a jack handle while your entire house creaks and groans and moans above your head is both awesome and terrifying. Bonus: the roofline had a visible sway over the garage area from the outside. It doesn't much anymore. :P

The new wall cuts the garage space in two, making a 12'x15'9" studio, and adding the rest of the space to the utility room (space which I'll expand the kitchen into... later). The only decision to make about the wall was the placement of the door, so that's what I freaked out about. I'd planned to have it line up with the exterior laundry room door (for ease of moving things in and out), which put it roughly mid-wall. Once I drew the rough opening on the subfloor and stood in it, though, I realized that with the studio being 15'9" instead of 20', that mid-wall door divided it into two awkwardly small spaces, so I shifted the opening to the north, creating one decently sized space and one tiny awkward space. (I didn't want it all the way into the corner, because I want room for a counter/workbench on the utility room side). I wasn't sure I was making the right decision at the time, but now I'm really happy I did it that way. Not only have I had a day to get used to it, but on Sunday mom and i moved ALL THE TOOLS from the laundry room into the studio, and organized them on a makeshift workbench right where a desk could go in the space by the door, so I have a really good feel for what it'll be like. :D

Speaking of rearranging: My mother is totally awesome for helping me clean, organize, and move the entire contents of the laundry room yesterday. Totally awesome. She'd volunteered to help demolish the wall; I told her thanks, but I wouldn't be ready until next weekend because there was too much crap around it. She said "No problem, we'll work on that! See you in an hour."

It's so much nicer to do that kind of thing with someone else. I honestly wouldn't have had the motivation to do half of it -- especially since it's not the first time. Remodeling a house you're living in is really just a very extended process of moving your tools from one spot to another. And not just tools -- all the stuff that had been in the garage that I'd oh-so-carefully stowed in the laundry room had to come out, too!

Mom and I also went out and looked at tile (for the studio) and vinyl (for the laundry room), just for fun. Mostly we just complained about the Ubiquity of Beige. There's a big flooring warehouse out in Lacey which we thought'd be promising. Nope. Two walls were covered in carpet rolls, and every single one was beige. The tile was a bit better -- only about 97% beige.

Guess what color I don't want on my studio floor? :P

Oh, and just so's it's evident I'm not totally mooching on my parents, there was an exchange of labor. My mom's working on a picture book for my cousin's kids, but she'd gotten stuck, so she brought over all her drawings and had me sketch in the bits she couldn't figure out. :)

You may make your juvenile jokes about having gas now. I'll wait.

~~~~~~

Okay.

The subfloor is all down, we brought the mis-threaded pipe back to Home Depot where a much more competent employee was very gracious about re-threading it all, and once we got home it went together pretty fast. Once enough was in place I could get a good measurement of the last bit, and we brought a long piece of old pipe down to Oly Supply, where they cut and thread it for a small fee. If I'd known all along they were willing to cut & thread pipe purchased elsewhere (or ripped out of a prior installation, as mine was!) I'd have saved myself some money earlier on. Oops.

Anyhow, dad got it all put together, we aired it up with the compressor, and it held pressure. The inspector came yesterday morning, did his cursory glance, and gave it the thumbs up, and yesterday dad stopped by after work and reconnected the whole shebang to the meter.

I have now turned on both the range and the fireplace with no explosions, unwanted fires, or asphyxiation. Yay!

Friday I have to paint the exterior gas line to prevent rust (weather permitting), and this weekend we should get to build the wall.

Today I've got dad's car, so I can return huge amounts of ironmongery to home depot. We hit a point Sunday where we weren't sure what we needed, so we just bought LOTS OF EVERYTHING. I have 20 feet of pipe and an entire bag of fittings to return. :P

We — well, mostly dad — busted our butts to get the gas line replumbedso I could have it inspected and turned back on today, but the custom-cut-and-threaded pipe we got on our fourth trip to Home Depot wasn’t threaded properly -- the fittings locked up two threads in. At 5:30 p.m. on a Sunday, the local place wasn’t open, and we didn’t want to bring stuff back to the same guy who screwed it up the first time.

We’re going to take off from work early and go back to Home Depot to make them eat the messed-up pipe (financially and figuratively, though if they’re not meek and diligent I’m afraid my imagination will get disturbingly literal), and either get them to fix it or head down to Oly Supply, where the staff is generally knowledgeable… and the prices are much steeper.

Oy vey, this is NOT a fun part of the project. I spent a ridiculous amount of money this weekend, and I’m afraid I worked my pater to the point of injury. I just don’t have the strength for working with threaded black iron. He was sweating and cursing and making disturbing popping noises. :(

I'm also a bit down about the floor. It's great to have the last bits of subfloor down, but the middle section -- over where the concrete shattered -- is squeaky. That means it moves, which'll mean broken grout lines or broken tile. And since it IS over the shattered-cement area, it's almost certainly a problem happening between the joists and sleepers, not twixt joist and subfloor, so there's really bugger all we can do about it at this stage. The only thing dad could think of was layering another round of inch thick subfloor on top, with staggered joints... and that messes up the floor height.

First, I finished up with this stuff:



...which was an itchy, uncomfortable job, but not a hard one. The last little bit in the area under the water heater remains to be done, but it doesn't involve insulation UNDER the floor joists (because the joists are sitting right on the slab at that point), so it'll take me five minutes or so, once we drain and move the water heater. Which we need to do soon, because...



The subfloor is almost all down! :D Only two sheets remain to be installed; the aforementioned bit-under-the-water-heater, and the tricky bit with the cut around the chimney, which you can see just up there to the right.

Dad took the day off to work on his house Friday, which means he thinks he'll be able to help me Saturday (and maybe, wonder of wonders, Sunday! We could build a WALL!). The plan is to drain and move the water heater, insulate and subfloor under it, stick a scrap of linoleum underneath, and put everything back. Oh, and fix the leaky valve, which means turning off the water to the house again, but hopefully not for long. *knock on laminate*

The leaky valve is why there's a towl in this picture of the unfinished corner:


It's not a bad leak, but I'll breathe easier once it's been dealt with. Also visible in this picture: the Roland Cube amp that we've been hooking up to our phones to supply the nessecary workin' tunes, my extremely bedraggled official plan, and the shortly-to-be-demolished wall between the laundry room and garage.

(What's that, you ask? You're taking down finished walls, now?)

IF Dad can work with me on Sunday, we'll be building a NEW interior wall. See the lumber showing between the pink insulation, right by the amp/extension cord/plan combo? That's the end of the wall betwixt kitchen and living room. We'll build the new laundry/studio wall even with that, and knock the old laundry/garage wall down, thus magically moving the water heater from studio to utility room without actually moving it, and more importantly, clearing the way for a future expansion of the kitchen into the laundry room space.

Planning! 

Not only did the under-floor framing pass inspection, but the inspector said he'd trust me to continue the insulation in the same way as the sample bit I'd laid out, and signed off on the entire under floor assembly! W00t! Now I get to spend a few hundred bucks on plywood! Whoo, flat rectangles, yay!

(Please forgive me. Laying the insulation is a whole lot like work, and I've been at it for 5 hours -- ever since the inspector left. I'm just over 1/3 of the way done, and have no idea how I thought I could finish it in a day. Fits of ignorance look a lot like fits of insanity, in retrospect.)

Bro ran my errands again today -- chauffeured me to the store to pick up insulation, where I paid for 4 bags and a $100 gift card (so I could send him to get anything I missed, later). We took home the two bags that we could carry, he went back for the other two... and they gave him three.

A $50 windfall would be lovely, but for all our flaws we're both easily guilt ridden disgustingly honest, so I sent him back to return the extra bag -- then called before he was halfway there, because I realized I'd probably need the extra, and he'd need the gift card to pay for it. The hardware store employees were very happy with us, at least.

Saturday-Shimming-Day started out as a bit of a disaster.

Because there's only room for 2x4 joists over the garage slab, we ran three rows of sleepers underneath the joists to break up the span (Inspector said we could get away with two; I'm so glad dad insisted on three!). Figuring solid was better, we shot the sleepers into the cement slab with a powder-activated nailer. It worked fine!

...until we hit the middle of the garage.

Both ends of my garage were poured to acceptable standards, but the slab in the middle is crap, and when we tried to nail into it, it shattered. If you stepped on the sleeper, not only did it wiggle, but you could hear it crunch. The broken cement was sealed under the vapor barrier, which in turn was pinned under several firmly attached sleepers, the whole lot covered with joists, so we couldn't exactly get at it, even if we'd had a fix (lots of epoxy, maybe?).

I was not going to be happy with a floor that occasionally made broken-cement-crunching noises. We decided to lay sleepers alongside the poorly attached ones and shim to those, hoping the pressure'd keep 'em in place and they wouldn't crunch the cement, but we weren't sure it would work.

At about this discouraging juncture, while we were sitting on the windowsill going "Hmmmm" with our heads to one side, I noticed that the water heater plumbing was leaking* and dad got a call from mom, saying he'd ordered the wrong product and so she was having a DIY emergency at home** (and generally having a bad day, as well).

Once we started in on actually shimming, it started to feel like progress, and we both got a bit cheerier. We used ridiculous amounts of liquid nails. I termed our goopy shim blocks 'construction shit sandwiches', but they were working. After a few joists dad ran off to get a second caulk gun and more shims. By the time he came back, I'd completed half the floor, so he decided I had it under control and I sent him straight back home to deal with his own emergencies. (Well, he ripped a few things for me first. I'm not comfortable with table saws. And he felt bad about leaving partway through, but I reminded him that part of the point was that I learn to do things myself).


A construction shit sandwich. The 2x4 joists are supported by a block of pressure treated wood with shims on top, all stuck together with liquid nails. Also actual nails.

...four hours later, covered in construction adhesive...

I managed to glue my fingers into the Live-Long-And-Prosper sign. Oops.


But I also finished shimming the floor!

Stay tuned for "The epic of how little I got done Sunday", on this same station.

*It's the old valve, not any of our replacement work, and I have a plan for damage mitigation and when and how to deal with it. It'll be fine, but it wasn't what I needed to see right then.

**have I mentioned that my parents discovered rot in the exposed south face of their house a month or so ago? They've been scrambling to try to repair extensive damage in something they put a huge amount of labor into constructing in the first place, and the rain is here already).

Remember all that angsting about the perfect water heater?

bwaaahahahahahaHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA.

*collapses*

The plan was to get a few months more out of the old one while working on the project, then either get the new one permitted, or start on it after the inspections were done. The new gas one -- regardless of specifics -- would require venting, which would mean it was in a different place,and required replumbing, so it wouldn't be a quick job, and we couldn't start it now because it wasn't permitted with the rest of the work (because I didn't know the current one was slowly failing at the time of application).

BUT.

To put a vapor barrier down over the garage slab today, we had to move the water heater 2 feet UP (room for vapor barrier and access to put a joist underneath), so we drained it out the driveway and pulled it away...

...and the five giant rust spots on the bottom that had been the source of a very slow leak, as long as the water was compressing it down into a sheet of foam insulation, suddenly became the source of a VERY BIG LEAK.

...so I bought a new standard electric tank water heater, because I had to. Which, after much swearing and a bit of pipe sweating and a lot of people sweating, is now in place -- exactly where the old one was, except 2 feet up (on a store-bought stand rather than the temporary wooden platform we were going to make, because it looks like I'll have to live with it for longer than I thought, and we were running short on time). And Freddie, I hope dad hooked things up right, and my house's weird wiring is up to snuff, because I had to chase wires through the attic and I'm covered in insulation dust and dirt and I want my shower, damn it. And I have a paying renter and a houseguest who presumably want showers, clean clothes, and sanitary dishes at some point, too.

I told Kiyoko that I was trying to ease the transition back to Japan by making her live in miserably primitive conditions, so that she'd be happy to get back to civilization.

I bought a cheap (six year) tank with 10 gallons less capacity, because we never ran out of hot water before and I'm penny pinching with a mind to replacing it in a few years -- whenever I remodel either the kitchen or the bathroom. 

At least this way I have more time for research, I suppose.

I scheduled a framing inspection -- well, partial framing inspection -- for tomorrow.

That's as specific as it gets. 'Tomorrow.' They won't tell me when. It's like the Spanish Inquisition.

I'm now faced with an ethical dilemma -- call the city and try to get them to narrow down the time, or take the whole day off work. I'm leaning towards the latter, except that I have a  9:30 dentist appointment, and with my luck the inspector will show up while I'm a mile away having my teeth cleaned -- and then my permit will be cancelled, because tomorrow is literally the last day for me to prove I've done enough work to keep the permit open.

They'll be looking at the exterior wall framing. Technically all the wall framing is supposed to be one inspection, but since the interior wall is the last thing to go up, it'd mean waiting waaaay too long, so I'm calling for a partial. That way I can get my window openings checked off and put the north windows in, which is good, because they should be arriving at the window place TODAY.

This weekend we cut away the sheathing, shingles, and aluminum siding so you can actually see through the framed window holes. WINDOWS! Now with new "Transparent" technology!

EXCITEMENT!

The studio, from approximately the door:



All four windows, showing the difference between the standard height window in the laundry room and the high oh-shit-I-hope-this-doesn't-look-awful windows in the studio:


A shot of the floor, taken without any additional lighting, to show how bright it is in there:

 

In other news, we didn't do the gas line because I'm still confused about the eventual future of my hot water heater, and what kind it is determines where it lives and where the gas inlet is, so nothing can be done with the gas line.

This is new: I crossed off an item on my sticky to-do list a few weeks early. Quick, fetch me the smelling salts, I've ordered my windows!

Since dad and I finished framing all the windows this weekend, and the window place is willing to hold onto the giant one until I'm ready for it (which'll be after all the drywall's moved in), and my credit card gets double points in august, there didn't seem to be much point in waiting.

Now I have to remember to transfer great gobs of money to my credit card before the 25th, and figure out how to pick up windows in Lacey on Monday (which mostly means borrowing my parents' vehicle, and possibly a parent).