shadesofmauve | Entries tagged with house

I made a list on LJ in August of 2016 of things that needed to get done on the house. I went back to it so I could see progress, and hey, there IS progress! Whoohoo! Maybe it'll help me plan my weekend.

~~Fake Paver Driveway / Patio~~
All steps gloriously finished! I sometimes practice my fiddle out there.

Other Yarden things

Retaining wall: Currently being built by my friend Tom!
take down cherry & willow trees (requires dad's help or $$$ to hire someone)
limb up / clean up maple ($$$$ to hire arborist)
~~redo back path with fence-board border & sheet mulch~~
Extend back path
Finish edging existing south bed with fence boards
continue sheet mulching back yard (made progress, nowhere near finished)

Once the wall is done, it'll be time for garden soil and raised beds and planning. Fun stuff. I can't hire an arborist or other help until I'm done paying for the retaining wall. It's more expensive than expected (of course) and I may well be broke after.

Exterior House things

install ridge vent or other vents ($$$, dad's help)
~~exterior trim for new windows ($$$ for material)~~
~~siding patches on new areas ($$$ for material)~~
~~final inspection and off permit!~~
remove aluminum siding from front
clean & paint front of house
wire in extra porch light from outside
~~New water line put in autumn 2016~~

I really should vent the attic better, but all the cosmetic house things can wait a year or two.

Interior House things

Studio

studio window trim
studio chimney trim & shelves
~~sand & finish studio door~~ Done!

Living Room & hallway

replace living room heater
patch living room drywall
paint living room & hallway (already have paint!)
~~replace living room fan~~ Done!
~~NEW: replace hall closet door~~ Done!
replace living room baseboard & door casing? ...eventually.

Bedrooms

Finish cleaning out guest room
sand, stain, & finish rent-a-room window trim
repaint rent-a-room
Replace rent-a-room closet doors
rewire master bedroom for wall sconce? Someday later.
paint master bedroom

Laundry room

Delayed until autumn: replumb laundry room ($$$, dad's help)
Delayed until autumn: finish drywall mud in laundry room
Delayed until autumn: floor laundry room ($$$)

The last two weeks have been the GOOD kind of crazy, which is much nicer than the bad kind. There's so much to talk about I hardly no where to start.

First, I found out the job I was hoping to apply for was reviewing candidates a week earlier than I expected. I'd given myself an assignment to boost my portfolio cred for this job (which deserves it's own separate post) and suddenly I had to finish it fast, on a day when I'd already committed to be somewhere else. 'Somewhere Else' was my friend's ranch, where I spent the afternoon playing pretty ponies. I took two mares from mudballs to shiny, and in the process I got to lead them around on strings, which is basically all eight year old me wanted in life.

The next day I went for a bikeride. It was 28 miles, which used to be only middling for me and is now quite long. My legs and lungs were fine, but my back was horrible for the next two days. Apparently I lost all my core strength over my illness. "Do boring core exercises" has become a more urgent task on my list.

The back made driving up to and enjoying Fiddle Tunes more difficult, but I did it anyway. First time I've gone up in three years, and wow, I don't think I'd realized how much I missed it. It was made even better by the fact that friends of mine are now living three minutes from the fort, so I had a bed to sleep. It's also more time than I've spent with those friends since they stayed at my place for a week a few years back, so it was great to catch up. I played music with lots of people, chatted with even more, basked in the sun, sketched, and generally had a marvelous time. I could only stay up for two nights, but when I came back down I had the best 're-entry' into 'normal' society I could hope for -- I called my dad round-about Shelton and found out he and some of our musicker crowd who weren't at camp were just about to sit down to dinner downtown, so they saved me a seat and i joined them. The crack was so good, and I was so hyped to play more, that I invited everyone back to my place after dinner, so we had songs and tunes around the fire pit in the back yard (in between fireworks and the neighbor repeatedly mowing the same patch of lawn, because it was national explode things day).

Later that week I had overnight guests from France by way of Quebec, whom I'd never met (kids of friends of friends sorta thing, possibly with more layers than that). I had to get the guest room cleaned out for them, which is GREAT, because next week Erik's mom is coming to visit. He's lived here over 14 years and this is the first time she's come out. It's also her first travel without his dad, and just a big deal all round.

This weekend I had a ton of energy and unexpectedly had my folks' extra vehicle while they were at the Oregon Country Fair, and I ended up getting a ton of stuff done on my house. Lots of little things that I've been meaning to do for ages but hadn't gotten around to:

Replaced 30" hall closet door that blocked almost the whole hallway with two french-opening doors from a bifold door kit with all the hardware removed. I had to chisel two new hinge mortises into the door frame, which was new for me.
Replaced the hall light, because as long as I was working on the hallway I might as well, and because the replacement was a fixture I took out of the laundry room and had stored for three years and I was tired of moving it from place to place.
Replaced the non-functional, noisy-when-functional, and incredibly ugly living room ceiling fan with a nicer looking, quieter, more powerful fan. Turns out the old fan was just wired waaaay too loosely -- one neutral was floating free in the box, and the wire nut pulled right off the hot leads. \o/ I'd never taken a look at 'fixing' it before because it was so dang noisy and had so little airflow that it wasn't worth it, but now all these problems are solved ~~with the power of consumerism~~.
Since I spent all this time up near the ceiling, I also destroyed huge amounts of cobwebs. \o/

Just in case all that isn't ENOUGH, my friend Tom started work on my retaining wall out front, Anthony & Kiyoko joined us for dinner somewhere in there, and I got a phone interview for the job I applied for way back at the beginning of all this! The phone interview was this morning, and I think it went really well.

The world may be going to hell, but with some health-related exceptions, my small corner of it seems to be doing pretty dang well.

Current Mood: hopeful
Current Music: When it Comes to Love - Big Bad Voodoo Daddy

(So when is it NOT, you ask? I don't know, dear reader, I really don't know).

I'm hoping to head up to Port Townsend for a few days at Fiddletunes Sunday, and come back down on the 4th. The job I want to apply for closes the fourth, so really I need to get that application in by Sunday, before I leave. We have a rehearsal Sunday, too, and tomorrow I've arranged to go help my coworker, Nancy, with cleaning the winter-muck off some of her horses, which I'm really looking forward to. Tonight there's a concert to go to. Time grows tight. Oh, and I have francophone guests-I-don't-know (daughter of a friend of a friend sorta thing) staying over Thursday the 6th, so the guest room needs to be clean and habitable, and the guest room WAS being the tool room for like three years and is now 'ex tool room dirt explosion', so that's fun.

On the good side, doing the cleaning rush for the guests from Quebec means that I'll have a headstart on the bigger cleaning push for later July, when Erik's mom is finally coming out to visit. She's not staying with me, but I still want the house to be nice, and yarden to be... as nice as I can manage. Erik helped with the latter last night, cleaning and re-arranging the back storage-patio (I have a covered patio running along the back of the house that accrues stuff, and then an uncovered patio that's actually used for sitting or grilling and what not). Then he called me 'nouveau white trash' because A) the storage-patio is always a disaster and B) part of the disaster is a bike tire I have yet to install. But at least I no longer have a lawnmower up on blocks, which I did for awhile.

(Erik is from Connecticut, and he doesn't like most of the middle-class trappings he was brought up with, but I swear the super-Connecticut-ness comes out when confronted with my trashy patio. I never care about the patio because it's the catchall place for the detritus of actually important projects, like big home and yarden improvements -- I have a hard time working on 'tidy' when I want to spend my time working on 'big change'. Even though tidy DOES make it easier to work!).

Oh, and I need to add 'installing that bike tire' to my to-do list. I've been putting it off 'cause the sidewalls are so stiff that installing it is really difficult on my hands. I already switched out the back one (old tire had come apart), and I gave the tube a pinch -flat in the process and had to do it all again. So I'm not eager to do the front.

Oh! And speaking of Trash In My Yarden (because I am hippy trash, my yarden totally shows it, it can't be denied), dad is supposed to finally come 'round with the trailer this weekend and take a bunch of stuff to the dump. YAY!

Current Mood: productive

I saw the list I posted last time I popped onto LJ, so I decided to copy it and see how much I'd gotten done!

Almost none of it, it turns out.

I got an extension on the Fake Driveway, so it's not due until November 11, which is good because the giant freelance project that was supposed to be done in May is STILL going in August, and there was another one in that time, as well as several gigs, Kiyoko's wedding, and ongoing health issues.

Fake Paver Driveway / Patio (must be done by June 1!)

~~Finish digging driveway hole (mom helped)~~

~~Order & spread gravel ($125 and mom's help)~~

Form 'pavers' ($200, halfway done)

pour driveway ($$$, requires dad's help)

get inspection!

Other Yarden things

Build short retaining wall + steps in front ($$$$, hiring friend Tom to do it)

~~Take down ~50' of old fence (the neighbor had that done with a backhoe but now she's super antsy that I haven't built a new one yet)~~, build new fence ($$$ and work party)

~~cut old fence boards down for border (borrow or buy saw)~~

take down cherry tree (requires ~~dad's help or~~ $$$ to hire someone)

limb up / clean up maple ($$$$ to hire arborist)

~~redo back path with fence-board border & sheet mulch~~

edge existing south bed with fence boards

continue sheet mulching back yard (made progress, nowhere near finished)

build raised beds in front yard ($$$ for materials, probably soil)

Exterior House things

install ridge vent ($$$, dad's help)

exterior trim for new windows ($$$ for material)

wire in extra porch light from outside

siding patches on new areas ($$$ for material)

final inspection and off permit!

remove alumnimum siding from front

clean & paint front of house

Interior House things

studio window trim

studio chimney trim & shelves

~~sand & finish studio door~~

finish drywall mud in laundry room

replumb laundry room ($$$, dad's help)

floor laundry room ($$$)

patch living room drywall

paint living room & hallway (already have paint!)

replacing living room fan

replace living room baseboard & door casing?

replace living room heater

paint dining room

rewire master bedroom for wall sconce

paint master bedroom

NEW things

Pay a plumber one thousand dollarses for a new main water line

I realize those still in LJ land haven't yet seen pics of the progress I've already made (if anyone can recommend a free image hosting service that isn't a pain in the ass, please do!), but it's time for me to do another giant to-do list.

I have end of May/beginning of June deadlines for both a big ol' freelance project AND getting my fake driveway done, so that basically accounts for all of May.

Fake Paver Driveway / Patio (must be done by June 1!)

Finish digging driveway hole (easy except that I've had health issues, so may require help)

Order & spread gravel ($$$, plus extra for fence)

Form 'pavers' ($$$, requires dad's help. The 'how' part is somewhat of a mystery)

pour driveway ($$$, requires dad's help)

~~PROFIT~~ get inspection!

Other Yarden things

Build short retaining wall + steps in front ($$$, hiring friend Tom to do it)

Take down ~50' of old fence, build new fence ($$$ and work party)

cut old fence boards down for border (borrow or buy saw)

take down cherry tree (requires dad's help or $$$ to hire someone)

limb up / clean up maple ($$$ to hire arborist)

redo back path with fence-board border & sheet mulch

edge existing south bed with fence boards

continue sheet mulching back yard

build raised beds in front yard ($$$ for materials, probably soil)

Exterior House things

install ridge vent ($$$, dad's help)

exterior trim for new windows ($$$ for material)

wire in extra porch light from outside

siding patches on new areas ($$$ for material)

final inspection and off permit!

remove alumnimum siding from front

clean & paint front of house

Interior House things

studio window trim

studio chimney trim & shelves

sand & finish studio door

finish drywall mud in laundry room

replumb laundry room ($$$, dad's help)

floor laundry room ($$$)

patch living room drywall

paint living room & hallway (already have paint!)

replacing living room fan

replace living room baseboard & door casing?

replace living room heater

paint dining room

rewire master bedroom for wall sconce

paint master bedroom

...so that's not so much!

Mind you, these are the 'little things' -- the finishing-up parts of my major project, before starting any new major projects, like the kitchen or bathroom remodels. :P

The exciting part for me is that there are a bunch of things in both the yard and the inside of the house that don't require (much) money or external labor. Patching, painting, trim, edging, replacement of lights and heaters -- those are all really cheap and things I can easily do on my ownsy. There are just a few big-ticket items where I have to figure out if I have any friends left whom I haven't already hit up for manual labor!

On Tuesday electricians came and replaced my electrical panel, all the cabling from the panel up to the weatherhead, and the weatherhead. They also fixed all but one of the little things I needed to do, like sinking the ground stakes a few inches farther and getting a cable clamp for the exterior outlet. It was awesome! ...I have to pay them a lot of money now, but it was awesome.

Calliope got very confused when the guy was under the house bonding to the water line. Where is that voice coming from? She's not a stupid cat; SHE knows voices don't come from the floor! So instead she looked in the reasonable places, like 'under the baseboard heater' and 'behind the shelf'. Y'know, places where a grown human male could conceivably hide. :P

Friday the electrical work got all inspected and I had a lovely visit with N, an older long-time musician friend of mine who's been struggling for awhile with not being able to play as much. She gave me a few pointers on a song she used to perform that I want to work up on my tenor -- the ostensible reason I went over -- but mostly we just had a nice visit.

I'd planned Saturday to be quiet, and full of writing and art, but I kinda forgot that my brother had promised me yard work for my birthday. When mom got fed up with him she brought him over, and since he was there and I really needed a plant moved (which gets more dangerous for the plant as spring progresses), we started in -- at 4 p.m. In the rain. The plant is six feet tall, my yarden is full of tree roots, and it took us three hours. In the mud. Now I'm just crossing my fingers that the darned thing lives.

Sunday dad came over and he started the last new circuit (240 to run floor heat) while I worked on low voltage. A lot of the day was spent buying stuff, but I've got the first two speaker wires cut and run, and the studio ethernet. By the end of the day I was tuckered and E and I bailed on the dinner I'd planned on making and went to the Thai House. I should be avoiding that kind of expense, but damn, I didn't want to stand up for another hour in the kitchen (and the Thai House is delicious).

It's really pretty exciting -- Dad's going to be gone or unavailable for the next three weekends, but there's a lot of work for me to do. I have to put up the rest of the heater circuit (he did the scary panel bit); cut holes for boxes for speakers and ethernet in the living room and ethernet in each bedroom; measure, cut, and run the cat6; and... damn, I think there was something else. That's enough for now, though. I've never actually fished wire through a wall, and cutting holes in the rooms that are finished is always exciting. And it involves wading through attic insulation! Always a fun time.

Oh, and brother and I also restacked the whole drywall pile this weekend. Twice.

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. :)

First, I finished up with this stuff:

Partially installed rockwool insulation

...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!

First, I finished up with this stuff:

Partially installed rockwool insulation

I had a dentist appointment at 9:30. Dad had a dentist appointment in a different city at 3. We had no idea when the inspection was going to be until 9:10, when the inspector returned my message and said it'd be at 11 - a time we could both make! YAY!

Then I got to the dentist and found out I was actually scheduled for cleaning PLUS x-rays, photos, and full exam... for two hours.

I told them I had to be out of there by 10:50, even if it meant I had to reschedule, and they were awesome. I've never had such an efficient cleaning (and naturally, people shared remodeling stories while my mouth was full of tools). The dentist said "Boom! Boom! Boom!" as he scrolled through pictures. Finished up at 10:40. My hat is off to my dentist office for their pit crew level performance.

I remembered to get nervous just as the inspector pulled up, but it was the head inspector --the guy I'd talked to before -- and he was totally relaxed. "Yup. Yup. Prior owners did weird things with the gas line, I see what you mean. How about I tell you a story about the old days when I worked in construction..."

He signed off on the exterior sheathing, basically, because he can't sign off on framing until the electric's in. I said "That's fine -- I just wanted to be sure there wasn't anything wrong with the window framing, so I can install them." and he stared at me and said "Why ever would there be, building to the plan I'd already approved?" as if the worry was vaguely insulting.

I have a notion that was mostly for dad's benefit, as part of a 'oh, look, we both have widdle daughters who are newbs at this construction thing, how cute' vibe -- but I don't care, because so far that's always worked in my favor and just means he's been very helpfully explaining everything (...yes, I am occasionally willing to abuse the fact that I sometimes bring out protectiveness in older men).

He gave us really good advice on how to work the floor, too -- it's going to be easier than we thought. YAY!

Now, it's almost 12:30, I have two errands to run, and it's beautiful outside. I'm thinking of just not going back to work...

Last weekend
- ~~demo little garage window~~
- ~~frame studio windows~~
- ~~finish mulching cardboarded area~~

Week of Aug 5-9
- ~~decide between electric heat pump,~~ gas tankless~~, and gas condenser water~~ heater
- ~~ask window order questions~~
- ~~pester city about inspection timing~~
- schedule freezer pick-up
- ~~find/buy new lace for bodice~~

Weekend Aug 10 & 11
- ~~Busk at the Ren Faire~~
- ~~mark out laundry room window dimensions~~
- ~~frame laundry room window~~

week of 12-16
- cost compare floor lumber
- apply for electrical permit
- ~~inventory gas line~~
- ~~make rough electrical plan~~

Weekend Aug 17 & 18
- Gas line
- ~~cut out windows~~
- ~~maybe vapor barrier?~~

Week of Aug 19-23
- [gas: nope!] ~~Partial Framing inspection~~ Passed!
- order floor lumber
- ~~pick up windows~~

Weekend Aug 24 & 25
~~ALL THE MUSIC~~

Week of Aug 26-30
- ~~order windows~~

Labor day weekend and week (week off)
- FLOOR.

As Time Allows
- cut and fit new cardboard baffles
- replace attic baffles ew ew ew
- cardboard and mulch backyard
- ~~finish chapter 2 of SaES~~
- watch at least one buddy cop movie, for research
- paint mailbox
- Design Pinniped stickers
- ~~continue rhody pruning~~ hope I didn't kill it, eeeee.

I've been spending a lot of time on PSE's website (the power company), keeping track of rebates and things, and rather on a whim I scheduled a HomePrint assessment a few days ago, because, hey, I've been having trouble with decisions, and more information is good, and it was free.

I was a bit worried that it wouldn't be useful, since there are things about my house I *know* are bad that I can't fix, like the minimal wall insulation, and other things I'm planning to fix but haven't gotten to yet. (I was also afraid the guy would see my house and go 'how can you live in such filth and squalor!' but that didn't happen). It was actually pretty interesting, though, and, hey, I got a bunch of free CFLs, and free stuff is cool.

And I learned things! I even learned things I can do immediately, and things I can work into my remodel, and potentially a way to get the benefit of furring out the wall without actually doing all the tedious work with furring strips -- all of which is awesome!

From top to bottom --

I need to unkludge the bathroom fan vent that dad I kludged because it was raining. Currently the very nice bathroom fan takes up one of the roof vents, and the roof could really use more ventilation. More roof vents or a ridge vent would be good in future.
I need to replace the cardboard baffles in the attic, not just make new ones for the new area, because they've fallen from the right position and are actually hindering things. That job takes zero money, but it'll be miserable to actually do. NOT looking forward to it. Ick.
In related news, he suggested a 2x4 two instead of the 2' OSB I have up there to make it easy to get through the attic, since the OSB seriously reduces the insulation in the areas it's in. I knew it was an issue; 2x4s are a decent solution, I suppose. I'll probably put up more than one, though.
vent hood for the oven, for CO and moisture reasons. Well, that's not news. What is cool is that the guy suggested moving the old bathroom fan -- which has been replaced but not removed -- into the kitchen in the interim between now and actually shelling out for a vent hood and possibly moving the stove, which is a nice idea.
Should do lots of caulking for air sealing around joints and electrical fittings and things.
advice on water heaters. Apparently a gas storage heater (like I'd been planning) is a bad idea in a conditioned space, and I should either look at gas tankless, condensing gas (a fancy storage heater), or an electric heat pump water heater. Back to the drawing board -- but good to know!
The walls are a problem, and will probably always be a problem. :( They're very poorly insulated, but since they do have some insulation, they're not candidates for drill and fill. Poo. Only way around that is to reside the house, and that's not in the cards.
The floor is awesome! Not only is it well insulated (which I knew), but there's an air barrier between the insulation and the floor (which is 2x6 boards, not sheet stock, so there are lots of air gaps). Also, I managed to keep Calliope from following him down into the crawlspace. Yay!

Current Mood: accomplished

I need to unkludge the bathroom fan vent that dad I kludged because it was raining. Currently the very nice bathroom fan takes up one of the roof vents, and the roof could really use more ventilation. More roof vents or a ridge vent would be good in future.
I need to replace the cardboard baffles in the attic, not just make new ones for the new area, because they've fallen from the right position and are actually hindering things. That job takes zero money, but it'll be miserable to actually do. NOT looking forward to it. Ick.
In related news, he suggested a 2x4 two instead of the 2' OSB I have up there to make it easy to get through the attic, since the OSB seriously reduces the insulation in the areas it's in. I knew it was an issue; 2x4s are a decent solution, I suppose. I'll probably put up more than one, though.
vent hood for the oven, for CO and moisture reasons. Well, that's not news. What is cool is that the guy suggested moving the old bathroom fan -- which has been replaced but not removed -- into the kitchen in the interim between now and actually shelling out for a vent hood and possibly moving the stove, which is a nice idea.
Should do lots of caulking for air sealing around joints and electrical fittings and things.
advice on water heaters. Apparently a gas storage heater (like I'd been planning) is a bad idea in a conditioned space, and I should either look at gas tankless, condensing gas (a fancy storage heater), or an electric heat pump water heater. Back to the drawing board -- but good to know!
The walls are a problem, and will probably always be a problem. :( They're very poorly insulated, but since they do have some insulation, they're not candidates for drill and fill. Poo. Only way around that is to reside the house, and that's not in the cards.
The floor is awesome! Not only is it well insulated (which I knew), but there's an air barrier between the insulation and the floor (which is 2x6 boards, not sheet stock, so there are lots of air gaps). Also, I managed to keep Calliope from following him down into the crawlspace. Yay!

Current Mood: interested

For the fourth of July dad and I headed to Home Depot so I could stimulate the economy in good consumer fashion. We ended up buying more studs than I'd planned on because the sling of cheap 'whitewood' happened to be really good quality fir, and who knows what the cheap sling will be in two weeks? (this also drove the decision not to build the north wall thicker, since for that it' d make more sense to buy 2x6s and the 2x6s were crap, while the 2x4s were really good. We could still fur it out, but cutting and applying all those furring strips would be a lot of work for an R-6 insulation boost).

Back at my place, I started work on the sill plate (cutting to size and countersinking the holes for the anchor bolts so the wall plate would sit flush) and wall plate...

Foundation and sill plate across garage door opening

Foundation and sill plate across garage door opening

While dad worked on pulling the siding away from the header and figuring out where to make the cut so my new window would be at the same level as the existing ones, and then did the tricky plunge cut:
Cut away header

(The 1x2 is just tacked up there so he had something straight to cut against).

The deconstruction and plunge cut were the hard bits; the framing went together in twenty minutes, and then we propped the garage door over it again so dad could run off to his 4th of July party (E and I celebrated by making Japanese food and watching a French movie).

Saturday we sheathed, and now it looks like a real wall!

[This bit is f'locked for family stuff, and would have just derailed the 'project pictures yay!' post. Make sure you read the happy-pictures-progress-yay post too, or you'll get the idea that I'm dismal and grumpy. :P]

Saturday I did a LOT of standing/walking for my injured foot, which made me tend to irritable already -- and then my brother showed up to 'help.' (actually, dad told him he had to come so he wouldn't be in mom's hair -- we were all having dinner there later, and we didn't want a pissed-off mom). Problem being, we weren't doing anything that required three people -- it sometimes didn't require two -- and I need this to be my job; part of the goal is coming away confident that I can do all this shit.* Giving him jobs meant I wasn't doing them.

I had a job I'd already offered to pay him for -- taking nails out of the old fence boards -- but he wouldn't stick with that for more than ten minutes at a stretch because it wasn't where dad and I were working and it wasn't part of the cool project. Despite the fact that I was willing to pay him for one, and not the other. E showed up out of the blue to help, too, which may have made it worse -- we didn't need three people, let alone four, and having E with us emphasized the all-the-cool-kids-are-in-the-garage problem my brother was having.

Dad's gotten used to managing him, though, and so we found jobs nearer us every so often to try to keep him engaged. He helped move the door back; he took his turn with the hammer drill. The hammer drill thing points up some of the painful contrast between us; he wanted to do the job -- apparently he likes hammer drills and has used them before -- and he still took multiple breaks on one hole, complained about his arms, and had to be corrected on some element of tool misuse (I don't know what -- I try to avoid being an audience for uncomfortable lectures). I can be in serious pain and keep trucking without much complaint (I make 'uuuaaargh' noises, but that's more a better-out-than-in thing). My brother can't stick with a job for ten minutes without saying he's exhausted and needs a break. One of his avoidance-techniques is to randomly stop working to call people -- any people. Then he offers to pass the phone around and interrupt everyone else's work, too. This time he called my uncle, and then I got to hear how apparently we'd been working my brother to death, and he'd really put in a hard day. Dude showed up three hours after we got started**, took breaks every half hour or more, and did less while he was working. And I was actually in pain from an actual injury the whole time.

I don't actually expect other people to work through real pain, but it's really hard for me to hold back the 'suck it up, dude' when he seems to be stopped by the most minor discomfort. It's not a competition; it's not okay to compare the two of us. I have it way easier than him, and I know it. But we're talking manual labor, and he could shine if he just had an ounce of stick-with-it. Instead he's not just not-working, he's constantly derailing everyone else.

(I admit I have some old issues in this area, too -- when I was fourteen my fifteen-year-old incredibly irresponsible male cousin came up to help on my family's remodel and was always given 'real' remodeling tasks. When I asked what I could do to help, dad usually said 'make lunch'. In retrospect I realize that it was probably at least in part that I'd been on crutches and doing major medical stuff less than a year before and he was used to being careful of me, and I was small, with very little upper body strength. But it stung, and the omg-sexism bitterness really hung on.)

Other weird things: At one point my brother asked "When did you get a sawsall?" which was bizarre and awkward, because he'd been there when I received it as a christmas gift in 2011, and when I'd playfully called them 'big girl toys' he'd said "No, they're big boy toys and I should have gotten them," with absolute bile in his voice. :| (I took him to task for being a sexist pig -- I couldn't even bring myself to touch gift etiquette -- and never told my parents about it, 'cause they would've flipped).

The job I offered to pay him for still isn't done, and the once-neatly-piled boards are a total mess now, but... I didn't expect much more than that. I'm disappointed that he tried to lie and tell me the job was done -- holy shit, dude, the pile of boards is only 40' away and it's my house, and I can tell you didn't finish the job! -- but I'm not really surprised by that, either.

I think dad's right that he has a Thing about being sent away to work elsewhere. All the things I've had him do for me have been like that, and they've all been disasters. I'll have to remember that in future, but it's a bit counter-intuitive -- usually if I'm going to hire someone it's because they either have more expertise than me, or because I have other shit to do and don't want to hang around and do that job. My brother can only do the later type of job, but he needs someone working alongside him in order to work at all.

*sigh*

This seems pretty heavy, but really, it went about as well as could be; I didn't snap at my brother; I enjoy working with my dad and E; and E really, really gets that I need to do stuff myself, so he doesn't even jump in unless he knows it's something I've already done and am comfortable with, despite a lot more experience in some things (concrete and plumbing, mostly). Dad was really good about it, too -- he swings back and forth between being a great teacher and 'darn it, it's quicker if I just do it myself', but we've been really clear with each other about how this needs to be mine, and he respects that.

And we got everything done this weekend we'd planned on, which counts as major remodeling success!

*Except lift 80lb bags of concrete. I really, really can't.

**He was working for someone in the morning, but it wasn't us making him do it.

STRAIGHT SCREWDRIVER: A tool for opening paint cans. Sometimes used to convert common slotted screws into non-removable screws.

OMG, GUYS, IT'S ACTUALLY HAPPENING!!!

Thursday Dad's friend dropped off four 80lb bags of quikrete he had left over, and dad's little cement mixer. (Yeah, my dad owns a cement mixer. He bought it on Craigslist when he was doing his giant patio project, and now he loans it out to people).

Before picture of my house with the garage door open

Saturday Dad came over with a car full of tools, and we went to Home Depot to buy more tools. Dad made me set my Bucket-O-Tools on the cart because "I know it's your project and you're buying, but people are glaring at me because I'm making a girl with a limp carry all the heavy stuff." Poor dad. :P It was The Lawn Mower Incident all over again. (I injured my foot last week, so I have a much more pronounced limp than normal).

(I got a little bit alarmed when Dad paused by the mini compressors -- I was NOT prepared to buy one; I don't even own any tools that USE one. Dad pointed out that there was no way in hell he was lugging his giant compressor over to my house; I pointed out I could borrow a little one from the next door neighbor. Dad pointed out that if I did, he wouldn't have an excuse to buy a mini compressor. I should've remembered that Dad sees any given project as an 'excuse to buy more tools he wants anyway.' The man owns a little cement mixer, for crying out loud.)

$130 later (with no mini compressor, yet) we got back home.

First we took down the garage door, which is the older single-solid-panel type, then the trim pieces around the the opening and a teeny bit of the siding, so we had something to attach concrete forms to (the forms were sitting on either the garage slab or the driveway, so we couldn't just pound in stakes). My house has a weird double sill plate, which worked to our advantage here -- we planned the pour to be taller than the rest of the foundation, going up to the top of the first sill plate, so we could screw the 2x6 form pieces right to the lower sill plate on either side. Then I got to learn about hammer drills and epoxy and rebar, and dad finally taught me how to use my circular saw. YAY!

(I cut the blocks we used to temporarily stick the garage door back on. Always good to practice on something where the final product doesn't matter).

Detail of the garage door, attached with blocks
My garage door iz pastede on yay.

On Sunday we tied the rebar and poured the concrete. E showed up with coffee and treats, and (again unexpectedly) stayed for the whole day.

The concrete part went perfectly.

Freshly poured concrete foundation
Yum, creamy.

The cleaning of the concrete equipment, however, required hose with a decent amount of water pressure, which was enough water pressure to totally blow through the already leaking valve on the hosebib, and when I went to turn the water off it didn't. At all.

After excavating to find the damn water main (a LOT of dirt had gotten in its little house somehow), and realizing there was no way in hell we'd get it unstuck with just a wrench I called dad back and begged him for the specialty tool. He brought that and still had to use a metal bit off the garage door as a four foot long cheater, and he was throwing his whole weight into it.

His muscly job done, dad left E and I with a shopping list and we set out on our unexpected plumbing adventure. As long as we had the water off, we might as well replace both leaky exterior faucets, right? Which meant dissecting the one in back, which stuck 30" out of the ground and was swaddled in insulation. I call it the Stupid Faucet, because it IS. Observe:

Really badly positioned exterior faucet.

That is my 7" back patio. That is a shin-bruiser-ankle-breaker-knee-slicer faucet coming straight up out of the middle of the 7" patio. If they'd run the pipe three more feet it would've come up right next to the post. If they'd run it four less feet it would have come out of the wall like a normal faucet. BUT NO. IT'S IN THE MIDDLE OF THE PATIO. That's an 'after' photo, too -- the original Stupid Faucet(tm) had a 'freeze proof' faucet, which only makes sense if installed horizontally inside a wall. The Stupid Faucet was actually more likely to freeze, because it trapped water at such an angle that none of it drained out. Or it would, if it hadn't been constantly leaking. Oh, and the handle snapped off two years ago, so I've been operating it with pliers.

I'll cut the long story about hunting through various hardware stores for pipe fittings short. Suffice it to say we fixed the front faucet. The Stupid Faucet is still dribbling, but much more slowly.

We also took every opportunity for off-color plumbing jokes along the way. I mean, when E put the 8" pipe in his pocket... resisting that opening would have taken a saint, I tell you. And the pipe was called an 8 inch nipple. And the hosebib is a silcock. And, well, plumbing. You know how it is.

Anyhow, got the water back on, none of the ancient galvanized broke, and I joyfully announced to my poor renters that they were free to flush in peace. E and I took an ill-considered but well-deserved nap. Dad called to make sure we hadn't flooded anything.

All was well with the world.

There are actually more stories in here somewhere, about silly things Erik and Dad said and how, between us, my brother and I managed to sort of lock dad and I in the garage, and why my housemate threatened to take away my power tools, but this'll do for now. We planned on getting the foundation across the garage opening poured this weekend, and we DID! That's remodeling success. :D

Current Mood: productive

STRAIGHT SCREWDRIVER: A tool for opening paint cans. Sometimes used to convert common slotted screws into non-removable screws.

Current Mood: productive

Soooo much weekend.

I woke up early enough Friday that I could play Terraria while sipping my coffee and still have time to run errands before going on a bike ride with Kim, which worked out 99% perfectly! The 1% involved a half-empty can of paint I was taking down to donate to the ReStore, which opened itself and spilled in the back seat of my parents' car. *headdesk* Upside: There isn't a giant puddle of paint on the car floor because I just happen to have been carrying a drop cloth in that footwell for the last two months, so there's just a bit on the seat. The car is the beater my brother has to drive, and my parents don't care.

Kim and I managed about 28 miles (I managed, anyway -- I'm sure she could've gone for longer) and then still had energy for game night. Lots of cottontail bunnies out on the bike trail, and lots of fun at game night, though my recent itchy-eye problem was bothering me something fierce.

Saturday I didn't manage to wake up early, and then when I was about to finally get a move on E showed up to relax and have breakfast, so I moved even slower. I still managed to get out and strip ALL the plants from the narrow walkway between the fence and the north side of the house. ALL THE PLANTS inlcuded blackberries, ivy, hawkweed, and a volunteer nut tree that was three feet taller than me (I dragged the root ball out into the lawn so I could show off my kill). We're going to have to walk back there to work on the studio, and the ground was extremely uneven (and sloped towards the house), so I set to with rake and shovel and leveled things out a bit. Then I got cardboard down on half of it, really well fitted around fence posts...

...and then I realized that if I mulched on top of the cardboard there'd be organic material too far up the foundation, three inches or less from the siding, and I was going to have to move the cardboard and either abandon the mulching or dig out three inches of dirt all the way along.

Then I sat on my cardboard and stared at the wall for awhile.

There are times when staring at the wall is a vital part of the DIY process.

Eventually I decided to A) get up off the cardboard and B) leave mulching that area until after we're done with the major studio work. The important thing was getting the vegetation out, anyway. It just needed to be navigable.

Made dinner for my sweety -- stir fry off the top of my head -- and he assumed I'd used a recipe, which I think is good. I hadn't realized how little off-the-cuff cooking I do for him -- I cook pretty rarely, since he's so darn good at it. Speaking of which, he made an excellent brunch Sunday, after he arrived around 11 to find me out working in the yarden again, running on only coffee (I'd almost finished weeding the gravel path! Gravel paths SUCK to weed). He says he's perfectly happy to be my kitchen witch if I'll be his garden gnome. :P

After finishing the path, I turned the compost, went for a walk, and then continued clearing out the area

emony42 and I started on when she was here -- and I FOUND A LONG-TOED SALAMANDER! I had no idea any lived in my yard -- there's no water nearby -- and amphibians are a really good sign for ecosystem health (and also cuuuute) so that was awesome. :D :D :D I was telling E about the best part of my day, and I said "you making me brunch while I weeded AND THE SALAMANDER" but really it was totally the salamander. Don't tell.

The salamander drew my attention to rain gardens, and how the spot I found him in would make a very good rain garden, so if the slope agrees*, I'll work on one -- after the studio stuff.

(I released the salamander into the oxalis after finding him, because I was putting four layers of cardboard over his home).

All that, and I still got to eat dinner, too! E made a delicious vaguelly polynesian thing with slow cooked pork, pineapple, and raisins, and it was delicious.

So, weekend:
miles ridden: 28
areas weeded: north walk way, gravel path, everything from oxalis patch to vine maple and a bit beyond.
stacks of cardboard used: 1
salamanders found (and not accidentally squished):1
delicious meals eaten: 3

*If you want water to be somewhere, it helps if it's downhill. Sadly, my yard has only a slight slope, and it points towards the house. I have to get out the builder's level and see how deep I'd have to dig a rain garden so that there'd be adequate slope in a pipe running from the downspout...

Current Mood: accomplished

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shadesofmauve

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August 2017

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Page generated June 8th, 2025 11:02 pm

Days of Shades

Entries tagged with house

The giant house list revisted

I've got it all figured out, I've got a horse on a string

A busy month ahead

Things I haven't done since I made that list

Giant House/Yarden To-Do List, iteration eleventytwelve

I did ALL THE THINGS. And then collapsed.

I have a stud wall!

I have a stud wall!

Weekend's Work

Weekend's Work

First inspection: Passed!

The List: Oh Gods, It's Already August

An Educational Morning

An Educational Morning

Studio Progress: I has a WALL!

Studio Progress: I has a WALL!

The psychological end of the weekend [warning, sibling issues]

Studio project: Weekend One!

Studio project: Weekend One!

My weekend had a lot of weekend in it!

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August 2017

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