Author: turtle

Siding Factory

I received the new motor for the vacuum cleaner, and successfully repaired “r2d2”!

(above left) r2d2 in pieces on my work bench. The old motor is on the left. Above right, all back together. It’s almost smiling 🙂

I put in the window for the bathroom at the side of the laundry room. There’s still one more window, but the company I ordered it from forgot to put the order into the manufacturer! So, it’s going to be a few more weeks. The photo above left is a view from the outside, above right photo view from the inside.

I think I have mentioned before how much work it is to re-use old siding. I’ve not figured out how many hours per foot it is; it’s probably too depressing. But, now that ‘r2d2’ is up and running again, Mole’s siding factory is back in operation. The first step is to strip off paint that is too damaged to save. Then, notches are patched with pieces of wood and waterproof glue, and splits are glued and clamped.

Then each piece is sanded on all sides. Notice the vacuum tube coming out of the sander (above left). Then the pieces are all vacuumed to remove dust.

*news break* Here’s Mole headed off to the store on her bike (above left).

And then back to painting the siding with two coats of primer on all sides.

Above left, Mole is waiting for paint to dry (it’s only slightly faster than grass growing.) Above right, fitting the restored siding on the house again. Cutting the siding to fit around around the pipe penetrations in the wall is tricky. You can see here two locations: the top left is from a sink, the lower right is from the shower.

The black building paper “Jumbotex” is a water resistant barrier, on top of which I put 1/4″ thick strips of wood. The strips space the siding away so that there’s an air gap. This is supposed to help the siding last longer, as moisture doesn’t get trapped between the siding and the building paper.

Putting the siding up takes weeks, because we only manage to sand and paint a few boards every weekend. But it’s almost done. The next step is to use ‘Bondo’ to fill all the nail holes, dents, and scratches in the boards, sand them again, prime them again, and on to final painting!

The siding is up around the new window, and I’m just waiting for the other window to arrive. Above right, you can see the new window, and siding up and around it. On the right of the picture is a temporary piece of wood covering the hole for the missing window.

 

Roof Extension

I’ve still got the scaffolding up on the back side of the laundry room, so need to finish up this wall.

A month or so ago, I reframed this wall. It’s been sitting that way since, so this weekend I finally cut out the plywood from the window openings, ready for the new windows (one is still not here). This will be the wall of the toilet room back here. Above left is a view from the inside, above right from the outside.

But the main activity: Creating a roof overhang so that when it rains, the wall gets a little protection. The wall used to line up directly with the edge of the roof. Sorry, didn’t catch a photo, but the photos above show halfway through.

I had to take up the roofing, back to the first roof joist inside. We’ve added “outriggers” that extend out and support a joist right at the outside edge. Then I had to replace the roof sheathing boards so that they extend out to the new overhang. In the photos above, we are half way done.

Not a big change, and a “real” builder wouldn’t even bother (in fact, when we hired a roofing contractor to do the main roof, they actually cut some of the overhangs off, much to my dismay). But it will make a big difference to the longevity of the wall. In all houses, especially wood, water is the enemy. Roofing handles water and weather much better than paint on wood. I think, also, many window and door manufacturers will not warranty it if there’s no overhang protecting the window or door.

Above left is after all the roof sheathing boards have been extended. I’m re-using old wood, so it’s covered in random paint. Above right, we’ve put back the roofing felt, and the shingles. We re-used the old ones, so it’s a bit of a patchwork. And since the roof is a bit wider, didn’t have quite enough. No worries. I’m planning to get this all re-roofed because the roof slope is actually too shallow for shingles (it leaks).

Here’s an exciting picture of the high energy walk mole is on with a+b. 😉

R2D2 D:<

It’s been a big family visit month.

My sister Eva had her wedding (again), but this time, in Santa Cruz. My whole family came to visit, including my sister Mia all the way from Asia, and Mum, my aunt and cousin from England, my brother and Aja from Brooklyn… Nice to see everyone, now back to the grind: didn’t get much done on the house…

It’s been one wall at a time on the laundry room. This is the lower half of the last wall. Above left, you see the window opening in this wall, and above right, some nice strapping around this window. Although the code doesn’t require it, I decided to paint the edges of the plywood with wood preservative, just in case. That bottom edge is so important for seismic, but is also in the most damp location.

While we were working in the room under the laundry room (the ‘garden room’ I think I’m calling it), we got an unexpected inspector looking down through the hole in the floor.

At this point, it had been about a month since I’d disconnected the washing machine. We were making the occasional emergency trips to the local laundromat, but the pile of laundry was mounting. So I spent a weekend plumbing in the washing machine again. Top right is where the sewer line exits at the floor level. The sheet metal and rubber against the wall is a roof jack, intended for when pipes exit through the roof. The rubber seals tightly around the pipe, and is crimped onto the sheet metal. I’ve been using roof jacks to waterproof around these wall penetrations. There are probably equivalent pieces intended for walls, but these are all they have at my local supplier. And it’s a whole lot better than what the plumbers did on other parts of the house: they drilled a hole and squeezed some caulk in there. Lots of rot was the result.

Above right is a view on the inside, looking up. You can see the sewer line that will serve the toilet, and also the washing machine. There is also the pipes for the hot and cold water in the top right corner of the picture, going up through the floor. The photo above left is how the sewer pipe looks on the outside of the building now.

And lo, we have a washing machine again. The room is still bare, but at least we don’t have to hike down the street with our baskets of laundry. We are so spoiled.

Next comes building paper, and another window. A couple of years ago, when I ordered replacement sashes for the windows in the office, one of them came with single glazing. The supplier replaced it with a double glazed window when I called them, but then I had this extra window left over. It’s been sitting around the garage ever since. So we decided to use it here. Works quite nicely. I’ve made it into a fixed window. Mole sanded and primed the whole thing, on all faces, twice.

We’re still reusing the old siding that came off the building. Mole spent many hours sanding these, then priming all surfaces. It’s an extraordinary amount of work reusing old materials. The photo above right shows how the wall penetrations look when a roof jack is used. It will all be painted the same color, so not quite so obvious.

When we first started working on the house, we bought a HEPA shop vacuum cleaner. It was quite an expensive model Turbo II made by Fein. I love it, because it doesn’t make a racket like all the other shop vacs, and it’s always hooked up when we are sanding anything that may have lead paint (ie, everything.) It turns itself on and off whenever the sander is turned on or off. One thing that had never occurred to me: it really needs servicing every now and again. It’s probably been running over 5000 hours since we got it. Well, last weekend, “r2d2” as we call it, had a heart attack! I thought it might be just worn brushes, so I took it to pieces. The brushes are worn, but not the problem. The motor’s kaput.

I’ve ordered a replacement motor, but never realized how much I use this thing. We can’t sand anything without it. No siding, no painting, no smoothing wood. Cleanup is difficult. We use it to vacuum off our clothing after working. Wow, this is an important tool.

Four Windows In

 

For a while, we were giving the cats oatmeal to help them with fur balls. Got to watch the quantity, though, and I get jumped on when I eat my breakfast.

My two breakfast buddies.

Last week, mole’s ‘little sister’ came to visit for a few days. The visit coincided with getting a new bike. And the roses are out.

We spent quite a few weekends working on the old siding. Not only was it suffering from lack of maintenance, it got quite split up when we pulled it off. First I used waterproof ‘Titebond III’ glue and clamped the split boards back together. After a day to set, I sanded them all, to remove all loose paint, and smooth out a lot of the roughness. It took quite a while to get down to solid material. There’s going to be a lot of bondo on this wall.

Janeen primed both sides, with two coats on the backs. Slowly, slowly, siding is starting to climb up the back of the laundry room again.

Once we got to about half way up the wall, I built some temporary scaffolding out of old pieces of wood. I don’t like working up a ladder. Here’s Mole holding the second window in place. She’s standing on the temporary scaffolding.

The instructions for putting in windows are very methodical. You level the window on shims, then carefully measure both diagonals. Surprisingly (for me), the windows are always out of square and need a lot of shimming and pushing around to get them square. Shipping must really bang them about. Each window takes a while. But here’s a view from the inside looking out, with three windows in.

Arwen loves the laundry room. Partly because there’s so much to explore, and partly because that’s the way to go and play outside. When she wants to go through a door, she rubs her front feet on it, over and over.

Here we’ve got all four new windows in, and the siding is up to the underside of the windows. But there’s one more wall to do.

Here we’re tearing out the last wall that needs replacing in the laundry room. This is where the toilet was, so the floor is also quite rotten. Initially, I was trying to save the tile, thinking it would make it faster to get the room done. But I’ve decided to tear it out, because it’s so hard to match, and there are some large areas that didn’t have tile.

The problem with removing the tile, is that it was very thoroughly glued to 1/2″ plywood that was nailed with serrated nails tightly to the sub-floor. When I started pulling up the plywood (really slow going, and hard work), it started pulling up and breaking the rather rotten sub-floor.

So now I had to also replace the subfloor. Here’s a picture with most of the sub-floor along the wall torn out, and the wall completely gone. That plumbing is for the sink that the washer was connected to. That’s coming out too.

Late that night, I managed to get the framing for the wall, and the plywood up. The following day I had my Mum and sister coming to stay.

Hoot Like a Dove?

Since we bought a bird feeder, and I’ve been filling it with wild bird seed every week, we’ve been visited by quite a few birds. One of them hoots like an owl, and mole calls it my friend. I think it may be a mourning dove (not sure if they are in Calif, but it sounds a bit like this):
http://www.learnbirdsongs.com/birdsong.php?id=7

Above left, my friend is looking for seed that’s fallen to the ground. Right, I’m working on sealing up the wall over the window, ready to put siding on.

Finally, we’re getting siding on the wall around the window. This is the window that looks out of the kitchen. It spent the whole winter with duct tape and plastic covering the edges. I’ve finally got the siding on around the window, and the trim. Still needs the more filler, and prime and paint.

When I was building the back stairs, I built them so that they were independent of the house. This was partly so that I could build them without needing to tear down the laundry room or the old stairs first. The problem is, now I want to put a window in this wall, and I have a post in front of the window. So I re-framed this part of the stairs, and extended laundry room roof overhang a few inches, so there’s no longer a post in front of the window.

And then we put in one of the new windows. Four more to go. And no weekend project is complete without a kitten inspection. I think Bella approves (Arwen is just too preoccupied looking at the birds, I think).

Garden Room?

I realized we don’t even have a name for the room below the laundry room. How about Garden Room?

We really didn’t do a whole lot, though, this weekend. We did put the windows in that I’d worked on last weekend. This back wall is almost ready for the new windows on the back of the laundry room, too.

I started making a window sill out of the redwood that came off the tear-off room. The white caulk is polyurethane caulk. It is really sticky, and supposedly lasts very well, but you can’t paint it. So the only places I’ve put it is where there will be wood trim covering it.

Next step is to start putting the siding on. The black tar paper does not do very well with sun exposure, and it’s been HOT in city over the last few days (by our standards.)

New Back Door

I’m still amazed at how fast time goes by. I took off the old back door, extended it, and refinished it back at the end of October, so it’s been five months without a back door downstairs!

Instead of trying to save pieces, I tore off this whole wall and re-framed it. Now it has a door opening and a window next to it. Above right is the view from inside, with the plywood already on.

A problem I am going to have to resolve later is the post from the stairs, right in front of the window (above left). I’m planning to support it from the roof (extend the roof out to make a bit of an overhang, and sit the post on the overhang). Above right, the door is in, and I’ve put the old window temporarily into the window opening (we’ve ordered new windows).

I also got a new toy. I can’t believe I’ve not used a palm nailer before, but they are awesome: The opening at the end accepts loose nails (one at a time). Then you place the nail against what you want to nail it into, and the nailer just vibrates the nail into the wood. It’s so effortless that it’s unbelievable. It’s especially useful in tight spaces that you can’t swing a hammer.

I used it to nail in the clips that support the roof rafters, and to attach the blocking. Notice the ear protection: That nailer is LOUD. Between each rafter, there’s a piece of wood cut to fit. This wood gets nailed to the roof, the top of the wall (usually with a metal ‘A35’ clip) and to the rafters each side. It serves very important purposes: It stops the rafters rolling over, it acts as a connection between the roof and the wall in an earthquake, and it closes off the space between the joists.

The problem with the last part is that when you have insulation, you need to ventilate above the insulation so that moisture does not build up and rot the wood. So we added holes, with mesh screens on them to let air in.

Above left – the door is in, and the wall moisture barrier paper on. Above right, I’m looking out of one of the random holes that’s left when I screw up all the temporary bits of plywood that I find lying around. This wall will be all windows soon. Above my head between the rafters you can see the blocking all in place (primed white).

Another view from inside the laundry room. Before the blocking was in, Arwen almost jumped out one of the openings between the rafters. We didn’t even notice that she was in the room, and then Janeen looked up and saw her hanging out the outside!

Above right, these old windows are the windows we replaced at the front of the house, and in the bedroom (2009!). They have been gathering dust in our garage, and now I’m going to put them to use.

I’m cutting the frames shorter, and reassembling them so that I can use them in the garage back room (under the laundry room). Should get them in next week…

Here’s our view when we are working on the back door.

Not What Normal People Do

We continued working on the Laundry room. I took off all the old siding, and added plywood. I ran out of coil strap (steel straps for shear walls can be bought individually, or in rolls, colloquially referred to as “coil strap.”) So there’s only strap below the window. Need to add some above it.

Once I got it all on, nailed, and cleaned up, we had a kitten inspection. They love this room.

Then I started on the second part: Raising the roof. Because of how this room has been built over the last hundred years (in bits and pieces tacked onto the previous pieces), the roof framing was haphazard. So I added new roof joists. I had to hold the roof up with 2×4’s while I cut the old framing and added in new.

It’s rather tricky figuring out how long to cut them, and what angle all the cuts need to be. When I put them in, because the roof slope was still steeper, they all looked short (above left). Then I put a beam across all of them, and started jacking. Above right you can see a gap forming between the wall and the roof!

Here’s me jacking up the ceiling. Maybe I should have been wearing my hard hat. Above right: When mole saw this gap, she said “this is not what normal people do to their house.” Poor house.

So Mole started working on taking out the old tile and plaster board where the old ‘shower’/toilet was. At first it was really tough going, but then she managed to get most of the wall off in one piece.

We then framed in a new wall to support the lifted up roof. Above right, you can see the gap where the roof has been raised up, and the new wall next to it. This wall is going to be mostly windows. Above left, Mole is looking out of one of the future window openings. I’ve used all the old scraps of plywood I can find to fill them in until the new windows are delivered in about four weeks! In the mean time, it’s looking like there was a fire. 🙁

Here’s Arwen playing in the comforter.

Foundation, Flowers, Travels, Walls!

Quite a bit has happened, both before I went to England and Brooklyn, and after. As usual, I over estimated how much we could do. I wanted to get a new foundation poured, and walls built to support the laundry room before I left. We almost got there…

The old walls around this space had been built in stages. Initially, it was probably open, and just posts supported the floor. Then siding was added. Then concrete. So the siding was buried in concrete, and very rotten. We tore out everything, leaving the laundry room sitting up in the air.

The problem (well, one of them) with being an amateur: Even if I know how to do something, sometimes I forget, because I do it so rarely. When laying out the foundation, I forgot that you are supposed to stretch string out to lay out the sides. That helps get them straight, and is easier than snapping chalk lines. I snapped chalk lines.

As you can see, I’m not doing real foundations, just putting a concrete wall on top of the old concrete slab. It will lift the wood framing up, so that it’s not sitting in water. Hopefully will stop the rot.

We drilled and epoxied threaded rod into the old slab, and made sure they were sticking up high enough so that we can use them to attach the new wall to the concrete.

The formwork took a whole weekend to make.

The next week, in four car trips, I got the concrete, and rented a mixer. Janeen and I poured the new concrete walls in a day. I spent quite a while cleaning up, and trying to smooth and flatten the top.

 

And that’s as far as we got before I took off. I screwed some plywood onto the outside, and hoped for no earthquakes.

When I got to Brooklyn, I pulled out the gifts that Janeen had made: Pocket Bears! She said that Misha and Aja could pick whichever ones they wanted. Misha had a lot of trouble (he wanted them all I think.)

Arwen and Bella glamor shot!

Spring is really here. The flowers are all out in our garden. Janeen took these photos while she was outside with the cats.

Here is Bella inspecting the foundations that have been setting for a week by now.

I forgot to take photos when I was in England (because my phone wasn’t working, I didn’t even think of trying to use the camera. Oh well. I spent a week in Stroud, enjoying beautiful weather, and Mum’s great cooking. 🙂

I stopped back in Brooklyn as I returned, and one day there was a track meet! Managed to snap a photo of Misha running the 800 meters, and Aja running a relay.

Nails! [Mole note: these nails are almost 100 years old! they are hand made. see how they are not round? they have corners! so cool.]

Yes, we’re back at it. And there was a 4.0 earthquake while I was gone. Fortunately, it was quite small, so nothing fell down.

Besides peach blossoms! The Freesia are blooming.

Drilling holes, and then putting the sill plate onto the new concrete. Above right, I’ve painted wood preservative into the drilled holes, and hammered the plate over the threaded rod anchors. It fits!

Janeen is dismantling the ‘Jenga’ that was supporting the laundry room. Above right is one of the pieces of wood that the jack was pushing on. I guess it was pushing quite hard!

Above left, building a new wall. Above right, with pile of wood supports removed!

Above left: I made a mistake measuring for one of the anchor bolts, so the washer and nut will extend into one of the posts in the wall. Janeen used a chisel and notched out the bottom of the post to fit over the square plate washer. Nice!

Above right: The plywood on the far left is a new shear wall. The rest of the panels are temporary. I’ve got some old aluminum windows that I am planning to resize and fit here.

 

 

 

 

Jack!

We did jack this weekend.

It took most of Saturday to get the supports and bracing in place. I added diagonal bracing below, to try to stabilize everything as much as possible. When the back room is cut off the house, the only thing stopping it from toppling over will be these braces. I wore my hard hat so that I didn’t keep hitting my head. Looks more professional, too!

Using a reciprocating saw, I cut all the way round, through the nails that held the laundry room onto the house, completely separating it from the house. We also disconnected piping (well, most of it – see later) and other things that held the floor to the house.

Above left you can see the step (red) between the kitchen and the laundry room.

Once we started jacking, Janeen ran outside and took a photo (above right). You can see a gap under the framing that is going up with the floor, and the wall below.

Above left, there’s about six inches between the floor and the wall below. Above right, this is half way there.

While we were pumping the jack, there were all sorts of creaking noises. Sometimes there was the sound of splitting wood, or sudden cracks. After one noise, I went outside, and found that I’d forgotten to disconnect the sewer pipe from the wall, so it was being lifted up with the room and had separated at a joint. I had to disconnect it, and carefully slide it back down into place (while up on a ladder, leaning on the room sitting on temporary supports – above left).

Above right, you can see light shining through a gap between the house and the laundry room. The whole thing would tilt sideways as we jacked up one side. Then it would tilt back when we jacked the other side. I didn’t realize it would tilt around this much, and am really glad I put in the bracing. It’s quite scary being underneath all this with the jack.

Janeen kept calling it ‘reverse Jenga’. I have one 20-ton jack but have six support points to lift the room at. We put the jack onto one of the supports, and pumped it until it lifted that side about 1 1/2″. Then I slipped a couple of 2×4’s into the gap, and let the pressure off the jack. Then we moved it to the next location. It took all day.

Above right, here’s the gap after getting the floor to the right level.

Above left: Flush! There’s no more step down. Above right, the whole room was moving around while we jacked it up. At one point, I noticed that as I was jacking, the room was moving sideways. A piece of wood had got stuck, and was levering the whole room sideways about 1/4 inch before I stopped. To get it back into place, I screwed a block of wood to the floor joists of the laundry room, and a block to the side of the house. Then I tightened a clamp between the two pieces of wood to pull it over. It worked!

Above left, here’s a nice (scary) pile of wood supporting the laundry room. Above right, at this side of the room, it raised up about a foot, because the floor of the laundry room (in addition to the step), sloped away from the building.

It’s been a funny winter. Actually, I think there was none. It only rained two or three times. And now it’s spring. The daffodil, crocus and iris bulbs that we planted around the tree are popping up. And the peach tree is coming into blossom already. Janeen took a photo of a couple of sprigs we brought in and put into water.