Author: turtle

Starting on the back stairs

I was going to use this post to show the completed front steps and porch. But I forgot to take photos. Next time.

When we first looked at the house, the major thing that worried us–and actually almost held up the sale–was the condition of the back steps. So it’s a bit ironic that we just passed our four year anniversary here, and I’m finally starting on the project of replacing them.

Here’s a nice view out of the downstairs kitchen window. When my Mum was visiting, she tried to improve things by getting plants to put out there. On the right is the view at the outside of this window. Pipes everywhere, and paint  in rather poor shape. It’s hard to imagine, but this actually looks better than when we got the house (I’ve removed two pipes already, and a cable tv wire).

But nothing compares to this! These stairs are held together with paint and caulk. And the paint is seriously peeling. On the right you can see the temporary shoring I put in four years ago (I was thinking it would be there for six months max).

Last weekend mole and I measured, and I drew up some plans for the new stairs. My goal is to change the alignment slightly so that it’s not in front of the kitchen window. I’d also like to make a small deck out in this rather dingy space.

With a level, string, a tape measure and spray paint, it took me most of the day to lay out the locations of the new posts, and where their footings will be. Using a concrete saw blade, I saw cut around the outlines of the new footings. In about two hours of hand chipping, I dug one of the footing holes. There’s about five inches of concrete, then soft, dark, beautiful soil. On the right above you can see the footing hole.

I’m gonna rent a jackhammer next week–there are nine more to do.

…and some kitten photos:

Left, Arwen on the about-to-collapse-deck. Right, kitten cooking assistants (they are watching Janeen cooking).

 

June Rain

The highly labor-intensive work continued on the front porch. The weather has been sunny and warm, but there’s a weather forecast of rain…

Mole primed all surfaces of the balusters before I put them in.

Ever since I changed the wiring for the porch light, the marks left by the previous electrical conduit were an eyesore on the ceiling of the landing. You can’t see it clearly from the photo, but it also looked as if someone had started stripping the paint, but never finished.

So I put plastic over the door and landing, put the ladder on the landing, and did some overhead paint stripping. Really tiring on the shoulders.

Sorry, not photos after the stripping, but here it is with primer on. I’ve started to sand and prep the beautiful decorative wood posts. At some point, a really thick coat of paint was put on that did not adhere. In lots of places, it’s come loose, so there are voids under the paint. Other areas, the paint is showing cracking, as if the paint underneath is shrinking. It’s got to get ugly before it gets pretty.

Well, even though I didn’t believe it on this beautiful sunny weekend, I’ve been caught before: With rain forecast, I had to get primer onto all the exposed wood. Here you can see the new railing and balusters installed.

The rain did come. The following week rained almost every day. On the weekend, Justin came to visit. The cats loooovvve him.

We bought this electric fireplace back in December because my mum thought the downstairs living room was dingy. Our plan was to install it into the bookshelf space to make the room a bit more cozy. I took out some of the bottom shelves, and installed a new receptacle inside the alcove. But we’ve liked the heater so much upstairs that we never got round to bringing it back down. A rainy summer weekend is the perfect time.

Above right: Arwen and Bella inspect the test fitting.

Above left: Bella asks which screwdriver to use. Above right: I think Arwen just really likes getting into bags. She’s really curious and doesn’t scare easily; she hung around even after I started sawing, and got sawdust in her fur.

I had to trim off some of the top of the fireplace to get it to fit. But now it’s built-in.

Lying Around on the Steps

Now that the front stairs are done, we’ve got to finish the painting. And of course, there are other projects.

On the left is the new landing, grouted and sealed. I finally took off the ugly metal gates from the front of the house. When they put them in, they tore out the rail and balusters that ran along side the landing.

Almost three years ago, my neighbor was tearing out and replacing his deck. He had these balusters left, and gave them to me. Quite fancy for a deck (I think he got them cheap used).

The reason so many wood Victorians were stripped, or torn down: Maintenance of exterior painted wood, even if it’s old growth redwood, is incredibly labor intensive. Sanding these balusters before we could use them took ages.

I don’t think these are redwood, but they are beautiful tight grained fir. I cut the balusters to fit in their new locations. Nothing is square in an old house, so every one is a different size, and the angles of the cuts vary. To keep the bugs from feasting on the wood, (right) mole is treating the end grain with nasty smelling wood preserver. We have to let it dry 48 hours before painting, so I couldn’t get them in this weekend.

Janeen and I spent the sunny Sunday afternoon lying around on the front steps (with paint brushes). Last post, I said we’d decided on a new color for the stairs. It’s not really a ‘new’ color; we’re just sticking with the color scheme of the overall house until we repaint the whole house. The photo above right, for me, is acceptance of how long it will be until we get around to repainting the outside of the house: Probably not until next year.

Stair Painters

I think I’ve pointed this out before: Part of what takes me so long is I have to do much of the work more than once. When laying out the stairs, I was aware that it’s very important to keep the dimensions of each step identical. I waited to build the stairs until I’d bought the tile for the landing. I measured it, and included an estimate of the thickness of everything that goes under the tile. The building code requires the variation be less than 3/8″.

After building the stairs, putting on the Kerdi (same as in our shower) waterproofing membrane and starting to lay out the tile, I realized there was a problem.

(Above right) I was doing a last minute check that the stair heights were consistent. OOOoops. As you see, the top step is almost an inch higher with the tile installed. I’d not realized that the tile I bought has varying thicknesses. The pieces that are at the nosing are twice as thick as the tile I’d measured. Also, the combined thickness of the thinset under the cement board, under the Kerdi, and the membrane added up to almost 3/8″. Lesson: Assemble a mock up of the entire assembly including any waterproofing membranes and the actual tiles that will be used if the thickness of tile is important.

I had to tear out the landing and lower it. Fortunately I had John to help (above right).

After a full weekend detour, I was back to the start. Above right shows the waterproof membrane attached to metal flashing that goes over two layers of building paper under the cement board.

Using John’s tile saw, mole cut out the tile for the landing. Here it is all laid up, before sticking it down with thinset.

Thinset time! The little diamond shapes are hand made tiles from Mexico that a friend gave to me three years ago.

What? Think I can resist putting destructamonkey photos on the blog? Bella figured out how to jump from the bathroom counter onto an open door. Arwen can destroy a toilet roll in under 15 seconds.

Above left, Janeen’s family came to visit to celebrate birthdays. Above right, Misha came to stay for a week; so I put him to work…

Grouting and painting the front steps.

After much indecision on my part, we decided to paint the fronts of the steps (risers) to match the main house color, and we’ll paint the tops (treads) in a brownish caramel. I didn’t have any porch paint in that color, so to fortify the steps before the oncoming rain, we put a coat of the blue on them.

Before Misha’s visit was over, Reirin, Leo, Dan and Dad showed up. Dan is allergic to cats – he looks a bit pensive being the subject of Janeen’s test of our cats’ hypoallergenic qualities.

On the last morning of Misha’s visit, we met up with my “older brother”/friend/mentor Bob for breakfast at San Francisco’s best – and snobbiest – coffee place: Blue Bottle. Misha ran there in his North Brooklyn Runners shirt.

Three cuties working in the office…

finishing the office

This weekend, the office was finished enough to start using it: Only a nine month project. I vacuumed the walls, and all surfaces, then we started taking up the plastic and paper that’s been protecting the floors.

Underneath the layer of plastic is a layer of craft paper. Of course, we need to recycle everything we can, so we took all the tape off the paper as we took it up.

Sun in San Francisco? I guess there’s enough in the Mission to bleach the protective paper on the floor. It started out a mauve color and became a very pale pink (left.) The floors held up nicely, and still look fine.

Janeen took some close-ups of the ceiling, lamp, and the crystals that she had cleaned up.

After a couple of passes with caulk, and paint, the medallion melds well with the tin ceiling.

Dad, Elijah, and Eva came to visit this weekend. We all went out to one of our new favorite restaurants: Gracias Madre.

My ‘baby’ brother is now standing a good few inches taller than me. Dad, on the left, is trying to pull him down to size.

Janeen had the camera, most of the time, so she took a photo of the goofiest person in the restaurant (right).

We finished up the weekend starting to move things back into the office. Boxes that have been sitting down in our garage for almost a year. Maybe we don’t need that stuff??

Since winter is on its way, and I can’t see my finding time to get the outside of the house completely painted, I’ve decided to just touch up the bad spots. We’ll do the full repaint in spring. (left) Dumpy is really loving his smooth, clean runway.(right)

what do real contractors do?

Last year — or was it the year before that (how time flies) — when we were working on Popo’s living room, I put insulation over the top of the sliding doors. I couldn’t get to the whole width, because part of the wall was in the hallway. I never got round to installing it, so now we are working on the office, this was the last chance.
adding insulation over sliding doorgyp board over insulation

Above left, I’ve cut out a piece of plaster, and shoved insulation between the joists. Above right, gyp board on, and starting to repair the plaster.

split and damaged window casingdamaged window sill after stripping paint

After stripping the paint off the window frames, some parts are in quite poor shape. The window sill (right) seems to have lots of notches taken out of it. Not sure how this happens? Because of settlement (left), the casing on this window is split, and the corner does not fit. There are also many holes where different curtains have been screwed to the frame.

sheet metal cover that clips over plugs to protect them when stripping paintplug cover in place

Janeen, when she was stripping paint off the baseboards in the living room, discovered that if your trowel slips into the plug while you are working (accidentally), it makes lots of sparks, and burns a hole into the trowel and plug. This time, I made a sheet metal cover that clips over the plugs so that I can protect them (and me) while stripping the paint off the plug. Worked great!

starting to strip the baseboardsaround the bay window

Working around the room, it’s exciting when the wood starts to reappear under years of paint. Most of the trim in this room is in very good shape.

window sill after sanding and fillingbay windows after sanding

After sanding and filling, the window frames are starting to look really nice. It’s almost ready for stain.

window casing after repairing splits, filling, and sandingsunlight on the wall

Above left is the casing that was split. I took it off, glued and clamped it, re-mitered the corner, nailed it back in,  filled, and sanded. Slow work. The sun looks really nice in this room in the afternoons. I’ve also stripped the paint off the mantle shelf.

meticulous j.

Hmm. How did this happen? I wonder if there’s a market for a meticulous builder?

putting up plasticRoofing piled outside our kitchen window

We’ve been planning to replace the roof for a couple of years, almost. Last year, we just didn’t have enough money to pay for it. This year, there hasn’t been four straight rain-free days since before December. Wednesday evening, we got a phone call saying the contractor would be here at 7:30 the following morning to start! I put up plastic and moved our table away from the skylight, which is being replaced.

When they arrived, it was a storm of activity. I had to go to work, but Janeen took the photo above right. They tore off three or more layers of roofing by lunch time.

one dump truckin front of the house

The photo above left shows one of the two dump trucks needed to haul away all the debris. In front of our house became a regular construction zone. If you look at the photo above right, you can see the ladder inside the windows of Janeen’s office. Nobody parked in our driveway that day: there was stuff flying everywhere off our roof. I think there were twelve people on our roof simultaneously.

truck with multistory conveyorroofing piled at top of roof

To get all the roofing off the roof, the contractors used a big orange chute. Well, for the stuff that didn’t go flying in all directions. To get new shingles and plywood onto the roof, they used a truck mounted conveyor belt. Above right you can see all the shingles piled onto the top of the roof, the plywood is installed, and they are starting to put the underlayment on. This is the end of day one.

At this point, I called the contractor. He was supposed to be installing a new skylight. It is bigger than the old one, so new framing is needed, but they haven’t done any framing, and are covering everything up with plywood and roofing already. I told him they are going to need to strip off the plywood, so they can install the skylight. He told me not to worry, everything is under control, and if they need to take off the plywood, they’ll do that…

loose pipe in our closetNew fancy skylight

Above left, I’m taking out an old abandoned pipe that fell through into the closet when they were stripping off the roofing.

At the end of day two, the roofers walked in with the skylight, and said: The skylight is bigger than the opening (duh?), so they are going to just lay it on top of the roof and the opening will be smaller underneath! I told them they had to reframe, so that the skylight fit into the opening properly. That’s the last I saw of them. When I called the contractor, he sounded flustered. Seems the roofers had not understood that they were installing a larger skylight.

The next day when I got home, they’d partially reframed the opening, and set the skylight on top still (the opening is still too narrow). They then proceeded to try to seal up outside, but the manufacturer’s flashing did not fit (because the skylight is supposed to fit into the opening, not sit on top of the roof). The roofers adhered a bunch of roofing goop around the flashing, nothing was fitting properly, so they jammed everything in place and left.

Well, that lead to a “nice” meeting between me, the contractor, and the roofers. Apparently, when cleaning up after nothing was fitting, a bunch of “extra” parts got thrown out, so they can’t even install the skylight properly until they re-order those parts. Right now, it’s temporarily waterproofed for the rain, and the contractor is ordering new flashing and parts. At this point, I’m rather disappointed that the roofers didn’t read the installation instructions (I did!), as they’ve obviously not installed one of these skylights before (at least not properly).

The contractor is being extremely helpful, and keeps promising that he’s going to make sure it’s all done right. He’s made sure everything is temporarily water tight, and the roofers have always cleaned up very well. We’ve had no leaks, and he’s not asked for a penny until it’s all complete and we’re happy. It’s just a pity this skylight is turning out to be such a pain. If I did this again, I’d install the skylight, and let them do all the roofing. Everything would be done by now. Lesson learned.

Popo and her niece KimberlyPopo and her brother-in-law Willy

Popo got some special visitors: Her brother-in-law Willy (Popo’s sister passed away last year), and her niece Kimberly came by for a visit.

janeen with her cupcakes

And it was Janeen’s birthday! Her cake was two Black China Bakery vegan cupcakes.

plastering on my day off

I took a day off work to do one of my favorite pass-times: plastering! Janeen popped her head in just as I was painting the walls with plasterweld, the special plaster adhering paint.

We’d already gone over the mesh tape and plaster washers with rough patches of joint compound, so that’s why the walls look splotchy white.

Janeen loves this photo. It’s funny that I’m standing on a step stool to plaster the area over the fireplace. “Real” plasterers would probably set up a platform to walk on.

The plastering went really well, mostly. The only problem I had was after I’d done the first coat on a couple of walls, I mixed a second batch that was much too runny. I added more dry plaster to it to thicken it up, but the process of starting, stopping, re-mixing took about 20 minutes off the 40 minute open time… I ran out of time and the plaster started setting in the bucket.

That plaster got wasted, but I’ve figured out that I can just mix another batch, and recoat the whole wall. No stressing necessary! It just added about 2 hours to my day, so I finished as it got dark. So much less of a mystery than my first attempt.

The finished walls came out really nice, I think.

Ooohhh, Smooth!

a monster

this post is a catch up. it’s got so much in it, it’s a monster…

Janeen putting decorative film on back doorclose up of decorative film

We bought decorative window film for the back door about eight months ago. We used to have a curtain on the other side of this door, but it started to smell really moldy, so I took it off. The decorative window film is intended to obscure the glass. Janeen’s done this once before, putting a plain frosted film on the windows of Popo’s bathroom. This weekend, Janeen put it on our back door. You have to clean the glass really thoroughly, the the film is sprayed with soapy water and squeegeed onto the glass. I’m making it sound easy. It’s meticulous work.

I got tired of trying to stuff insulation into the gap between the ceiling and the floor above, so I tore off the plaster ceiling in part of the garage that still needed insulation.  Quite a mess pulling it all down. It was already falling apart, and had holes, so needed some fixing anyway. Much more enjoyable.

Putting in the insulation was then super fast.

The following week, John helped us to put new gyp board on the ceiling. He came up with T shaped props, so that we didn’t need to hold it up on the ceiling while trying to screw it on.

Some places were really difficult to cut and fit.

John is the master of custom fit. He made a very carefully measured drawing of all the cuts before starting.

There were cutting and sawing noises for an hour, and then…

The floor was covered in powdered plaster dust, but the pieces of gyp board all fit perfectly. Janeen took a photo of the portable tool kit that her dad brings with him in his pockets…

We also spent half this weekend patching the plaster in the office. We’re using ‘hot’ (setting type) joint compound (“Easy Sand 90”) over fiberglass mesh tape and plaster washers. Next week I’ll plaster the lower half of the walls; but above the picture rails, it’s easier to just use a skim coat of the joint compound and sand it. The extra durability of plaster is not necessary where nobody can reach it.

And now that we’ve got the garage and insulation all done, spring is here. The white peach tree that Janeen’s aunt Janet gave us last year is in flower.

Oh, and Janeen knit a monster to give her friend’s son. The pocket on the front holds a baby monster.

stuffing fiberglass

Spring. We spent the first half of the weekend with Janeen’s family visiting; Popo kept talking about how many lemons were on the tree and insisted that Janeen’s mum bring lemon pie for her. Before they left, Jason and John went out to the garden and picked more lemons. The photo below is just one branch — after picking two bags of lemons. We’ve probably got two boxes of lemons still on the tree! Lemonade, anyone?

The peach tree is starting to flower, as is the jasmine. Janeen planted some freesia bulbs, and the gladiola bulbs Janeen planted last year are already starting to pop through the soil. The jasmine is really growing well on the East wall of our garden; quite amazing from just a twig that we took from a neighbor’s fence and rooted!

I tore out most of the Ice plant that I’d unwisely bought as cute little plants two years ago (it has very nice blue/purple flowers, but it overtakes the whole garden in a hurry), and sprinkled native California wildflower seed in its place. The snails had a great winter, practically eating everything — except the ice plant of course. I must have found fifty of them. Janeen took a photo as I was filling up a third container. The problem with urban gardens: Nature is all out of balance. Where are the hedgehogs, frogs, toads, snakes, caterpillars and birds when we need them?

We moved on to the garage ceiling on Sunday. I’ve left open holes in the gyp board for about a year, planning to stuff insulation in. I’d been procrastinating, because it’s such unpleasant work.

First we cut out strips of the gypsum board on the ceiling. The best method so far seems to be multiple passes with a utility knife to just cut through the board. (I’ve tried cutting it with a saw — messy! and it risks damaging the joists).

Using a magnet, I can find the nails, so that I can carefully cut around them. By not damaging the board when I take it down, we can reuse it.

Finally, cutting and stuffing the insulation batts in between the joists is really unpleasant. Even with a dust mask, goggles, gloves, and long sleeves, it gets everywhere. I should have just rented the insulation blower, and used blow-in insulation: a) it’s easier — drill a hole and blow it in b) it gives better insulation — fills the cavity completely c) it improves the fire resistance of the house d) it’s recycled e) did I say it’s a lot easier? Can’t think why I came up with the hair-brained idea to do this. The only advantage I can think of is that it’s much easier to service wiring within the ceiling space when there’s fiberglass batt insulation.

One really itchy, sweaty, awkward day later, half of the work had been done.

The cut out ceiling pieces fit right back in like a jigsaw puzzle. Almost no waste.

Fitting the gyp board was difficult around the new electrical box and the bracing I’d added to the beam over the garage door. We had to dismantle part of the conduit so I could slide the board underneath it. It’s no surprise the work takes us so long!

Janeen wired in the three-way switch again.

When Janeen’s family was visiting, John helped us pick up our new front door. It needs to be cut to fit into the door opening, and stained and sealed. Exciting.