downstairs – turtle + mole

Heavy Lifting

It’s been two years since I bought the moment frame. The beam has been in the garage, getting covered in dust waiting, but there was a lot to get done to prepare for it.

The column near the garage door is too tall to stand up in the garage, because the final height will have the bottom of the column buried in concrete. So I had to dig out the footing before I could even stand the column up:

Here’s the column standing in a freshly dug hole. The top of the column has to be down below its final position so that we can bolt it to the beam. Once it’s bolted to the beam, the whole lot will be lifted into place. The columns will be hanging in the air and we’ll pour the new foundation under it.

The column at other end of the moment frame will be up on top of a concrete wall – but the wall isn’t there yet: So I had to make a temporary platform to sit it on.

The major pain with this moment frame: Absolutely every utility in the house has to cross this beam: All the electric, gas, water, heating, and network wiring and piping had to be disconnected, and then routed through holes in the new beam or under it.

Holes in steel? I bought a “mag drill” to drill holes in the steel beam. It’s basically a small drill press attached to a powerful electro-magnet. I position the drill in the correct location, then turn on the magnet and it sticks to the beam.

Then I drill a hole. I had to drill large holes for the utility pipes to go through, and smaller holes for bolts to hold pieces of wood to the beam so that I can support building structure off the side.

Here are two of the pieces wood, all drilled and prepared to attach to the moment frame beam. The bucket is filled with wood chippings for the compost.

Just the beam weighs a lot (over 1000 lb) plus each column is extremely heavy. I used two furniture dollies (they are supposed to be able to support 2000 lb each) to move the beam. They were creaking and flexing ominously.

Once the beam was lined up in the correct location, I used a 20 ton bottle jack to slowly lift one end a few inches, then temporarily support it before lifting the other end. It took a full day to get it almost up to the floor above.

Once I got it close, I cut the old wood floor beam where this moment frame beam fits in. And I also had to disconnect all the wires and pipes that crossed over it.

It took me over a week to get all the wires and pipes reconnected. It’s interesting thinking about our priorities for what we need. First I reconnected the power for the kitchen, to keep the refrigerator running. Then the main water pipe. Then bit by bit I got the electrical reconnected. But we were taking cold showers most of the week until I could get the gas reconnected. Finally I got the network cables connected. I still don’t have the duct for the heating in the front room reconnected.

I made one mistake in measuring for the holes in the beam: I drilled the hole for the gas pipe right where the duct for the furnace was. The beam was already up in the air when I figured this out, so I had to lift the mag drill up, and drill a new hole. Because the floor joists were in the way, I couldn’t get the hole quite as high as the other ones, so the gas pipe will be a little below the ceiling.

Here is the new steel moment frame beam temporarily supported in place.

I have lots of temporary support posts holding everything up while I do the foundation.

The old steel beam that used to be here was too small for the load, so it had sagged about an inch in the middle. The floors in the house are all sloping because of it. I figured when I put this new frame in place, I’d level out the floors – which I expected would damage the plaster.

What I hadn’t expected was how badly it would crack the plaster. Now I again have to fix all this plaster that we had fixed perfectly over a decade ago.

I also didn’t anticipate quite how big the jacking loads would be to lift the beam into place. Once it the moment frame connected with the house and started lifting the house, the loads were huge: Enough that the jack crushed and cracked the concrete floor slab in the garage.

I used a laser level to figure out how much to jack up the structure. Once I got the beam to the correct height, I added temporary wood pieces that I’ll replace with a steel post cap.

This piece of wood is almost 2 inches thick: That’s how much the floor got raised at this point.

I talked about the floor joists being notched on the bottom in a previous post. But all this leveling of the floors suddenly made it obvious when a floor joist supporting one of the walls in the living room was sagging. So I added a joist to that one.

Again, I had to disconnect wires and reconnect them to put the new joist in. I also screwed this one up: At first I reinforced the wrong floor joist.

I spent a full day, removing the drywall, disconnecting the wiring, adding the reinforcing joist, reconnecting the wiring, and putting everything back. When I went up to the living room at the end of the day, I was surprised how little the sagging floor joist had changed – until I realized I’d reinforced the wrong one. So the next day I had to do everything again, but for the correct joist this time.

I temporarily jacked the center of the sagging floor joist, connected it to the new reinforcing joist, and then removed the jack.

Now on to the concrete work. I’ve got the reinforcing done for the wall and the pilaster below one of the steel frame columns. Now I have to build formwork to hold the wet concrete in place, but I have to get the rebar inspected first.

Bella bella… we miss you…

fancification

A friend of mine was remodeling his house, and planned to replace all the appliances, too. He offered them to me – stainless steel commercial grade stove, refrigerator and dishwasher. Considering one burner on our stove never lit without a match, I think it was time for the stove to go…

Still usable, but not great. It’s done it’s part. Of course, nothing goes perfectly smoothly: The old gas line interfered with the new stove, so I had to move it.

But wow, this thing is fancy.

And the ‘fridge: It’s been making some funny noises, but still works fine. But a free new stainless steel fridge, with the freezer on the bottom…

This one wasn’t as easy: The new fridge is not as deep as the old fridge, so that will fit better next to the table, but it’s six inches wider, and has an ice maker (needs a water hookup). We barely use ice, so really don’t have a use for an ice maker, but I still plumbed it into our water filter. I moved the cabinet on the right side of the fridge up, so that the bottom aligns with the cabinet next to it. Things are starting to look spiffy down here.

And I made a new cabinet to fit on the right side of the new fridge. Actually, I made two cabinets: a smaller one above, and a new one below.

Oh, and I got a great new addition to my workshop (Christmas present). It may not look like much at first, but on the right is my dust collector with a new high efficiency air filter. It used to be a fabric bag that allowed fine dust to get into the air: Effectively it was only collecting the large dust, and blowing the most harmful fine dust particles into the air. It should have been called a “dust circulator.” I had to work with a respirator on if that thing was running, and eventually everything would get covered in dust. Mole bought a cover for the car, because she got tired of the dust coating. Oh, and the new filter is so much more efficient than a bag, so it picks up the dust at the tools better. I attach a plastic bag to the bottom, and the bag fills up with all the dust – none in the air. Thank you John and Judy.

Here I’m clamping together reclaimed wood to make a butcher block top for the top of the new cabinet. Beautiful fine vertical grain douglas fir saved from the dump.

Sometimes there were nail holes in the wood: I filled them with wood plugs. The picture above is before I’ve drilled out the hole and added the plug.

More reclaimed wood for the cabinets. This is before it’s gone through the planer.

Comes out beautiful afterwards.

Here are some of the pieces for the cabinet doors. I made them with mortise and tenon joinery. You can see all the tenons cut above on the left. The pieces on the right will be the panels for the doors.

Here’s a close up of the mortise cutter: It’s an attachment for my drill press. It’s a square chisel with a drill bit in the middle. The drill bit drills out most of the wood, and the chisel squares up the hole. You cut a longer hole by joining the holes up next to one another. Much faster than by hand, but still it takes a while. The fastest way to do it is with a floating tenon machine, but I don’t have one of those.

Here are the doors after the first coat of polyurethane.

This is the new lower cabinet in place, next to the new fancy fridge. At last this corner is not an afterthought.

And sad news: My neighbor’s son Nick died. He helped me many times working on the house when we first moved in. His mental illness got a lot worse over the years, so he no longer was able to help, but I have some blog posts in this blog about the work he did. He was one of the strongest people I’ve ever known; single handed he picked up and put my 200+lb drill press on my workbench, carried thousands of pounds of concrete into the back yard to make the footings for the back stairs. I made some picture frames from two thousand year old redwood for some pictures of him working on the house. This piece of wood came out of our house; the density of the grain cannot be matched by any redwood you can buy now. The picture below is him working on our front steps. I feel the imperfection of this piece of irreplaceable wood represents Nick well.

little luxuries

When I raised the ceiling in the hallway upstairs, I created a small closet to access plumbing and electrical stuff. This space used to be accessed by climbing through the attic space.

I made a custom little door to fit the opening (out of an old door).

Because it’s me doing this, I have to make it a bit more complicated. So I was trying to figure out how to make the door as flush as possible. I found something called “hidden hinges”. They fit into routed slots on the door, and because of some very clever mechanism, they allow the door to open 180 degrees, and the hinges fold up into themselves when the door closes. My mistake: I chose not to pay the $20 to buy the pre-made jig (I figured I could just make my own). There goes a weekend!

I bought a marine door latch that sits flush with the door. It’s not completely invisible, but I’m quite happy with how it came out.

oh, and I love the patterns the lights make on the other wall…

I never thought about them before, but I’ve come to really like towel warmers. They sound like such a luxury: Warm towels! But they are also quite useful because they help to dry wet towels faster, so they don’t go moldy smelling. The only difficulty: They need a plug.

Originally, I had put just a regular towel rail here, and a towel warmer in another corner of the bathroom. Even though I went to architecture school, I’m still surprised by how I really need to live in a space to know how it will work. I had assumed air from the heating vent would dry things. Didn’t really work, and the towel warmer was in an awkward place. So I decided to move it.

Mole caught a photo of me as I was closing the wall back up. I often forget to take photos.

We bought a new litter box for the girls with higher sides: Arwen! Modcat are value added: They include a game for the cats with the litter box packaging.

oh, and upstairs: I also put that towel warmer in. There’s no heating upstairs (yet?) so I got a larger one, hoping it will help to warm up the bathroom a bit in the winter. Same process: I need a plug.

This time, instead of tearing off the finishes inside the bathroom, I took off the drywall outside. I’d been planning this (ten+ years ago), so never plastered the walls.

Here it is installed. It was a bit tricky because the thickness of the wood wainscot below meant I had to add little spacers where it attaches at the top. I think eventually I’m just going to remove that wainscot below: Too fiddly for such a small bathroom.

Purrrrr. Now it’s nap time.

lost in 2020

when we went into lockdown (the first time) I thought: “I’ll just spend a lot of time working on upstairs and get it all finished.” Hahahha

Well, in spite of (or possibly because of?) the debacle of 2020, a few good things happened. Most notably, the majority of Americans were able to spot incompetence after four years of having it rubbed in our faces. And I got to vote for the first time in my life.

I ordered the mechanism for an adjustable height standing desk about.. three years ago.. and it’s been sitting in boxes in the garage since. I finally got enough prodding to stop delaying, and built the top for it. Of course, because it’s me, it was a little complicated.

I wanted it to fit into a corner in our office that’s next to the bay windows, so it has a 45 degree back. But the complicated part is the front: it curves. I used a piece of wood and some clamps to draw the curve, and cut a template out of a scrap piece of wood.

I found that putting a piece of masking tape on the top of the plywood makes the veneer on the top of the plywood splinter less.

The tricky part: I’m using oak veneer plywood, so I need to finish the edges with a piece of solid wood… and it needs to curve.

I’ve never steamed wood before, so after a bit of youtube research, I found a video with some guy making a steamer out of plastic piping. Looked quite simple: I had some old ABS pipe lying around, I figured I could make a simple wood top for the large kettle I use to brew beer, and channel the steam through another piece of flexible plastic hose from my shop vac. I put the piece of wood I wanted to steam inside the ABS pipe, and started up the steam. Just like the video.

Don’t believe what you see on youtube: The steam melted the pipes!

First the flexible plastic pipe became very flexible (similar to warm bubble gum). I quickly disconnected that – didn’t want to ruin it. I then connected to the ABS pipe with some pieces of metal pipe. Then the ABS pipe started melting!

I couldn’t get enough steam to properly bend the wood, so it split when I bent it. I don’t know how that youtuber made it work… I ended up with a bunch of Salvador Dali inspired pipes, but the wood didn’t bend.

Second try: This time all in metal. I bought a piece of metal heating duct to steam the wood in. Once the water started boiling in the kettle, steam was hissing out of all the cracks. I left the wood in there for almost an hour: My neighbors were very curious! It worked.

Here I’m gluing the curved wood edge onto the plywood. You can never have too many clamps…

The curved edge came out quite well.

My star trek command center.

It will never look this neat again, so I’d better post a photo:

… not that getting a fully adjustable desk is guaranteed to make my ergonomics any better, though…

Meanwhile…. We’ve never had anywhere decent to put our bike helmets. They were always balanced precariously on boxes and bags of building materials. So mole decided to make some shelves from a couple of old boxes that we found in the attic of the house.

Shell aviation fuel(?)

So neat!

I was wondering when this would happen: Hot water tanks must be one of the most wasteful inventions that are still part of houses. They are planned obsolescence incarnate. This large heavy contraption is in every house in the country, wastes energy all day long every day, and in the best cases may last fifteen years: you can even buy water heaters that are only expected to last five years!

The previous owners bought a good quality one that lasted about fifteen years, but it finally started leaking. 2020.

Luckily we can get anything delivered, including water heaters! I transferred the insulation blanket from the old one – I figure any extra insulation on a tank of hot water is a good thing.

Oh, and if 2020 didn’t have enough going on, it was also my fiftieth. Friends of mine threw big parties on theirs. For years I’d been thinking about the party I wanted to throw. I guess 51 is the new fifty?

Not all was lost, though: mole made me this incredible vegan chocolate torte. You all missed out.

I did get to see some people for my birthday, though. Friends put together a great bike ride up mount tam. It was incredibly foggy, cold and wet, but I was a very happy fifty-year-old. And I also went to visit my dad.

As a fiftieth birthday present to myself I decided to get a(nother) bike: This time, a gravel bike.

Actually buying a bike in 2020 turned out to be rather difficult. So I bought a frame, and all the parts, and put it together myself. And even that wasn’t without many hiccups. The first frame I received was the wrong color. Then it was missing many of the parts I needed to put it together, the most annoyingly difficult of which was one tiny bolt that holds the derailleur on the frame. Oh, and this is the first time I’ve done this. And none of the parts come with instructions.

After a few months of false starts, I finally got it together. Here’s a pic from my first ride: I really have nothing to complain about. Riding on a dirt trail looking out to the Pacific Ocean, with San Francisco in the background on a sunny day in winter, all I could think was “How truly lucky I am.”

Looking Down

It’s been a long while since I last worked on a floor – over a decade. But the front stairs – wood exterior stairs need TLC every couple of years.

One of the steps was starting to grow some type of fungus. Really time that one was replaced.

By the time I was done, I replaced three steps.

Here’s mole getting started priming the stairs for our unit.

Meanwhile… We plan to move downstairs so that I can work on upstairs. But the bedroom downstairs had carpet: Fine as a rental, I suppose, but not nice. So we tore out the carpet. No hardwood floor under this carpet, sadly. Just many layers of vinyl composite tile.

Once I got down to the subfloor, it was better already. I decided to use a prefinished solid oak plank floor. I don’t have the equipment for the refinishing, and the prefinished is almost the same price as unfinished – the end result is also much faster.

I don’t like the look of quarter round to cover the necessary gap around floors – looks cheap and un-craftsman-ly to me. So I used a jamb saw to cut the exact thickness of the flooring from the bottom of the baseboards.

That is a little easier in theory than in practice, because sub-floors are not perfectly smooth. The jamb saw can’t sit perfectly flat on the slightly uneven floor, so the height of the cut varies slightly.

I put a border all around the perimeter of the floor, before infilling. In retrospect, I wish I’d selected out all the darkest and lightest pieces from all the boxes, and used them to make alternating light and dark boards in the border. Would have been a nice way to add a little decoration, without resorting to different wood species.

Selecting and placing boards takes quite a sense for color and shade. You don’t want to put two pieces that are overly contrasting together, but do you want to keep them sort of random. Otherwise you’ll get whole areas of the floor that are dark, and others light.

I started on the floor using an old mechanical floor nailer that my dad gave me when he helped me install the floors at the front of the house. It doesn’t require a very heavy hammer blow, but it must be perfectly aimed. Given the right technique, it works perfectly well. Needless to say, after spending a day with it, I went out and bought an air-compressor powered version. Sooo easy.

Tongue and groove flooring is almost all blind nailed (no nail holes on the surface). It fits together with tongue into groove on the sides and ends.

When doing this with a border, though, on every line of boards, you have to cut a board to fit against the border. One thing I did on this floor that we never bothered to do when I was working for my dad almost thirty (!) years ago, was to cut new grooves into all the cut ends of boards: Much too time consuming for a contractor. This floor, however, is completely interlocked at all joints, except for the one long side joint one third of the way into the floor where I’ve ripped boards to fit. I glued those in together.

To finish the job, I carefully taped all around, and caulked the gap between the floor and the baseboard. Then painted the baseboards.

Perfetto!

A soundproofing bookshelf?

This is a huge post – I just never got round to posting. Fear not, there are some cat pics towards the end.

We kept the front room of the downstairs unit for our office. But in this Victorian, as in most, the front room is connected to a second front room with double sliding doors. The double doors do not seal any noise between the rooms – you can clearly hear everything in the adjoining room. Now that the second front room will be a bedroom, we had to come up with a way to provide some sound privacy: A built-in bookshelf.

Here are pictures of all the clamping and drilling…

I built the shelf in three pieces, because the door opening is so large that a single shelf would have been too tall to stand up in the garage, and would have been really difficult to move around (it wouldn’t have fit through the front door!) The design is two tall bookshelves above, and a slightly deeper cabinet at the base. The photo above is the piece of wood that joins the top and bottom part. Because I’m using plywood, I either mitered exposed edges, or glued solid wood to the edges.

This is the base cabinet all assembled.

And here are the bookshelves.

Then I stained and varnished everything to match the wood doors in the living room. The car gets to be outside for a while.

The base cabinet will have doors on the front. I made these from the remaining scraps of the plywood sheets.

Here’s a detail I’m particularly proud of. The doors are made from plywood, so I made decorative molding to glue into the edge around the panel.

An engineering problem: How to hold the bookshelves in place, without damaging the beautiful wood pocket doors. I made metal brackets that fit into the gap between the doors and the pocket in the wall. These I wrapped with fabric, and one leg slides into the gap, the second side screws to the side of the bookshelves. I’ll cover this with some wood trim attached to the side of the book case.

The sound insulating material went against the doors, but how to hold it in place while I assembled the book case? The solution: I cut drywall to fit tight into the space, and glued the sound insulating material to it with double sided carpet tape. The drywall serves to hold everything in place, and also adds to the sound absorption.

Here’s the book case almost complete. Still needs the doors on the bottom, and the trim around the outside to close the gap. But it’s working quite well to insulate sound. It’s not perfect, but enough to muffle sound between the two rooms.

Here are the doors with stain and two coats of varnish. One to go.

Oh, and what else? Yes, the “garden room” work.

Here are some photos of plumbing work preparing for a sink.

This the the plumbing for the space that will be the toilet. Beautiful.

The concrete in the garden room is a total mess. Here I’ve chipped and ground down concrete that was too high, and I need to fill in where there are holes.

The left side is after filling in the holes. But the floor still slopes, so I added a skim coat of leveling mortar to level the floor.

That’s me. Poor back.

The concrete in the area that I tore up the wood floor was extremely degraded. It was rough, and would dust every time I brushed it. So I coated the whole floor with a layer of non-shrink repair mortar. I had a great time doing it: Felt just like doing plaster.

It looked really great until it started to dry…

There must have been something wrong with one of the bags of repair mortar, or it may have reacted badly to the old concrete. But instead of being low-shrinkage, on about half the floor it shrunk like mud in a desert. Cracks everywhere.

Here I’m adding the wall to make the space for the toilet room. Yes, I still need to repair the window.

The old plumbing that used to come through here caused this wall, and the window next to it, to rot badly. So I repaired the wall. Above right is before I put in the new wall framing.

This is the repaired wall. I used mostly scraps – trying to use up the huge pile of wood I have stashed in the garage. Now I need to get the wiring in.

Arwen came to inspect my work.

“Hmm, good level concrete. Let me check the flatness…”

“Prrrfect for rolling on.”

Five year project

The laundry room has been the project that keeps on giving. It started out that I was just going to replace the back stairs in August 2011. Then I ran into problems waterproofing, so I stopped the stairs, and started working on the laundry room. Five years later, it’s finally DONE! So I thought a before-and-after photo post is in order:

Checklist

This is the checklist I scribbled on our white board, back when I thought it would be a quick project. I kept adding items as I went. Very satisfying to have all boxes checked.

Above left is the back door to the kitchen before. Above right is the same view after, with the door moved to approximately where the window used to be.

Looking a bit to the right, the dryer used to be jammed into the corner so tightly that the back door wouldn’t open unless you pushed against the dryer. Actually, it was such a tight fit, that the previous owners had cut out part of the back wall to make it fit. You can see the old back door location at the right side of the photo. Now it’s all windows in that area, looking out to the garden. I’ve put a small couch in this space… Hmm, maybe I should have used a photo with the couch in it. Oh well… You’ll have to come visit to see.

Here are two more photos of the old back wall of the laundry room. You can see the door opening into the moldy ‘tear-off’ room. Funny, in these photos it looks so sunny and airy, and you can hardly notice that to walk in there, you have to be under 5′-10″. On the right side is the wood door to the toilet. Actually, it was more like a closet with an always stinky toilet in it.

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This is the same side, now. I put a wall all the way across that side, so made the laundry room a little smaller, but a more functional bathroom. Bathroom door is now a nice restored redwood door that I hung on sliders to make it a pocket door.

The washing machine is in a similar location, but there’s now a sink behind it, instead of next to it. The new arrangement is not perfect – but was the only way I could figure out how to make this work. One other solution was to not put a sink in this room at all, but I find it so useful to have a utility sink.

This room used to have loads of shelving, so I added some shelves. Living in earthquake country, shelves scare me a bit, so nothing on them yet… We used to have lots of plants in this space, but I’ve found that if I put plants in there now, they die because I don’t go in there often enough to remember to water them.

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Instead of that stinky little closet with the toilet in it (sorry, no photo), I expanded the space to make a tiny, but functional, bathroom. On the left is the shower.

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And last weekend, I finished putting up the mirror and an electric towel warmer. There’s no heating in this space, so hopefully this will help a little (?) I’ve still got to figure out how to deal with the power cord – probably just some white wiremold aligned over the grout lines would do it.

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prrrrr

Finishing up: Paint and a Bathroom

Finally: Paint.

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Painting the wood trim is always the hardest part. I tried (and failed) to use the airless sprayer to paint the walls and the trim. The result was sagging, dripping paint on the trim, because it puts far too much on. Had to wait a week, sand out all the sags, and repaint by hand.

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Paint colors are so difficult; even more so because when they mix them, it seems like the mixed colors just don’t match the samples. Luckily I have mole to pick colors. She picked the ‘november skies’ (medium blue on the card in the photo above). But when it was mixed, I put a bit on the wall and it was way too light – looked like the powder blue that old VW bugs were sometimes painted. My feeling: Hate is not too strong a word for that color. So I went back to the paint store and asked them to add pigment. I used the recipe for the darkest color on the sample card. They fought me, because they said that the darkest color used a different base. Eventually, they agreed, and we got the color that’s on the background. Not a standard color, but we like it more than either!

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Some painting action photos!

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All painted, before the washing machine went back in.

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Here’s the bathroom before the toilet. Actually, the sprayer worked well in here. The difference? I used cheap paint. Seems like cheap paint sprays better.

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Painting the wood wainscot and window trim was a lot of work.

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I bought the glass shower door very cheaply at overstock.com about a year or more ago. At the time I bought it, I hadn’t put the tile on yet, so I estimated the space. The door also allowed some adjustment for width, so I thought I was safe. Not! Once the tile was on, the space was one eighth inch less than I’d estimated. All the adjustment happens on the wall opposite the hinges, at a 12 inch wide fixed panel. I spent an entire day trying to grind down the aluminum adjustment piece so that it would fit. No luck.

Eventually the solution I came up with was to order some stainless steel brackets from China, and screwed them to the wall and to the aluminum edge piece on the glass. Instead of the supplied slotted aluminum piece that was supposed to close the gap at the wall, I just used silicone caulk. But it looks fine now, and I didn’t have to buy a new glass piece. Lesson learned: Order the glass after the tile is finished.

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The sink is tiny tiny. This room is so small, that there’s not much room for the sink, and to allow the shower door to open. When I laid out the tile, I put that diamond shaped decorative tile above where I thought the sink should go. But once the sink was attached there, it was obvious that it was much too close to the shower door (see the door handle relative to the sink edge, above). Very awkward.

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So I took it off the wall, and re-did it. That required some tricky plumbing for the waste line (which I had to redo three times.) The glass shelves are part of the shower door – quite a neat solution to bracing the fixed panel. The only sad part for me is that there is a hole in one of the tiles to the left of the sink. Maybe I can glue a decorative tile on top of it, or find some way to make not show. Suggestions welcomed!

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And now there’s a toilet. Now I just need a towel rail, a mirror, and to finish the lights.

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The sliding pocket door for the bathroom has a beautiful old-style lock. Unfortunately it’s impossible to find the correct keys for them now, so I bought a nice solid cast bronze key and filed it down to fit. Only problem is that traditionally, the key would have had a loop that could fold flat so the key wouldn’t get in the way when the door slides closed. We’ll just have to remember to take the key out before trying to slide the door into the pocket…

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So, trying to take a selfie while riding a bike is a bit dangerous, and doesn’t work very well. Here’s Janeen and me while riding the Primavera century in April. I think Janeen was suffering a bit from the headwinds at this point so I was trying to ride in front to block the wind. We had a great time, and also rode it with a couple of good friends (Kirk and his twin brother Derrick).

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England, the Garden, and Tile (plus kitties)

Well, one of the big things that happened last month is that I went to England with Misha. It was a short visit (the pictures are linked to a larger version).

On the way up to Mum’s house on the first day, we walked through the farmers market – I got a bit turned around, and didn’t realize which street we were on and assumed it was really small this time of year (above left in front of the only vege stand we found on this street). Above right: “Changed Priorities Ahead” (hopefully they are enjoying themselves more).

We went back to the farmers market with mum – a bit late as everything was getting closed down for the day. We still got some yummy flapjacks, though.

We went on a long hike to the Woolpack (famous because the author Lorrie Lee used to love this pub), had a pint and some “chips”, then continued the hike up Swift hill. On the way up the hill, we came across paintings of badgers in many different costumes on the fence posts. There must have been over thirty paintings. They were painted as part of a protest against the “badger cull“.

The weather was quite warm (for February), but drizzled on the day of our hike. This is the view from the top of Swift hill, looking down over the Stroud valley toward the river Severn (off in the haze somewhere…)

Mum and Misha sitting at the top of Swift hill (just before Misha pulled out some energy bars to share). The snowdrops were all out – couldn’t help trying to catch a photo on the way down (above right).

Here I’m trying to take a selfie with the black sheep. Who isn’t a black sheep in some way?

The flash made their eyes glow. Kinda creepy?

We rented a very little house in Stroud to stay in for the week. Here’s Misha locking the front door. Yes, we did have to duck to walk in. Fortunately, the ceilings were a little higher!

Above left: breakfast! Above right, a photo of Misha, Mia and me from about fifteen years ago. Maybe more.

We also took a trip up to Manchester to visit a family friend (our second mum Jaya, from when we lived in a house filled with eleven children and three single mums). I’d not seen her for over ten years – Misha probably more than 20!

Mum wanted us to break down a brick wall and do some hedge trimming while we were visiting. I refused to climb up a ladder on the sloping driveway to trim branches – so Misha did it!

Above left is a photo outside mum’s house. Above right: Does this product name look appetizing to you (Gü)?

One last photo before we took a train back to London.

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Hmm, so I also did some tile work. Actually, I finally finished the tile on the floor in the laundry room. This is the hexagon tile, with some black tiles used to create patterns. Initially, I was planning to do a border in this room. Then we decided to just do the same patterns as the bathroom, and also something in the middle. And then I added an extra little circle at the center of each wall line. And then (see later)…

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Above left, a detail of the pattern in the middle, and above right is one of the only cut edges (at the door).

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Above is how I looked all day. My knees hurt.

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Above left you can see why there was very little tile cutting. I could just continue the tile under the base boards, and didn’t need to finish them tight against the wall (actually, it’s much better not to, so there’s some expansion room).

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It’s hard to see in the photo, but instead of cutting the baseboards both at 45 degrees at the corner, I have butted them together, and hand-cut one of them so that the piece on the left fits into the grooves on the piece on the right. This is the way it was always done before power saws, and actually results in a joint that is less likely to open as the wood expands and contracts. It’s much more work (of course).

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Here’s the tile all in, and grouted. When I was installing the tile, I ran out of white tile (about half a square foot short), so tried adding even more patterns at the doorways with black tiles, so that I could stretch the remaining number of white tiles. In the end, I just had to buy more tile. Now it reminds me a bit of how some people’s tattoos look: Lots of different patterns strewn around. I think it’s about as permanent, too, because I can’t see myself wanting to do this again!

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Now the baseboards are all in, the floor is done. While I was putting the baseboards in, I stood on pieces of plywood because it’s a bit early to be walking on the tile (needs a week to cure). I’ll start painting next week.

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We had a few weeks of reprieve from the El Nino rains, so I rented a jack hammer and broke out more of the concrete in the back yard. Last year, the pear tree did very poorly in the location I’d put it (even though it did gallantly give us some fruit). The poor tree had almost no leaves, and was being crowded out by some aggressively drought tolerant plants. So I decided to move it. Hopefully the move doesn’t kill it, although the previous location would have anyway.

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Here’s after the concrete is all out, and I’ve added mulch. The pear tree used to be on the far left of the upper left photo. Now its at the far right of the same photo. More sun and space. Fingers crossed. Above right, you can see what remains of our peach tree after the tree-jumper incident. It blossomed this spring, and is looking very healthy right now, so I think it will recover.

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Mole was taking photos, so I think the texture of the pile of broken concrete appealed to her…

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Our garden grows nasturtiums!

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While I had the jack hammer, I also broke out some of the concrete in the room underneath the laundry room. We’re calling that room the ‘garden room’. I plan to make it into a place to brew beer 😉 But there’s a bunch of plumbing sticking out of the concrete that I need to remove.

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We didn’t get many crocuses this year – but here’s one!

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Bella sometimes likes to climb inside my shirts (when they are clean)…

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This time she fell asleep in it!

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Here’s Arwen looking blissful on a blanket that Mole knitted specially for her!

Brewing, Tiling, Riding, Waterproofing, Siding…

Wow time goes by quickly. Well, I’ve actually done something in the last few months. And here’s some of it:

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I bought a jug of apple juice at the farmer’s market, added some yeast & a bubbler: Cider! Much easier than brewing beer. I finished laying the tile in the laundry room bathroom, but am going to wait on grouting it until I’ve also tiled the laundry room.

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And of course, we rode AIDS/Lifecycle together this year. Here’s a picture from the opening ceremony.

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Here’s me trying to capture the party atmosphere in the Cow Palace…

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A photo with our friend Alex who rode one day, but work stopped him from doing the whole week.

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Well, these front steps have been an ongoing project. Seems I have to fix them every year. The temporary fixes from past years finally gave out. The photo shows how the front of two steps broke off completely. There is also another problem with these steps: The height between steps varies too much for code compliance, so it was high time I did something about it.

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The reason the step heights vary so much is originally they were built with thick boards. Then (before we got the house), some repairs were done with thinner wood. To fix this, I had to make new steps out of thicker wood. I re-used some old wood that I still have in the garage. Lots of planing, gluing and clamping to make boards that are wide enough for the steps.

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I forgot to take photos while I was working on it. There’s one photo where I’ve replaced part of one step. I also replaced the step below it. The one below that was concrete, but it had a piece of wood glued on top. This made the step heights very uneven, so I took the wood off: The reason they’d glued the wood on top was the concrete underneath was cracked and uneven. So I had to repair the concrete, also. Above right is after I’ve repaired the bottom five steps. Looking further up, you can see that some of the upper steps are also uneven and need to be fixed: Next year!

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OK, to head off the ‘no cat photos’ complaint: I think Bella was sleeping under the table, and Arwen (love-bug) decided she needed some cuddling. They were actually sleeping like this for a while.

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One other project that I got partially finished with, but stopped because of ALC and life, was the siding and waterproofing on the back. In the photo above left, you can see where I left things for the past two years. The building paper is exposed (getting damaged by the sun), and I’ve “sealed” the top with some blue tape. Above right, I’ve taken out the wall of the back porch, so that I can take out the siding boards and re-use them. Clearly the rear porch was not part of the original building construction.

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Here’s all the siding removed. The wiring for the porch lights is hanging loose, and you can see in under the roof.

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Here I’m getting plywood on. It’s a bit complicated because the drain for the kitchen sink goes through this wall. Luckily (for the house) we’ve had very little rain for the past few years. But there’s predictions of ‘el niño’ this year: hopefully lots of rain. But I have to get this properly waterproofed and finished first.

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Here I’ve added the porch wall back in. Wiring is now much neater.

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The siding was is very poor shape. Lots of holes cut for various plumbing iterations over the life of the house. But the wood, once the peeling paint is removed, is still good. Thousand-year-old redwood is too good to waste. So I carefully repaired all the boards.

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Here are the same two boards after I’ve glued in pieces to repair them, and sanded ready for primer.

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The photo above left is titled “One Weekend of Work”: Repairing and re-using the old siding takes masses of time. Six boards in two days: Not the sort of thing a contractor would do. Above right, I’m getting the building paper on, and waterproofing around the drain pipes. I also got a new wall vent for the attic space.

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Here are photos of the process of putting the siding back on. Cutting around the pipe penetrations is tricky.

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And here’s where I’ve got to. I’ve ordered new windows for the porch, so can’t go much further here until they arrive. Above right is a view under the porch.

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Here I’ve added insulation, and installed wood to cover it. This is re-used wood left over from the laundry room wainscot. It still needs some trim around the edges and paint, but looks much better – and the porch will be more insulated now.