work on the downstairs apartment
we had a casual family gathering last saturday night to celebrate my parents retirement.
the rest of the weekend was all about prepping the downstairs living room walls for plaster.
and then finally applying plaster.
mathew is getting really good at this! while mathew was working on this level i was down in the garage stripping paint from trim that will go around the new window.
we took some time off last weekend to attend a high school friend’s wedding. we had a really great time and thoroughly enjoyed ourselves.
it was a beautiful ceremony at the coolest venue ever, the lawrence hall of science in berkeley. in fact, we were impressed with pretty much every detail that night. congratulations jennifer and doug, we wish you all the best, and thank you for including us in your special day.
on sunday we finished painting the exterior window trim.
and it was time for the scaffolding to come down.
my parents came up to help us work on the house on saturday. and they even brought a home-cooked lunch!
(left) my dad filling holes with plaster. (i don’t know why there’s something in his mouth.) (right) my mom being silly. she filled the holes in the hallway (above her) with plaster but i got there too late to document it. in this “dramatic reenactment” she is holding the wrong tool for the job and says she has no idea how to use it.
(left) mom taking the wood frame off the old window. (right) dad trimming the expanding foam that he and mathew used to fill the gaps around the new window. sorry, no photos of mathew this weekend. he’s not big on “dramatic reenactments.”
mathew spent yet another weekend up on the scaffolding attaching and painting pieces of wood i refinished in the garage. here is some impressive clamping mathew did. (well, at least i’m impressed.) on sunday we also painted the exterior with paint i had bought. unfortunately i didn’t buy the right finish so the new paint is flat and the old paint has some gloss, but we’ll repaint it all some day.
(left) my weekend was spent just like last weekend, stripping paint, filling holes with bondo, scraping, sanding and painting. i wore my respirator mask for about 10 hours on sunday… (right) garden update: we have tomatoes! and they’re quite tasty.
(left) not sure if you can see them, but we’ve finally got jalapenos! and lots of pretty green ground cover and blue and purple flowers.
we worked all weekend. all three days were spent in the garage refinishing the exterior wood that was removed to install the new downstairs living room window and fix the leak.
because the house was built with beautiful, solid redwood and replacing it is expensive and wasteful, we’re reusing every bit that we can. i spent the weekend stripping paint, gluing, filling, sanding and painting exterior siding and trim.
this is what we looked like for most of the weekend. mathew up on the scaffolding: scraping, removing, installing, sanding and painting, me with my respirator mask, gloves and various tools.
we’ve gotten into using bondo, a car repair filler. it sets fast, is waterproof and durable. it makes the siding and trim look new again. but it smells really bad. (left) all those little blocks of siding were in pieces when mathew removed them from the house. it was a job for “puzzle savant” (that’s me), now they are whole again.
see? more bondo filler. (thanks bob, for the tip.)
(left) a view from the scaffolding. (right) mathew wiping down the wall with a wet cloth after sanding with the vacuum attachment, trying to minimize the amount of lead paint dust we release into the air!
a piece of refinished trim that goes near the window.
this weekend we rented scaffolding, the parts were delivered and mathew put them together. i helped a little (but most of my weekend was spent stripping paint off trim.)
(left) mathew removing siding. (right) the view i had for most of the weekend.
mathew working on the third level of the scaffolding.
(left) what it looks like to stand on the second level. (right) mathew replacing siding after installing barrier paper.
after we removed the old (crappy) window.
preparing the opening for the new window.
(left) more barrier paper. (right) the new window!
(left) installing and squaring the new window. i helped with measuring and squaring. that took a while and the sun was rapidly going down. (right) success!
on saturday we got a phone message from our friend mae, wanting to drop by around 9pm that night. we didn’t hear the message until after we’d finished working and were too exhausted and hungry… after 9 we’d finally had dinner and were thinking about sleep, when mae’s sisters, stef and nancy dropped by to see if we were home and to give the green light to the rest of the group to show up. we felt bad about sending them away but we were too exhausted to stay up or really socialize. and stef brought this lovely gift! the gee sisters are always so thoughtful and generous.
as time keeps rushing by, we’ve made the decision to only work on the house on weekends and socialize on week nights. it’s been a year since we started working on this house and my 84 year old grandmother is still living alone.
because of family visits on saturday AND sunday, we had less time to work on the house, but still managed to get stuff accomplished. we only lost about 8 hours.
remember all those holes mathew made in the walls? we rented a machine and installed the blow-in cellulose insulation. sorry no photos, i was downstairs in the garage while mathew was upstairs in the living room with my dad. my brother jason helped me loading up the agitator/blower (sorry, there ARE photos but they’re on jason’s camera…)
later after my family left, mathew and i switched places so i installed the insulation in the second entry while mathew filled the machine. (left) a photo i took of myself. it’s a very cool machine we rented, we had it in the garage but controlled it with a remote. and it was even powerful enough to blow insulation up to the attic, 2 flights up.
on sunday mathew’s dad, daniel came over for brunch. then we went downstairs to see if the wood in the entry was worth saving.
(left) it was! (right) the edger and a sandpaper disc they call “pizza.”
(left) filling a few more holes with insulation. (right) patching the holes and large gaps with plaster.
and because he just needed make a little more progress, mathew pulled down all the damaged plaster in the hall built-in cabinet. now it’s really ugly! he’s thinking there might have been a light-well here in the past, it would explain why there was water damage in the middle of the house.
on saturday after i applied fiberglass mesh tape to the cracks in the walls, mathew applied a skim-coat, painted the wall with pink “plaster-weld” and then we got to work with plastering the first wall.
(left) mathew burnishing the wall after 2 layers of plaster were applied. (right) on sunday i started with some paint stripping.
and then it was time for plaster on the second wall, this batch was a good consistency and mathew was quite happy with how it turned out. while mathew was burnishing i cut out some “recycled” gypboard to fill in some of the spaces where i’d removed old loose plaster.
(left) i did the best with what i had. adding the gypboard cuts down on the amount of plaster we’ll need to layer in to fill those spaces. (right) mathew starting on the built-in cabinet in the hall, removing even more of that weird paneling the previous owners liked to use all over the house. behind it the plaster was really ugly and water damaged.
this is how those two walls look as the plaster is drying.
mathew figured out the leak: an incorrect installation of exterior siding. on sunday we covered the wall openings with gypboard.
(left) the original plaster wall! (right) installing gypboard.
mathew drilling holes in the 2nd hallway for blow-in cellulose insulation. the holes go between each stud. once those top holes are drilled he drops a string and plumb inside to find where horizontal pieces might block the insulation, then he drills more holes below that.
we decided to strip the old paint and plaster skim coat off this third wall. pounds/gallons and years of paint were removed. then we stripped the 2 layers of wallpaper. the exposed plaster walls are quite beautiful in a rustic way, they look like walls in old buildings in europe.
mathew inspecting the ceiling and drilling holes for blow-in insulation we’ll install next weekend.
my cousin larry was back to paint the closet door he sanded last weekend. he ran a marathon in the city the next morning.
mathew installing batt-insulation above the doors to keep out drafts. i spent the day stripping paint then stripping wall paper.
i finally got a good look at the old wallpaper. mathew removing wallpaper.
there were so many photos from this weekend that i’ve been putting off making a post. i was going to post the photos and no text and say, “figure it out!” but now that i’m typing…
i’m still in the middle of “destroying” this room and making it as ugly as possible. after the sanding it was time for the loose plaster to come down.
i screwed in plaster washers to hold cracks and edges in place.
my cousin larry came over to help; i put him to work sanding this slatted door from upstairs. (left, photo taken after the sanding was done. he’ll be back next weekend to paint it!) it was nice having someone work with me in my demolition room. mathew has spent the last few weekends, mostly in the garage, working on electrical/rewiring stuff. in the evening another cousin, jon and his wife florence and their two kids, makayla and malachi dropped by to see the house and go out to dinner with larry. of course, as usual, i forgot to take photos of our guests… and they brought yummy snacks. (right) here i am sitting with a wall where i’ve removed the plaster in a perfect line so that the new repairing gypboard can be screwed to half of the stud and the remaining plaster can be screwed to the other half. (does that make any sense?)
mathew installing yet another electrical outlet and finding a weird panel attached to the wall where he thinks a heater might have once lived. and we also discovered this weird green wallpaper on two of the walls in this room. previous owners had put a plaster skim coat over it but it wasn’t holding that well and easily chipped off. so the room gets even uglier…
my sunday started with a lot of plaster skim-coat removal. after making a royal mess i got tired of working by myself and went down to the garage to see what mathew was doing.
i found him in the garage causing trouble… i mean cutting lots and lots of holes in the ceiling. adding outlets upstairs means running wires in the floor below the living room. he also spent the entire day doing rewiring and fixing electrical stuff that wasn’t done correctly by the previous owners. (do you see a pattern?)
mathew thought it would be better for my morale if i worked downstairs with him in the garage. so then instead of demolition i was put on construction duty, cutting and installing 2x4s for a partial retrofit of the garage. there are these precariously placed steel beams in the garage that in an earthquake could fall over. i helped to make them safer (and felt quite manly in the process) by securing them to the floor above.
(left) after that bit of retrofitting i replaced the mesh on a window screen. (right) at 7:30 i’d had enough fun in the garage, but mathew kept rewiring until close to 10 pm. it wasn’t something that could wait, our tenant would have been without electricity!
hope everyone had a nice weekend. (next time i’ll cut down on the sarcasm…)
