Category: downstairs

saturday was spent doing office work.

sunday was spent with lemons and tile.

the lemons needed picking and the tree needed pruning.

it was a beautiful morning to be outside. hopefully the tree doesn’t react badly to the extreme pruning.

most of the lemons look like lemons, but some have been disfigured by a winter citrus pest. from what i’ve read, the pest isn’t inside the fruit, it affects the stem as the fruit is growing and alters it’s appearance.

strange and beautiful.

lemons anyone? we’ve got 3 big boxes (of normal lemons.) we gave some to our neighbors who invited us in for short visits. one of our neighbors is rosa, she’s 96 years old, funny and feisty! we left one box of lemons on our front steps for people to help themselves. it was gone within hours.

in the afternoon and evening: tile work.

and more tile.

for the record: i don’t think i got mathew sick. i’ve got this 2-week cold that’s going around and he might have a stomach flu. one good thing about being sick in this house though… an endless supply of lemons for hot lemon & honey. (lemons shown on a mathew designed/built bench.)

i think getting sick might have been good for mathew. he’d been working so much and stressed out all the time. now he’s catching up on sleep, getting 12+ hours a night/day.

but it still hasn’t kept him from working on the house.

because i haven’t had very many pretty pictures to post recently, i thought i’d share one of a snack i had last week. (i guess it’s not technically pretty, but it brings back fond memories…)(yes, larry, they’re vegan!) (right) here i am in my office, shrink wrapping the (cheap, single-pane) windows with a plastic film to seal out drafts. one day they’ll be replaced.

we spent a lot of the weekend winterizing and preparing for the upcoming rain by painting, sealing and caulking around the windows upstairs. rain is predicted for at least the next 10 days! (right) the cute little bathroom vent hood that mathew installed on the roof last weekend.

an early evening moon photo taken by mathew while freezing on the roof. (right) the upstairs bathroom is on the verge of greatness… ready for plaster, tile, flooring, wainscoting, a custom-made vanity, a sink, shower, toilet, medicine cabinet, light fixtures and switches…

except for last weekend’s window detour, the bedroom is almost ready for paint! here mathew is taping and skim-coating the ceiling.

have a good week everyone. stay warm and dry!

it was a weekend of hard work with little to show for it…

a while back mathew had cut holes in the downstairs closet wall for running pipe and electrical wires upstairs from the garage. now it was time to close them up. i attached wood to the right side stud so the drywall would have something to attach to. i added insulation, then cut and screwed on the drywall. next will be plaster and probably something to hide that unsightly sewer pipe.

meanwhile, mathew was upstairs cutting more holes in the ceiling… this time for a vent fan in the bathroom. (i should have him take some exterior shots, there’s a cute little vent hood up on the roof now.)

sunday’s activities took a slight detour…

during the last big storm mathew noticed that the upstairs bedroom window was leaking. since there’s no rain in the forecast for at least a week, we decided to check out the damage. this included removing the window, tearing off the window frame and (sadly) destroying part of mathew’s first plastered wall.

what we found was not good. rotten wood and fungus (ick.) someone had installed this window not too long ago, but had done it so incorrectly that water was seeping into the window frame and wall and getting trapped. with time running out in the day, we decided to treat and replace as much of the rotten wood as possible and come back and replace all of it including the stud and window at a later date.

this unscheduled activity took up our entire sunday. i spent the day sanding and sealing old and new wood and mathew spent the day laboriously hanging out the window attaching, planing, sanding and painting things.

(left) here i am demonstrating the home remodeling bicep drill curl. start with 3 sets of five reps, increase as you build up strength. (right) the bathroom is almost ready for tile! (currently the cement board makes it look like a prison cell…)

it’s amazing how much more you can get done with 2 extra people!

on sunday morning najia couldn’t wait to get started on the entry floor. linoleum tiles were stuck down with adhesive; peeling them up with a scraper was tedious, but the heat gun sped up the process.

justin cut and installed drywall upstairs where the refrigerator will go, and put up insulation and moisture-barrier paper in the bathroom.

mathew put up blocking (horizontal wood pieces between studs) for the shower doors to attach to and made some cool sparks grinding off nails. after lunch justin, najia and i moved cement board (HEAVY) up 2 flights of stairs from the garage.

(left) tired work monkeys. (right) a (tiny) toy truck found during the remodel. it’s helping to move some cellulose insulation…

we’re so grateful to justin and najia for sacrificing their weekend to help us work on the house. with them we made lots of progress and had fun talking and catching-up during meals. thank you so much to both of you! come again, any time…

before and after dinner, mathew and i installed cement board on the bathroom walls. it is mold resistant and goes up before the tile. it is cut by scoring with a special carbide tip knife then snapped over a piece of wood.

the cement board is heavy. it’s hard to cut and hard to drill. two screwdriver bits were destroyed in the process. (it’s dust is also carcinogenic so masks were worn during the installation, although, for some reason… not in these photos.)

hope everyone has a good week!

saturday was all about electricity.

the crazy, stormy weather continued from friday, mathew installed 3 electrical outlets upstairs, and my brother, justin and his wife, najia helped with deciphering the house’s entire electrical system.

justin and najia started by creating floorplans of each level of the house and mapping out every electrical outlet and light fixture. then using our cordless phones as walkie-talkies they systematically turned off each circuit to find out which outlets and lights were connected to each circuit. they found that of the 25 circuits, #5 was used heavily throughout the house with a random light usage of #11,12,13 and 14. mathew’s new outlets use #16 but the rest of the circuits are completely unused. this is incredibly valuable info and mathew hopes to sit down with uncle ken (electrician) to find out the best way to rewire the house.

we also had a visit from my parents, uncle gilbert and auntie pauline. and i worked on installing more (yes, more!) insulation.

last weekend we worked on the house but didn’t have many photos to show for it. (left) my box of nail, paint and adhesive-free solid wood to go in the compost bin, old pieces from the house that are too small (or too strange) to be reused. (right) the plumbing temp valve for the shower upstairs. [turtle: ok, so we spoke too soon, there still is more plumbing.]

we baked cookies for our neighbors on christmas eve.

my family came over in the morning to celebrate christmas. it was a nice gathering with lots of cookies, coffee and pizza. afterwards we went to the big extended celebration with my mom’s family.

hope everyone had a warm and peaceful christmas and hanukkah.

 we’re making progress! but i think we’re the only ones who can tell.

today we finished all the rough plumbing for the upstairs bathroom and kitchen. yay!! (above left) mathew tried out the downstairs dishwasher for the first time. and it worked! from the looks of it, the dishwasher had never been used (there was an operating instructions sticker still stuck on the inside…)

i removed all the plaster and wood from this wall. previous owners had cut the middle stud (!?) so i replaced it. it looks like i’ve just stuck a new piece of wood there, but it usually involves precise measurements, custom fitting, cutting and chiseling.

after all the plumbing was done we tested the pipes by turning the water back on. thick grey water came out (ewww) a mixture of flux, oxidized copper and white bread. no leaks! after the test we added foam pipe insulation and finally put the subfloor back.

tired but happy. hope everyone had a nice weekend.