Category: downstairs

in an attempt to get more accomplished on the house, we’ve been declining any daytime, social invites. it’s probably not making us very popular with friends and family, but it would be great if my grandmother could move in asap and not have to spend another winter living alone. because of our work schedules, our house schedule keeps getting pushed back.

here are the photo highlights from this long weekend. because our evenings were busy i had to make one large post today.

(above left) new sidewalk and driveway squares! (above right) more plumbing.

white bread: a plumber’s tool. it helps to soak up water in the pipes so that you can actually solder the pipe instead of just boil water in it. but i’m guessing most plumbers don’t use freshly baked baguettes. and mathew takes bites in between soldering.

we had our first house guests! midori and andy were visiting from portland and stayed over friday night. i guess i don’t have to mention, we were terrible hosts! we were up early on saturday and mathew got right to work.

as the temps drop, the need to insulate becomes urgent. this house was built in 1914, before insulation. here mathew is adding fiberglass insulation to the bathroom ceiling and walls.

another late night of plaster work. another dinner at midnight. typically one wall takes us about 4 hours from start to finish. i was having so much fun taking photos of mathew and his shadow that he had to ask me to stop so i could actually get some work done… (there were a lot of cool shadow photos!)

more insulation. one side of the living room is done. the bedroom is next. for the ceilings we’re going to use a blow-in recycled cellulose insulation. it involves drilling holes in the ceiling plaster and renting a machine to blow the material into each space. a cozy new hat and jacket for our house.

i spent the morning scraping adhesive off plaster walls with a heat gun. with my respirator mask on, i could imagine it smelled like warm chocolate frosting…

mathew finished his bathroom framing. later this evening he sanded and painted the new siding outside. (above right) mathew in his new birthday overalls! [notice the shiny clean kitchen floor? i scrubbed it last night. – mathew]

for dinner we made pizza and tested the oven with an oven thermometer. as i suspected, the oven has no temperature control (i baked a lasagna and a casserole last week…) if you set it at 400 degrees it will preheat for 10 minutes and keep getting hotter. after baking the first pizza for 5 minutes the oven was 525. after 5 minutes of baking the second pizza it was up to 575! how hot could it get? so, this oven isn’t great for cookies but it’s excellent for super-thin crust pizza! too bad you can’t smell these… mmm.

while i went off to do yet more shopping – i think i’ve been procrastinating, because i’m feeling intimidated by the cast iron sewer pipe that i need to move for the new toilet location – janeen started to tear up the underlayment that is on the floor in the room we are using as a living room right now. there are so many nails in it – fortunately they did not glue it down, though.

when i finally got back from ‘discount’ (it’s anything but) builder’s supply, i realized that we need to remove the painted over window because it will interfere with the shower. it’s a bit weird because it looks out directly at three of our neighbor’s windows. there will (only) be two windows left now. so instead of fiddling with the intimidating plumbing, i reframed the wall and, with janeen’s help, nailed on the siding through a combination of leaning out the side widows, and climbing on the roof. it was really difficult to fit the new siding in, because the old siding had all shrunk the new pieces were almost half an inch wider.

so, it feels a bit better now that we got something done. janeen managed to take off about 1/3 of the underlayment. janeen is now relaxing under a blanket next to the floor where she removed the stinky underlayment.

we didn’t make any major progress this weekend but got a lot of little things done.

i cleaned and repaired the blinds in the office and took down the valance and curtain rails. (20+ years of dust?) we’ll keep these blinds for now until i figure out what i want instead of them. hopefully soon i’ll get some new paint on those walls.

mathew temporarily fixed the sad, sagging deck in the backyard.

and pulled up the floorboards to get to the plumbing in the upstairs bathroom. he did some re-routing with the copper pipes in the garage. the previous plumber had some strange, inefficient methods. i know nothing about plumbing, but hot water shouldn’t travel twice the width of the house then go up and around the exterior of the house, should it?

is there anything this guy can’t fix? last week mathew also repaired the ancient stove in the downstairs kitchen. now we can cook downstairs! as good as the mexican food is around here, there are only so many tacos and burritos you can eat before you need some variety.

it’s columbus day and i guess some people have it off? mathew is away at work and i’ll soon be sitting in front of my computer, in my pink office with clean, functional blinds.

we had helpers today! in one of the downstairs rooms, my parents pulled up carpet.

(left) and linoleum tiles… under the underlayment (right) is old fir. mathew says this is called the sub-floor, not meant to be the final layer but often kept exposed in old houses and can be quite nice when finished. we may or may not add hardwood. we’re not sure what condition it’s in but the part that was uncovered was painted red.

and upstairs my cousin larry was helping scrape “chocolate” adhesive and wallpaper off the plaster walls. he was in town for the weekend and thought he’d put in a few hours of help.

the five of us had lunch at a local, very popular, hole-in-the-wall mexican restaurant. on the way back we looked at murals, another tourist attraction in the mission district. thank you so much larry, mom and dad for all your help today. i hope you’re not too sore tomorrow.

after our helpers left, we came back for more scraping and sanding. this new sander and wet/dry vac are amazing, the dust gets sucked directly into the vacuum cleaner. dustless sanding. mathew started to repair the plaster and kept wondering if we should have torn down all the plaster and put up dry wall. but what a mess that would have been, and more waste. and how many people actually have plaster walls these days? eventually the plan is to break into these walls and add built-in shelves and cabinets.

my hands and arms are so tired i almost didn’t post tonight. hope everyone had a nice weekend!

(left) doesn’t the housewarming plant from genanne look nice in the upstairs kitchen? (right) i got my own tools, bag and gloves!

(left) today i pulled up the carpet in the foyer downstairs. (right) linoleum #1.

AND under that, linoleum #2! this one will be tricky. it was glued down and there’s major water damage near the door. not sure how the wood survived…

upstairs: mathew took out the tile, chicken-wire, and mortar floor. noisy.

the dust was thick and photogenic. (yes, genanne, we’re both wearing our masks.)

(left) “i hope the toilet made it down okay.”

just kidding, it’s in the garage. the bathroom is now completely empty.