Category: downstairs

work on the downstairs apartment

planer vs heat gun

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Sometimes Bella likes to lie half hanging off shelves. No problem with heights, I guess!

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I did some more wiring. The garage was on the same circuit as much of the downstairs unit. And with all my fancy power tools… the breaker would trip. I added four circuits. Two for the garage, and two for our upstairs kitchen (which was also on the same circuit!) But it meant taking off more ceiling, and lots of conduit bending and pulling wire.

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Stringing the wire through the conduit took much longer than I thought it would. As usual, what I thought was a one day project was really a four day project.

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And now that the girls are three — they can go into the garage. Here’s Bella inspecting the conduit bender.

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Here’s Bella doing her best impression of an otter. Her hairy belly makes here look really big. heh. And Arwen taking a nap on her favorite blanket.

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Mole, Arwen, and knitting. Cozy! Arwen is on my lap as I write this. She has a unique squeaky rattling loud purrr…

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The wood that was the laundry room siding was thickly covered in flaking paint. Before I put the wood on the soffit, we stripped it with a heat gun, and it took many hours. I decided to try another (faster) method for the rest of the wood: a planer. For the first pass, I hooked the dust collection up to a HEPA vacuum to try to catch the (probably leaded) paint dust I created.

The process generated two full garbage bags of paint chips, and wore through a set of planer blades (paint is quite abrasive and I hit a few nails.) But I stripped about 300 linear feet of wood (both sides) in one day. Of course, this method only works on flat boards, but the heat gun takes about 10-20 min per foot per side.

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Here’s a picture of the pile of wood part way through planing. Some of the old wood is really beautiful tight grained wood. There are some rotten bits, but I’ll trim them off.

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Here’s another photo of some of the boards after planing. Next step is to rout a decorative edge, and edge the boards so they fit together neatly for the wainscot in the laundry room.

And now for a photo of Bella relaxing in the sun:

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Plastering Done

I mentioned before how good Arwen is at shredding paper. Well, she finally got her paws on a bill. I had to piece it back together with tape. “My cat ate it!” Good thing mole is really good at puzzles and found all the pieces.

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Above left: Unshredding. Above right, looking down through the skylight while I was plastering the ceiling.

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I set up boards over saw horses so that I could reach the ceiling. Plastering the ceiling went quite well. I followed all the directions: “Blue” board as the base, then “Kal Kote” base coat, then “Uni-Kal” veneer plaster.

One problem I’d always had when plastering was there would be small patches of the plaster that would come loose as I was trying to polish the plaster. It was as if that section did not set up as fast. I’ve finally learned that when putting on plaster, the first pass must be very thin – basically scrubbed onto the surface so it’s almost translucent. If it’s too thick, it will get air bubbles under it, and that’s what was happening to me. Then, from the same batch, I come back and build the coat of plaster up to about 1/16 inch thick. This is the first time I’ve done that (the manufacturer’s instructions say to do that — it was just never clear to me how thin the first pass must be). It worked like a dream.

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So now the plastering is done in the laundry room. Here’s mole and Arwen coming to inspect right after I’d finished the walls. The plaster was just setting up; it goes a brownish grey until all the water evaporates.

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Then Arwen decided to get up to her old tricks and ran up onto the roof. Here she is walking along the ridge, with the sun setting behind her. Must be a great view.

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Not to be outdone, Bella jumped up onto the handrail and walked back and forth. Then she walked into the open window of the laundry room.

Tile Shopping

We had a week of hot weather for San Francisco. The poor cats have been losing their summer coats and getting their winter coats at the same time.

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Above is Bella trying to stay cool.

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Continuing on the shower rebuild in the laundry room bathroom, I made the shower pan. Because I’m using Kerdi as the waterproofing membrane, I use their special drain flange, and cast it into a bed of mortar.

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Above left is the finished shower pan. Above right mole is putting bondo onto the pressure treated wood we used for the back stairs. The wood gets incised when it’s treated, so has all those holes all over it. Looks much better when filled.

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Above: Before and after filling with Bondo.

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Over a year ago I made some balusters for the back stairs. I just got them primed, and will put them up soon.

But the most interesting thing we’ve done lately is go to Fireclay tile and we bought fancy tile for the bathroom. Above right are two nice decorative pieces we’ll add in. The only downside is that this tile is $$expensive$$ !!

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We went to their ‘boneyard’ and bought a couple of boxes of seconds at about 1/4 the price. Now we need to figure out exactly how much more we need and order it.

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Some other tile we looked at was at Latch tile in San Francisco. The person working there was super helpful and patient. Above left, cool shapes, but how to use it? Above right, these tiles are beautiful (reminded mole of her parent’s house) — maybe we’ll use a few as accents.

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We’ve been watching a lot of Downton Abbey lately… Funny, with all the fancy stuff “upstairs”, the thing that caught our eye was the tile in the kitchen. We may do something like this on the floor in the laundry room & bathroom. Above right Bella came to inspect right before I started plastering.

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This is the first time I’ve used basecoat plaster. It’s similar to plaster, but has sand in it. It goes on slightly rough so that the plaster sticks to it properly. Above you can see the ceiling after the basecoat is on and drying.

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On top of the basecoat, I put a finish coat of veneer plaster. I forgot how much I enjoy plastering. Yes, I did get quite a bit in my face and on the floor while working on the ceiling. Still, it’s very satisfying to start out the day with rough uneven surfaces, and end with perfectly smooth white plaster.

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In the laundry room, I taped all the joints. I don’t need to be very careful with the taping, because it will be covered in veneer plaster.

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Next: More plaster!

from cobbler to cement board

Our peach tree gave us lots of peaches this year. The tricky thing with peaches–at least the ones on our tree–is they all ripen at the same time.

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The peaches were not as sweet as last year, so Janeen made lots of peach cobbler. MMmmm. Especially good with vanilla coconut bliss.

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Arwen still loves to get into bags. I think she’s amazed at how a space can be created out of a folded up piece of fabric. She loves to be carried around in the bag, too. Oh, and we don’t need a shredder anymore: Arwen does a fine job of it. We have to be careful never to leave anything important out, though.

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Here’s a photo of me and Bella (above left.) Arwen and Bella are having a discussion about who gets to shred this piece of paper.

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This is an unusual view: Looking straight up at the ceiling of the bathroom-to-be beside the laundry room. I’ve used cement board on all walls and the ceiling.

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Above left is the shower with the niche, and above right is the space for the toilet.

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Here is mole painting on the plaster weld. I’m going to plaster the walls on two sides, and tile the remaining walls. Above right I’ve done a first pass with alkali resistant mesh and plaster over the joints. I forgot how much I enjoy plastering.

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Here’s the skylight in the laundry room. I finally put the drywall around the inside of the skylight. The photo is taken from two opposite sides of the skylight. Above right you can see I have curved the piece where the ceiling steps back (see above left on the right side). Next step is plastering – not sure if I know how to plaster a curve. This will be a challenge.

Ta da: walls!

Bella and Arwen got into some remodeling of their own:

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I think Bella likes the additional area that the walls provide for sleeping space. The house is also centrally located in the middle of the dining room. Arwen (above right) looking through the window at Bella inside.

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MY house.

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This weekend we bottled the most recent batch: amber ale. I’ve tried a bit right after bottling (still too sweet from the bottling sugar, and no carbonation). The previous brew, though, a brown ale, is really good. We decided to call this “Tiny Kitchen” brews.

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Finally finished all the rough plumbing for the shower (had been waiting for some parts to be delivered). And true to form, I can’t keep things simple: I’ve put the shower controls centered on the wall in the shower, but there’s a window, so I have the pipe crossing over. And, I got clever with 45 degree bends, even using a pipe bender on part of it to get a smother flow. The hardest part is drilling at 45 degrees through a stud.

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Here’s all the insulation in place, and a view up at the ceiling in this tiny little bathroom.

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Now the hard part: putting up drywall. As you know, I love plaster — the real stuff. So here we are using ‘blue board’. It’s supposed to make it easier to adhere the veneer plaster. The only problem is that the supply place only had 5/8″ thick blue board. Heavy. Here I’m cutting out the openings for the recessed lights.

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Oh, that looks easy? Let me tell you: That one board weighed over 70 lb. Hefting it overhead, and screwing it in place is hernia material. Luckily all my measurements for this board were correct, so the holes all lined up, and everything fit.

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I came up with one little idea to help get the pieces of drywall in place overhead. I temporarily screwed a piece of wood to the wall just below the edge of the board. That way we could rest that edge of the board in place and only support one side while trying to position it and screw it up.

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Here’s how one side looks with all the walls covered in drywall now..

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And the other side. Still not quite finished the walls on this side.

Cat-in-the-Box

To make up for last post’s absence of kitten-pics, I’m going to over-do it now.

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They are getting a bit big to share the same bed now. Bella is looking grumpy because Arwen came along and wanted to snuggle with her.

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And I made my second large brew (brew #7). Up until now, I’d been making one gallon batches. I’ve moved to 3 to 5 gallon batches. This time five gallons of an Amber Ale. And I had a bit extra, that I put in a separate one gallon jug and fermented with extra hops. The main batch is has one more week of fermentation before bottling.

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Dad had his seventy fifth birthday this year. Here we are talking at the surprise party that Eva and Elijah threw for him. Above right is a photo with Dad and two of his closest friends: Charles, and John.

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A picture with some of the attendees to Dad’s birthday party.

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And these photos were irresistible: Above, Arwen; below, Bella. They like Anchor Brewing as much as I do…

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Since I’ve not been eating dairy, one of my favorite things I can’t eat: Haagen-Dazs Dark Chocolate bars. But, now there’s a solution: Coconut Bliss makes coconut bliss chocolate fudge bars. All I had to do is coat it in dark chocolate. Not quite as pretty, but really *dang* good:

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Oh, yes, the reason for the blog: I finished up the wiring and added a ceiling in the small bathroom that’s attached to the laundry room (no photos). Then I put in all the insulation.

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Here I am working on the insulation in the ceiling. We bought ‘encapsulated’ insulation, which is basically fiberglass insulation, with a plastic bag around it. In the past, it was really well made, so that the bag fitted well around the insulation pretty much stopped it from coming out as dust. (The batch we bought this time, though, had terrible quality control: The bags were not sealed up, so basically it was just fiberglass batts with extra sheets of plastic packed with it.)

Next week we’ll put up the drywall.

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And one more thing: Mae and Nancy came to visit on a cold SF summer Sunday Streets day in the Mission. We walked all the way up Valencia and had a chance to catch up over lunch.


most boring post EVER!

If you are hoping for kitten photos, or even human photos, read no further. I’ll blame this on mole: I can’t take photos of myself doing things.

Now that the roof doesn’t leak any more (well, I assume it doesn’t — it hasn’t rained in quite a while), I can work on the inside of the laundry room. First thing: I put in the framing for a new pocket door. I bought the kit almost a year ago, finally installed it (hiding behind the hanging plants):

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The one thing that bothered me after the roofing was done is that I failed to buy a new skylight that fit the opening in the roof properly. So, retrofit: the photo above right sort of shows how the framing sticks into the space of the skylight. I spent a day with the reciprocating saw cutting out joists, and putting in reinforcement. Mole said the whole house was rattling from the noise. To me, it looks better…

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But the photo above left really doesn’t show it. Oh well. Above right, I’ve put in new recessed light fixtures. This is going to be a fancy laundry room.

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Oh, and the really, really boring stuff: Plumbing. Well, it’s rather exciting when it doesn’t work, I suppose. Here I’m putting in the rough plumbing for the sink and shower. I don’t have the controls yet for the shower, so the pipes just end after they stick through the stud. Above right: the pipes below the laundry room floor.

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Of all the projects on this house, the most intimidating is gas piping. Everything else, there’s some type of warning or fuse if somethings done wrong. With gas, I guess you smell it: But it feels like if this is done wrong – BOOM! So, I used lots of joint lube, cleaned the threads meticulously, and tightened every joint to the extreme. Above left is the pipe going above the ceiling in the garage, above right, where it transitions to go to the garden room (fancy!).

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Above left, it tees to go up to the laundry room (for the dryer), and I added a pipe that will allow a stove down in the garden room (beer brewery maybe?). I went over every connection with soap to check for leaks: None! I did find a slow leak in three valves, though, and managed to tighten them up.

Oh, and these photos are the last photos that our first digital camera will take. It finally quit, after over ten years (almost every photo in this blog was taken with it).

Real Pros

When I went to buy roofing materials, the person at Western Gravel & Roofing Supply talked me into hiring a contractor: He was afraid I’d burn down my house with the torch (!) and recommended a contractor who happened to be in line.

What a contrast to the last roofers we hired. These guys were awesome!

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I did the prep work before the contractor arrived. I forgot to take a photo before I started ripping off the old roof. Above right the photo shows where my foot went through the old rotten wood!

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Above left is the view from below. That piece of wood had to be replaced. One top of the old wood, I installed plywood. This is both to provide better earthquake resistance, and to span over weak old wood.

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Now the pros showed up. Actually, they told me they’d arrive at 3pm, so I thought I had time to finish the prep before they got here. They arrived three hours early. So they helped me install the insulation for free (I added 2″ of rigid insulation on top of the roof). Above right, Enrique and his assistant smile for the camera.

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This is the reason the roofing supply salesperson didn’t want me doing the roofing myself: Notice the 18″ long flame coming out of the torch? This is on low. Here, Enrique is melting the back of the modified bitumen roofing, so that it seals down to the roof. Each strip is melted to the previous strip to make a continuous membrane over the roof.

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Ironically, after watching the roofers, I realized that fitting the roofing around and over all the tricky corners was where their skill and experience really helped. It would have taken me weeks to do this, and it probably wouldn’t have been done as well in the end. Pick your battles!

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One more photo as they finished up, and here it is done. Beautiful, eh? I managed to salvage the old skylight; took some serious chipping and heat-gun action to get it off the old curb. I’ll probably replace it one day, but for now, it’s fine.

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So now we’re done with the outside of the laundry room. All I had to do after they finished the roof is to put the gutter on and paint it. Here’s photos with the scaffolding down.

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Now I can start working on the inside without worrying that it will get ruined by rain. Sometimes, it really is worth getting the pros.

misha’s visit part 2

just to prove we do more than work on the house when misha visits, i finally downloaded photos from my camera!

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here we are at the betabrand store. misha and mathew are posing with a creepy mannequin and his silver dog (in mathew’s lap.)

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the cats insist on going outside every evening. (left) bella checking out the poppies and bumble bees. (right) arwen hanging out with the nasturtiams

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i can’t remember what we were doing when these photos were taken. i think we’d just had dinner at cha-ya and come home for tea. mathew is also taking funny self portraits, none of which i have posted. perhaps they will become an animation..?

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another outside visit. (left) arwen investigating the new compost tumbler. (right) bella showing off her balancing skills, spying on birds in the tree. she almost caught a bird recently when climbing in the tree, luckily the bird got away!

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mathew and misha painting and then reviewing their work.

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(left) we went for a walk into bernal heights with misha and daniel and made a new feline friend. (right) we also found quirky water features advertising a business outside someone’s home: watercontraptions.com

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misha looking out over our beautiful city on a beautiful day. 🙂

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three bittleston men having a chat on a bench.

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arwen has gotten adventurous again. she’s figured out how to jump onto the other neighbor’s house. i love how casual she is; she has no idea how freaky this is for us!

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when she’d decided she’d had enough, she finally came back to the place she’d originally jumped from and it didn’t seem so fun coming back. she was more than happy to run to the bathroom window where i pulled off the screen and let her in.

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and when they’re not getting into trouble, they spend a lot of time lying around being cute…

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and before i forget, HAPPY FATHER’S DAY to our dads! we love you both!

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mathew is currently in new orleans. he had a 3-day master camp training and a belt test that he’s been preparing for for months. HE PASSED!! he’s now a third degree black belt in shotokan karate. (above: bella helping mathew study.)

finally: Paint!

My brother comes to visit for a few days and what do I make him do? Work on the house, of course!
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First, I had to fill all the dents and cracks with Bondo. This was the second pass with filler (first time was before I primed everything). As soon as it’s painted, all the missed dents and unfilled holes show up.

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Then we had to caulk all the joints between windows and siding, and vertical joints between the trim and the siding. We have to be a bit careful when caulking: Mustn’t fill any joints that water trapped behind the siding might need to drain out of (ie, none of the horizontal joints in the siding, or the bottom of the window sill, etc).

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Actually, painting the color on is fun. It’s the most rewarding part, makes everything look finished, and goes quite fast.

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Well, as long as you are not working with the world’s pickiest Turtle. Here I’m painting the underside of the eave with a sky-blue color.

We’ve always had wasps nesting in the eaves on the back here. While I appreciate that they are part of our environment, and help with (other) pest control, I don’t particularly want them on my eaves. So, a bit of internet research led us to a Southern tradition that we noticed in New Orleans: Painting the underside of eaves with a sky-blue (the actual color varies by region, but it’s often called “Haint” blue) supposedly makes them less likely to nest. Worth a try, and it has a cool story to go with it.

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Above left, Mole gritting her teeth waiting for super slow Turtle photographer.

So, here it is, the outside of the laundry room is painted — now on to the roof, the stairs, the inside…

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Oh, and I’ve still got to paint that pipe.