front of house – turtle + mole

Restoring the Dollhouse

Now that we’re done with the structural work, I need to fix what I broke.

In the blazing sun — while the street was closed for a low-rider car show — I started working on the siding and trim around the garage door.

It was hard to see from photographs, but the paint on the siding around the garage door was bubbling up. So I stripped it down to the wood. The reason I’d waited too long on doing all the paint on the front of the house, is I’d wanted to strip it all. It’s prohibitively expensive to hire someone to do that, because it takes a long time. But the bubbling is because one of the layers of paint is not sticking to the layer below it: Probably because one of the times it was painted, the previous paint wasn’t sanded/cleaned properly.

Working on the paint overhead is really hard on the neck and shoulders. I also re-used some old siding and filled in the lower left and right sides. That piece of old plywood with the interesting painting on it served many months. I think it even made it into a google street view.

Only after I’d done all the overhead paint stripping, I thought: While I’m doing this, I should add insulation below the floor. So I pulled all the overhead wood off. Could have done it before stripping and made it so much easier on my neck. Oh well.

Insulation in. I used a double layer of closed cell “reflectix”–it’s a bit like bubble wrap–with an air gap between. I had to cut each piece to fit with enough to staple to the joists on all sides. I decided on this because I didn’t like the idea of glass fiber batt insulation possibly being a place for insects to nest.

I added some ventilation holes so that moisture doesn’t accumulate in this space. I did add metal mesh on the back side so that large insects can’t get in.

Mole snapped a photo of me after I’d got all the siding back on and was working on filling holes and sanding smooth.

Now it’s getting much nicer than it was before I started: The trim around the garage door was a real botch job before. Now I’ve used some nice cedar with dimensions matching the rest of the house. It’s hard to see from the photo, but I added a piece of quarter round at the inside edge – another Victorian era detail.

The lower edge of the bay window was always a bit of a mess. They’d used just a piece of quarter round, and butted it against the edge of the ceiling boards. I very much doubt that was original, because it results in exposed end grain.

I changed the detail by making the quarter round extend down a bit, and adding a piece of wood with a coved edge routed into it. In my mind this is a huge improvement because it hides the transition, and also provides a ‘drip’ edge.

Here she is, painted. I added lights: We bought them about fifteen years ago (!) planning to put them here.

Back on the ground at last

I’ve had a lot of help moving this project forward. By chance, I ran into Emilio — who, it turns out, is a floorman and immigrant like Dad. He initially agreed to help me with getting beams lifted into place. When we’d jacked up the first beam and got it attached, we stood back and he kept saying “Beautiful” — I told him Dad used to sing a “Beautiful, Beautiful” song when he was putting polyurethane down onto freshly sanded floors. It’s now become our mantra.

Since then, when his regular work is slow, he’s been helping me keep this project going. In January, we did a major push and got the final foundation poured. After re-reading mole’s post about Dad and me installing the floors, I realized Emilio reminds me of Dad in other ways too (quoting mole) “working with mathew was like working with a really high-maintenance, picky, perfectionist client who never left the house… during the entire weekend mathew was BOSSY but daniel, as always, maintained a positive attitude with a smile on his face.” Emilio too.

There were lots of interesting things hiding in the walls when I opened them up:

A wood concrete trowel, shoes, and a can of shellac lacquer

Here I’m starting to get the wall supported again. You can see the light shining through below the wall, and I’m adding new wall studs next to the old shorter ones, working left to right.

Even with all my shoring efforts, this corner dropped a bit. So I’ve got a jack under to corner lifting it while I put in the taller posts. It reminds me of when we first bought this house: The agent was showing us around, and in the back of the house, there was a jack supporting the extremely rotten and falling-down back stairs.

Corner post installed.

I had some original siding saved from the wall on the other side, so I stripped the paint, and repaired all the dents and dings. Now it’s on the lower quarter of this wall.

Siding and moisture barrier installed and shoring removed! Ahhh, such a relief.

I put the hidden treasures back into the wall, just the way I’d found them.

Then plywood to make it into a strong shear wall.

On the other side of the house, I had to construct a wall against the neighbor’s house. You can see the siding of their house on the right. To do it, I built a platform at the height of the concrete wall, and then planned to build the new wall on top of the platform, and slide it into place…

The new wall was incredibly heavy because it has to be a one hour fire wall. Moving it into position was difficult: The wall had to be moved over, and slid over the top of the anchor bolts. The bolt holes had to line up perfectly with the bolts sticking out of the concrete. Plus it had to fit in close at each end and somehow fit under the edge of the existing floor. I used a pry bar to gradually nudge it over, and had to tilt the whole wall at what felt like a 45 angle to get it to fit under the edge of the floor.

…Lots of grunting, false starts, and last minute trimming later: Wall in place. Success!

Then I shored up this side of the house and removed the old termite-eaten wall, in preparation for installing a new steel beam.

Actually, the beam is not “new” – it’s one of the beams that was over the garage before. I cut it down to the length for this new location, and with my mag drill, drilled the bolt holes into it.

This view shows the shoring beam above, and the “new” permanent beam below. I drilled some extra holes in the middle in case I decide to run conduit through it in the future.

Reclaiming the remaining good pieces of wood that came out when I removed this wall, I filled in the sides of the beam so I can nail joist hangers to the sides.

Here are the floor joists notched to fit the new beam. I couldn’t make the beam go all the way up, because it runs under the landing at the front, which is lower than the floor inside the house.

And that’s it: Fully supported on the new foundation. Plus the garage is a bit larger now. Next I have to build back the wall framing and all the finishes that were damaged/removed during the foundation work.

One more thing found in the walls. Maybe you can see where it went in the photo below.

Now to remove this old wall: The threaded rods sticking out of it are the retrofit anchors I added a few years ago – before I got myself into this mess!

On a more fun note, some of Misha’s sculptures appeared last month… delivered by art delivery service. I was super worried they’d get broken in transit, but they were packed expertly and ADS drove their own truck here to deliver. No FedEx box-smashers please!

This so reminds me of a sad part in ET.

But now Blue Ganoogle lives happily out on our back porch. They don’t like living indoors. I think Arwen likes them, too.

Two bowls gnome’s arms were sooo tired.

Now he’s keeping watch at Bella’s grave. His hat is actually a solar light, so his eyes and all the holes around his head and belly glow at night.

A pretty painted lady

My sibling came to visit – and helped put in windows that I bought about fifteen years (!) ago for the upstairs. First we had to put up scaffolding, which is rather a scary endeavor so high up.

It was surprisingly easy to get the old aluminum window out of there. Then there was a gaping hole in the front room.

First step was to add a center jamb. In retrospect, I wish I’d thought about making this thinner in the middle – the windows could have been about an inch wider.

There was a lot of shimming, and adjusting to get the windows to fit right. But they went in nicely. Still need to finish off the inside, though.

I decided to strip the paint off the window sill, because latex paint seems to have a soft sticky quality about it that I really don’t like on shelves, window sills, etc. But the wood is going to need some careful repair.

We also got to have some time exploring, and drinking coffee – I even made latte art.

Right before they left, we stopped in at the happy vegan. The location is truly unpleasant – but it’s takeout only and we loved the food.

While we were up the scaffolding, we got a close look at the state of the paint on the front of the house: It really wasn’t good; the ornament was starting to come loose, there was exposed wood, and lots of peeling paint. My sibling gave me an earful about how I need to stop delaying and hire someone to paint it, or the decoration will be irreparably damaged.

So we did: Our lady was hiding behind sheets of plastic and screens for the month of July while our painter labored away.

I took a cycling vacation in France while they were working on it. And came home with Covid. Again.

But as the colors started appearing, it got more and more exciting.

Here’s mole discussing the paint colors around the windows. We generally stuck with the initial plan that mole and I made, but there were some last minute tweaks. Can you guess who picked the colors?

Our painter felt that the way we’d colored the tiles wouldn’t show up well from below. I think he was right, but we didn’t want to ask him to re-paint them.

note from mole: the painter really didn’t want us to go with any of these colors! he thought they were too dark, too bright and not traditional. but in the end i think he was really pleased with it. he even had a sign made to put out front.

There was one decorative piece of molding that had been destroyed by the roofers many years ago. It had always bothered me, so while the scaffolding was up, I repaired it.

I saw a photo of the house around 1906 and it had decorative finials on top of the part I’d repaired. I was sure I had a copy of that photo somewhere, but can’t find it. Luckily for us, I think most of the decoration has survived.

Here’s the final decoration getting finished. At first I was thinking it would look nice in silver. In the end we went with gold accents because it was more traditional and stood out better.

So here she is in all her glory. She’s a painted lady again.

When it was first done, mole said it looked like Disneyland. I heard someone walking by saying it looked “right out of Alice in Wonderland”.

I regularly see people taking photos in front. So I think people appreciate the bright colors.

Here’s the original mockup. I did the line drawing and mole came up with all the colors and placements. mole said it was like a really big, high-pressure print project.

Another type of bench

Well, I did one more thing in the garage first: There was a wall around the back of the workshop area that prevented me from putting long pieces of wood through the table saw.

The only tricky part was that there was a concrete curb I had to chip out. No this wasn’t a load bearing wall – but I think it was the edge of where they excavated to when they put in the Garage in the 1960’s.

OK, on to the main topic: My neighbor’s son died in February of 2021 and at the time I decided to make a bench to commemorate him. Something solid (strong and heavy) would both represent him well, and prevent someone walking off with it. Here’s my initial sketch.

I made the whole bench out of old wood that had come out of the house when Nick and I demolished that strange room on the back of the house. The seat and the posts I made by laminating smaller pieces together with glue. The seat back is one of the shelves that had been in the garage; it is a single piece of redwood measuring 2 inches thick, and over 14 inches wide – I doubt I could find another piece of redwood like that these days. The strongest connections are mortise and tenon – so that’s what this bench must have. I had a lot of fun carving these connections.

Oh, and while I was making this bench, mole was working on a piece of furniture too. She’d sanded and urethaned the wood parts, and now was on to the part she actually enjoys:

The most tricky connection was the front to the posts, because the posts are skewed. The tenon enters the post at approximately 7 degrees off perpendicular. Once I’d got that all fitted, I cut the mortises for the sides as square tenons – one of which goes through the front mortise, locking it in.

Here’s a test fit of all the connections – don’t mind the compression socks 😉 The seat attaches at the front with tenons from the front posts.

Even that large piece of redwood wasn’t quite wide enough for the back rest, so I glued another piece to the bottom. I didn’t come up with an elegant way to attach the back rest, so I’ll just screw it in from the back. The screws will have oversize holes to allow the wood to move.

Final glue-up:

I used a clear stain on the seat and the back rest, but the frame I stained a bit darker. Some of the wood on that is pressure-treated, so has a green color. The stain made things look better.

Here I am putting the bench in the front. I placed it on four bricks, and added some anchor straps to the wall, just to make sure it doesn’t walk off somewhere.

The only remaining part is a nice solid cast brass plaque to attach to the seat rest. I’ve ordered it, but it takes about 5 weeks to make. I love how the tree shades this bench during the hottest part of the day.

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.

Gold Numbers

We’ve been procrastinating on the transom house numbers for a few years. It’s intimidating doing sign painting. Finally, I got around to doing it.

Mole made a template printed on paper, with the numbers reversed. She just printed the black outline and shadow. I’ll be painting the black outline and shadow on the glass first, then filling it in with real gold leaf.

After thoroughly cleaning the transom glass, I aligned and taped the paper template to the outside of the glass. The numbers are going to be painted on the inside, so I can look through the glass and paint over the black areas. Using ‘One Shot’ sign painter’s paint, I painted the number outlines on the inside of the glass.

There was quite a bit of involvement by our usual inspectors. Arwen couldn’t resist climbing the ladder to get a closer look.

There are two things that make this painting difficult. Firstly, painting is a skill that I’ve never practiced. A paintbrush is much more difficult to control than a pen or a pencil. I kept misjudging how close the glass was, and making a mess. It’s really difficult to paint a smooth, straight line. Secondly, the glass is about 1/8″ thick, so I had to look perpendicular to the glass at the outline drawing on the outside, or the lines would be offset slightly.

A few hours later, I was done with the outline. Next time, I’d make a template with just thin lines for the edges, and paint up to those, or use a color for the template. It was hard to see whether I’d painted, or it was the template, because it was black on black.

I let the paint dry for a few days, then on to the next step.

To get the gold leaf to stick, I painted gilder’s size onto the inside of the glass inside the black outline that I’d already painted. The size has to dry before the gold leaf is applied. The mistake I made, is that you only need a very thin coat of size. I painted it on too thickly, so the size wasn’t uniform and perfectly clear. Oh well, it looks a bit more aged… Then, once the size had dried, carefully, I placed gold leaf onto the numbers. Lesson here: whole sheets are better than pieces. At first I was tearing the sheets, and trying to lay them over only the number. The problem is that at the joins, there is sometimes a gap. Also, the leaf breaks whenever there’s any wrinkle in it, so it makes another gap.

I gently rubbed the gold leaf to burnish it flat, and the leaf that did not have size behind it rubbed off.

Ta-da! Our transom number completed. It looks fine from a distance. Up close, you can see my slightly jagged painting: Mole will be doing the other one, because she’s much better with a paint brush.

June Rain

The highly labor-intensive work continued on the front porch. The weather has been sunny and warm, but there’s a weather forecast of rain…

Mole primed all surfaces of the balusters before I put them in.

Ever since I changed the wiring for the porch light, the marks left by the previous electrical conduit were an eyesore on the ceiling of the landing. You can’t see it clearly from the photo, but it also looked as if someone had started stripping the paint, but never finished.

So I put plastic over the door and landing, put the ladder on the landing, and did some overhead paint stripping. Really tiring on the shoulders.

Sorry, not photos after the stripping, but here it is with primer on. I’ve started to sand and prep the beautiful decorative wood posts. At some point, a really thick coat of paint was put on that did not adhere. In lots of places, it’s come loose, so there are voids under the paint. Other areas, the paint is showing cracking, as if the paint underneath is shrinking. It’s got to get ugly before it gets pretty.

Well, even though I didn’t believe it on this beautiful sunny weekend, I’ve been caught before: With rain forecast, I had to get primer onto all the exposed wood. Here you can see the new railing and balusters installed.

The rain did come. The following week rained almost every day. On the weekend, Justin came to visit. The cats loooovvve him.

We bought this electric fireplace back in December because my mum thought the downstairs living room was dingy. Our plan was to install it into the bookshelf space to make the room a bit more cozy. I took out some of the bottom shelves, and installed a new receptacle inside the alcove. But we’ve liked the heater so much upstairs that we never got round to bringing it back down. A rainy summer weekend is the perfect time.

Above right: Arwen and Bella inspect the test fitting.

Above left: Bella asks which screwdriver to use. Above right: I think Arwen just really likes getting into bags. She’s really curious and doesn’t scare easily; she hung around even after I started sawing, and got sawdust in her fur.

I had to trim off some of the top of the fireplace to get it to fit. But now it’s built-in.

Lying Around on the Steps

Now that the front stairs are done, we’ve got to finish the painting. And of course, there are other projects.

On the left is the new landing, grouted and sealed. I finally took off the ugly metal gates from the front of the house. When they put them in, they tore out the rail and balusters that ran along side the landing.

Almost three years ago, my neighbor was tearing out and replacing his deck. He had these balusters left, and gave them to me. Quite fancy for a deck (I think he got them cheap used).

The reason so many wood Victorians were stripped, or torn down: Maintenance of exterior painted wood, even if it’s old growth redwood, is incredibly labor intensive. Sanding these balusters before we could use them took ages.

I don’t think these are redwood, but they are beautiful tight grained fir. I cut the balusters to fit in their new locations. Nothing is square in an old house, so every one is a different size, and the angles of the cuts vary. To keep the bugs from feasting on the wood, (right) mole is treating the end grain with nasty smelling wood preserver. We have to let it dry 48 hours before painting, so I couldn’t get them in this weekend.

Janeen and I spent the sunny Sunday afternoon lying around on the front steps (with paint brushes). Last post, I said we’d decided on a new color for the stairs. It’s not really a ‘new’ color; we’re just sticking with the color scheme of the overall house until we repaint the whole house. The photo above right, for me, is acceptance of how long it will be until we get around to repainting the outside of the house: Probably not until next year.

Stair Painters

I think I’ve pointed this out before: Part of what takes me so long is I have to do much of the work more than once. When laying out the stairs, I was aware that it’s very important to keep the dimensions of each step identical. I waited to build the stairs until I’d bought the tile for the landing. I measured it, and included an estimate of the thickness of everything that goes under the tile. The building code requires the variation be less than 3/8″.

After building the stairs, putting on the Kerdi (same as in our shower) waterproofing membrane and starting to lay out the tile, I realized there was a problem.

(Above right) I was doing a last minute check that the stair heights were consistent. OOOoops. As you see, the top step is almost an inch higher with the tile installed. I’d not realized that the tile I bought has varying thicknesses. The pieces that are at the nosing are twice as thick as the tile I’d measured. Also, the combined thickness of the thinset under the cement board, under the Kerdi, and the membrane added up to almost 3/8″. Lesson: Assemble a mock up of the entire assembly including any waterproofing membranes and the actual tiles that will be used if the thickness of tile is important.

I had to tear out the landing and lower it. Fortunately I had John to help (above right).

After a full weekend detour, I was back to the start. Above right shows the waterproof membrane attached to metal flashing that goes over two layers of building paper under the cement board.

Using John’s tile saw, mole cut out the tile for the landing. Here it is all laid up, before sticking it down with thinset.

Thinset time! The little diamond shapes are hand made tiles from Mexico that a friend gave to me three years ago.

What? Think I can resist putting destructamonkey photos on the blog? Bella figured out how to jump from the bathroom counter onto an open door. Arwen can destroy a toilet roll in under 15 seconds.

Above left, Janeen’s family came to visit to celebrate birthdays. Above right, Misha came to stay for a week; so I put him to work…

Grouting and painting the front steps.

After much indecision on my part, we decided to paint the fronts of the steps (risers) to match the main house color, and we’ll paint the tops (treads) in a brownish caramel. I didn’t have any porch paint in that color, so to fortify the steps before the oncoming rain, we put a coat of the blue on them.

Before Misha’s visit was over, Reirin, Leo, Dan and Dad showed up. Dan is allergic to cats – he looks a bit pensive being the subject of Janeen’s test of our cats’ hypoallergenic qualities.

On the last morning of Misha’s visit, we met up with my “older brother”/friend/mentor Bob for breakfast at San Francisco’s best – and snobbiest – coffee place: Blue Bottle. Misha ran there in his North Brooklyn Runners shirt.

Three cuties working in the office…

new stairs and other stuff…

Other stuff: Janeen ordered carpet tile from flor which we put into the front lobby.

The kittens helped with cutting the tiles to size…

And Arwen was in charge of inspections.

The front stairs for our unit have been in sore need of replacement for quite a few years now. Engineer friends of mine won’t even walk on them (wise). I finally got round to replacing them over the last few weeks.

My goal was to pre-fabricate as much of them as possible so that we don’t have to go without a front door. Above, I’m cutting the stringers (structure that supports the steps.) This has to be precise, as any variation in step length or height is dangerous: People are much more likely to trip. The building code restricts the variation between any two steps to 3/8″ at the most.

We also cut out and painted (above right) all the parts for the steps themselves. The stringers and steps are made from pressure preservative treated wood, and I’ve also treated all cut edges.

The top landing was the most derelict of the whole stair (if that’s possible). Once I’d chipped out the mortar under the tile, the wood was completely rotten and just fell away.

This was Janeen’s view out of the front door. And the black hole is where I would have gone when I walked through the front door if we’d waited much longer…

We completely tore out all the stairs and framing underneath; it was too rotten to save. Above I’ve got the framing for the landing back in place, with help from John (sorry no action photo).

When the stairs were built, they were built right over windows in this area. Above left is the view out of my workshop; it’s never had daylight since we’ve been here. One neighbor told me that he’s lived here over sixty years, and has never seen this window from the outside. The window on the right I filled in so that it did not interfere with the new stair framing.

Our neighbor’s son helped me tear out and rebuild these stairs in two days. It helped that we’d already cut, assembled, and painted most of the stair parts (just the bottom riser was cut to fit). Still more to do: I need to seal all the edges, and put a couple more coats of paint on the stairs. I also need to lay tile on the landing. More about that in another post 🙁

Bella liked the new tile for the landing. Here I’m laying out pattern ideas to include hand made tile that a friend gave me years ago.

Visit from baby brother Elijah (well, he’s getting closer to seven feet). He and dad are comparing methods of cheating in scrabble with your iphone (what’s the point?)

Breakfast time neck-warmer anyone? This was a once-only performance, but it really did warm up my neck nicely.

These cats love watching fish almost as much as they like eating them… Sadly our fish Ludwig died last week after thirteen years. Above left, Bella is wondering where the fish went. Above right is what happens if you let the kittens into the closet with Janeen’s dresser: they get into it, and clothing gets pushed in and out as they scramble up and down inside it.

I wasn’t feeling well, so I went to lie down for a nap (above left): The kittens came to investigate. Above right: They are helping to (dis)organize the paper recycling in our office.

Arwen has turned into a rubber band thief. And she does not care if it’s attached to a roll of drawings.

Happy Easter!