Category: garden room

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.

Bigfoot

We have been slowly progressing with finishing the trim around the windows of the laundry room and garden room.

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I spent almost all day getting the trim to fit in above the windows, and tight against the soffit. Had to splice on a piece at the end, because the board wasn’t quite long enough (above right). But that’s nothing: When I bought the redwood, I got tempted by the slightly cheaper, rough-sawn redwood planks intended for fences. We had to plane and sand and prime them all before putting them up. Silly Turtle – no wonder it takes so long! Now that all the trim is on around the windows, though, it’s starting to look finished.

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This (above left) is the window under the laundry room (‘garden room’). We built out a small box head above the window to shade and protect the windows from rain. Turtle being turtle, I couldn’t resist getting my router out and adding a bit of decorative edge (above right) to the trim. It also serves a purpose: Rounded edges don’t show dents, and they hold paint better than sharp corners.

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The photo above left shows the back wall of the laundry room — a bit difficult to see, as my home-built scaffolding is in the way. Above right is the corner that faces the deck. So, this is quite exciting (for me): All the exterior trim and siding are installed on the laundry room. Now we need to fill all the holes, sand, and paint.

While we were working on the laundry room trim, the cats sometimes came out to play. All the flowers have been blooming in the back yard, and the bees are loving it. Unfortunately, Bella doesn’t know the difference between a fly and a bee…
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She decided to catch a bee, and when she slapped it down on the ground, she got stung. Mole was calling her ‘bigfoot’ for the rest of the day…

R2D2 D:<

It’s been a big family visit month.

My sister Eva had her wedding (again), but this time, in Santa Cruz. My whole family came to visit, including my sister Mia all the way from Asia, and Mum, my aunt and cousin from England, my brother and Aja from Brooklyn… Nice to see everyone, now back to the grind: didn’t get much done on the house…

It’s been one wall at a time on the laundry room. This is the lower half of the last wall. Above left, you see the window opening in this wall, and above right, some nice strapping around this window. Although the code doesn’t require it, I decided to paint the edges of the plywood with wood preservative, just in case. That bottom edge is so important for seismic, but is also in the most damp location.

While we were working in the room under the laundry room (the ‘garden room’ I think I’m calling it), we got an unexpected inspector looking down through the hole in the floor.

At this point, it had been about a month since I’d disconnected the washing machine. We were making the occasional emergency trips to the local laundromat, but the pile of laundry was mounting. So I spent a weekend plumbing in the washing machine again. Top right is where the sewer line exits at the floor level. The sheet metal and rubber against the wall is a roof jack, intended for when pipes exit through the roof. The rubber seals tightly around the pipe, and is crimped onto the sheet metal. I’ve been using roof jacks to waterproof around these wall penetrations. There are probably equivalent pieces intended for walls, but these are all they have at my local supplier. And it’s a whole lot better than what the plumbers did on other parts of the house: they drilled a hole and squeezed some caulk in there. Lots of rot was the result.

Above right is a view on the inside, looking up. You can see the sewer line that will serve the toilet, and also the washing machine. There is also the pipes for the hot and cold water in the top right corner of the picture, going up through the floor. The photo above left is how the sewer pipe looks on the outside of the building now.

And lo, we have a washing machine again. The room is still bare, but at least we don’t have to hike down the street with our baskets of laundry. We are so spoiled.

Next comes building paper, and another window. A couple of years ago, when I ordered replacement sashes for the windows in the office, one of them came with single glazing. The supplier replaced it with a double glazed window when I called them, but then I had this extra window left over. It’s been sitting around the garage ever since. So we decided to use it here. Works quite nicely. I’ve made it into a fixed window. Mole sanded and primed the whole thing, on all faces, twice.

We’re still reusing the old siding that came off the building. Mole spent many hours sanding these, then priming all surfaces. It’s an extraordinary amount of work reusing old materials. The photo above right shows how the wall penetrations look when a roof jack is used. It will all be painted the same color, so not quite so obvious.

When we first started working on the house, we bought a HEPA shop vacuum cleaner. It was quite an expensive model Turbo II made by Fein. I love it, because it doesn’t make a racket like all the other shop vacs, and it’s always hooked up when we are sanding anything that may have lead paint (ie, everything.) It turns itself on and off whenever the sander is turned on or off. One thing that had never occurred to me: it really needs servicing every now and again. It’s probably been running over 5000 hours since we got it. Well, last weekend, “r2d2” as we call it, had a heart attack! I thought it might be just worn brushes, so I took it to pieces. The brushes are worn, but not the problem. The motor’s kaput.

I’ve ordered a replacement motor, but never realized how much I use this thing. We can’t sand anything without it. No siding, no painting, no smoothing wood. Cleanup is difficult. We use it to vacuum off our clothing after working. Wow, this is an important tool.

Garden Room?

I realized we don’t even have a name for the room below the laundry room. How about Garden Room?

We really didn’t do a whole lot, though, this weekend. We did put the windows in that I’d worked on last weekend. This back wall is almost ready for the new windows on the back of the laundry room, too.

I started making a window sill out of the redwood that came off the tear-off room. The white caulk is polyurethane caulk. It is really sticky, and supposedly lasts very well, but you can’t paint it. So the only places I’ve put it is where there will be wood trim covering it.

Next step is to start putting the siding on. The black tar paper does not do very well with sun exposure, and it’s been HOT in city over the last few days (by our standards.)