Category: garage

Seismic

Dad always joked that the cobbler’s children go without shoes. This house has been a bit like that: We’ve been here for almost fifteen years, and I’ve barely done any seismic strengthening on the house. So I finally decided to pick the most vulnerable wall, and make it a bit better.

But first: Mole almost finished the photo wall… and did I mention she made a rainbow cover for her keyboard?

Oh, and with all the masks, mole perfected her mask strap technique: This allows her to hang it around her neck, or loop behind ears. Super easy on-and-off without the mask-beard that seems to be the vogue right now.

When Arwen isn’t relaxing on the couch…

… she’s decided that oatmeal is one of her favorite treats.

Bella found the new power position in the bedroom…

OK, the garage door: It’s been begging for some attention for decades, and I’d just been ignoring it. Too many other pressing things, and besides: Who looks at the front of our house??? (not me, obviously).

It took about a day to get the door sanded and prepared for painting. I decided to paint it, instead of staining it. Stain and polyurethane may be nice, but they don’t last as long as paint. And it’s a garage door. I’d rather not be doing this again soon.

It took a couple of coats of primer (the door is made of redwood).

I tried to match the rest of the house somewhat. Still need to paint the walls on the sides of the door (I also want to put a couple of lights up)…

Now to the project at hand: I took off the old random pieces of wood, shelves, etc to get down to the studs on this front wall. And I found some rather nasty surprise: Looks like some termites have been living here.

I drilled and installed all the anchor bolts, but had to pause on putting up the plywood until I could get a pest inspector to look at it.

He said it was old damage. But I soaked it all in wood preservative all the same (made the garage stink).

Hmm, it didn’t happen this quickly, but here I am putting up the last of the drywall.

The amount of electrical wiring in the ceiling is quite mind boggling. And I added to it by putting in an additional four way light switch so we can turn off the garage lights as we leave with bikes.

Don’t hire me to be your electrician, OK?

OK, now almost ready to start putting shelves and cabinets back in. Got to make them first, though.

Arwen has been really enjoying the overgrown back yard. The area she’s sitting in gets watered by our shower and bathroom sink, so it stays lush and green.

Bella prefers her cat tree – like everything, originally it belonged to everyone, but now it’s exclusively Bella’s: She rules the house like a despot.

Oh, and instead of the wire shelves, we now have a beautiful fancy wood cabinet with a full height mirror. The first time we’ve had a full height mirror since we lived at Rousseau St!

July fourth weekend this year we took a trip to Tahoe to escape the war zone fireworks on our street. The girls still hate the ride, even with their thunder shirts on.

You didn’t think this was going to be a vacation, did you? What’s that?

After we finished putting in a new water heater and fixing a pipe broken by freezing last winter, we were up scaffolding installing sheet metal over holes that woodpeckers had drilled into the house. Lesson learned: Get enough scaffolding to cover the whole wall. Then you only have to assemble and disassemble it all once (instead of four times).

We didn’t realize what we were making…

The girls really like the rock cabin – particularly the spiral stairs. They even got to go outside for some walks in the rocks.

I also managed to get a run up to the ridge trail in. This is lake Tahoe on the morning of July 4th (click on the image for a larger picture)

On the way home, Bella got a bit better at traveling, but it was still traumatic. I can’t decide if the fireworks, or four hours in the car, are worse for them: Might be a wash.

How d’you like our matching jerseys?

Watching ice melt is fascinating… for Arwen.

She is a good car

Nothing lasts forever, but she almost has. For twenty years, I’ve been thinking Mole’s 1982 Honda Civic would not last another year. And there were things we had to fix, but then she’d just keep on going. At the end of last year, the car had been getting progressively harder to start, and would sputter and hesitate for the first few blocks when first started, but still she kept going. As the year turned the corner, suddenly she started overheating, and would issue clouds of white smoke when started: Blown head gasket. Time for a new car…

But I couldn’t let this wonderful little car just be towed to a junk yard and get torn to pieces; or be crushed for scrap metal. So I bought a head gasket kit and had to clear out some space in the garage to work on it. The bike rack I’d made a few years ago jutted too far out into the garage to fit a car next to it.

I put some hooks in the wall, and hung the bikes up on hooks. Mole’s city bike is just too heavy to lift up, though, so it will need to be wheeled around…

Plenty of room! Now, to rent an engine lift, and get out the ’82 Civic shop manual.

The most difficult part is keeping track of all the vacuum hoses: A car of this age does not have a computer – or fuel injection. It has a carburetor, and the emissions are controlled mechanically through miles of vacuum hoses. I think there are about fifty hoses to label and keep track of before the head of the engine can be lifted out.

This is the “head”: I left the carburetor and intake manifold attached, so there’s less to reattach later.

No mystery here about what the problem is! One cylinder is completely filled with coolant that has leaked through the broken head gasket. In the few weeks the car’s been sitting in the garage, some rust has formed, too. The oil was an emulsified gloopy mess: Mayonnaise!

This absolutely felt like open heart surgery. Poor little car was hoping I knew what I was doing (first time).

The photo below shows the old head gasket. To contain the forces inside the cylinders, they embed a metal circle in the gasket around each cylinder. The second from the front one had rusted through – should have been more careful changing the coolant!

Mole caught a picture of me slowly lowering the head back in. Then the time consuming part: reconnecting all those hoses. If I were planning to keep the car, I would have replaced all those rubber hoses at this time. A tiny leak in any of them makes the engine run poorly.

When reconnecting the timing belt, I discovered that the mechanic who had replaced the timing belt (not me!) had set the valve timing off slightly. At first I didn’t believe it, but true enough, it had been wrong for years! This engine is so magnificent it can even compensate for the valve timing being one notch off! With the correct valve timing the engine now started even easier, and had more power, than before I replaced the head gasket.

So she’s back alive, and I was using her to get plywood, gyp board, and as a general SF runaround car. While going to American Ace to buy electrical parts for the garage, I ran into someone who wanted to buy her. He was so excited about the car, he was willing to buy it right outside the store (how would I get home??) He came over later that afternoon, and gave us cash: Years ago, he says, he had one. He loves the car.

So long! It’s been 32 years since mole learned to drive in this car. We’ve traveled to Canada multiple times, to Colorado, Tahoe, Arizona, and countless times up and down the coast of California in this car. Take care of her, Charles, and she’ll last forever!

Garden room: Finished!

Wow, another project that started out as a “quick” project is finished (two years later.) But it came out quite nicely.

A checklist all checked off: satisfying.

More recycled wood used on the window trim.

The only problem I had was I bought some different polyurethane by Minwax for the counter top and it’s garbage: It didn’t stick – and I only discovered it when I used tape to mask off the edges while I caulked the joint at the wall. The tape pulled the top layers of polyurethane off the wood! I had sanded between coats, even (and on the can it said that’s not required). Had to sand all the way down to the wood again to get rid of it. I’ll stick with Bona Mega from now on.

Arwen decided she needed to do some inspection when I was plumbing the sink faucet.


Here’s the faucet installed: I offset it to the right slightly, so it’s not in front of the window, and hopefully it makes the sink more convenient for cleaning the large 6.5 gallon carboys. It’s still the brewery room, right?

I also sanded, resized, and stained the old front door (that I’ve had leaning around in our garage for years) to close off the space from the garage. Had to also replace the acrylic glass windows because they were scratched and had been painted over.

Popo left behind a daybed/couch and it has also been sitting in our garage for years. We bought a cheap mattress at Ikea and I put it into the garden room. That’s mole’s bike on the trainer.

… and mole testing it out while I made the living room upstairs stinky (more on that later).

When I first started working on this space, I was thinking of it as potentially a cat-free space for visitors. Little did I realize, but when you live with cats, there’s no such thing as a “cat-free” space: They own the whole house.

Here’s Arwen checking under the day-bed: She’s not happy until she’s checked every square inch.

While mole was riding on the bike trainer, Arwen brought down her favorite wand toy for her.

And Bella just waits patiently on the stairs.

Oh, and here’s the sink in the toilet room, with the tile grouted and finished. Looks neat.

When we moved in (ten years ago!), our plan was to take out the carpets. But we’ve lived with them ever since. I recently decided to take them out: I’m convinced that all that wall-to-wall carpet is not good for air quality. As we took it out, we found that the underlayment had started to decompose, and left sticky red pieces all over the old floor surface, dropping them everywhere as I carried it out: Looked like dried cranberries, but definitely not as good. Lots of work scraping and scrubbing them off.

While tearing out the carpet, Arwen enjoyed the new furniture layout.

This is the old floor tile after we had removed all the old carpet and underlayment, pulled out the staples, scrubbed and cleaned it up and polished the tile. I damaged a lot of it back when I was working on the wiring for the lights downstairs.

So we covered it up with a rug.

This bit was still exposed, though. And Bella did not like it: She started picking at it and broke off part of a tile.

So I decided to replace the broken tiles with some cheap self-adhesive vinyl tile. It was a total pain getting the old tile off (had to use a heat gun). Yes, I’m certain this tile is “hot” (asbestos). Didn’t use protective gear: Hope I don’t regret it. Sometimes I’m just plain stupid lazy. Mole and the cats were downstairs hiding in the garden room.

Done (using the stool my godfather made for me as a weight to glue the corner of an old tile down).

“FEED US! (We are only going to look cute for 30 seconds, then we’re going to melt down and start fighting)”

We got a new rug for the bedroom.

Arwen!

“Helping” with my calculations at the office.

“I’m going to take a nap here, OK?”

Prrrrr…..

Bella loves this box. We stuck eyes on the box – it comes alive when Bella gets inside it. One lesson I learned the hard way: Don’t stand near it – claws will fly out of the corners and grab toes. The robot has lightning-fast reflexes even through its eyes usually get pulled off or rearranged.

The box robot lives!

Nap time.

We volunteered for the AIDS/Lifecycle “day on the ride” in April: It’s a one day test ride for the people planning to do the week-long ride to LA in June. We’re not riding, so it was fun to dress up and help to staff rest stop one.

Trim and tile

I’m adding the finishing touches to the garden room. There was still some trim around doors, and baseboards to finish.

I really like the curved piece I came up with for the transition from tall baseboards around the foundation wall, to lower ones around the garden room (above).

Now all the trim in the back room is also finished.

I also put some shelves into that space to store things like bottles (this is going to be my brewery room, right?) I added removable fronts on the shelves so I don’t have a disaster of broken glass after the next earthquake, hopefully.

 

Arwen came down to inspect the garden room while I was working on the cabinet and counter top.

I sanded the old cabinet (from the kitchen on the ‘downstairs’ floor), and painted it.

Arwen likes tools, except power tools.

I’ve had trouble with the compression fit piping that’s commonly used under sinks. The plumbing book I have recommends the above alternative. It’s certainly easier to install, and seems quite a bit more sturdy, too.

Here are the cabinets after paint, and new handles. Also, I’ve installed the sink I got from building resources (the local recycler of building materials — construction is responsible for about half of all landfill). I’m going to put the faucet in after the tiling, and a few more coats of polyurethane on the counter.

My godfather sent me a cycling map of San Francisco, and I’ve finally found a good place for it. The garden/brewery room serves mainly as a workout room these days.

Getting started on the tile, I wanted to make it similar to the kitchen in Downton Abbey (white tile with small black squares). The photo above left was the more labor intensive option (I had to cut down the black tiles to about 1.5cm squares). Guess which one we went with.

Here’s the tile after it’s grouted. Not quite as extensive as Downton Abbey, but neither is the brewery room!

I also added a tile backsplash at the little sink in the toilet room.

I had to do some plumbing in the shower upstairs (hair clog!) and the girls both joined in to help:

The Freesia seem to love our back yard: They increase every year (whereas there are only a couple of daffodils left).

This back yard needs some inspiration: Big pile of rocks still there–volunteer Nasturtiums have covered them. Arwen is trying to figure out what to do about it all:

It was a rainy Friday, so Mole’s friday ride group got together to celebrate her birthday. And there was a trip to get vegan donuts, too.

And yesterday Mole’s mum made vegan apple pie for her birthday. It was a triumphant success. Everyone had seconds.

Here are Arwen and Bella pretending to be constellations.

Smorgas-baseboards

Oy vey, so much miscellany: Baseboards, door, water heater, carpet…

But first things first: Kitteys! Synchronized sleeping anyone?

I still have quite a pile of old wood, so I’ve been planing and reusing it to make the molding in the garden room.

There is a stem wall that is wider than the walls above in the toilet room, so I boxed it in with wood. The wood in the toilet room is stained dark red-brown, so I also did that with the base boards.

Here it is ready for the toilet to go back in.

A fully functional toilet in the garage. Such luxury. Except there’s no door yet: Details.

I put a planter box outside the toilet room window, and planted a variety of plants that I think can handle the low light. We’ll see.

Another project that used quite a lot of old wood: I needed to make a table for the laundry room to fit next to the dryer.

Here’s all the wood, planed to width and ready to make into a table.

I glued boards together to make the top.

Here’s the top clamping together.

Here’s the base of the table.

I also made a drawer to go under the table.

This is the finished table.


Here it is, in the laundry room. Doesn’t look like old throwaway wood.

Back to the toilet room (what, you thought I was done already??)

For the rest of the baseboards and trim in the toilet room, I decided to just paint it white instead of deal with staining and polyurethane, etc.

Well, this was instructive: I did such a nice job of fitting the strike plate for the door (above left). Pity I measured wrong. Sadly, I measured wrong not once, but twice. As usual, I do everything three times.


Above right is the door that used to be on the toilet room upstairs. I tried to give it to building resources, but they wouldn’t take a hollow core door. I was planning to cut it up and throw it away, but I needed a door for the toilet room: So I sanded and stained it.

The picture above is after the remaining baseboards and trim were finished, and door is on the toilet room. Now it’s really a functional bathroom.

Recently, a friend mentioned that they had to have their water heater replaced because it leaked all over her garage. That reminded me: Most water heaters have an anode rod that must be replaced every few years to prevent the inside of the hot water tank from rusting. And I’ve never changed the anode rod on our water heater in the ten years (!) we’ve lived here. So I ordered one:

I also had to get a large socket to remove the old anode rod.

The old rod had completely been used up. Ooops. Well, I think most people don’t replace them, so they buy a whole new water heater more often. Hopefully this will make ours last a bit longer.

While draining the tank, lots of rusty sediment came out. Looks like the inside of the tank has been rusting.

Back to wood re-use: There were a couple of solid oak boards that I saved from the floor of the “tear off room” (remember that?) I planed them down to smooth wood, and cut a rabbet into them for trim around the door into the garden room.

There were some pretty large knot holes and rusty nail holes.

I’m getting quite good at making wood plugs to repair holes (above is a knot after it’s filled).

For the baseboards, I planed, glued, filled about 180 feet of old wood subfloor. I also routed an ogee into the top edge. Getting a bit carried away.

Here are a couple of the baseboards installed. It’s quite time consuming installing baseboards over this floor because the floor is so uneven. I have to place the baseboard into position, then mark the baseboard for the shape of the floor, cut along the baseboard with a band saw, and seal the wood before attaching it.

One additional wrinkle: In the garden room, there is a concrete stem wall behind the base boards, so I have to use concrete screws. To fill over the screw, I countersunk it, then filled with wood plugs made from the same wood as the baseboards.

Here is the hole in the baseboard before I’ve filled and sanded. You can see a completed plug at the bottom of the photo.

Upstairs in our bedroom, we still have the same wall to wall carpet that was in the house when we first bought it ten years ago. Mole has been having a lot of allergy issues lately, so I decided, on a Friday evening, to tear out the carpet in the bedroom.

It’s much easier if everything is moved out – but we just shuffled things around while I pulled up the carpet, cut it into manageable rolls, and dragged it out. The hard part, actually, is pulling out all the thousands of staples in the underlayment. I was done by midnight!

Here’s the room without blue carpet: There was tile under it: That will have to do for now with a rug.

We brought the rug into the bedroom from the living room. It had deep dents in it from the furniture: I read online that you can put ice cubes on the dents, then once they melt, fluff up the fibers. Not sure why the ice cubes, not just spray it with water — but I follow directions.

And the girls love ice cubes!

So Shiny

Summer is a time for riding bikes, and not working on the house. But I’ve been chipping away at it a little. I sanded the wood beam and post that are in the space, exposing the wood. I’ll polyurethane it. Nicer than paint.

How d’you like the pink pipe? If you can’t hide it, paint it pink!

My first attempt at resurfacing the concrete floor didn’t go so well: It cracked up badly and it came loose from the concrete below. So I chipped it all out and started over:

Above is the floor after I’ve removed the cracked concrete. Then I re-did the thin layer of repair mortar.

This time, I covered the whole floor in plastic sheeting and left the sheeting on there for two weeks. There was very little cracking this time (just near the edges of the plastic where more air could get in to dry it.) I think, even though it’s supposed to be ‘low shrinkage’, when the top surface dries while the bottom cannot, it makes the mortar want to curl up.

And I finished filling, sanding, and painting the window that looks into the garage.

I went back and forth a lot on what to put on the floor in this space.

My first plan was to get some cheep Pergo flooring, and install a floating floor over a moisture barrier. This would probably be the best approach for a concrete slab that doesn’t have any moisture barrier below it. But headroom in this space is extreeeemly tight for me. Actually, we are now using the ‘garden room’ space as a workout room: I have a bike trainer set up in there. When I sit on my bike, there is about 1/2 inch between the top of my head and the ceiling. If I put in a floating floor, I’d be touching.

So I decided to try using an epoxy coating on the concrete.

Preparation is quite labor intensive. I used a diamond grinder to grind the entire surface of the concrete to make sure it bonds properly. But I’ve learned that you can get a shroud for the grinder, attach it to the HEPA filter vacuum, and it’s almost dustless.

After grinding it, I had to acid etch it, and thoroughly wash the concrete.

You can see the cracks in the old concrete slab showing up clearly when the concrete is wet.

Above left is the garage back room, looking towards the toilet and the garden room. Above right is the toilet room floor.

I filled all the large cracks with acrylic latex caulk. The black parts are where I used an epoxy filler to fill larger holes or feather edges between different concrete pours. Here’s Arwen checking on my work. There’s something about concrete she loves: she’ll walk around a bit, then roll on her back on the concrete purring.

The process of coating the concrete is quite easy. You pour it onto the floor, then use a squeegee to spread it around. After that, you just use a roller to spread it evenly. In the photo above, I’m wearing spike shoes, so I can walk around on the wet epoxy and it doesn’t leave any marks. They are tricky to walk on at first — probably much easier than high heals, but I almost fell at least four times!

Then to get a more interesting patterned surface, and to add a bit of non-skid to the surface, I sprinkled it with a mix of color flakes.

One lesson learned: You have to fill all the cracks, not just the big ones. The epoxy runs into the cracks and they show up very clearly once the epoxy sets. In fact, they are much more visible than before coating the floor. So I filled all the cracks with the same acrylic latex caulk. It was well color matched with the epoxy coating.

Here’s the same area of floor after filling the cracks. Then I did the final clear coat.

It’s shockingly shiny now! The color flakes add a bit of roughness, but I’m really impressed with this stuff.

Bella says the new floor is so clean she could lick it.

Here’s Bella checking on the plants while mole was riding on Zwift.

That’s my bike set up on the trainer, with Zwift loading on the laptop. Initially I got the trainer because I was tired of crashing on wet pavement last winter. But I’ve got hooked: It’s so easy to just go down there and ride for an hour. I don’t have to worry about cars driving erratically, debris on the roads, etc. And I can get a really good workout in just one hour. So even on sunny beautiful days, I’ve been in here riding on the trainer!

A screen capture mole made while riding on Zwift; it’s quite scenic!

In October we went to Portland and had a good time eating vegan food, and attending veg fest.

Of Paint, Guardrails and Plumbing

Well, it’s been summer: a time for bike riding, and not working on the house! I’ve done a bit though.

I managed to put up some of the muntins for the guard railing at the deck. They look really good with the roses, I think!

And I painted the garden room and the garage toilet room.

The garden room primed…

The gas pipe painted pink!

Here’s the garden room with paint.

Now for the trim in the garden room.

I still have a big pile of old wood that I want to re-use, so for the trim in the garden room, I planed and joined it. After all that work, can’t go painting it. Polyurethane!

Here’s some of the joinery I was working on. It would have been much easier if I’d just bought three windows the same size, instead of re-using the old windows from the front!

I think it’s looking really nice, even with the rust marks from old nail holes.

I also finished up the trim around the toilet room window. This time, only the window sill got stripped and stained.

This is the rebuilt window all framed in and ready for the final coat of paint.

Well, I may change my mind and paint some color at some point, but my initial thought was it’s such a tiny space, I’d just paint everything the same semi-gloss white except the window sill. We’ll see once the floor is in.

I also installed the sink in the toilet room. It’s going to be really awkward to use, but saved a lot of plumbing work. One of those things I did to try to take less time, that may bug me later.

Still not plumbed in, but close. The toilet is going to be right next to it on the right. Sigh…

Arwen came to check on my work.

“There’s a bike in the garden room! I’d better sniff the wheel.”

“OK, so while I’m in the garage, let me check out everything else. Hey, yellow cycling shoes!”

“Why is turtle’s workbench such a mess? Hardly any room to walk on it.”

This feels like progress

All of a sudden, work has slowed down a bit, so I’ve had some time to get things moving on the garden room.

I hadn’t quite finished putting the gypsum board on the wall here, because the stem wall bulged out at the base. So I used a concrete grinding wheel to grind it flush. Yes, brick foundations…

Above left is with the corner bead on and above right is after a couple of passes with joint compound.

Next is the project I’ve been procrastinating on for a few years. The window in the toilet room space is badly rotten. Plumbing pipes used to penetrate the wall directly above this window, and rainwater would run down the pipes and into the window. The upper sash has completely disintegrated, the lower one is too rotten to move, and the frame has rotted across the top and down one side. I went far enough to work out drawings and all the dimensions for the replacement window sash, but never made it. In retrospect, it would have probably been better to just buy a new complete replacement window. But this was an interesting challenge in joinery.

Here’s the wood I used: Old wood from the house some place.

Here I’m cutting some of the mortise and tenon joints. The joints at the bottom of the upper sash are a bit like finger joints.

I was quite happy with how it all fit together.

Above left is clamping during glue up. Above right is a detail at the connection of the center muntin to the top rail.

Here’s the fully assembled sash, with glass (don’t worry, I did not paint the sides where it slides.) I managed to save three of the original lites – the other was cracked so I had to use some new glass.

The window frame was also rotten, so I had to remove it and repair it too. It was at this point (after spending a full day making the new sash and another repairing the frame) that I was regretting not just buying a new window!

Well, here’s the window frame re-assembled and repaired (left), and weights and new cord going in. I had to buy two slightly heavier weights. Not sure if the new glass was slightly thicker and heavier, or if these windows were always slightly off balance before (would explain the nail holes in the frame). Anyway, they balance now!

After stripping the paint from the tracks, I waxed them, and hung both sashes in. Then primed and painted all the trim, and we have a completely repaired window. It’s the only remaining fully functioning double hung original window in the house. The previous owners had replaced all the other windows in the house before we bought it. Maybe it’s a good thing I saved it.

In the garden room, instead of veneer plaster, I’d decided to tape and use sandable joint compound. I probably was thinking it would be easier/faster/something than doing plastering. But it’s turned out to be very time consuming and messy. So I plastered the toilet room: One day and it’s done.

The toilet was a tricky space to plaster, because there are pipes sticking out of the wall. The photo above shows the gas pipe at the top left, and a water pipe in the middle.

Here’s how it looked as the plaster was drying the next day. I think I’m going to polish this little piece of pipe, and coat it with sealer.

Still working on the garden room. Here it is after sanding and feathering all the joints and screw locations. Note to self: Sanding overhead is much harder work than plastering.

Oh, and the guard railings for the deck: I stained them with a red-brown transparent stain to protect from UV – no paint. Here they are drying.

One of Bella’s favorite games is watch for water dripping

Mole was trying to dry her umbrella. I think the girls wanted us to turn on the shower.

Large bubble-wrap: fun with claws.

When your neighbor won’t lend you his truck: Tie it to your roof. The trusty ’82 Civic taking a chair to get re-upholstered.

Taking shape

Arwen just loves climbing into bags…

Phew! It’s been a long haul, but I’m starting to get drywall up. That gives some shape to the space:

Getting drywall on the ceiling, and the insulation up, was a major effort. Holding a 4ftx8ft piece of drywall over my head, by myself, while screwing it in was hard enough. But there are no 90 degree angles in this place, so every measurement seemed to be off and I had to lift it into place to test fit multiple times. Ugh.

The “before” photos would have been daytime…

Insulation…

In the toilet room (above right), I added wood into the wall behind where the sink will be (so I have something to screw into).

This is the same view with purple (moisture resistant) drywall installed.

This is looking at the doorway into the toilet on the right, and the door into the garden room on the left.

It’s actually looking like a ‘garden room’…

And the rain continues here in California: We’ve started using the garden room as a workout room. I bought a trainer and mounted my bike to it. Mole even tried it last week – we’re still not very familiar with bike trainers, so it’s been a bit bumpy (but not as bumpy as all the crashes on wet pavement I’ve been having lately).

Headroom is a big problem in this space: there’s none. A big duct runs from the furnace to the outside wall for the kitchen above. I have to walk under this duct. After I hit my head two or three times, it’s usually enough for me to do something about it. I changed the duct from round to flat and thin, so there’s just enough room for me to walk under it without losing more of my remaining limited supply of brain cells.

Here’s the duct installed. You can see bare studs around that will soon have drywall on to make walls…

More views of the space between the garden room and the garage…

Above left is the state of the slab in this space. Needs some work. Above right I’m getting drywall on the “garage back room” (between the garage and the garden room).

The green drywall is also moisture resistant – just a different brand. The photos above are the walls that were bare studs in the duct photo above.

Meanwhile, we are working on the guard railings around the stairs and deck at the back. Above left is mole sanding the pickets. I’ve lost track of how many years it’s been: This is the last unchecked item on my todo list for those stairs.

It wouldn’t be a turtle project without some intricate details. Cedar: I love the smell of it.

We still haven’t decided if we’ll paint it, or use deck stain. I’m leaning to the latter, both because it’s faster, and because it’s sad to cover up this beautiful wood.

A soundproofing bookshelf?

This is a huge post – I just never got round to posting. Fear not, there are some cat pics towards the end.

We kept the front room of the downstairs unit for our office. But in this Victorian, as in most, the front room is connected to a second front room with double sliding doors. The double doors do not seal any noise between the rooms – you can clearly hear everything in the adjoining room. Now that the second front room will be a bedroom, we had to come up with a way to provide some sound privacy: A built-in bookshelf.

Here are pictures of all the clamping and drilling…

I built the shelf in three pieces, because the door opening is so large that a single shelf would have been too tall to stand up in the garage, and would have been really difficult to move around (it wouldn’t have fit through the front door!) The design is two tall bookshelves above, and a slightly deeper cabinet at the base. The photo above is the piece of wood that joins the top and bottom part. Because I’m using plywood, I either mitered exposed edges, or glued solid wood to the edges.

This is the base cabinet all assembled.

And here are the bookshelves.

Then I stained and varnished everything to match the wood doors in the living room. The car gets to be outside for a while.

The base cabinet will have doors on the front. I made these from the remaining scraps of the plywood sheets.

Here’s a detail I’m particularly proud of. The doors are made from plywood, so I made decorative molding to glue into the edge around the panel.

An engineering problem: How to hold the bookshelves in place, without damaging the beautiful wood pocket doors. I made metal brackets that fit into the gap between the doors and the pocket in the wall. These I wrapped with fabric, and one leg slides into the gap, the second side screws to the side of the bookshelves. I’ll cover this with some wood trim attached to the side of the book case.

The sound insulating material went against the doors, but how to hold it in place while I assembled the book case? The solution: I cut drywall to fit tight into the space, and glued the sound insulating material to it with double sided carpet tape. The drywall serves to hold everything in place, and also adds to the sound absorption.

Here’s the book case almost complete. Still needs the doors on the bottom, and the trim around the outside to close the gap. But it’s working quite well to insulate sound. It’s not perfect, but enough to muffle sound between the two rooms.

Here are the doors with stain and two coats of varnish. One to go.

Oh, and what else? Yes, the “garden room” work.

Here are some photos of plumbing work preparing for a sink.

This the the plumbing for the space that will be the toilet. Beautiful.

The concrete in the garden room is a total mess. Here I’ve chipped and ground down concrete that was too high, and I need to fill in where there are holes.

The left side is after filling in the holes. But the floor still slopes, so I added a skim coat of leveling mortar to level the floor.

That’s me. Poor back.

The concrete in the area that I tore up the wood floor was extremely degraded. It was rough, and would dust every time I brushed it. So I coated the whole floor with a layer of non-shrink repair mortar. I had a great time doing it: Felt just like doing plaster.

It looked really great until it started to dry…

There must have been something wrong with one of the bags of repair mortar, or it may have reacted badly to the old concrete. But instead of being low-shrinkage, on about half the floor it shrunk like mud in a desert. Cracks everywhere.

Here I’m adding the wall to make the space for the toilet room. Yes, I still need to repair the window.

The old plumbing that used to come through here caused this wall, and the window next to it, to rot badly. So I repaired the wall. Above right is before I put in the new wall framing.

This is the repaired wall. I used mostly scraps – trying to use up the huge pile of wood I have stashed in the garage. Now I need to get the wiring in.

Arwen came to inspect my work.

“Hmm, good level concrete. Let me check the flatness…”

“Prrrfect for rolling on.”