Category: upstairs

on saturday mathew worked on the house while i visited my grandmother and helped with holiday stuff.

but turtle wasn’t completely alone, he got a visit from daniel (his dad) and younger brother elijah (visiting from santa barbara.) they had a short ben & jerry’s break together. my parents and older brother also dropped by to check out the progress.

we’re both happy to say the upstairs plumbing is almost done! (above) some late night pipe soldering (looking turtle-y on the right.) i wanted to watch a movie but i helped with framing, pipe cutting and prep instead.

daniel brought us a housewarming carrot cake! yummmm… and it was made by my client: just desserts (i do their labels.)

and another housewarming gift: a beautiful, japanese, hand-blown glass pod (bud vase) a gift from midori and andy during thanksgiving weekend.

i’d better get to work now…

i had big plans for the weekend: get the water for the kitchen hooked up (again), and start framing in the walls of the bathroom. didn’t quite get there, but we got most of the way.

after plastering the the bedroom wall, we noticed that it cracked when janeen jumped in the doorway! not promising. i’d noticed beforehand that when the plumber had installed the sewer pipes in the old bathroom, they had destroyed one joist, and left a second one next to it almost completely cut. i think this is the reason for much of the cracking in the wall – so this weekend i resolved to reinforce the joist that was in the worst shape, and runs under this wall.

janeen spent hours stripping layers of old paint from the old trim that goes around the bedroom door. difficult to see (maybe janeen will upload a better picture…) but theres green, gold, beige, white…

my second goal was to get the pipes connected into the kitchen. had to tear up the carpet to install them. when i was in the middle of pulling up the carpet, janeen said, “it just gets more and more ugly. when’s it going to start looking pretty?” soon. i hope.

didn’t quite get the pipes all connected up, but janeen did some framing.

we have been trying to reuse as much wood as we can. this means we spend a lot of time pulling out old nails, and unscrewing screws. so far, we have filled seven cans with nails.

“no – but man, that’s a good idea.”

during a moment when we weren’t making any noise, mathew thought he heard the doorbell. he went downstairs to check and someone asked, “did someone here order a pizza?” well, it wasn’t just some pizza guy, it was our good friends making a “home invasion” pizza delivery.

a fun lunch break and yummy chicago-style pizza from patxi’s. (l-r: nancy, mae, turtle, philip, alex and mole.) mae had been planning a lunch delivery for weeks, we just didn’t know it would be a surprise.

and nancy brought a beautiful housewarming gift basket which included homemade chocolate ginger granola and 3 rolls of chocolate pecan oatmeal cookie dough! don’t we have amazing friends?

mathew installed the new window and we got the siding back up on the outside of the house. it’s all sealed up again, just in time for the rain that’s coming this week. doesn’t the new window look a lot nicer and more air-tight than the old aluminum-and-glass-slat window that we replaced? maybe next weekend we’ll get the other window installed, and the flooring down and wall panels up? there we go being overly ambitious again…

on saturday mathew hoped to get a new bathroom window installed, replace the removed (and improved) siding on the outside of the house, and install the sub-floor. we’re always so optimistic about what we can get done in the 8 or 9 hours of daylight and noise-making time each saturday and sunday. mathew usually spends much of saturday running around buying materials.

here mathew is removing the old framing for the bathroom window. to get at everything, he needed to remove siding and framing from the outside of the house. and i was scraping, sanding and painting (sealing) the siding, to put back after the window is installed.

(above left) we received a delivery of plywood (for the new bathroom vanity), cedar flooring (naturally water and mold resistant) and more insulation. (above right) our late afternoon view of the mission district and potrero hill, as our laundry dries on a cold, windy but sunny day. the mission seriously does get the best weather in san francisco.

everything was ready for the window to be installed by the time the sun went down so i convinced mathew to wait till the morning. we don’t need him climbing on the outside of the house, after dark! but we’re no where near putting in flooring or interior paneling…

and later, in his workshop, mathew made these pretty frames that will go around the upstairs, bedroom window.

this has been the craziest week. and it’s only wednesday…

this is what it looks like when i get up, around 6:30 am. i’m at the computer by 7 and i work until mathew comes home, at about 8 or 9 pm. last night we didn’t eat dinner until midnight (which we actually cooked at 9), because the urge to plaster got in the way…

that’s mathew burnishing the 3rd and final layer of plaster. as usual, he is quite critical about his 2nd attempt ever (!) to plaster a wall, but i think it turned out pretty great. and there are so many more walls to practice on. as you can tell, i am just the helper, i mix the plaster and apply it to the hawk (that’s the thing in his left hand that holds the plaster.) i also clean up his messes, offer encouragement and sing along with the radio.

will there be more plaster tonight? perhaps. but i think i’d rather eat, then sleep.

happy thanksgiving everyone!

We decided that even though the upstairs walls are really cool looking, with the distressed plaster and layers of stripped paint, we’d give it a nice coat of pink paint — in honor of my brother. No, really, this pink paint is called ‘PlasterWeld’ and it’s supposed to help the veneer plaster adhere properly to the walls. Our plan was to coat the walls and do the plastering this weekend. I got a bit distracted, as you’ll see.

Earlier in the week, our illustrious – and now even more prosperous – plumber dug up our driveway to repair the sewer pipe. Besides the ever increasing quotes, we didn’t realize that the plumber was planning to use the driveway to store piles of dirt dug out to get at the sewer pipe – for over a week. This ordeal is still not over. Hopefully tomorrow the building inspector will sign off on it without prompting any more cost escalation.

I had to shovel the piles to each side to squeeze the car out.


Meanwhile, back to the real project: The drainage pipes for the shower are finally in and finished.

Now on to getting water into the shower – since we’ve already removed the crazy piping on the outside of the house, we need to find a new shorter route inside the house. [above left: We can’t figure out why one would need to make this shape pipe?]

Extra pipe, anyone?

I tried to carefully cut out the gyp board from the ceiling in the lower level so i can reuse it after installing the plumbing pipes. Mostly successful, and plenty of plaster dust in my hair, ears, eyes, nose and mouth:

Janeen did loads of prep work getting the upstairs bedroom ready for plastering, and also started demolishing the funny dysfunctional closet beside the kitchen (only half of it was usable). If you’ve never tried it, there’s nothing more frustrating than trying to un-screw painted-over screws that have the head mostly worn out:

She found some rather cute little keys in the process, though.

The walls look pretty with the pink paint, eh?

from last weekend: doesn’t it seem like the upstairs keeps getting more destroyed?

mathew working on the upstairs bathroom plumbing.

mathew’s “workshop” outside of the bathroom.

crazy sparks fly as pipe is cut.

i’ve been prepping the upstairs bedroom for plaster and paint. i removed the picture rail moulding. and stripping the paint on the window sill is quite satisfying! i’ve been using a heat gun, scrapers and a respirator mask.

hopefully this weekend we can make more progress…