sep-tober life

september and october have been busy months!

last month we had a family “stay-cation” and got to play tourists in san francisco. here are my brothers at Alcatraz, justin on the left, jason on the right. that photo is blurry because my camera was dying. (no worries, i’ve since gotten a new one.)

it was a beautiful, clear day but a bit windy and cold. mole left, turtle right.

(left) my mom hiding from the wind! (right) at pier 39 after visiting the Aquarium of the Bay.

(left) look what we found! turtle and mole! (right) and a street vendor selling all kinds of evil deliciousness: pretzels, churros, corndogs and soda. there was also cotton candy.

on day two we visited the California Academy of Sciences. i think everyone’s favorite part was the rainforest. i didn’t get an good photos of them, but the butterflies in the rainforest made me very happy!

(above) my brothers and parents touching starfish and sea urchins. i even got to touch a sea cucumber!

downstairs at the academy of sciences, the aquarium is so huge, that we didn’t even see all of it because we were starving and had to stop for lunch!

(left) there were baby ostriches outside! (right) and stuffed? giraffes inside. i love giraffes. 🙂

a cool photo of my family climbing stairs to see the rooftop.

day three we had a little detour. with all my “amazing” planning, i planned for us to visit MOMA on a day it was closed! so we went to the apple store, then got onto a cable car headed for fisherman’s wharf.

we spent quite a lot of time in the Musée Mécanique, an antique penny arcade. (left) me and jason and a fun-house mirror. (right) mathew finally got to see a “whac-a-mole” game i’d told him about from my childhood.

my brothers playing games.

(left) mathew and i listened to some ragtime from a player piano. (right) i posed for a publicity shot in front of a submarine. 😉

justin found “grow a girlfriend”! 🙂

we rode the cable car back after dinner in fisherman’s wharf. and because it was so crowded justin and i volunteered to stand, hanging on to the outside of the cable car. that was FUN.

(left) jason’s cats also came for the stay-cation. here is my dad holding smokey. (right) jason and my dad walking through the palace of fine arts.

day four: we had a lot of brainy fun at the exploratorium! because my camera was acting up again, i only took photos with the chairs…

and we all agreed to extend our stay-cation by one more day so we could visit MOMA. (left) me and justin in front of a mark rothko. (right) my dad given a surprise blue bottle cappucino in front of the giant metal spider in the rooftop cafe/garden at MOMA.

thank you to my parents for a fun and low-key family stay-cation. i hope everyone had a good time!

and we saved $$$ by purchasing CityPass tickets to all the attractions. i highly recommend this option if you have out of town guests or just want to explore city attractions. it also includes a week of free muni and cable car rides.

on october 2nd arwen and bella turned TWO. they didn’t get a birthday party, but i made them a playhouse to celebrate.

they like going inside, chewing on the roof and knocking the whole thing over. they did fight over it in the beginning but they’re sharing it now. i’ve since added an escape route at the top so no one gets trapped inside.

october 20th was our wedding anniversary. we had brunch at Greens and reminisced about our wedding reception there TEN years ago.

and of course we had to walk up to the fort mason park and visit the spot where we said our vows.

it was a beautiful sunny day to be out.

and today, october 24th, is my mom’s birthday.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY MOM!!! i love you. xoxo

a new coat of paint

with new tenants moving in, the first thing on the to-do list was to paint over the PINK! and for the record, not everyone hated it. i’d say only 3 or 4 people really disliked it, and everyone else thought it was kinda great. i mean, this IS san francisco.

late on a saturday night last month, mathew, bella, arwen and i got busy masking off trim, baseboards, the window, doors, ceiling and one wall that would remain white. bella and arwen weren’t all that helpful. mostly they spent their time climbing up the ladder, standing proudly at the top, then working up the courage to climb back down.

mathew applying test swatches on four different walls. after mark, jennifer, mathew and i all decided “queen’s wreath” was the best choice, the paint spraying began.

sprayed and waiting for the paint to dry… it’s amazing how many hours prep takes and then with the sprayer, painting is done in minutes.

ta-da! queen’s wreath is a slightly purple, muted, medium blue grey. mathew was skeptical about such a dark color, but we all think it turned out great and works well with the trim and doors. yay team! (mathew did most of the work.)

while mathew was inside painting, i was just outside the bedroom painting the exterior wall and window trim. in the above photos i’m sitting on the 2nd level of the rented scaffolding.

we masked the windows and trim then mathew used the sprayer to paint the final coat. the new paint looks great! as you can see, above right, we still need to sand and paint the other walls…

but the good news is the scaffolding has finally gone back to the rental company. we’d had it for FOUR months! ack. even though it was getting expensive, it had been a busy summer, we’d had lots of friends and family visiting so we barely had time to work on anything.

now on to one of our other 200+ projects.

and my next post will have absolutely nothing to do with the house. 😉

Change of Plans (again)

I’ve finished the siding on the back side of the laundry room, and got both windows in.

Here are a couple of views showing the windows and the siding before I put the trim around the windows.

Now the trim and the fascia is on. The really hard part was fitting wood around the sewer vent pipe (in the top right photo). If I were to do it again, it would be faster to move the pipe — and the result would be better, too. One more for experience. Just need to finish filling, sanding, and paint!

Maybe these photos of the living room downstairs will give a clue about the ‘change of plans.’

Or these, of the kitchen and the bedroom downstairs?

A couple of things changed: One of them, my friend who stayed at the house when we were first working on the downstairs, was looking for a place to live with his girlfriend in town. Two: We faced up to the fact that the work I’m doing is taking too long to justify waiting to rent out the space as a vacation rental. So we dropped the vacation rental idea, and it’s going to be a regular rental. Not quite so simple, because we need to clear out all the furniture, and repaint the bedroom (the pink is not popular with anyone). The downside is that we will no longer have space for family to stay. The up side is we’ll be getting rent (finally!), which takes some of the pressure off paying bills and reduces the stress to finish the renovation work.

vote for me!

this post has absolutely nothing to do with the house. it is a shameless plug to try to win a design contest i was invited to enter. the contest is being held by psprint.com, a printer i often use for work. voting started yesterday so i’m a bit behind in my campaign for votes…

i’ve entered my “patchwork christmas tree” (below) in the card design category and my “christmas is over” (even further below) in the humor card category. visitors to the site are allowed one vote per day, per category until september 19th. i don’t expect you to log in and vote every single day till then, but if you really wanted to, i’m sure that would increase my chances of winning! 🙂

to vote, just click on the photo above or click here for “patchwork christmas tree.”

and to place a second vote, click the photo above or click here for “christmas is over.”

prizes include amazon gift cards ($100-1000) and free printing of the winning cards. mathew thinks i have a good chance of winning, but he’s always been a little biased. but if i do win, there’s a good chance you’ll receive a card this christmas! 😉 so go crazy and vote for them every day till september 19th! THANKS!

and just to add some “substance” to this blog post, here are some photos of arwen and bella, helping mathew with some framing. (no, we don’t usually allow them to sit on the table!)

they really do like to “help” with projects around the house. they especially like making the bed, plumbing and changing the toilet paper…

Siding Factory

I received the new motor for the vacuum cleaner, and successfully repaired “r2d2”!

(above left) r2d2 in pieces on my work bench. The old motor is on the left. Above right, all back together. It’s almost smiling 🙂

I put in the window for the bathroom at the side of the laundry room. There’s still one more window, but the company I ordered it from forgot to put the order into the manufacturer! So, it’s going to be a few more weeks. The photo above left is a view from the outside, above right photo view from the inside.

I think I have mentioned before how much work it is to re-use old siding. I’ve not figured out how many hours per foot it is; it’s probably too depressing. But, now that ‘r2d2’ is up and running again, Mole’s siding factory is back in operation. The first step is to strip off paint that is too damaged to save. Then, notches are patched with pieces of wood and waterproof glue, and splits are glued and clamped.

Then each piece is sanded on all sides. Notice the vacuum tube coming out of the sander (above left). Then the pieces are all vacuumed to remove dust.

*news break* Here’s Mole headed off to the store on her bike (above left).

And then back to painting the siding with two coats of primer on all sides.

Above left, Mole is waiting for paint to dry (it’s only slightly faster than grass growing.) Above right, fitting the restored siding on the house again. Cutting the siding to fit around around the pipe penetrations in the wall is tricky. You can see here two locations: the top left is from a sink, the lower right is from the shower.

The black building paper “Jumbotex” is a water resistant barrier, on top of which I put 1/4″ thick strips of wood. The strips space the siding away so that there’s an air gap. This is supposed to help the siding last longer, as moisture doesn’t get trapped between the siding and the building paper.

Putting the siding up takes weeks, because we only manage to sand and paint a few boards every weekend. But it’s almost done. The next step is to use ‘Bondo’ to fill all the nail holes, dents, and scratches in the boards, sand them again, prime them again, and on to final painting!

The siding is up around the new window, and I’m just waiting for the other window to arrive. Above right, you can see the new window, and siding up and around it. On the right of the picture is a temporary piece of wood covering the hole for the missing window.

 

Roof Extension

I’ve still got the scaffolding up on the back side of the laundry room, so need to finish up this wall.

A month or so ago, I reframed this wall. It’s been sitting that way since, so this weekend I finally cut out the plywood from the window openings, ready for the new windows (one is still not here). This will be the wall of the toilet room back here. Above left is a view from the inside, above right from the outside.

But the main activity: Creating a roof overhang so that when it rains, the wall gets a little protection. The wall used to line up directly with the edge of the roof. Sorry, didn’t catch a photo, but the photos above show halfway through.

I had to take up the roofing, back to the first roof joist inside. We’ve added “outriggers” that extend out and support a joist right at the outside edge. Then I had to replace the roof sheathing boards so that they extend out to the new overhang. In the photos above, we are half way done.

Not a big change, and a “real” builder wouldn’t even bother (in fact, when we hired a roofing contractor to do the main roof, they actually cut some of the overhangs off, much to my dismay). But it will make a big difference to the longevity of the wall. In all houses, especially wood, water is the enemy. Roofing handles water and weather much better than paint on wood. I think, also, many window and door manufacturers will not warranty it if there’s no overhang protecting the window or door.

Above left is after all the roof sheathing boards have been extended. I’m re-using old wood, so it’s covered in random paint. Above right, we’ve put back the roofing felt, and the shingles. We re-used the old ones, so it’s a bit of a patchwork. And since the roof is a bit wider, didn’t have quite enough. No worries. I’m planning to get this all re-roofed because the roof slope is actually too shallow for shingles (it leaks).

Here’s an exciting picture of the high energy walk mole is on with a+b. 😉

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.

Four Windows In

 

For a while, we were giving the cats oatmeal to help them with fur balls. Got to watch the quantity, though, and I get jumped on when I eat my breakfast.

My two breakfast buddies.

Last week, mole’s ‘little sister’ came to visit for a few days. The visit coincided with getting a new bike. And the roses are out.

We spent quite a few weekends working on the old siding. Not only was it suffering from lack of maintenance, it got quite split up when we pulled it off. First I used waterproof ‘Titebond III’ glue and clamped the split boards back together. After a day to set, I sanded them all, to remove all loose paint, and smooth out a lot of the roughness. It took quite a while to get down to solid material. There’s going to be a lot of bondo on this wall.

Janeen primed both sides, with two coats on the backs. Slowly, slowly, siding is starting to climb up the back of the laundry room again.

Once we got to about half way up the wall, I built some temporary scaffolding out of old pieces of wood. I don’t like working up a ladder. Here’s Mole holding the second window in place. She’s standing on the temporary scaffolding.

The instructions for putting in windows are very methodical. You level the window on shims, then carefully measure both diagonals. Surprisingly (for me), the windows are always out of square and need a lot of shimming and pushing around to get them square. Shipping must really bang them about. Each window takes a while. But here’s a view from the inside looking out, with three windows in.

Arwen loves the laundry room. Partly because there’s so much to explore, and partly because that’s the way to go and play outside. When she wants to go through a door, she rubs her front feet on it, over and over.

Here we’ve got all four new windows in, and the siding is up to the underside of the windows. But there’s one more wall to do.

Here we’re tearing out the last wall that needs replacing in the laundry room. This is where the toilet was, so the floor is also quite rotten. Initially, I was trying to save the tile, thinking it would make it faster to get the room done. But I’ve decided to tear it out, because it’s so hard to match, and there are some large areas that didn’t have tile.

The problem with removing the tile, is that it was very thoroughly glued to 1/2″ plywood that was nailed with serrated nails tightly to the sub-floor. When I started pulling up the plywood (really slow going, and hard work), it started pulling up and breaking the rather rotten sub-floor.

So now I had to also replace the subfloor. Here’s a picture with most of the sub-floor along the wall torn out, and the wall completely gone. That plumbing is for the sink that the washer was connected to. That’s coming out too.

Late that night, I managed to get the framing for the wall, and the plywood up. The following day I had my Mum and sister coming to stay.

Hoot Like a Dove?

Since we bought a bird feeder, and I’ve been filling it with wild bird seed every week, we’ve been visited by quite a few birds. One of them hoots like an owl, and mole calls it my friend. I think it may be a mourning dove (not sure if they are in Calif, but it sounds a bit like this):
http://www.learnbirdsongs.com/birdsong.php?id=7

Above left, my friend is looking for seed that’s fallen to the ground. Right, I’m working on sealing up the wall over the window, ready to put siding on.

Finally, we’re getting siding on the wall around the window. This is the window that looks out of the kitchen. It spent the whole winter with duct tape and plastic covering the edges. I’ve finally got the siding on around the window, and the trim. Still needs the more filler, and prime and paint.

When I was building the back stairs, I built them so that they were independent of the house. This was partly so that I could build them without needing to tear down the laundry room or the old stairs first. The problem is, now I want to put a window in this wall, and I have a post in front of the window. So I re-framed this part of the stairs, and extended laundry room roof overhang a few inches, so there’s no longer a post in front of the window.

And then we put in one of the new windows. Four more to go. And no weekend project is complete without a kitten inspection. I think Bella approves (Arwen is just too preoccupied looking at the birds, I think).