we had a casual family gathering last saturday night to celebrate my parents retirement.
the rest of the weekend was all about prepping the downstairs living room walls for plaster.
and then finally applying plaster.
mathew is getting really good at this! while mathew was working on this level i was down in the garage stripping paint from trim that will go around the new window.
we took some time off last weekend to attend a high school friend’s wedding. we had a really great time and thoroughly enjoyed ourselves.
it was a beautiful ceremony at the coolest venue ever, the lawrence hall of science in berkeley. in fact, we were impressed with pretty much every detail that night. congratulations jennifer and doug, we wish you all the best, and thank you for including us in your special day.
on sunday we finished painting the exterior window trim.
and it was time for the scaffolding to come down.
my parents came up to help us work on the house on saturday. and they even brought a home-cooked lunch!
(left) my dad filling holes with plaster. (i don’t know why there’s something in his mouth.) (right) my mom being silly. she filled the holes in the hallway (above her) with plaster but i got there too late to document it. in this “dramatic reenactment” she is holding the wrong tool for the job and says she has no idea how to use it.
(left) mom taking the wood frame off the old window. (right) dad trimming the expanding foam that he and mathew used to fill the gaps around the new window. sorry, no photos of mathew this weekend. he’s not big on “dramatic reenactments.”
mathew spent yet another weekend up on the scaffolding attaching and painting pieces of wood i refinished in the garage. here is some impressive clamping mathew did. (well, at least i’m impressed.) on sunday we also painted the exterior with paint i had bought. unfortunately i didn’t buy the right finish so the new paint is flat and the old paint has some gloss, but we’ll repaint it all some day.
(left) my weekend was spent just like last weekend, stripping paint, filling holes with bondo, scraping, sanding and painting. i wore my respirator mask for about 10 hours on sunday… (right) garden update: we have tomatoes! and they’re quite tasty.
(left) not sure if you can see them, but we’ve finally got jalapenos! and lots of pretty green ground cover and blue and purple flowers.
the outdoor temp gauge read 100 degrees this afternoon! i had lunch with my grandmother in the richmond district this afternoon and our neighborhood in the mission felt 10-15 degrees hotter.
mathew’s aunt karin and cousin sylvia have been visiting from england. they drove up with daniel today and mathew took the day off work to hang out with everyone.
afterwards he got back to work on the house. i found him cooling off on the scaffolding and using his new toy (some sort of power nailer.)
we worked all weekend. all three days were spent in the garage refinishing the exterior wood that was removed to install the new downstairs living room window and fix the leak.
because the house was built with beautiful, solid redwood and replacing it is expensive and wasteful, we’re reusing every bit that we can. i spent the weekend stripping paint, gluing, filling, sanding and painting exterior siding and trim.
this is what we looked like for most of the weekend. mathew up on the scaffolding: scraping, removing, installing, sanding and painting, me with my respirator mask, gloves and various tools.
we’ve gotten into using bondo, a car repair filler. it sets fast, is waterproof and durable. it makes the siding and trim look new again. but it smells really bad. (left) all those little blocks of siding were in pieces when mathew removed them from the house. it was a job for “puzzle savant” (that’s me), now they are whole again.
see? more bondo filler. (thanks bob, for the tip.)
(left) a view from the scaffolding. (right) mathew wiping down the wall with a wet cloth after sanding with the vacuum attachment, trying to minimize the amount of lead paint dust we release into the air!
a piece of refinished trim that goes near the window.
our furniture finally arrived!
we’ve been waiting over a month and a half for these 3 pieces.
how does a vegetarian household end up buying a leather loveseat? (especially when we both agreed before going to the store that we didn’t want leather?!) leather sofas tend to be shorter in height, an important factor when considering our narrow entry, hall and stairway.
and the “grasshopper” chair almost didn’t make it up. it had to be carried through the downstairs kitchen, up the back, exterior staircase and then through the bedroom window, which mathew removed in desperation.
this weekend we rented scaffolding, the parts were delivered and mathew put them together. i helped a little (but most of my weekend was spent stripping paint off trim.)
(left) mathew removing siding. (right) the view i had for most of the weekend.
mathew working on the third level of the scaffolding.
(left) what it looks like to stand on the second level. (right) mathew replacing siding after installing barrier paper.
after we removed the old (crappy) window.
preparing the opening for the new window.
(left) more barrier paper. (right) the new window!
(left) installing and squaring the new window. i helped with measuring and squaring. that took a while and the sun was rapidly going down. (right) success!
on saturday we got a phone message from our friend mae, wanting to drop by around 9pm that night. we didn’t hear the message until after we’d finished working and were too exhausted and hungry… after 9 we’d finally had dinner and were thinking about sleep, when mae’s sisters, stef and nancy dropped by to see if we were home and to give the green light to the rest of the group to show up. we felt bad about sending them away but we were too exhausted to stay up or really socialize. and stef brought this lovely gift! the gee sisters are always so thoughtful and generous.
as time keeps rushing by, we’ve made the decision to only work on the house on weekends and socialize on week nights. it’s been a year since we started working on this house and my 84 year old grandmother is still living alone.
because of family visits on saturday AND sunday, we had less time to work on the house, but still managed to get stuff accomplished. we only lost about 8 hours.
remember all those holes mathew made in the walls? we rented a machine and installed the blow-in cellulose insulation. sorry no photos, i was downstairs in the garage while mathew was upstairs in the living room with my dad. my brother jason helped me loading up the agitator/blower (sorry, there ARE photos but they’re on jason’s camera…)
later after my family left, mathew and i switched places so i installed the insulation in the second entry while mathew filled the machine. (left) a photo i took of myself. it’s a very cool machine we rented, we had it in the garage but controlled it with a remote. and it was even powerful enough to blow insulation up to the attic, 2 flights up.
on sunday mathew’s dad, daniel came over for brunch. then we went downstairs to see if the wood in the entry was worth saving.
(left) it was! (right) the edger and a sandpaper disc they call “pizza.”
(left) filling a few more holes with insulation. (right) patching the holes and large gaps with plaster.
and because he just needed make a little more progress, mathew pulled down all the damaged plaster in the hall built-in cabinet. now it’s really ugly! he’s thinking there might have been a light-well here in the past, it would explain why there was water damage in the middle of the house.
a gift from mathew’s co-worker, bob. mathew has it proudly displayed as you walk downstairs to the garage. my only question is “why did he leave the shrink wrap on it?” lazy? trying to make a statement?
on saturday after i applied fiberglass mesh tape to the cracks in the walls, mathew applied a skim-coat, painted the wall with pink “plaster-weld” and then we got to work with plastering the first wall.
(left) mathew burnishing the wall after 2 layers of plaster were applied. (right) on sunday i started with some paint stripping.
and then it was time for plaster on the second wall, this batch was a good consistency and mathew was quite happy with how it turned out. while mathew was burnishing i cut out some “recycled” gypboard to fill in some of the spaces where i’d removed old loose plaster.
(left) i did the best with what i had. adding the gypboard cuts down on the amount of plaster we’ll need to layer in to fill those spaces. (right) mathew starting on the built-in cabinet in the hall, removing even more of that weird paneling the previous owners liked to use all over the house. behind it the plaster was really ugly and water damaged.
this is how those two walls look as the plaster is drying.
