plumbing, plaster and insulation

in an attempt to get more accomplished on the house, we’ve been declining any daytime, social invites. it’s probably not making us very popular with friends and family, but it would be great if my grandmother could move in asap and not have to spend another winter living alone. because of our work schedules, our house schedule keeps getting pushed back.

here are the photo highlights from this long weekend. because our evenings were busy i had to make one large post today.

sidewalkplumbing

(above left) new sidewalk and driveway squares! (above right) more plumbing.

bread

white bread: a plumber’s tool. it helps to soak up water in the pipes so that you can actually solder the pipe instead of just boil water in it. but i’m guessing most plumbers don’t use freshly baked baguettes. and mathew takes bites in between soldering.

midori and andy

we had our first house guests! midori and andy were visiting from portland and stayed over friday night. i guess i don’t have to mention, we were terrible hosts! we were up early on saturday and mathew got right to work.

insulationinsulation

as the temps drop, the need to insulate becomes urgent. this house was built in 1914, before insulation. here mathew is adding fiberglass insulation to the bathroom ceiling and walls.

plasterplaster

plasterplaster

plasterplaster

plasterplaster

another late night of plaster work. another dinner at midnight. typically one wall takes us about 4 hours from start to finish. i was having so much fun taking photos of mathew and his shadow that he had to ask me to stop so i could actually get some work done… (there were a lot of cool shadow photos!)

insulationinsulation

insulationinsulation

more insulation. one side of the living room is done. the bedroom is next. for the ceilings we’re going to use a blow-in recycled cellulose insulation. it involves drilling holes in the ceiling plaster and renting a machine to blow the material into each space. a cozy new hat and jacket for our house.

operation: progress.

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

sunrise

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…

plasterplaster

plaster

plaster

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!

pretty in pink?

pinkWe 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. Cleaning the driveway 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.

twisty pipedrain pipes done

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?]

pipe pieces

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:

garage ceiling 1carefully garage ceiling

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:

found keysjaneen closet demo

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

walls coated with plasterweld

The walls look pretty with the pink paint, eh?

the money pit

many years ago when we first started shopping for a house, a co-worker of mathew’s recommended we see the movie, “the money pit,” staring tom hanks and shelley long. i think she meant it as a cautionary tale. of course we never saw it. and now i keep thinking about that movie…

plumbingaccessories

(above, left.) we’ve got major plumbing drama this week. on saturday we had plumbers tear up our sidewalk, dig down to our sewer line and repair the broken pipe and connection, only to return today to test it with high pressure water and find that the clay pipe is broken further up the line… this means we need to tear up the driveway concrete leading all the way up to the house and replace all the clay pipe with cast iron. $$$$. the upside: we shouldn’t have to replace the sewer line again.

(above, right.) check me out in my super-cool accessories! respirator, goggles and ear protection: makes me feel like a star wars character. this weekend as mathew got closer to completing the upstairs bathroom plumbing, i did more scraping, sanding, moulding removal and paint stripping. have you ever tried sanding a ceiling? hard work!

plaster

and i had my first try at plaster (with lots of help from mathew.) paint is coming soon! exciting. guess that means i should finally decide on a color.

mathew

mathew’s work hasn’t been too photogenic, but here’s a nice shot of him removing superfluous pipe outside.

progress?

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

bathroom

mathew working on the upstairs bathroom plumbing.

construction zone

mathew’s “workshop” outside of the bathroom.

sparks

crazy sparks fly as pipe is cut.

stripping paint

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…

dia de los muertos

today is the day of the dead, a mexican holiday to honor and celebrate the deceased. there is an annual procession that walks down 24th and 25th streets and this year for some reason it came down our street. we watched from our steps as hundreds of people walked past our house carrying candles, wearing costumes, dancing, chanting and playing drums. there were bands, children, bicycles, strollers and even a float. there are altars set up at garfield park where people are encouraged to add flowers and photos of loved ones who have died.

day of the dead
here is the altar i put together to celebrate friends and family we have lost.

from left to right: adam and gisela bittleston – mathew’s grandparents; paul chisholm – a childhood friend of mathew; phillis and jim skellam – mathew’s grandparents; rick skellam – mathew’s uncle; winfred jang – janeen’s grandfather; ‘gung-gung’ andy chan – janeen’s grandfather; debbie kim – a high school friend of janeen; wil mckissock – a high school friend of janeen and mathew; yuen c.m. jang – janeen’s ‘bau-po’ great aunt, and the reason janeen’s father was able to move to the united states as a child; david kessler – a high school friend of janeen and mathew; greg gize – a childhood friend of janeen.

scraping, sanding, painting and pizza

scrapingscraping

i spent the morning scraping adhesive off plaster walls with a heat gun. with my respirator mask on, i could imagine it smelled like warm chocolate frosting…

bathroomoveralls

mathew finished his bathroom framing. later this evening he sanded and painted the new siding outside. (above right) mathew in his new birthday overalls! [notice the shiny clean kitchen floor? i scrubbed it last night. – mathew]

pizzapizza

for dinner we made pizza and tested the oven with an oven thermometer. as i suspected, the oven has no temperature control (i baked a lasagna and a casserole last week…) if you set it at 400 degrees it will preheat for 10 minutes and keep getting hotter. after baking the first pizza for 5 minutes the oven was 525. after 5 minutes of baking the second pizza it was up to 575! how hot could it get? so, this oven isn’t great for cookies but it’s excellent for super-thin crust pizza! too bad you can’t smell these… mmm.

birthday weekend

lemon treelemon tree

early this morning i found mathew up in the lemon tree (with the spiders) pruning and harvesting. (left photo: if you look closely you can see mathew playing “where’s waldo?”)

lemons!

lemons for our neighbors! this box was completely gone by the time we came home in the afternoon.

hats

we had a birthday celebration for my mom and mathew at my grandmother’s place. my mom and younger brother, justin looked so cute in their beige baseball caps. like mother, like son.

refrigerator

after lunch (at a vegan chinese restaurant) we celebrated with gifts, pie and cheese cake, then came home to move in our new refrigerator (a gift from my parents!)

jasonjason

my family stuck around for a few hours to help with the house. jason, my older brother, got busy taking down the four ugly closet doors in the bedroom. then he moved on to helping bring the “hall closet” back to it’s original form as a built-in cabinet in the foyer.

floor

and i had the satisfaction of exposing the final bit of red floor in the living room. i wouldn’t let anyone help me finish it. (and you can’t really tell, but i am wearing my new (ebay) eeyore work overalls! embroidered with dragonflies…)