Starting Upstairs

It’s finally happening: We have moved downstairs, so we can work on the upstairs unit. First: the hallway and stairs to upstairs.

It’s just going to get more ugly for now. Here’s how it started out:

The problems are:

The stairs are steep, and also have ‘winders’ (pie-shaped steps that turn the corner) near the bottom. Both make the stairs more dangerous, so I plan to at least resolve the winder part by making a landing and then extending the stairs three steps into the hall.

Also, the head room for the stairs is very limited, and it’s made worse because for some reason they left a rather small ‘door’ opening at the bottom of the stairs. I plan to open this up and to raise the ceiling above the stairs, so there is much more head room (I’ll raise it up to the underside of the roof).

There are other miscellaneous problems, like the wiring for the lights is in a pipe on the outside of the wall, the plaster surface is not uniform, and the trim is just a mess.

The photos below show the problem we had trying to get our couch downstairs through the stair opening. Surprisingly, we did actually manage to get it through.

It was quite easy to open up the top of the ‘doorway’. I still made quite a mess — but nothing like what was to come.

The extra pieces of wood around the opening turned out to be difficult to remove, and removing them made quite a mess of things. I also took the 1/4″ drywall off the walls: It had been used to cover the damaged plaster, but it had got water damage at some point (as most of the house has). The plaster underneath was in terrible condition.

First step in raising the ceiling: Tear off the lathe and plaster. This is going to be a lot of work.

I had to change the framing supporting the roof, and re-route the drain line for the kitchen sink. Also, the wiring for the bedroom had to be moved. And while I was at it, I re-wired the light over the stair and the dining area.

But more interestingly: One of mole’s clients wanted her to design all the posters in the San Francisco Civic Center MUNI station! They were only supposed to be up for a month, but now they are going to be up through the end of the year.

Back to the mess: In the photo above, I’ve finished re-framing to raise the ceiling, but haven’t got it closed off from the attic yet.

I jammed 3″ rigid insulation tightly between the old 2×4 rafters. The old wood is almost 4″ deep, leaving 1″ for a vent gap between the roof and the insulation.

Here’s the new ceiling installed. Doesn’t look much different from before I started, but there’s much more room overhead.

Switches installed, and walls patched (partially).

Here’s something that will be a challenge: Traditional Victorian corner details use a dowel attached at the corner. The the plaster stops at the dowel, but instead of just being a plain round corner, they put a reveal next to the dowel. I’m going to try to reproduce it here.

Looking Down

It’s been a long while since I last worked on a floor – over a decade. But the front stairs – wood exterior stairs need TLC every couple of years.

One of the steps was starting to grow some type of fungus. Really time that one was replaced.

By the time I was done, I replaced three steps.

Here’s mole getting started priming the stairs for our unit.

Meanwhile… We plan to move downstairs so that I can work on upstairs. But the bedroom downstairs had carpet: Fine as a rental, I suppose, but not nice. So we tore out the carpet. No hardwood floor under this carpet, sadly. Just many layers of vinyl composite tile.

Once I got down to the subfloor, it was better already. I decided to use a prefinished solid oak plank floor. I don’t have the equipment for the refinishing, and the prefinished is almost the same price as unfinished – the end result is also much faster.

I don’t like the look of quarter round to cover the necessary gap around floors – looks cheap and un-craftsman-ly to me. So I used a jamb saw to cut the exact thickness of the flooring from the bottom of the baseboards.

That is a little easier in theory than in practice, because sub-floors are not perfectly smooth. The jamb saw can’t sit perfectly flat on the slightly uneven floor, so the height of the cut varies slightly.

I put a border all around the perimeter of the floor, before infilling. In retrospect, I wish I’d selected out all the darkest and lightest pieces from all the boxes, and used them to make alternating light and dark boards in the border. Would have been a nice way to add a little decoration, without resorting to different wood species.

Selecting and placing boards takes quite a sense for color and shade. You don’t want to put two pieces that are overly contrasting together, but do you want to keep them sort of random. Otherwise you’ll get whole areas of the floor that are dark, and others light.

I started on the floor using an old mechanical floor nailer that my dad gave me when he helped me install the floors at the front of the house. It doesn’t require a very heavy hammer blow, but it must be perfectly aimed. Given the right technique, it works perfectly well. Needless to say, after spending a day with it, I went out and bought an air-compressor powered version. Sooo easy.

Tongue and groove flooring is almost all blind nailed (no nail holes on the surface). It fits together with tongue into groove on the sides and ends.

When doing this with a border, though, on every line of boards, you have to cut a board to fit against the border. One thing I did on this floor that we never bothered to do when I was working for my dad almost thirty (!) years ago, was to cut new grooves into all the cut ends of boards: Much too time consuming for a contractor. This floor, however, is completely interlocked at all joints, except for the one long side joint one third of the way into the floor where I’ve ripped boards to fit. I glued those in together.

To finish the job, I carefully taped all around, and caulked the gap between the floor and the baseboard. Then painted the baseboards.

Perfetto!

Still chipping away at it

I’ve still been working on the house, but not posting much. Last year, I started repairing the fence between the deck and the neighbor’s house.

Next I started covering it with Cedar. I bought 2×4 boards, and ripped them to 3/4″ thick, sanded and stained, then attached to wall. I put 1/8″ thick spacers behind the mineral paper to allow a little air circulation.

I tried to make all the gaps consistent, including at the mitered ends. I used copper flashing over the top of the wall. I’ll get a piece of Ipe to top the wall – eventually.

I have to stop here until I’ve put tile on the steps. But I’ve not decided what tile to use. It’s always difficult using tile on stairs: Either I have to buy special tile with a nosing, or buy some type of metal stair nosing. I also poured the curb under part of the wall – still have two sections to do though.

The roses really liked this rainy winter. They are looking good again this year.

Safely Home

I’m home safely after riding 560 miles (including the short trip from my house to the ride start on day zero, and a few repeats of the infamous “quadbuster” hill during the ride). Here’s a fun parody video that gives you a bit of a feeling for the more fun side of the ride.

Here’s the 2019 AIDS/Lifecycle video, hot off the ‘presses’:

Day 7: Ventura to LA!

When riding through Malibu I was thinking today is not such a beautiful day, but looking back it was. Again.

Different roadie teams run all the rest stops along the ride every day. Today rest stop 2 made a special effort for the last day. These are peanut butter or Nutella bagels with various toppings:

Lunch, after a long and very un-scenic ride through Malibu, was on the beach.

I’m safely in Los Angeles. The route through LA to the finish line went past the pride celebrations. People were cheering on both sides.

Thank you for your support and generosity. It was beautiful, tiring, emotional, fun, and now I’m utterly exhausted!

Day 6: Lompoc to Ventura

Today’s ride is absolutely gorgeous. We rode up and over the Gaviota pass then along the coast through Santa Barbara to Ventura.

It is an easy climb up to Gaviota pass then a spectacular fast descent to the coast.

Ron (right) took me under his wing on my first ALC, and Scott (left) did the same for Ron a few years before.

I had a good day today, and even stopped along the route at a great cafe in Goleta with friends.

Day 5: Santa Maria to Lompoc

Otherwise known as Red Dress Day, today we dress in red to make a red AIDS ribbon as we wind up the hillside.

I recycled my cat in the hat costume from past years.

It’s a relatively short day of riding, but I really was not feeling very well today. I didn’t sleep well last night so this morning I barely wanted to move. I love cycling but today I just wanted to go hide in a corner somewhere. Happily I found Ron and David to ride with, and we stopped for pizza before the end of the day. Good friends can make any day into a good day.

Day 4: Paso Robles to Santa Maria

It was a beautiful morning for the climb up the evil twins to the halfway point.

We rode through my college town San Luis Obispo. And a friend from high school and her family happened to be in town to look at Cal poly so they met me at the lunch stop. Arthur has ridden this ride once, and Marisa knew someone else on today’s ride who was riding his 20th time.

It was a really great day for everyone riding I think. There was some wind but the temperature was perfect, the views were beautiful and the downhill from the halfway point was absolutely fantastic.

I’m now sitting under a tree at camp waiting for some cycling clothes to dry in the breeze before dinner.

Day 3: King City to Paso Robles

Today’s challenge for us San Francisco fog dwellers was the heat. The day starts out cold and foggy but very soon the fog burns off and it’s in the mid to upper 90s for most of the ride.

The most talked about part of today is “quadbuster”. It’s not a particularly big hill by San Francisco Bay area standards. But at the beginning of the third day of riding, and after riding 110 miles yesterday, it feels like quite a challenge. It has become a tradition for some people to ride repeats on that hill usually in honor of somebody. I rode it three times, once for me, once for an HIV+ friend who rode it once many years ago but will never be able to ride it again, and once for a friend who was planning to ride this year but died after being hit by a car in December.

Today I wore the cycling kit Janeen designed for the positive pedalers. This photo is with Evan who rode almost the entire ride with Janeen the year I was roadie.

Riding gives me time to think. Today I was thinking about why it is that I’m constantly drawn back to this ride. There are lots of other bike rides and there are probably lots of other more challenging ones. So that’s not the reason. I think what this ride does is it puts everyone out of their comfort zone. For different people it does it in different ways: non-campers camping, non-fundraisers fundraising, non-cyclists cycling, non-cross dressers cross dressing… By doing that I think it helps to give me more compassion for other people who may be out of their comfort zone in society as a whole. It’s a brief glimpse into how we can all be outcasts in some way and we all need to be compassionate to one another.

Since the 90s Bradley school has been a strong supporter of AIDS/Lifecycle. The Bradley school is in a tiny farming town, and it throws a party to welcome us. They accept donations to support the arts at that school and every year cyclists donate for lunch there and generate tens of thousands of dollars for their programs.

We also rode through Camp Roberts and I couldn’t resist comparing my bike to the tank.

I managed to catch a quick photo with Deyon who has ridden over twenty times.

Day 2: Santa Cruz to King City

I think this is my favorite day. We travel from the relatively affluent coastal town of Santa Cruz, inland through Salinas and through farm country down to King city. The views are so wide and open and dramatically different from what I usually ride through.

Last night I managed to get some dinner (actually a third dinner!) with my Dad.

On our way out of Capitola we were greeted with free coffee on the side of the road! Stef was there again, this time much more recognizable.

As cyclists we are incredibly vulnerable on the side of the road. Riding through Santa Cruz I just felt like drivers thought I was in the way. Cars were constantly doing dangerous things around us.

As soon as we got inland to farm country the trucks and cars were almost unbelievably courteous to us. They would pull all the way across to the other side of the road giving us the full lane; This happened every time. On multiple occasions a semi truck loaded sky high with boxes just drove behind the cyclists until it was safe to pass. The contrast from a car recklessly almost driving into the woman in front of me to save a few seconds in Santa Cruz and the way everyone behaved as soon as we got out near Salinas was enormous.

On a lighter note: I bumped into some cycling friends at the rest stops.

I love the contrasts of the ride today: From coastal towns to wide-open farmlands to an old beautiful bridge.

For a while we even rode on the side of the freeway. Then it’s an incredibly bumpy back road for about half a mile to a dirt trail into camp.