Builders Share

Movin' On Up

There is still plenty of work to do on the upstairs, but enough has been done to allow us to start using the space.  I would've liked to strip and urethane the hallway, trim out the windows, paint hallway, etc. etc. but good enough will have to be good enough for now.  The non-essentials will have to wait until after I get the upstairs bathroom tiled and the tub, toilet, and sink installed.

The move itself was not without some pain.  After cleaning up from my last task of putting another coat of urethane on the baseboards, we tried to move the queen size mattress up the stairway.  No go.  The stairway is steep and narrow and is accessed through a doorway entrance from the side.  It's one of the old-house charms that grabbed me the first time I saw it, but now it was getting in the way of progress.

For the past year I've struggled to get building materials and large power tools around the corner and up the stairs.  All the while, I've stayed in denial about how we were going to move our bed and other furniture upstairs.  Well now the dilemma faced us head on.

The only way we were going to get the queen-sized mattress upstairs was by busting through the wall at the base of the stairs.  I was half-prepared for this.  When framing the downstairs, I deliberately left that wall in place with its old hand-split lathing exposed hoping we could keep it.  It was one of the few remaining vestiges of the original house.  In the back of my mind, however, I knew that it might need to come down to move up.

Sadly, I took the hammer and pry bar to the old lathing and opened up a space for us to get the job of moving done.  The new opening gave us just enough space to get our bed and dressers upstairs.

So tonight, after two years of living in the house, we'll spend our first night in the Master Bedroom.  Happy birthday to me.

handyman

Baseboards

We've already decided to go ahead and move into the upstairs rooms before all the trim and finish work was complete, but I wanted to at least get the baseboards installed so that we wouldn't have to move all the furniture when it came time to do the finish work.

I didn't expect installing the baseboards would take long, but I've also come to understand the nature of my expectations with regard to renovation tasks.

Before covering up the corner where the wall meets the floor, I donned the rubber gloves and sprayed a bead of foam insulation along the outside walls.  This would be one more break against the cold drafts of winter which seems particularly far away today when the temperature is 95 degrees in the shade.

I've learned to detest working with spray foam insulation because it has a way of getting on everything within reach and is nearly impossible to clean without creating a toxic waste dump.  One thing to help me deal with my foam insulation issues was purchasing a professional foam gun.  This has made both controlling the flow of the foam and cleaning up much easier than it was when using the consumer level spray foam in a can.  It may also be that after doing so much foaming, I've actually gotten a little more careful.

One thing I made sure to do when foaming the gap at the base of the floor was to use some masking tape to protect the new paint job.  After the foam was dry, I cut off the excess using a hand saw and was ready to install the baseboard.

I decided to go with the less expensive pine stock for the baseboards.  The clear pine, that is the stuff without any knots, is twice the price.  The lower grade stock looks more interesting with its knots and goes along with our farm/cottage-style house and decor.  There are so many places in the course of the renovation where spending just a little more money might improve things, or at least make the house look classier(?) but each of those things continues to add to a bottom line that's already eaten up our savings.  There's a constant pull to go for the "high-end" in everything.  I enjoy architectural bling as much as anyone, but where do you draw the line?  I try to gain as much pleasure as I can finding the least expensive, but serviceable way.  It's a nice way of being cheap.

I put a coat of water-based polyurethane on the boards before cutting and installing them, but I intend to add another coat once they're installed.  I like the natural wood look.  If we change our minds and want to paint it later, it shouldn't be a problem using latex over the water-based poly.

Installing the baseboards brought out the unevenness of the floor.  In some cases I tried to bend the board a little to minimize the gap along the floor, and also planed the boards some, but it both instances this only went so far.  I realize now where molding might come in handy as a way to close the gap and I'm considering one that might look appropriate...

handyman

Summer Distractions

I'm often frustrated over the amount of time this project is taking, but the more I think about it, it's an absurd frustration.  It's like being frustrated about how long my life is taking.  My dwelling is an extension of me.  Even when this project is "done," I'm, hopefully, still going to be here and will probably want to make improvements and changes.  God knows I'm always wanting to make improvements and changes to myself.

It is true, though, that the tasks that make up the whole project sometimes linger longer than I'd like, and part of that's because life gets in the way.  With summer and it's beautiful weather comes the lazy porch sitting days.  Well, not so lazy if you're hopping around swatting mosquitoes every 30 seconds.  One of the nicest times of day on our little porch is the early evening with its diminishing light and often dramatic sky.  It's also the time when the blood-sucking 3 milligram monsters appear.

At some point last year we sent away for a bunch of mosquito netting with the intent of screening-in the porch, but it was late enough in the season by the time the stuff arrived that we never got around to the project. With summer here again, we realized we better take a couple hours and get the job done. The idea was to get several yards of the stuff, cut it to the right length, and then tack it up.  Simple.

After cutting it up, we decided that it would be a good idea to put grommets along the top so we could hang the netting from hooks.  That would make it easy to put up and take down as we liked.  Well, after going through the trouble of putting grommets on (first along the wrong edge and all with a poorly-made-in-the-USA tool) we realized that hanging the stuff from hooks was going to leave big gaps through which our uninvited guests were sure to come. Duh!

The 2 hour project was suddenly growing in scope.

My neighbor Bob suggested tacking it up with a piece of molding. Aha!  Of course! Why didn't I think of that? Even better than molding, I had some scraps left over from making the door jambs for the upstairs rooms that would do the trick.  I set about cutting the scrap pieces to length and tacking up the netting, flipping it so that the grommets were now along the bottom edge. To make seams where two pieces met, I simply folded the material in on itself and stapled it together with a stapler.

Now we had to come up with some kind of opening at the steps so we could get on and off the porch.  I remembered that I had one of those zipper openings that I intended to use for isolating rooms during demolition but never ended up needing.  In a couple of minutes I solved the problem of creating an opening.

After an uncertain start, the porch was screened in.  As I sat drinking an iced tea, admiring my work, I noticed the floor and how widely spaced the boards were.  Will the mosquitoes figure it out?  Will they fly underneath the porch to suck the blood from our ankles?  I'll have to spend some serious time sitting on that porch to find out.

handyman 

Hot Water Detour

After working hard to get the master bedroom floor painted, I wanted nothing other than a nice hot shower, but all I could get out of the shower head was a tepid stream.  Great. What now?

Our ancient electric hot water heater was acting up so I headed to the cellar armed with a screwdriver and a multi-tester.  Most likely one of the elements had burned out.

First, a little background on our vintage appliance.  The house came with this old Sepco hot water heater.  It was part of an arrangement that the prior owner had with one of the local power companies, Central Vermont Power.  The homeowner pays a monthly fee for "hot water service" which includes a lease on the tank, maintenance thereof, and the electricity to heat the water.  This frees the homeowner from having to maintain or replace their hot water tank and also let's them monitor their hot water usage separate from the rest of their electric bill.

I'm not one to go for these deals.  The power company that was providing the hot water was a different one than that supplying the electricity to my house, so essentially I'd be paying a middleman for something that I was quite capable of managing myself.  And being the handyman, it would be anathema to actually allow somebody else to maintain a household appliance for me.  I mean, really, why would I want to spend my weekend golfing or playing whiffle ball with my kid when I could be in the cellar fixing the hot water tank!

When I didn't sign up for the service, Central Vermont Power reminded me that the hot water tank belonged to them.  I told them, fine, come and get it.  They called back a few days later and asked me if I wanted to keep it anyway.  Frankly, I was expecting this.  The tank is big and heavy (concrete lined) and they had to cut a hole in the floor to get it into the cellar however many years ago they installed it. They probably checked their records and realized that removing the tank was going to be an expensive trash removal operation.

Now I had to decide, let them come and take this old tank off my hands and buy a new one, or keep this and save myself, at least temporarily, the task of having to dispose it.  I decided to keep it.

So now comes the first Sepco hiccup. I determined that it was a burned out element after all and proceeded to replace it. The basic way to do this is:

1. Shut off the power to the tank, disconnect the leads to the element, and test for connectivity.  If the element shows not connectivity, it's burned out.  (On my tank, you can actually listen closely and hear the elements heating the water, using an ohmmeter is more to the point though.)
2. Drain the tank by attaching a garden hose to the drain spigot, turn off the cold water inlet valve, open the drain spigot, and open the hot water taps on the faucets in the house to allow air in as the water drains out. (Oh yeah, and you'll need a place for all that water to go to.)
3. With the tank empty, remove the burned out element, slide the new one in, with a new gasket, and hook up the leads.
4. Fill the tank up by leaving the taps open in the house, close the drain spigot and open the cold water inlet.
5. Turn the power back on after you know the tank is filled by the presence of water coming from the hot water taps.

So those are the basics, but when you have a tank that may very well be as old as your father, you might run into the following:

• Rusty bolts that hold the element in place. You break these and your Saturday morning chore just turned into a weekend hell.
• The amount of sediment in the tank (a calcium carbonate and sand mix that very closely resembles vomit) is so much as to have completely immersed the bottom element. You have to scoop and flush it out as best you can.
• Old style element. You'll drive to two or more building/plumbing supply centers before you find the right one or an adapter to make a new one fit. 
• The updated old-style element requires some funky modification to the bracket that holds the thermostat in place.

My little detour from painting the upstairs to getting us back to having hot showers took a little longer, and had more surprises than I hoped.  But what old house task doesn't take 50 - 100% longer than expected...

handyman

Swabbing the Deck

The other day I saw the tell-tale pickup trucks pulling up in front of my neighbor's house.  Large men in sleeveless t-shirts and baseball caps piled out and started setting up saw horses and power tools.  The contractor and his men had arrived.

I often wonder what my life would be like if I handed-off the many tasks of renovating my house to those worthy troops of contractors and sub-contractors who troll fields of the American Homeowner. I'd probably play a lot more with my son and be able to read novels without falling asleep from exhaustion. Or maybe I'd have to work just as much to earn the money needed to pay that army of carpenters, plumbers, and electricians that always seems necessary for even the smallest jobs in my neighborhood.  But enough what-ifs..

Having decided to paint the floor, we chose a color and decided to go with an oil paint.  The clerk at the building supply store informed us that if we were to use a latex, we'd have to rough up the surface and then prime it before painting.  Oil paint would take longer to dry but it would adhere well to the existing paint (most likely oil-based) and would probably wear better than the latex.  Oil paint it was.

Before getting down on my hands and knees with a brush though, I'd have to do a little cleaning.  This old floor has large gaps between the boards that have been collecting dirt and thin objects for more than a century.  I went at these cracks with the saw blade on my multi-tool and began pulling out dirt, hairpins, nails, and even a little necklace that I haven't cleaned up yet but may be gold.  I have my doubts though because I'm pretty sure that the financial status of the inhabitants of Chez Melendy over the years was such that they'd probably work pretty hard at freeing anything of value from a crack in the floor before giving up on it.  I've gutted this house and in the process I've found only treasures of sentimental value, not monetary.

Once the dirt was loosened and the shop vac sucked the cracks clean, I thought it might be a good idea to fill them with something to help prevent their collecting dirt all over again.  I read somewhere that hemp rope worked well for this purpose so I went about shoving rope down into the cracks.  This was time consuming and I started to think I might be creating more problems for myself with all the little strands of hemp that were fraying off the rope pieces as I pushed them in.  I decided to fill the first few cracks and then take a crack a painting to see how the rope took to the paint.  Well, I scrapped the crack-filling. The little rope hairs keep getting in the paint brush and I had to keep picking them out; also it took more paint than I cared to spend to coat the rope. 

One benefit of having the rope in the crack was that it covered any residual dirt that was down there.  When painting near the floor cracks that didn't have rope shoved in them I inevitably picked up small amounts of dust/dirt that would then get painted onto the floor.  I went back and poked and vacuumed them all again and but still had to be careful with the brushwork.

The finished product looked good, perhaps a little more patriotic then necessary but once the baseboard and trim is in place, the pink, white, and blueness of the room will be toned down some.

handyman

Something to Stand On

With our color choices made and the walls painted, (we decided to stick with our original choice of "secret garden") it was time to decide what to do with the floor in the master bedroom.

The choices were basically:

1. Leave it be - that is give it a good cleaning, pound in the protruding nails and call it done.
2. Strip it and clear coat it - the wood is pine and distressed and would probably look great given enough TLC in preparation and finish.
3. Paint it - the floor is currently covered in heavily worn battle-ship gray paint that seems to be a requirement of all old houses in New Hampshire.  We could easily paint it the same color or choose one more suitable to the colors we've put on the walls.
4. Install a new one - new pine boards over the existing one? a floating hardwood? bamboo? cork? carpet? the choices dazzle.

Installing a new floor would be nice but we ruled that out a while back.  The cost in both time and money made the decision easy.  I would've liked to do it if only to help provide more soundproofing between the master bedroom and the guest rooms/offices downstairs. It may also have been relatively easy to install one of those click-in floors that are all the rage these days but I can't help but think something like that would be a black mark on the soul of this 100+ year old house.

Stripping and clear coating the floor would've been another nice way to deal with an old floor in need of a new life, but again time and expense ruled otherwise.  I've discovered a stripper called Soy Gel that's more environmentally friendly than most and also works pretty well.  But it's not cheap.  And no matter how good a stripper is, the process is labor intensive.  For something that's going to be mostly covered with furniture and rugs, a refinished floor was a luxury we'd have to go without.

Leaving the floor as is was ruled out once we saw the walls painted and the room looking so clean and nice. It's distressed look was nice enough but there were some ugly dark stains here and there that were just too much of a contrast to the pretty new pink.

More paint was the answer and since we were becoming well-versed in making decisions regarding color choices, we dove in.