Oh My!

It's amazing what can happen in a couple of weeks. I'll give details later.

Slow and Steady

This is what she looks like, still without any exterior framing work completed. I may have gotten hosed by the first guy who bid and was awarded the roof and framing contract. Guess I'll have to find someone else. And now there's 6" of snow to contend with.

In the mean time, we've been chuggin along with a bunch of necessary interior projects including prepping for electrical, interior framing and window framing. Getting the electrical service entrance ready required replacing siding at that exterior location. It had been torn off to accomodate new window and door openings, not to mention that the west face of the house gets the worst weather and was in pretty rough shape. To facilitate the electrical installation we had to trim out the area to receive the service entrance and disconnects and leave the remainder of the siding repair for later. Here it is under the tarp. Oh, and we replaced the siding with fiber cement from Menards, which definitely have some intricacies of its own.

On the interior, we continued to frame the middle walls back up with a new header to support the replaced floor framing for the bath above. The area below the header will allow the HVAC ductwork to run to the ceiling and connect to a bulkhead that will run the length of the house. As it becomes colder and colder, that will become the next priorty after getting the windows installed and rear of the house framed.

We bought the windows from an architectural sales rep for Capitol Windows. We've used the same windows with pretty good success at a local senior housing project. They are new construction, vinyl, double hung. We sized them to fit into the existing openings with a little extra rough framing in the existing holes, which allowed the new work to avoid messing with the existing headers. It might have been easier to use replacements, but the verdict is still out in my mind. I think there were too many bad sills to bother with trying to repair everything when I now know the openings are going to be weather tight and very insulated.

Here are the rough frames being put together on the floor.


And here they are installed in the openings.

It's really going to be great once the actual windows are in. Let's hope for a few warm days here at the end of December. Winter conditions suck.

Moving Forward

It's pretty great to see progress. Such as, this lumber used to be stairs:

Now the South basement stairs are completed and we're trying to rise up to the first floor by building up the floor framing in the South basement and the plumbing walls, while simultaneously framing out the second floor. What fun!

Now that is a lot of shingles, and we're not even 1/4 done! Three layers was typical:

Fortunately the roof decking is in pretty darn good shape.

Isn't this fun!?

Lumber Delivery

So finally I've procured a framing crew. Not sure how much of a crew there'll be, but I've got a guy wrapping his head around it right now. Same guy's going to be doing the roofing as well, which makes better sense considering that a 1/4 of the roof is being torn off completely and rebuilt. Hopefully three weeks from now we'll nail down the exterior and button up the framing.

I bought the lumber from Hall & House on the Southside (Epler & Bluff). I grew up down there, but have never patronized their lumber yard. I never checked prices in the beginning, but after I received the bill of materials, I priced it all out relative to a Menards ticket I had and the prices were only $0.20 higher generally. No delivery charge made it all relative, and as they counter guy said "If we left anything off, I'll load it up in the pickup truck and bring it to ya." You won't get that service from Menards.

The slide-off can send crap flying, but this time it was safe. I had Ethan that morning because the day care lady was sick, so we both hung out and watched the delivery. My framer hung around for a few minutes and buttoned up the lumber with tarps, since he wouldn't be able to get to the work for a week.

Hi mom!

Much Ado About Stairs

I was under the impression early that the basement stairs would be okay. That is until the first time I walked down them.



The stairs were not up to current code in any way, and there really wasn't any way to make them so. It was much easier to make the work in the current layout than to worry about "code." So I added an extra tread to the top run, cut an extra tread into the landing, and increased the rise in the lower stair run, and voila. I can bounce down the stairs without banging my face into the joist. It is seriously sweet.

Swiss Cheese

I told you about the permits, right...that is, spending a good four hours in the permitting office to get these:

So I came home the other day, and when I walked over to the house I looked at it and went "Oh my God." Rocky, my painter-jack-of-most-trades had, at my basic instruction, ripped off all of the plastic and window trim to EVERY window. Granted I just ordered my windows yesterday and the lead time is about four weeks, it had to be done. Suddenly though I was distraught with the feelings of overwhelming vulnerability. The house is now swiss cheese. I am vulnerable to the wind, the rain, the weather in general, riff raff and thieves.

I don't leave much of anything in the place, with the exception of some building materials. But the feeling is powerful in a way I wasn't used to. Hopefully we'll be able to seal it back up with plastic soon enough to avoid problems. At the same time, Rocky has been scraping the exterior of the house, which is simply going to be repaired and re-painted. The old paint is coming off great, and it looks nice so far. I'm very glad someone convinced me to keep the siding and repair it. I'm almost wishing that would've happened with the windows, but I can't go back now.

There are definitely areas that need a little help, especially the roof line where water drains:

I'm going to take the entire back wall of siding off, since I have to re-frame both doors and back windows. Also, we need to get the meter bases on the wall back here next week, and I want to make sure that the electricians have the space they need. The windows on the back were pocket style windows that actually operated by lowering into the wall below. It's pretty fun to check out the interior wall framing of these old techniques.

Next up: Basement stairs look awesome

Stairways to Heaven

This evening, we will journey to the Land of Menards, where lumber is cheap and you have to load it yourself. The objective: Get just enough pressure treated wood for the basement stair framing, since we now know (and generally always have) that the stairs are shot and just need to be rebuilt. In addition, the stairs leave such a small amount of headroom at the intermediate landing (which actually goes outside on the side of the house) and going down the last run to the basement that something must be done.

In looking at ways to make that extremely small space work a little better, I've come up with a plan. It probably doesn't meet code, but I'm most certain a) the existing set-up isn't near close, and b) the new set-up is about as close as I can get to "code-worthy" and functional without breaking out my visa card. It just wouldn't be worth wasting money on such a limited use thing, such as the basement stairs. Head room wasn't at a premium back in "the day," just like 1/2 bath. See below:

Instead of a square landing, we're going to introduce a kind of odd-shaped landing with an extra stair cut into it. That will allow the lower run of the stairs to clear the completely inadequate headroom almost at about 6'-0". Code is 6'-8", so we're close. Close enough. The framing will be simple, because we have to introduce a couple of extra 4x6 posts, onto which the landing as well as the bottom and top of the stringers can attach. All of the lumber will pe pressure treated, which means these days you need to use extra good, special screws. I use Menards premium deck screws, which are about $20 a box. The strange treating method will cause virtually anything else short of stainless steel or tripple coated galvanized to disentegrate over time. Not good with a structural component.

Since I am such an architect and CAD geek, I like to draw everything I'm about to do in great detail. I like to put all of the members together and king of figure it out really accurately on paper before I ever get in the field. That's just me, because you KNOW that once you're in the field things change. But it's better than winging it. First was the upper section of the stairs to the landing. I had to field verify the landing height, which needed to correspond with the exterior stair threshold location. Custom stringers would be required, although I tried to keep it on even dimensions, such as an 11" rise and a 9" run.

These will help in building out the stringers from a stock 8' 2 x 12:

On the stringers I'm going to install 5/4" treated decking in lieu of plywood or other typical stair tread material. Since these go to the basement and don't have to look all too pretty, I figure 5/4 would be an easy, cheap maintenance free material, which is also easy to remove if necessary. I remember having to remove my 2 x 12 tread in my existing house to get something in the basement once.

With all of this, and the help of my co-worker Kurt (for a price unfortunately), we should be able to knock the stairs out in a couple of evenings.

New Drawings Available

A while back I remembered putting the construction documents online for viewing. So I've updated that page as a place where I can direct potential contractors to view prints, along with anyone following along.

Go here: http://www.customgroup.biz/1342/index.html

This week I will be investing in the help of a co-worker, Kurt West, to re-frame the stairs to the basement. We'll see about how far we can get in the next few evenings.

Cuttin' the Rug -- Part 2

So now the permits are posted on the front window, and we feel better than we did when we left the DOC's office last week. But we're having a bit of trouble with a major components of the renovation. It has a tendency to keep me awake, worrying a bit about certain things. I'm not normally like that, so occasionally when those worries get the best of me I can take solace in the fact that we have six months for this project. That's heartening. But the fact that those six months occur over the worst season of the year for renovation work is annoying. It's my fault for procrastinating though.

We've hired the Plumbing and Electrical sub-contractors. The budget numbers and close, and we're pretty confident about their convictions on this project. Timing is a slight factor, though, because the major trade right now, carpentry, is probably at the very soonest a couple weeks out. The original contractor we talked with just didn't seem interested anymore -- probably too much work, and I understand. But what is weird is that a lot of people who come and look have the same mannerisms and ask the same questions. They scowl, and look around alot with their head kind of shaking, asking questions like "Whatcha gonna do with these when you're done?" Many want to be inspectors and comment on every little thing: "The floor looks like it's sinking over there..." Gee, maybe it's the 10 years of water than has leaked from the broken soffit on the exterior?

We're not re-inventing the wheel here. Put it back together like it is, with a few minor changes. Is that so hard?! Haha. Yeah, it is I guess. Anyway, the first carpenter I'm tempted to shoo off after last week's showing. All I got was stuff like "I thought all of this was supposed to be demoed by someone else." What, am I supossed to demo the siding and the exterior walls and wait four weeks for you to show up? Give me a schedule and maybe I'll find someone to do it right away. Sheesh. Then I got kind of a wishy-washy "I'll call you tomorrow and let you know what we can do" sort of thing, which never happened. Oh, and the old "We've got a $20,000 porch coming up so it might take a couple weeks to get on this." Did I not stay in touch with you over the past 3 months updating you on loan closing progress? Give me a break.

The next guy on Saturday was better, still a touch wishy-washy, but more apt to *maybe* get it done soon and quick. Open-ended yeses are bad. Get a day, stick to it and if it comes and goes without contact, find someone else ASAP, unless you can wait. We can wait a little while, but too long and it's going to be -10 degrees outside and no one will be happy with that. Schedule? What schedule? Haha.

Okay, the pictures. Here's what we were able to accomplish this weekend. I shouldn't have to tell you that the list was long -- about 10 things on it. But what was actually completed? About 3 things. That is typical. We were attempting to clean up the basement, so that the plumbing guy can get started down there running DWV (drain, waste & vent) and find the plumbing mains. I think the mains are 3/4" copper that were core drilled through some time ago, but have since been nearly crimped and crumpled at the edge of the block wall. Bummer, but we should be able to free them. Well, that was on the list too, but it didn't happen either.

Instead, we started by finishing off cleaning up the kitchen. Most of the work is happening in the old kitchens, and I've found that it is easier to start in the beginning to remove ALL of the nails from the floor ahead of time. Of course, that's after you remove the plaster and lathe (haha). The last thing you want is to be vacuuming and have to deal with a billion nails sticking out everywhere from the two layers of old flooring that was installed with 8d nails. Plus, we're putting down luan and replacing some floor, so a clean floor is just a good way to start. PS...get a respirator and wear it. Very dirty job.

Once the kitchen was cleaned up, I had to replace some of the floor. I really had hoped to get more than one side done, but as it turned out the weekend was just enough time for the North side. It is the harder side, due to a few extra areas of rotten flooring, so that's going for us. Saturday started out with cleaning, and mid-day it was time for a trip to Menards. I had the largest load I can imagine in the new truck this time. I bet we were in the 2000 lbs. range, probably overloaded for this F150, but it got me back home. I got back and started in on cutting out the bad sections of flooring. It got dark around 6:30, but it felt like 8pm, so I quit to get in some family time.


Waking up in the morning, the first job was set already. It had started raining about five in the morning, and I never checked in with then weatherman, so my wood load and plaster filled trash cans were just getting wetter and wetter by the hour. Dummy! And after Saturday, my back was killing me, so work today was supposed to be lighter than normal -- yeah right, that wasn't about to happen today. After moving 100 plus studs, a couple sheets of 3/4" OSB and about ten 2 x 10 x 14's, it was time to get to work work.


Cutting the holes for the flooring replacement was easy. Three areas in the North unit kitchen were rotten. The middle wall area was mostly rotten, probably because of water damage from the bath above over time, and an area to the Northeast (2nd pic) that was sinking due to a lot of water coming off the roof and deteriorating the exterior bearing wall.

Introducing new framing members to a floor that is pretty much intact isn't exactly an easy task, especially alone. I took a crow bar and some blocking to pry against to task, and worked pretty much everything out well for myself. The basement windows are currently missing, which made it easy to get the 14' 2x10's into the basement, and tearing out the blocking between the units allowed the placement of the 14'ers easily.

The introduction of new framing along the middle wall allows for future hidden HVAC ductwork. Something had to be built to carry the load of the floor joists, which in this case was a doubled up header with joist hangers (hopefully code worthy).





At the end of the day, the new joist framing and new support header beam came together nicely. The finishing touch was to put the sub-floor in place with glue and screws. I even screwed every original board I cut through back to the joists to maintain the integrity ofthe original 1x3 plank deck material. And I used a little PL400 (or whatever DAP version is applicable) to glue the new floor to the joists and improve the bond between old and new. Ultimately, a new luan underlayment will be placed on which the final floor finish will be installed.

I had to use 3/4" sub-floor material, and in this case it was OSB, because it's only $12 vs. $22. Generally, OSB is a touch less desirable because of screw hold capacity, or it's full of formaldehyde, but everybody has their own opinion. I used it because it was half as expensive and was interior only never to be exposed to weather (except when the owner forgets to consult the weatherman before leaving stuff in his truck bed). Ultimately the original floor is 7/8" instead of 3/4", so there's quite a lip differential between the old and new. Since I'm putting luan down, I figured it wouldn't matter much. I just plan on putting down some leveling compound prior to the luan installation.

That was it for the day. I was hoping for more. Probably would've been too much though. A nice end to the day was dinner at home, some family time with Ethan and Sheri, and a nice long soak in the hot tub. And some hydrocodone if I can find it.

Hope you enjoyed the weekend's project. Stay tuned for the South side SSDD (Same Stuff Different Day). And hopefully some labor by someone other than your truly. Peace.