Yak Shaving

Have you ever set out to do a task and discovered that in order to do it you needed to do some other task first?

And then had that same thing happen to the second task?

And the third task?

And ...

Pretty soon, in order to complete the first task, you're shaving a yak.

That's what happening here.  Although it looks like it, that's not actually yak hair.  It's wood shavings from that (formerly) square dowel.  It's my yak shaving for the task of finishing the attic.

See if you can follow along.
In order to insulate the attic, we had to have all the plumbing penetrations completed through the roof.

So we had to move the plumbing stack.

So we had to demolish the old master bath.

Which meant I didn't have a closet.

Which meant all my clothes are in laundry baskets scattered around the house.

Now, you might recall that we're on a couple of house tours soon.  Naturally we can't have laundry baskets full of clothes everywhere when people are touring the house.  So we started installing a closet in the old master bath space. (Don't worry this ties back into the attic again...)

Also as part of the attic, we looked at opening up the staircase to the attic.  Structurally that wasn't going to work at any reasonable price or timeline.

So the old cabinet in the hallway was removed to provide a more open feel in the back hall.

The cabinet was reassembled in the new closet.

And it needs to be painted.

So it needed to be prepped for painting.

And we noticed that a previous owner must have repaired some broken glass and used the wrong molding to hold the glass in place (see glass pane at the lower right).  Actually there are 5 panes that have suffered the same fate.  And they used the wrong molding (1/4-inch quarter round); it looks like cr*p and it going to bug me forever.

So I went looking for the right stuff.  No one has it, including Hiawatha Lumber.

So I have to fabricate it myself.  I start with a 3/8-inch square dowel; shaving it to a 1/4-inch by 3/8-inch quarter elliptical profile with simple hand tools and sanding it smooth.

It's going to cost $8 in materials and a little time.  I'm not sure why the previous repair was such a kludge; that material isn't significantly less expensive...

And once this yak is shaved, I can prime the moldings, install them, and keep painting.

The Old Master Bath - Part 4

If you look carefully you can see that I've started painting the woodwork and cabinetry in SWMBO's closet.  (OK, the serious painters would say that I'm not yet painting, I'm merely priming.  I'm fine with that.)

It's going a little slower than anticipated because, as a wise man once said, "Life is what happens while you're making other plans."

When I've had time to paint it's gone reasonably well so far.

Until I got to that lowest shelf near the window.

You see it's been pretty hot here lately (90+F).  And we don't have air conditioning.  And I'm trying to keep the dust down while I paint, so there's not fan.  Needless to say, I'm in there dripping with sweat.

I'm lying on the floor, contorted to reach into that lowest space.

Shift to reach a spot back in the corner...

And get a cramp in my calf.

I couldn't straighten out my leg because of where I was laying, so I just laid there like a turtle stuck on his back.

Maybe this post should have been titled The Old Painter Man...

Electrical Inspection

The attic electrical passed the rough-in inspection last week.  The inspector arrived a bit early, so I wasn't home when he arrived.  SWMBO showed him around.

Several times he asked her, "Are you sure you didn't have a professional do this work?"  When I arrived he asked me again.  For the record, I did every last piece of it.  He then said, "It's the neatest job I've seen."

(Hmmm.  I wonder if that's my "High C" coming out?)

I guess I have a second career lined up should my day job not work out.  ;-)

He didn't flag any issues, so I'm good to go.

There was one thing he offered for guidance which is a good thing to share.  Note the two outlets in the photo.  In particular the way the wire is routed between the staple and the box.  The one on the right has the wire routed so that is away from the surface of the stud.  The one on the left the wire is up against the stud.

Either way is fine, but the one on the right is better.
Why? you might ask.

Well, check out the next photo.

See where the wire enters the box?  Note that it's very near the back face of the stud.  It's really only an issue on interior walls or where you're finishing the wall on the back side of the outlet.

When the drywall is installed there's a much greater risk of the screw missing the stud and hitting the wire if the wire is right up against the stud.  That's a bad thing because you won't know it until you're installing the outlet.  And you'll have to rip open the wall to figure out why the outlet doesn't work.  Or, you'll have a short that causes your house to burn down.

That would be a bad day.

I've already adjusted most of the outlets where I can.  The others will be protected by nail plates; small flat pieces of metal that attach to the stud to protect wiring or plumbing from nails or screws.  You can see one protecting the water line on the back side of the left stud in the first picture.

And another piece of guidance.  I used the larger volume boxes.  The only cost a few cents more and provide way more room for the wire, etc.  Don't be penny-wise and pound-foolish...

Mulch!

30 cubic yards of mulch makes a pretty big pile when it's in your driveway.  It's taken about a week to get it spread in the appropriate places.  It would have gone much faster had I devoted an entire day to it, but we had other things going on.  As a result we did a little bit each day

At various times SWMBO thought we had too much or too little.  It ended up that we had only an extra wheelbarrow or two.  Which is a funny thing to say.

You can't really have extra; you just spread it a little thicker...

This should be the end of the serious landscaping work for the year.  The rest should just be normal day-to-day maintenance.

Something Different with Landscaping

In years past we've done a bunch of landscaping on the first weekend in June.  That's usually the weekend of Deutsche Tage across the street at The Germanic-American Institute.  So I've usually spent all day digging holes while listening to polka music.  This year the plants didn't get delivered until after the festival, so I spent the weekend re-wiring the attic to polka music.

It was a long tough winter so we lost a few plants and shrubs.  We also had a serious rabbit explosion in the neighborhood and they've caused havoc all over the neighborhood.  The Little Man got a bow for Christmas and has been fighting back though...  ;-)  The dog has been doing her best, but with a torn ACL she's had less success.  :-(

So this year, landscaping has been a combination of replacing dead things as well as filling in the last few holes.  The overall plan isn't quite implemented yet, but it's really close.

Tuesday night, Little Man helped me get 95 perennials and half a dozen 5-gallon shrubs planted.  Offering him a dollar a plant kept his motivation up.  In years past he's gotten bored after the second or third hole...

I was on my own Thursday night and got three 7-gallon trees planted after work. This morning I finished the remaining nine before it started to get hot.

I'm ready to switch gears back some other type of work...

Leaded Glass

Way back, I mentioned that we had a problem with broken glass in the front door's side-lights.

You can see where the glass is supposed to be just to the right of the doorbell.

You can see where it actually is down by the object that broke it.

Sadly, this is a fact that had to be established by the court...

Nevertheless, we finally got a response from one of the two craftsman in town who do this sort of repair.

More accurately...  SWMBO got a response from his wife!

Back when the window was broken he stopped by to give an estimate so the responsible party knew what the cost would be.  Fast forward a couple of years (there's no need to re-live the painful, two-year process) and we're ready to have the repair done.  We leave messages but don't hear back.  We don't consider it a huge problem because there aren't any critical needs for this to be fixed.

Fast forward to this Spring.  We know we're going to be on the RHA  house tour in the fall.  Further, the Cass Gilbert Society has asked for a tour of the house later in the summer.  Having a broken window at the front door is clearly not acceptable...

SWMBO makes another call.  This time the craftsman's wife answers.  Within minutes he calls back.  Within hours he arrives to re-survey the situation.  The next week he comes back and removes the leaded glass sidelights.  And six weeks later... restored sidelights are re-installed.

Now the problem is the front door looks like cr*p and I have to restore it before the tours.  I guess I better quit typing and get the attic electrical finished...

The Old Master Bath - Part 3

There has been a lot of good progress since the last post.

Drywall has been installed and the first couple coats of mud are on.  The cabinets are installed along with the base and crown molding.  The rightmost one will receive an end panel that has raised-panel details matching the recycled cabinet across the room (next picture).  Near the window is a shallower and narrower cabinet with fixed shelves for folded items.  We also have some trick lighting planed for the two wardrobe cabinets.

On the other side of the room, close to the window, is a similar fixed-shelf cabinet.  Closest to the camera is the cabinet recycled from the back hall.  The old wavy glass in the upper doors is awesome.  Once other interesting find is that the drawers all have roller bearings let into the supports.  That's not something you see often.

At the edge of both pictures you can see that the door casings have been installed as well.

Won't be long and it will be ready for paint.

The Old Master Bath - Part 2

Slow progress continues.  "Real" demolition has been complete for a while.  I've been chipping away at removing what I can of the knob-and-tube wiring.

The rough framing is complete and the room's new purpose is starting to become evident.  This wall was where the toilet, pedestal sink, and tub used to be.  These large plywood boxes are the carcasses of new cabinetry.  Once the framing and electrical inspections are complete, the walls can be insulated and the drywall installed.  Then the carcasses can be permanently installed.

This picture shows the wall where the radiator used to be.  The short cabinet closer to the camera was salvaged from the back hall.  It has an upper section with glass doors that it will be re-united with as construction continues.  It was way too cool to dispose of.

If it's not obvious yet, this room is no longer going to be the master bath.

It's going to be the closet for SWMBO...

More photos can be found in this album.

Old World Construction Techniques

This house is absolutely incredible. And I'm not being sarcastic.  There are some really unique things about this house and we discover more all the time that continue to stun me.

I've only recently heard about this technique, but have never seen it.  Bill, our contractor, hasn't seen anything like it either, even in doing this type of work on these types of houses for 30 years.

The finished floor in "Katie's Room" has been removed.  Somewhere along the line the finished floor suffered some serious water damage and was not salvageable.  Under that is the sub-floor you see pictured.

One of the sub-floor boards has been removed to reveal a 4-inch layer of what appears to be a dry mix mortar made of of stones and hard packed sand with some sort of binder.  Then there's another sub-floor on top of the joists.

Apparently this was used as mass to attenuate sound between the floors of the building.  I've heard this was common in old European construction, but haven't heard of it being used here in the US.

If you look closely at the picture, to the left of the hammer and running horizontally under where the missing floor board used to be, you can see the old pipe for the gas lights that were original to the house.

More Laundry Room

Well, it's a good thing I never got around to repainting the laundry room.  As part of installing the new stack some new holes have appeared in the laundry room walls...

This is a good attic-to-basement chase for various mechanical items.  I'm sure it won't be the last time we need to run stuff vertically throughout the house so we'll fix the holes after the dust settles.  Then we can re-paint the room, install cabinets, etc.

It's all about priorities...