Out of Plumb

Doing this reminded me that I never posted pictures from the redo. Going to dump them here in no particular order.

This is the link to the youtube video I made of the stairs. It was a 'happy new baby boy' present to the wife and one of a kind.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Avkix9Cpwk



Ripping out the shelving in the old monstrous walk in/bed room.


Furing the rafters with Dad. In order to get more insulation in the rafters we added full dimension 2x2's to the bottom making the rafters a full six inches. Let us put in R19 rather than R11. This is what I didn't do in the attic space because I need the height.


What is now the craft room just after I had painted. You can see the old opening into the storage room.

Ripping out the old sheeting in the craft room, you can see the lack of insulation. Again that is the opening to the storage room.
Main bed room, after insulating but before moving the wall.



Running the heating duct.


Dad hanging vapor barrier after insulating.


Putting carpet down with dad.

Old dividing wall. We moved this to the center of the space to make two rooms of the same size.

Taping around one of 5 new windows. Of all the things we did, these were the best.



Showing some of the tear out. The big opening is split into two windows, one in each room. This is the boy's room, or it will be when his mother is ready to stick him in there.



Mother in law running car down the materials ramp. Everything was dumped out this and slid down timbers to the ground. The sheetrock all came up this way too. By the way I do not recomend remodling in three weeks prior to pregnancy with your mother in law around. Message me if you want to know why.



Glowing stairs, treads are made from boards removed from the wall sheeting.


Door to the boy's room, still needs trim.


Treads still have the milling marks.

been a long time since I updated, but spent the long weekend redoing the storage room for the wife. She has wanted this for a long time but I have been resting because of it's dubious benefits. Anyway tore out all of the old sheeting to discover what we already suspected, piss-poor insulation. 1 inch of rockwool batting. I hate rockwool. Pulled it all down, removed the pair of windows hidden in the wall and reframed it all without disturbing the siding. We now have R11, I know it sucks but it must be 3 or 4 times better than it was. All of the sheetrock had to be cut into 4x4 sections so I could pack them through the house by myself. Now that it is done and I have started taping you can hear if not feel the difference. I think sealing the room will have more effect than anything else. Taping looks like crap and I am not really trying very hard so I guess that is my fault. Letting the taping mud freeze didn't help. It will be a two coat job no mater what it looks like, my crap isn't important enough for flawless walls. I know the wife will want it painted but I will see if I can talk her out of it. Finishing this room was the last step towards wiring the center wall of the bedrooms as I ran the wires while it was all apart. Ripping out the full dimension half-door jam and replacing it with 1/2 means the opening is way bigger now, nice because that sob had claimed the skin from the back of my neck more than a time or two.

Far corner looking back. This room was only one inch out of square, not bad considering the rest of the place. Inside the ceiling is just R11, woefully inadequate but way better what used to be up there, R3 rockwool. I was able to get the room another inch taller and two wider by removing all of the layers of full dimension sheeting.


The wooden 'L' is a removable panel covering not one but four junction boxes in the wall. These were the 'find' of the project. Thought it might be best if I could get at them, you know in case they catch fire. Behind the short little vertical wall to the right is where I interned a pair of turn of the century baby shoes we had previously discovered inside a wall. Turns out building baby shoes into the wall was sort of a 'bless this house' thing. I wanted to put them back in when we found them, the wife didn't. The wife wanted this project done, I didn't. She isn't here, shoes are back in the wall. She doesn't know yet, pray for me. Rock on kiddo.


This is the entrance to the storage room over the kitchen. Wife has been pestering me to redo it for years. I have no idea why the crap we have needs to be so well protected but whatever. I was able to trim out and hang a 30 inch door I cut down as opposed to the 28 inch door that used to be there. This is because I can bend time and space.

I have been putting everything into the complete gutting and remodel of the upstairs. Call it nesting, fiscal responsibility or environmentalism but that project was something that just had to be done. So far it has damn near killed me, week after week of 15 hour days and now that school has started and I am back to teaching its even worse. The end is near, I simply have to paint 2 more rooms and the stairwell/hallway and the major stuff is done. I mean there will be no floor coverings and you will be able to see where we cut into the floor to run the ducting but livable and before the baby arrives. Just in time judging from the size of the tummy.

Discoveries:

NO insulation in the vertical outside walls and half of the sloped ceiling.

NO sill plates allowing cold air to migrate up and down walls, essentially every wall was an outside wall. Dido on the second story floors.

A pair of turn of the century baby shoes walled up inside the cavity above a second story window.

Newspapers from 1918 under all of the upstairs linoleum describing American involvement in WWI. I was able to save about 50%.



This would have been done more than a week earlier except that the original construction on the second story is the worst I have ever seen. Old windows and doors cut in willy-nilly with no regard for bracing. Undersized lumber with spans far to large and a profound aversion to plumb. Seriously I had walls that were 2 inched out of square in 4 feet. 2 inches in four feet! Even squaring to the naked eye I would expect to be far closer than that. Drywall was an exercise in abstract art. No two edges were parallel, every sheet was a complicated custom cut, it took forever and then the results were so bad that taping was a nightmare. Anyway I am glad it is done. I will post pictures.

This is the new puppy Nessie. A little Great Dane Girl. Here she has stolen Teagan's bone.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=As5E8xm-fLU



In this one she has gotten a hunk of string caught in her mouth while trying to attack the cat.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CrUfCc7bucE



More cat action:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LS4aVg-LyZ0




An not to be left out, the last one is Teagan's particularities about sitting atop people on the upstairs landing.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9w5oapCO01A

I know we did lot of these in a lump but I am trying to catch up. This Christmas we stayed 2 weeks with family in Kalispell. (100 miles away) Other than being an experience I never plan to repeat, I was worried about the house sitting un-occupied in the extreme cold. Lets face it, the stuff around here does not have the best track record. I zip home to check on it and when I walk in I hear a nose like a garbage disposal running with nothing in it. Track that down to the cellar and the furnace is responsible. Turns out the exhaust or forced draft fan has spit off a blade.



The fan's metal keeper had rusted loose and gone through the blades. It was out of balance and vibrating something fierce. This is a real bad time to be without heat while I order parts, and it would have meant coming home to baby sit the space heaters. Genius that I am I decide to see if I can epoxy a little weight on to the broken tip of the blade. Thinking I might be able to balance it and get it running. I am sure you can see where this is going. The idea worked in principle but over night the weight came loose, took more of the blade with it and made the whole thing worse. Crap. Well if I can't add weight maybe I can take some off. So I cut the tip off the opposite blade to balance it. Success! Except that all the vibration had started to crack the hub. I epoxied on a thin wafer to stabilize the cracks put it all back in and it worked fine. A minor vibration but I could leave it and head back to the family. The idea was to replace the fan asap, but it was working and you know how things go. Cut ahead 2 months to the incident where we ran out of propane and the fan ran non stop for some 24 hours. The little vibration had grown and I noticed than when I shut the furnace down manualy there was a bit of a grinding noise.



Total failure was immanent that was obvious. So I put it off another week and a half because that is how I roll. Start looking for a fan only to find out they cost $400+. What the crap, for a hunk of plastic that whirls around? I researched what other furnaces used the same fan (lots) then used their model numbers, found the same fan listed for another furnace for $240. On Amazon.com of all places. Genius. Direct bolt in and none too soon. The other fan had started to drop off the shaft, it was only its momentum that kept it up while spinning, the grinding was it hitting the case as it slowed. Well the old monster is back up and running again. Heat is good.

Labels: exhaust or forced draft fan, Fixing the furnace

So last fall I had the propane talk filled, all 400 Gallons, $800 worth. The guy knocks on the door and says the fuel gauge is broken, shrugs and walks off. Sure enough it sill reads only 30%. Fine we will run it dry and replace it. Fast forward to 2 weeks ago. I notice the furnace fan hasn't shut off and seems to be blowing cold air. Great out of propane, its Friday night and we have a cold weekend of no heat in store. Give them credit, they sent a guy out Monday morning. The new young guy (he works harder than the rest) except when he was trying to pull the float arm out of the tank he broke off a bolt. Talked to the wife and said he would be back with help to fix it later. I come home that night and while eating dinner I swear I hear some one pounding on my propane tank with a hammer. No way, they wouldn't be that dumb. Yes they were. You might remember that picture I posted of the guy smoking while leaning against my tank while filling it? The same dude was now trying to center punch the broken bolt with a metal hammer and a tool steel punch. Right next to him is a 2 inch opening straight into my tank. For the unfamiliar, propane in the tank is rather safe because the tanks lack oxygen, they simply can't burn with out it. But open the top of the tank on a windy day and you have mixed oxygen and the gas in a large vessel other wise known as a bomb. All it needs is a spark, hammers on cold punches spark all the time. I run out to talk to them and inquire about the hazards of hammering on a tank like that. I kid you not, he leans over, sniffs the tank and declares it empty and safe. This guy didn't even know that propane is heavier than air, so it would sink into the tank and not be sniff-able. (Personally I thought it was pungent in that "no sparks or I will blow up and kill your family" sort of way) He then begins to drill the bolt with a left hand twist drill, standard procedure, but he breaks it off. Now he looks really confused, the old 'experienced' guy that is, the young guy looks embarrassed to be there. Soon I start to hear new noises, specifically "I think you are going to need a new tank". Pardon my french (grandma look away) the fuck I am going to buy a new tank because you morons screwed up. I go to the shop, grab the proper size drill and a tap and fix that son-of-a-bitch. You would have thought I had tuned water into wine. They went so far as to try and memorize the tools so they could get some. We get down to business with the float. (at this point I will not let them work 'unsupervised') The young guy comments on how it is shorter, his superior comments that its all they had, then turns to me and says its better than nothing right? (grandma turn away again) Uh fuck no. The tank will read empty when it still has 30% left (ironically the opposite of when we started) and I will have to wait a full year to burn all the propane, then have these same guys do the whole process again and buy another proper float. I told them I would rather wait for them to order in the proper mechanism. The young guy speculates out loud if it is just the gauge on top that is bad. Turns out they are universal and driven off a magnet in the float arm. (no direct connection with the gauge means no holes in the tank to leak) Two small philips screws later and everything works. My old float arm was fine. (and it should be, it works in a sterile environment and only moves a full cycle twice a year) What this means is that none of the work they did (or rather I did) was in any way necessary. You do not need to pull the float arm to change the gauge. The topper was when I got the bill for their labor. Don't you mean MY labor boys? Your labor would have cost me a 500gal propane tank.

Labels: Fixing a propane tank, Trying not to die

Lots of stuff going on but little time for blogging. The big bad project was finishing up the bathroom. Stripped out the lights, pulled the old fan and ran some wires. As it was you had to walk to the back wall of the room to turn on the lights. Don't ask, I didn't do it. Anyway we ran some wire so now the lights are at the door. (think monkeys fishing termites out of the mound with a stick)



The down side is that I filled the old switch hole with an outlet so now we have spots for six plug-ins. That way in case you ever need to put on a concert you will have enough power.



Only because we are so used to it, we now walk to the back and then come back to the door to turn the lights on. Having put switches too close to doors in the past to trim without trimming, I made sure to space these properly.



Had a huge feather job smoothing out a mismatch (my fault) at the tub. I had to smooth mud almost 18 inches to hide it but in the end it was hid so oh well.



Many coats of paint and a few stray dog hairs later and the yellow bathroom is yellow no more. I wasn't totally sold on using a gloss paint in a brightly lit room but I was swayed by arguments of easy clean up. The room is shiny but I no longer notice it. Can't fault how bright it is. Put the old mirror up with a new picture frame of spalted red alder. I was very happy with how this turned out because you clearly couldn't drag the whole mess into the shop for cut to fit. I cut scraps exactly the same length and width of the mirror and used those 'story sticks' to cut it all right the first time.



Refinished the old panel door so it matched the others. After the paint had dried I was pulling off the masking tape and dried paint flaked off of it. I thought nothing of it, it was dry after all. Well it stuck anyway so the stained part of the door has white speckles on it. I don't know what or if I will do anything about it.



A new overhead light, (Thanks Costco!) and we are up and running.

Thats it, all she wrote for the winter anyway. Still have some sheeting to put up but it will be minus 10 this weekend so that will be a slow job. The metal for the roofing has gone to $3 a foot, about doubled since the last time I looked. We are holding off on the advice that the price will drop. I have my doubts...

I think things breed, like inanimate things. I remember have one broken shovel in need of a handle, the other day I found out I have 5. Where did the other 4 come from? Do rusty garden tools have a form of immaculate conception I have heretofore been unaware of? Its all like that, a spare wheel for the garden tractor turns into three. Tin roofing of various colors replicates in orgasmic spasms and when the hell did all of the bowling balls show up?

Sorry this is older but I posted it in the wrong spot?!?!?

Or at least that is what it feels like. Coming back from VC, after just insuring the Dodge, I lost the pinion bearings in the rear end. I had this big truck pass me and the smell of gear-oil was overwhelming. I get on the CB and tell him the bad news, he has something major wrong. You see at the time I didn't know it was me, your not supposed to be able to smell your own car, not the back of it anyway. If you can hear me Knight Transport lease driver, I am sorry for wasting your time. Yep you guessed it, it was me.



Anyway long story short, I top off the rear end with the thickest oil I can find and drive it back home, no choice, had to work. Pulled the cover next afternoon and found this:




Of course it had to be during a wind storm so all that crap blew back on me every time a gust came up. I have some very powerful rare earth magnets inside the rear end so they gathered all the bad shavings and saved the rest of my bearings and gears so it is not as bad as it looks. Fixing it will not even be all that expensive but I don't have tools big enough to get the pinion nut off so I will have to take it to Dad's shop. With the Dodge down I had to turn to the s-10 to get me to the hanging of Jack Slade over this labor day weekend. It well, I don't even want to talk about what it took to get it running again. I can't even sell the thing because so much is held together with spit and twine. After this last rather heavy-handed repair, its a little worse.

Another 6 hour Jeep ride and I am back home again. It was a hoot of a drive with mechanical bodily fluids squirting, dripping and oozing all over the place, but better than the drive down. On the drive down I kept an eye on the severity of the oil leak by the amount puddling on the fenders. Changed out the oil bath oil filter for a paper element which did punch the fuel mileage up to 15mpg, a dramatic boost over the 10 mpg I got going there. It cost me $70 to drive back compared to $104 on the way down. With summer over, it is time to get down to the serious business of whatever it is I do. That is what I keep telling myself anyway but instead I have been messing around online for 2 hours.


I purchased wheel bearings for that crappy little trailer made so famous in the "hick" photo. Normal bearings sets run $10-$15 a wheel. Not this hunk-o-crap. At $60 a wheel these bearings are hand forged in the mountains of Mongolia by Buddhist monks before being smuggled into this country in tubs of yak butter. The Napa guy advised me to take 'real good care' of these because he was not sure he can get another set of 'those little (expletive deleted)ers'. Fantastic! At least the old ones were in need of replacement, their condition fell someplace between "wow you still pull this" and "oh shit". Lets just say I rumbled down the road to my own bass line.