More blooms

Unpacking is hard work.

Not sure if I need more or less coffee in my cup to stay right side up. Andy is working at snow farm so I am left to battle my own work ethic. Blogging is more interesting than unpacking. Even with little to report.

Sunday

So we haven't gotten a chance to update about the end of the long weekend because it was so super productive. We are also in the final phase of cleaning in our Northampton apartment. It's intense taking care of two places at once but soon we will focus our energy up here. So, all in all the long weekend was really productive but Sunday was the best by far. Among the smaller accomplishments, I mounted the toilet paper holder and corner cabinet in the downstairs bathroom.

I am learning to use lots of new tools and I make the very best concentration faces.  

The hammer and driver are the only tool use documentation from Sunday but I swear I used the jig saw and chop saw. Not the "clircular" saw- that one is "too sharp" and "just for real work men like Andy" according to a little boy in my class. Besides the reward of having a more structurally sound home to live in, I am getting some great material for stories to share at school. I have a fan club of three year olds (mostly boys) fascinated by the number of tools in have at my home!

And a "real work man" too!

Here is the beam and subfloor in place:

I am clearly inspecting the quality work with a well trained eye. It passed my inspection.

One other mini side project of the day was straightening out a band joist (I am making  that word up but I think that sounds like something Andy might call it). We had to pop over to the neighbors for a socket wrench extension. Andy held the other side from the basement while I cranked the wrench by reaching under the deck. The difference is substantial:

The top is before and bottom is after.  I did that!

Tha peonies have popped and they make hammock laying even better- I didn't know that was possible! 

Hemlock and Tar

After an early and running start this morning Andy realized he could be more productive if we picked up some additional supplies. So off we went to get a sister beam for between the French doors. Here she is riding home:

Who's driving this crazy Buick?! Oh it's parked. Andy was talking about white oak logs with someone who probably didn't really care when I snapped the top pic.

After hitting up Florence hardware for some additional goods we got a buy one get one free pizza lunch for the drive home. When we returned home I quickly started wiggling our belongings into more or less the places where they might live and then volunteered myself or an awful, awful job: applying tar coating to the foundation that my family had helped expose last weekend. This is what we are working with here:

It's the worst. The absolute worst. The brush kept coming undone and holes I had filled with the stuff kept reappearing. A real test of mental and physical strength this job. I hate even writing about it. It's not slower than molasses up a hill in January to me anymore. It's slower than tar on a foundation wall in June. 

 

It's finished now. Andy is hoping to have the French doors reinstalled today or tomorrow. I am glad to be able to do jobs like this one that don't require a carpenters brain. My body is much better suited for the organizing in home though. So back to that!

And the band plays on

So after digging out all the dry-rotted and insect-eaten wood that was pretending to hold up an end of our house, I finally had the joy of permanently putting in clean wood.

First, the weird bottom sill, which is now a pressure treated 2x4 for the first time:

 Not having a Ramset, or whatever the tool is called for anchoring wood to concrete, I used PL adhesive. This will be largely responsible for keeping bugs from crawling under. Not that they won't find another way...

I also made use of the 20-ton jack as a clamp, providing downward pressure against the sill from the header above. It was really good for my psyche to see some clean wood in there!

Next, the more typical 2x8 sill, again pressure treated for the first time:

This piece I notched around the end of the carrying beam in the basement. Keep in mind that the post seen here is temporary. I also intend to put in one of those adjustable lally columns just under the end of this beam in the basement. I can tell that there is water damage there, but I can't tell how deep in the end grain if the triple 2x10 it goes. 

Finally, the band joist or maybe you like "box beam," and what I have been referring to as its sister:

This was a struggle as the kiln dried Fraser fir that was used in the early 70's had an ever so slightly different dimension to it. This certainly wasn't my finest work, but it is surely a whole lot better than it ever had been in this spot.

  This means that I am finally back up above the deck ledger! For now! I still need to put in the sheathing under the opening, and re-bolt the ledger to the joists through 3/4" spacers. All of that should be child's play compared to removing the same to get at the sills!

After wondering through this all how much I needed to push the header back up, I came to a good finding today. Measuring the trimmer (I think... I have a really difficult time with names of framing members...) studs on either side of the opening would give me the intended height in the center, obviously. So a quick whip of the tape measure shows me that even what I thought had been a fairly pre-loaded temporary post could be a full half-inch longer! Amazing! This place really sagged! But having seen what I have seen so far, I am not surprised!

I now have a gameplan in place, and I am sure one more solid day on this project will find me ready to throw the door units back in and move on to something else! 

In case anyone is reading this that has lent or handed down or extendedly loaned tools to me in the past, MANY THANKS! I could not do any of this work without them. Further, if anyone wants to pass down a Fein multi-master, well that would be just swell! 

That's all for now. Tonight we continue the schlep of belongings from our apartment in Town to our home in the Country.

1love

Andy

Starting a long weekend

Today is Thursday and I have taken today and tomorrow off for some long weekend house projecting. This is what Andy sketched as a possible end result (the mud room fell off the page):

It's a good follow up to his exploratory digging mission because a lot of what might change the face of the house is my idea for a little nook/alcove type area where the deck off the master bedroom currently is - Andy sees some structural gains by making that area indoors but I will let him explain it. I just see that we could use the newer sliders downstairs where they would actually be walking through regularly and have a great, sunny little book reading/lounging area of the bedroom! 

Alright, off to a productive start...

Exploratory digging

So with nothing better to do (ha), I decide to see what is under the rolled roofing material on the balconies.

The answer is: not much. There is some old impregnated felt (or something) and some loose granulate that at one time must have been tarred to the felt. After that, it's one layer of completely punked sheathing, and the joist bays. 

If you look carefully, past the side if the beam in the living room, you can see the the stripe on one of the parts of my lathe in the basement!

At least I'm not finding ants. I know they must be here though. If I don't have trouble yet with mold, I will by the time this is all over!

1love

Andy

Hippie B*)($#@t

Our house is full of what my good friend Peter Meerbergen would call hippie work, or some such variation (see the title of this post). Well I say, why not fight the power with some of my own?

The whole thing is a jigsaw puzzle in reverse. I figure I will have to resort to this type of move now and then, in order to close up one project and move onto the next. Otherwise, I would end up taking apart the whole house before making any repairs.

You can see the level of decay in the band joist between my feet. It feels really good to put some clean dry wood back into my house, even if it is quite a bit less than ideal.

1love

Andy