Builders Share

Light Duty Tasks

A minor back injury (I can still walk) has kept me off the main task of repairing the rotted sill along the front of the house.  With the cold weather approaching, the inability to take care of that and other physically intensive tasks like stacking firewood and doing some minor roof repairs makes one appreciate the predicament that early-American homesteaders would find themselves when a similar injury would lay them up.  At least we still have the oil furnace as a backup.

Although I can't crawl around on my hands and knees with a sawzall to carve away at the sill, there are a few light-duty tasks I've been able to get to in the meantime.

I recently ordered set of brackets for making a firewood rack.  For the past couple of winters I've stacked wood on discarded shipping pallets and other pieces of scraps.  This worked alright except it meant either creating some end post or using a criss-cross method of stacking the ends of the wood pile so that it was self-supporting.

Our wood stove has a small firebox which requires the wood to be no more than 16" long. I found it wasn't easy to stack wood this narrow in free-standing rows without being very deliberate about the process.  Stacking wood isn't something that I really care to be that deliberate about so I've turned to these wood racks as a solution.

A set of brackets combined with some 8 foot pressure treated 2x4s will hold about 1/2 a cord.  If this works well, I'll build some more racks to help with my firewood frustrations.

The light task of putting these together kept me busy long enough to feel the weekend wasn't a total loss, and also gave me the pleasure of using the old handsaw again.

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What Rot

Before I actually started cutting away the rotted sill, I wanted to shore up some of the nearby framing.  The ancient hot water heater I've mentioned in previous postings (Hot Water Detour and Revisit to Hot Water) was installed a lifetime ago and in such a way that has a bearing on the sill work I'm involved in now.

New joist next to sawed-off timber.

In order to get the big stone lined tank into the basement, the installers cut a hole in the floor right inside the front door.  They also cut right through a 7" diameter log that served as a floor joist.  They patched up the hole with some new flooring and tacked a couple of scraps to the freshly cut ends of the log to serve as headers for the severed joist.

The tolerance of wood frame construction for this kind of butchery is pretty amazing.  It really looks like the floor should have collapsed a long time ago, but I suppose between the old plank flooring that's an inch thick, the hardwood flooring above that, and the scrap pieces nailed in as headers, the load that the old floor joist was meant to carry is spread out.

Now I was about to cut into one of the framing members that was probably carrying some of that extra load.  Before I started, I thought it best to replace the severed joist.

The challenge was the space I had to work in.  A mix of plumbing, heating ducts, and electrical wires converge on that spot.  Getting a new joist in there meant removing staples on the electrical wires so they could be moved aside and then threading a couple of 12 foot 2x6 boards through the ducts and plumbing so they could be sandwiched together and mounted. I also needed to jack up the new joist a bit before mounting it in its joist hanger.  It seem the floor had sagged a bit over the years.

With the new joist in, I was ready to start cutting away at the rotted sill.  There's still the issue of the wall studs that are supported by the sill, and how much sill I can cut out without providing support for those. There are 4 in question. The two on either side of the front door weren't getting any real support from the sill because of the rot, so I'm not worried about those.  The two studs on either side of those, however, may be carrying some load.  I'm relatively confident that I'll be alright taking the sill out from under those if I have to.  Again, the wood frame has the ability to transfer its load through the sheathing and across the top plate. It's not like removing one leg of a three-legged stool. It's more like taking 4 legs from a 60 legged stool.  Still, I'll be removing pieces of the rotted beam carefully, and plan on providing temporary support where I can.

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Sill Exposed

With the days of summer waning I figured I better get started on at least one of the exterior projects I planned for this year.  The sill under the front door threshold is severely rotted and needs to be replaced.

I've been pretty confident all along that the awful looking rot was limited to that one area but I really couldn't be sure until I removed some siding to have a look.  The siding on Chez Melendy is cement asbestos shingles.  These shingles were probably added to the house sometime in the 50s when asbestos was all the rage and before it was deemed a hazard.  The shingles are fireproof and are a good protective siding with decent insulating qualities.  They don't pose the same hazard as other forms of asbestos because the asbestos is trapped in cement.  Unless the shingles are pulverized in some way, the asbestos remains encapsulated.

Knowing the lack of danger posed by the shingles didn't keep me from being cautious, however, so I donned my fine-particulate respirator and got to work removing the first two courses of siding.  The shingles are strong when mounted flush to the house but are brittle when removed.  I couldn't help but break some as they came off, and it was for this reason that I wore the respirator.

Note: Asbestos particles are microscopic and can pass easily through your basic 2 dollar dust mask. An OSHA approved fine-particulate respirator is the only way to go.

Once the asbestos shingles were removed, I was ready to remove some of the original siding that was underneath.  I was happy to see that the original siding is in pretty good shape.  At some point in the future I'd like to remove all the asbestos shingles and go back to the original clapboards to bring out the original charm of this old cape cod style cottage.

With all the siding removed from the lower 12" of the house, I could see the condition of the sill beam all along the front. Happily, it's not in real bad shape after a hundred and fifty years of existence.

The real work is ahead of me though as I need to chisel away the rotted section and then use pressure treated lumber to replace what's been removed.  I'll be looking for advice from some local builders as I start to put it all back together.  This section of the house is critical in that it's susceptible to moisture and, if not insulated properly, can provide a place for cold air infiltration.  I want to get this job right the first time, and completed before the snow flies.

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This and That

This weekend was spent taking care of odds and ends.  I hooked up the vanity light in the upstairs bathroom.  I found this industrial fixture in an architectural salvage store for $10.  The light looks like it came out of a WWII era submarine.  It's a little big for a vanity light but it looks so cool, I thought I'd give it  try.

We still have to decide on a medicine cabinet.  I'm considering building one using the wood salvaged from the old kitchen cabinets that I ripped out nearly three years ago.  We'll see.

Speaking of wood that was salvaged from the original demolition, the pile of scrap seen at right is what's left of all the unpainted wood I ripped out of the house.  This pile is half as big now as it was when I finished the demolition.  I hate throwing things out, even trash sometimes. 

While gutting the insides of the house at the beginning of this project, I separated the unpainted wood from the rest of the demo material figuring I could burn it for fuel in the wood stove.  It's turned out to be a bit of a chore processing these scraps for use as fuel.  The main task is cutting the pieces to a length that can fit in the stove, and then either storing them in boxes or bundling them with twine.

After two years, this pile is starting to decompose.  It's time to get rid of it entirely so that its rotting doesn't end up contributing to the demise of the barn.  Today, I spent a couple hours cutting up the stuff with an old table saw.  I've got a ways to go before getting rid of it all.  It may come down to hiring somebody to haul it away.

The other task we got started on was painting the bathtub.  This tub came with the house and it's been sitting in the upstairs hallway for a couple years waiting for the bathroom tile to be installed.

The paint that was on the tub was in fair shape so Cybele used a wire brush and heavy grit sandpaper to remove anything that was loose.  Then she applied two coats of primer that's formulated for all surfaces including metal.  Tomorrow we'll put on the first coat of the blue paint we chose for the tub.

Some web info suggested all kinds of sandblasting and spray painting for cast iron tubs, the idea of turning my upstairs hallway into a paint shop didn't fly.  I'm sure that two coats of primer on cleaned-up surface will be sufficient.

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Wiring the Bath

I finished up the wainscoting on Sunday after having run out of material on Saturday.  That job is done. The pictur e on the left is two photos stitched together which means that weird bend in the wall is not an architectural feature.

With the carpentry done, is was time to don my electrician's cap and get to work hooking up the receptacles and the radiant floor heat with its programmable thermostat.

If you remember from a previous post (No Cold Feet), I had to fish wires through the wall for the radiant floor heat since it wasn't part of the original plan for the bathroom.  Now I needed to grab power from a nearby box that contains a GFCI receptacle and a switch for the vanity light.  The receptacle and the vanity light were the only services on the bathroom circuit (the overhead light and exhaust fan are on the upstairs lighting circuit) so adding the radiant heat mat on that line was okay.  The mat is a small one that only draws 1.5 amps.  The instructions recommend a dedicated circuit but grabbing power is okay as long as the mat is protected by a Ground Fault Interrupt (GFI).  The thermostat that came with the kit is has a GFI built into it, so I'm all set there.  If I wanted, I could have used the GFCI receptacle as the interrupt as well.

Getting everything hooked up is easy enough but it's often a challenge to get the wires all shoved neatly back into boxes so the switches and receptacles aren't popping out.  If you're not careful getting the wires pushed back in, you're likely to nick the insulation or dislodge one of the wire nuts.

Once I had the thermostat, receptacle, and switch wired, it was time to connect the circuit to the main panel.  This is where the stress level for the DIYer goes up a notch.  I wouldn't even attempt this if I hadn't been given a good hands-on lesson by an electrician friend. One misplaced poke, and that's all she wrote.

Connecting the circuit to the main panel is a matter of hooking up the leads to the neutral bus, the ground bus, and the breaker, all the while keeping it as neat as possible and staying well clear of the main.

It's remarkable how many individual circuits are required for a smallish modern house.  At this point, I'm up to 20 and I still haven't hooked up the range hood, microwave, or dishwasher circuits.  It's getting pretty crowded to work in the main panel, but I'm nearing the end of having to add circuits and having kept it neat, I've kept it accessible.

When I was done adding the bath circuit to the panel, I was ready to try out the heated floor.  I turned the circuit on and went upstairs to check things out. The GFI on the thermostat was tripped and when I reset it, it tripped again. I reset it again hoping that the second trip was a fluke but the interrupt tripped again.  My worst fear was that the radiant heat mat, that was now buried under porcelain tile, had a short in it somewhere.

When installing the radiant heat mat, it's important to continually test the leads for shorts so that you don't end up tiling over a mat that's defective or has been damaged.  I was diligent and did test it throughout the process, but something can always happen, and this time I was afraid it did.

I took a deep breath, however, and pulled the thermostat back out of the wall to re-inspect the hookup. It turned out that I had mistakenly combined the line and load neutral wires.  That would have been okay in another instance but not with this thermostat.  Once I separated the neutral leads, the thermostat and the heat mat worked fine. Whew!

The nights here are getting cool but with the programmable thermostat dialed in, I've got a nice warm tiled bathroom floor to greet me in the mornings.  When the temperature goes to -20 in the dead of winter, the upstairs bathroom might become a popular spot.

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A Board Too Short

Another Saturday rolls around and I'm back on task to completing the upstairs bathroom.  When I walked away from this project a couple weeks ago, I still had about 8 lineal feet of wainscoting to install, along with baseboards and door casings, and a bathtub to paint and install as well.

Today I hoped to finish up the wainscoting but ran into a few snags.  The first problem came at the very start.

When I started installing the wainscoting back in August, I started my first board at the south east corner of the room. It was important to keep the wainscoting plumb, and since the east wall is not plumb (after 150 years) I couldn't place the first board flush to the wall.  I don't know what I was thinking at the time, but I decided to simply leave a gap to be dealt with later, and later was today.

It would have been better if when starting the wainscoting I had trimmed a piece that could go flush with the "unplumb" wall on the left while maintaining "plumbness" on the right. Now I had a small gap to deal with which meant cutting a narrow, odd-shaped piece and hoping that it didn't come out looking ugly.

Filling that little gap took a lot more time than if I had taken care of the oddity at the start, but with some fancy table saw cuts, a compass, perseverance, and cursing, I got it done.

The next problem came at the same corner where I had installed the baseboard on the south wall leaving a gap to account for the wainscoting that would be installed on the east wall.  Again, I don't know what I was thinking back in August, or whether I just wasn't, but I had left too large a gap.  This meant another narrow odd-shaped piece of material to make up the difference.

I have to give myself some slack because this is the first time I've ever installed wainscoting and my finish carpentry experience doesn't go much further than what's been described here.  The end product is far from being a disaster.  If anyone wants to go sniffing around the corners of my bathroom looking for errors, I suppose the deserve everything they encounter.

The other two mistakes of the day were the more pedestrian kind. (1) I ran out of wainscoting and had to take a trip to the building supply store for more, and (2) I wasted some baseboard stock by cutting a piece too short.

The latter mistake came about by measuring without taking account of the floor not being level--another old-house anomaly.

Tomorrow I'll be back behind the saw finishing up what I started today and be one more step on my way to completing the bathroom.

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Move Mania

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On Sunday of Labor Day Weekend, I woke up with the plan to install the rest of the wainscoting in the bathroom.  It was a beautiful day, and I looked forward to the task of cutting up finish stock out in the yard and then pretty easily chasing my wife and son out of the house so I could work unhindered in the upstairs.

When I went out the shed to get started, though, I saw that I didn't have enough finish stock for the job.  It might have been that one of the big box retailers was open and could have provided the material I needed on that day, but the last thing I wanted to do on a Sunday, was deal with the vagaries of strip mall shopping.  I scratched the plan.

Instead, my wife (Cybele) and I decided to rearrange some the furniture to suit the new layout we created downstairs with the guest/work rooms.   Our plan was simply to move the TV into one of the guest rooms so that our living room would be a place for reading and conversation, away from the noise.  We also wanted to move a bookcase and the secretary to follow along with our room-use plan, and then bring another bookcase in from the barn to put in place where the secretary was.

The simplicity of our intent quickly devolved into a near complete de-construction of our downstairs layout.  Moving the TV went fine, and then unloading the bookcase and moving it went okay too.  Moving the secretary wasn't difficult but once it was in place, we realized the second bookcase could not go where the secretary was because of the placement of a heating register. (Are you still with me?)

We needed to rethink our living room plan. Since the 2nd bookcase couldn't go where the secretary was, it meant either find a new place for the secretary or put it back where it was.  We didn't really like where it was (we had always consider it temporary), but our options for its placement were limited.  The house has small rooms with a lot of windows. I guess back in 1850, without Ikea around, they just shoved their CD and DVD collections under the beds with the chamber pots or something.  Or maybe they just looked out the windows for entertainment.

At this point anyway, our house was a mess, it was getting later in the afternoon, and we were getting tired from moving furniture. (I left out the part about the third bookcase being moved upstairs and all the junk that had to be moved around in the barn to get to it).

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The only answer to the dilemma was to move more stuff of course.  The secretary would go where the pantry was, the pantry would go somewhere else, and the 2nd bookcase would go where the secretary was just after we moved it the first time.  (You with me?)

Well, one Labor Day later and the house (and the family that lives in it) is just about back together. None of tasks that were listed on my last post have been started, but there's always tomorrow, and the next day, and the next, and the...

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