Another fine scrape

As I mentioned before, the First Floor project is on hold. Grace and I agreed that this time of year is best for working on the repainting of the house, so although our first floor (and, if you'll remember, our third floor) is a construction area, we're putting that work on hold to get the house repainted. It's not just a matter of using the nice weather... the wall we're working on now isn't well sealed, and during a particularly harsh rainstorm earlier in the year, I discovered water was getting behind the siding, where it wet the insulation. So, we kinda need to get the walls painted properly and sealed up tight.

We started on July 3rd and 4th, but didn't make too much progress, between getting back into the swing of the paint stripping and not having scaffolding. This weekend, though, we dedicated the entire weekend to stripping paint, and got the bulk of the single biggest wall in the house cleared off.


I have to send the Silent Paint Remover paint stripper back for some warranty work, (it's been heating a little unevenly) but that won't be a problem, as we'll be able to replace boards, prime good boards, and finish reframing at least one of the windows next weekend. Not having the paint stripper won't slow us down too much.


One thing we certainly learned was to stay out of the sun, if possible! We only worked in the sun an hour and a half on Saturday, but it wiped us out. Sunday we got an early start, worked until the sun showed up, then stopped for four hours to let the shade return. We got a ton done, and weren't totally wiped out at the end of the day.


The Outside projects gallery is updated with new pictures and comments, starting with the third picture on the second page!

You gonna put scaffolding on that?

Outdoor scaffolding comes in big sections... the sides are 5x5', and that's not something you can easily move around. Even though the rental place is only about two miles away, last year I drove to a friend's house in New Hope to borrow his dad's pickup, to get the scaffolding. A 22 mile round trip to get scaffolding 2 miles.

When it was time to return it, we decided to try out the roof rack on the Integra. It's only two miles, right? Turns out, with the bike racks, it actually works quite well. The only thing is, the guys at the rental place found this very amusing, to the point where they actually remembered us from last year. The guy behind the counter, though, didn't get to witness this, so when we ordered up two sections of outdoor scaffolding, he nodded to the car in the parking lot, and said:

"You gonna put scaffolding on that?"

When we got around back to pick up the scaffolding, though, we were welcomed back, and all the guys who weren't doing anything at the time came out to watch as we stacked four pieces of scaffolding on top of the car, then put four 8 foot crossbraces in the hatchback. One guy who was helping us stood back as I finished lashing it all down with the ratcheting tiedowns, and said:

"You know, that actually works better on there than many pickup trucks we see."

12 years old, over 200,000 miles, and it's still a great little sport utility vehicle!

Our Old New House is on the market again.

When we moved from a new construction house just outside of Doylestown to an old house in Doylestown, Grace took to referring to the first house our our "Old New House" and the borough residence as the "New Old House". At least... I think that's the way she said it. Coulda been the other way around.

Anyhow, our old new (construction) house is back on the market after three years. Click on the picture to see the listing.

** The house sold, so the link to the listing no longer worked, so I changed it to go to a gallery of the pictures I grabbed from the listing.

The really funny part is several of the pictures look like they haven't done a THING to those rooms beyond move their stuff in. Guess they liked what we did! They did finish the master bedroom, the only room we hadn't redone before we left. That's a running joke between us - when we finish this house, except for the master bedroom, it'll be time to move again.

They did also finish the basement, and it looks like they did a good job. I had talked about doing that while we were there, but never got around to it.

Funny, though, both Grace and I said it brought back memories, but neither of us had any desire to go back. We like our new, old house. :)

First floor project on hold...

Well, according to our plan from earlier this year, the First Floor project is now on hold. Of course, we had hoped to be much farther along at this point, but that's always the case.

The reason for our pause on that project is we slated July and August as the time that we would pick up last year's project, namely repainting the house. We've started, breaking out the Silent Paint Remover and the scrapers. This weekend, we'll get scaffolding, but so far we've already done about 25% of the large wall we finished off with in November. Grace runs the heater, and I scrape. I've picked up a 6" variable speed grinder, so I can resharpen the scrapers at the end of each day, so they're good and sharp for the next day's work. I can even give them a quick resharpening when we break for lunch.

Only problem is the SPR is heating unevenly. I contacted the manufacturer, and they replied very quickly with some possible problems. I looked, and discovered we're still within the 1 year warranty - by exactly one week! So I think we'll be using it this weekend, returning it first thing Monday morning, and hoping for quick turnaround. We might have to find other stuff to do, but there are two windows on that wall (possibly three) which will need reframing, so we'll stay good and busy if we can't be scraping paint.

A little time off

Not much being done on the house recently. Last weekend we spent some time with Grace's folks and managed to just take it easy. I got up late, did a little work, had breakfast, then napped until almost noon. That was NICE! Before we left, though, we managed to pick up another 18 foot 2x8, and sister another joist, this time completely on our own. I've got some pics from that one, just haven't posted it yet.

This past weekend, Grace had a personal trainers' seminar in Rhode Island, so I tagged along. I snuck into a couple of sessions, and the info they were sharing was REALLY interesting. I can only imagine how good it is if I knew everything they were talking about, like Grace. She was really excited about some of the stuff she learned. When I wasn't sneaking into the seminars, I was walking around Providence, and taking pictures. Got some good shots, pared the 200+ taken down to 75 (yeah, I know, still a bunch) which I posted in the gallery.

On the house front, we're starting back up this weekend, but the First Floor project is going to be on hold for now. We still have to finish repainting the house like we started last year, and now is the time to get back to work on that. Hopefully, working together, Grace and I will make quick progress. Unlike the first floor project, stripping paint and repainting isn't rocket surgery, just takes some time and effort. I've learned how to resharpen the scrapers, too, so that'll help immensely.

Oh yeah! One more update on the house... we finally had a tile guy come in and tile the backsplash in the kitchen, and it looks GREAT. Have some pictures of that as well, just haven't posted them either.

Fan guards are there for a reason...

We've got a fan set up, circulating air around the cedar for the windows. It's an old floor fan, and the protective basket that goes around the fan blades got damaged, so I took it off. Well, just in case you were curious, those guards really do make a fan safer. I've managed to get my hand whacked by fan blades twice this weekend, and both times drew quite a bit of blood.

Also, despite working (very carefully) inside the main circuit breaker panel to run new circuits, I managed to get a "tickle" from the fan motor when I reached to switch it off.

Like Dad taught me, "once you don't respect this, it'll kill ya". I guess I respect the circuit panel just a little bit more than this silly little fan. Both can still hurt, though, so be careful when you're working with stuff, even if it's not quite mortal danger.

This weekend, electrical work.

With the cedar for the outside casing on the windows still drying this weekend focused us on electrical work. I transferred switches from an old metal triple-gang box into a nice, new plastic quad box, ran wiring for the light in the dining room, and moved the location of the smoke alarm.

The quad box comes from our plan for the wiring. Two switches control lights in the kitchen, because there's no room for them by the kitchen doorway. Then, we have one switch for the chandelier over the dining room table, and one which will control the lights on the stairs to the second floor. The wiring for the kitchen circuits is already existing, since it was all redone during the The Big Project (which is starting to seem like not such a great name because our current first floor project is also pretty darn big) but I had to transfer it out of the nasty old metal box. The wiring for the dining room was all removed during demolition, so that's all new, and I'm also taking the opportunity to split the first floor into a 20-amp circuit for outlets and a separate 15 amp circuit for lights.

While we've got the ceiling off, I'm also going to redo the circuits for the second floor, and I got a start on that one, replacing fifteen feet of cable with 6 feet of new cable. For some reason, the old wire ran several feet out of the way, extending the length of cable needed. Very odd.

The nicest part is having a real light in the dining room area. It lights the area up far better than the 100W floor lamp we've been using.

Undercabinet lights in the kitchen

This isn't recent but my mom had a question about our undercabinet lights in the kitchen, so I created a new gallery for it. I haven't done proper descriptions for each picture, but there is a description for the gallery and summaries for each picture.

Window reframing on hold

With the structural work done, we've been most currently working on reframing the windows. However, I discovered that Lowes has red cedar in the exact size we need for the outside casing. We needed 5/4x6" stock, which isn't common. The local lumber yard has it, but it's a bit expensive, especially for the red cedar, which is more rot resistant than pine. When I found it at Lowes for under $12 for a 5/4x6"x12' section, I was very interested. That's actually the same price Lowes has for the same size board in pine, and their selection of pine boards is horrible.

I bought one piece to bring it home and work with it, but even at the store I realized that the wood was quite wet. This is a problem, because not only won't paint stick to wet wood, but wet wood can warp as it dries. So, once I realized that this red cedar decking would work for our casings, I decided to pick up some more and try to get it dry and straight.

So today, I spent some time building a very rudimentary "drying rack" out of all the wood we have on hand. Take a look at the gallery to see how I did it. Let's hope I get the wood nice and dry and manage to keep it good and straight, too.

Since it will take a little while for the wood to dry out properly, though, the window project will have to be on hold for a week or two. No worries, though, there is plenty to still be working on. At this point, we're planning on working on the electrical phase of the project this upcoming weekend.

Gallery updated!

I've updated the gallery, with additions to the Structural, Window, and Overview galleries.

Summary of the project at this point

Quick update on where we are in the first floor project. We've been busy, and have been making great progress... at least as much as can be made when you only really work on something during the weekends!

• Demolition, been done for a while
  
• Insulation, mostly done.
  
• Structural reinforcement, mostly done, just some blocking remains.
  
• Electrical rewiring - partially started, still a bunch to do.
  
• Radiator work - drained the system, disconnected one radiator so we could finish the sistering of the joists.
  
• Reframing the windows - one window completed, the frames for the other three have been done.
  
• Redo staircase - still have to figure out exactly what we'll do
  
• Drywalling/painting/trim work... miscellaneous finishing stuff is so far off I can't even think about it quite yet. ;)
  

One good thing is that when I've been working on something that doesn't need Grace's help, she's been stripping paint from the front of the house, picking up where we left off last year. So, we're making progress on multiple fronts at once. We even managed to install under-cabinet lighting in the kitchen, and are hoping that our tile contractor gets back to us about installing the backsplash. We've got all the tile sitting in the mudroom awaiting him.

So we're busy, and making great progress, tons, TONS faster than we used to be, but the scale of what we're doing makes it all seem very slow.

No updates?

Sorry all, haven't been very good at updates lately, either here or in the gallery. Just haven't had or made the time to do it! I have pictures, just haven't uploaded them. Certainly have had a bunch to say, just haven't done that. Sorry for those of you who are interested in the progress!

Electrical demolition

This past weekend's major project was working on the electrical. I decided to keep it simple and just redo everything. I've got some pictures up in the gallery.

New name for the blog...

"Atomic Dog" was just a name I came up with because it was a play on a friend's "Radioactive Cat" blog. Since Grace and I have been watching a ton of "This Old House" lately, decided to rename it to "Our Old House".

A new toy for the project!

New tools are always fun. When we were working on repainting the outside of the house later last year, we discovered the window frame was rotted and wound up replacing a whole section of wall. One thing I learned was how to recreate a window frame. I managed it pretty well with the tools we had, but couldn't help but think that I could have done a better job with a router.

Enter... the router. Not cheap, but really a very, very versatile tool, and with four windows needing to be reframed, it's becoming more and more a necessity. Plus, we'll be able to use it again on many other projects in the future! Thanks to Kelley Nelson for pointing me to CPO Bosch which sells factory refurbished Bosch power tools. Got my router for about $50 less than retail, and it's still got a full warranty.

A router alone is pretty useless - you need the bits. Stopped at the Lowes, and individual bits were over $30! My mom and dad, always a great resource for woodworking and houseworking info, pointed me to MLCS, who had a really nice 33 bit kit for only $99! $3 a bit or over $30... and these are bits my folks have been using for a couple years now. Yeah. Hard call there.

Still alive...

Yeah, we're still here and we're still working on the house. Haven't had much chance to do any updates. I have uploaded pictures of the demolition to the gallery, and did some commenting. Also split up the gallery into major subprojects so it didn't get too many pictures all in one gallery.

A video that works...

I posted a link to a resized video yesterday that didn't work for anyone. Google video is way easier, so I swapped that out. If you had trouble viewing the video, scroll down to yesterday's post.

Demolition's done!

Three weekends of work, and our living room and dining rooms are both gutted down to bare studs and joists. We've even removed a wall, joining the two smaller rooms into one larger room, getting over a foot more floor space. (it was a thick wall!)

I've got a bunch of pictures... 342 raw pictures so far - and at the moment it's just too much to dig through and get posted in the gallery. I did find two that are very representative of the change we've seen in less than a month... one before the work started, and another as of tonight:

Before:


After:

If you don't believe that the pictures are the same view, notice the white radiator on the right side of each picture. Same radiator. Also notice in the "before", the chimney is behind the vacuum cleaner in the background. On the floor in the "after" is the shadow of the wall that we removed, which thankfully was not load-bearing, and was quite thick! As you can see, even with bare walls, it really opens up the space! On the left of the "after" picture is the first of two plastic walls which seals the first floor from the second, to keep all of our stuff up there from getting covered in dust.

We're really excited, although immediately, the most exciting part was having the demo area clean enough to unseal the kitchen. Previously, in order to go to the kitchen, we had to walk out the front door, around to the back of the house, then into the kitchen. With the recent winter storm, that's even less entertaining than it had been. The other night, Grace was hungry but almost decided against dinner just because she didn't want to go outside.

Until I get more pictures posted, I offer you this demolition video:

I realized that hammers and wonderbars just weren't fast enough, and since we didn't need to be fancy (it's demolition, after all) I grabbed a fiberglass sledgehammer handle (just the handle) and used it as a big lever to forcibly rip the plaster, lath, and drywall off the wall. Here you can see me rip up several layers at once. You can also see the dusty, dusty mess it created. Grace washed our clothes *every* night.

Thanks for reading, hopefully I'll have the pictures and more soon!

I feel dirty...

I feel dirty, and it's not just because we've spent the past three weekends demolishing the house. No, I finally broke down and got a blog. "blog", short for "weblog", which, being a system administrator, I always thought was what webservers use to log server access. But no, it's this trendy thing where anyone can post their thoughts on anything and everything, whether it's useful or not.

Whatever.

My use for it will be to document our home remodeling projects, in more detail than I've used in emails. Remains to be seen if this works out, but since it's free, I figured why not.

House Projects blog

Decided to set up a blog to document the house projects. Been kinda resisting it, but figured it's better than excessively long email messages. We'll see how it works.