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What Else? Labor on Labor Day

Two days of labor is how we celebrated Labor Day. Even though the weather wasn't all that bad, I checked with Brandon & Tracy next door and he wasn't feeling well and needed to sleep, so that kept me from doing the jack hammering (Owhrr, owhrr, owhrr!) on the driveway slab. So instead, I spent the day inside just picking up trash and sweeping up big time, even though the forecast calls for about 2 more inches of drywall dust in the next couple weeks. At least it would be clean for a day or so, in case company stopped by.
Here's a couple quick shots of the living/dining room; it's starting to look like a house again. And the heat! The heat! It's so warm in there now, and the water temp on the boiler appears to only be somewhere around 105 degrees. This is really going to be interesting to see how this works out. As I'm cleaning up, any spare insulation I find I throw it into the attic. I figure it never hurts to have more insulation up there, especially with all that heat we're generating with electricity. I still haven't heard "Boo" from the insulation sub since he returned from his vacation and after I left a couple messages. I should try him tomorrow just to close the loop. A guy could get a full time job being a Construction Manager for a single family home, I swear.

Today, I got the 40 pound demo hammer instead of the 60 pounder, and it made all the difference in the world. I could actually manage it without feeling like I had to do the clean and jerk every time it poked through the slab. It was exhausting. But with the 40 pounder, that the guy said wasn't going to be effective for breaking up a slab, I was able to get the whole rest of the driveway chunked up in less than two hours. Record time.

So that left most of the day - from noon until about 5:30 for Heather and me to pull up the chunks and pile them up for the new patio. It was a full day of hauling chunks up hill, and double wheelbarrow loads from the back yard, taking bites out of the orca pile of dirt and moving them to the front yard. Labor, labor labor. Working in the front yard makes it possible for all the curious neighbors to stop by and make jokes about laboring on Labor Day. Of course, we laughed each time.

At the end of the day today, this is what the future patio looked like. Almost all the way to the same floor level as the living room, and we're pretty much out of big old concrete chunks now; only a few more left that we're using to hold down the cardboard on the "grass." I guess you'd call it yardboard, not cardboard.

And we were able to build up the ground in front of the main entrance too, so the concrete stoop won't require 16 yards of concrete. Just 4 maybe. Here's a 'Before & After" shot, the left one taken on Saturday after I put on the waterproofing and protection board, and the right one taked this morning. Pete put in a full day today too, more coats of mud on the drywall, making it smoother and smoother. He really is a craftsman - and the corners are all crisp and true. Having done my share of D.I.Y drywall in the past, I have much appreciation for his work. It's looking real good.

Tomorrow it's back to work - more labor after all the laboring over the weekend.

Movin' Dirt & Waterproofing

It was a hard work kind of day today. It started out with installing a layer of Tremco Paraseal, a Bentonite waterproofing product on all the front concrete walls. To fasten it to the concrete, I got to use a Hilti powder activated fastening gun, firing small explosive charges with inch and a quarter nails, about six inches on center all over the dang place. Pow, pow, pow all day long. (Owhrr, owhrr, owhrr!) After that, I put a layer of drainage mat/protection board over it to keep the backfill from damaging the Bentonite and to let water wick away from the wall. The photo below shows both condtions; on the left is the Bentonite with the fasteners all over it holding it to the wall; on the right it's been covered with the drainage mat. That's a chunk of concrete in the middle of it all.

So after all the bang bang bang, Heather and I spent the rest of the day hauling dirt and chunks of concrete from all over the back yard to pile it all up against the house for the patio and entry stoop. The ground level is getting up there slowly but surely, tomorrow we'll be doing it again.

I was also able to get the same two-layer waterproofing system installed on outer wall of Daniel's room where he garage door used to be. By then, Pete had shown up and was slapping up more mud on the drywall. He had never seen these high falootin' products before, so it was all new to him.

Tomorrow I'll probably get the demo hammer again too, so I can finish breaking up the old driveway into chunks that we can use to build up the patio higher too. It's going to be another hard working kind of day again.

W00-H00!!! Warm as Toast!!!

Adam Sandler got the puppy running about 3:30 yesterday afternoon, fixing whatever it was that wasn't allowing the boiler to -uh - boil. By the time I showed up, the water temperature was a balmy 150 degrees F, and Pete was working with the programmable thermostat to see if he could make it stay at a certain temperature until he came back in the morning, instead of going to the lower night time temperature.

This morning, I popped in for a moment and it was toasty warm; if the floor wasn't so dusty I wouldn've taken off my shoes to warm my toes. Where there is bare subfloor and a few holes, you can feel the warmth emanating from the joist cavity. I'd say it's very cool but it's very warm indeed.

Drywall work on the main floor is looking awsome; Pete starts in the basement today!

We Got Heat!

Just called Pete; Adam Sandler came out today and got 'er all fired up and the heat is emanating off the floor like the embers of a braai. Only not as hot. Can't wait to check it out - going to leave the office in a few minutes.

Wednesday, August 27; Fire 'Er Up, Boys!

Pete wondered if we could turn on the heat system and get her going today so the drywall could start drying faster. Too much humidity and cool temperatures are slowing down his progres.

So I put the thermostat wires together, flipped the pump breaker on, heard everything click into gear, and flipped on the boiler breaker and switches, and waited for the water temperature to start climbing.

And I waited. And waited. Nothing. Called Even Conklin; he said it could be an electrical issue. Called Sparky; we agreed it wasn't an electrical issue. Called Evan back, and he was going to send out Anthony (the Adam Sandler look-alike) to come out on Thursday.

Keep your fingers crossed; we're going into the cool season and there ain't no backup to this system,..... I'm sure it'll be fine. :-)

It's Wednesday and It's $28.15

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Wetness Outside, & Some Inside

I know what you're thinking: "What the heck is that?" Don't blame ya. Looks like a wet streak on the basement floor. It is, sort of - it's a drying wet streak, where Pete put down the self-levelling concrete, a very viscous cementitious mixture that seeks its own level so that the floor is nice and flat. Problem is, there's flatness and there's levelness. Stuff can be flat without being level. We're going for flatness here since the floor is all catywompus and it's really the best we can reasonably hope for. When the cementitious stuff seeks its own level, it flows into areas Pete wasn't thinking it would flow into, so he's having to use more stuff than he anticipated.
And more drywall work big time upstairs, including mudding in the bathroom. Pete's really sticking to the mission to get the upstairs ready for us as soon as possible.

Since it was raining like a cow peeing on a flat rock tonight, we decided to check out a movie at The Crest; "Mongol", the story of how Genghis Kahn became who he was from the ripe old age of nine when he selected his bride, to the beginnings of the most powerful army of all time. Check it out.

Monday, August 25.

We are so not going to get a payoff from the ads on this site unless something drastically different happens. We're still holding at $24.58, which is where it was before my fatal blog deletion. So click away, guys.

Pete almost finished leveling out the basement floor today, and was cranking away on the drywall mudding around the new main entrance when I came by the house this evening. To my surprise, the recessed ceiling lights were in operation for the first time! You could see them through the front patio door (see top photo). Sparky had put in one light switch for those fixtures just before he left apparently, and Pete was taking advantage of it. Odd that I didn't notice it earlier.

And in case you hadn't heard, it was pouring rain pretty much all day. All that cardboard that we cleverly laid out to kill the grass and weeds on the front lawn was pretty well soaked, and fortunately Danny and I put down the biggest concrete chunks on top of it all to keep any of it from blowing away in all the strormy conditions.

Kian, home from summer camp after three weeks in the deep woods, saw the house for the first time in about a month, and for a guy who's pretty typically non-plussed about everything, he let on just a little bit of surprise at the big old Nanawall and some satisfaction with the Man-Cave. I think he's really looking forward mostly to the idea of the media room and the speakers around the house. It's a guy thing, I'm sure.

That's it for tonight. Pretty quiet except for Pete's drywall cranking; hope to see more tomorrow!

Sunday Sunday Sunday!

It was pretty quiet on the homestead front today; though it again started early with a quick trip to dump the clean wood, which Heather had loaded into my Matrix yesterday quickly without taking the time to shake off all the bugs and creepy crawlies before placing it in the car. She knows that I (and our two sons) get "somewhat" creeped out by spiders, but it didn't matter. She just crammed it all in there (bless her heart, there was a boatload of it - or a Matrix load anyway), and let the bugs crawl where they may! Which is fine if she's driving, but not me! So I had to dump the wood first thing this morning and completely vacuum out the interior just in case and critters thought they found a new home.

After that, I worked up a little Sketchup model for the bathroom, since we're trying to decide how much tile to put on the walls and if there needs to be any additional color striping. I think we agreed on some things using the model, but we still have a little more work to do this week. Soon, too, because Pete's really cranking on the drywall work. He'll be ready for finishes soon.

Which takes me to the next photo; it's the floor edge at the stairwell, and there are a number of odd things coming together here. The railing needs to be mounted soon so the flooring detail there needs to be designed and drawn. The concrete basement wall sticks out a little further than the framed wall above, and then there's the slope of the ceiling that angles down, and the joists that need to be covered up with wallboard or wood trim, and the opening I want to keep into Kian's "Man Cave" from the stairs, and the handrail that needs to go down the stairs. Oy! Just listing all the stuff to do makes me want to stay up all night and work on it. Not.

I heard Karin and Phyl made it all the way to Klamath Falls yesterday on their trek to Burning Man. Today they should have pulled into their campsite at the big event sometime late this afternoon.

Kian is back from three weeks at summer camp; Heather's so glad to have him back.

And lastly, it was Heather's dear friend Grassa's birthday today (29!!); she is one of the owners of Tempero do Brasil, the awsome Brazilian restaurant in the U District by Ravenna Avenue. H and I joined them briefly for a wonderful get-together including Pam and Tim from Tacoma, Antonio (of course), and so many other I cant' remember off hand. Maybe H will log in now and add detail and photos!

And that's all that's happening tonight in Lake Wedgbegone, where all the women are beautiful, all men are handsome, and all the children are above average.

Ciao!

Hot, Sweaty, Exhausted

It was going to be a working kind of Saturday today; H and I are trying to keep Pete and Steve on schedule, so we need to do what we can to keep the ball rolling. I started early by going in to check all of the perimeter insulation in the floor joist cavity - my earlier investigations gave me little confidence things were okay. Sure enough, the first area I looked at had the heat tubes up against the rim joist with no insulation separating them (see first photo). That means if you had an infrared goggles this winter and you looked at the house, there'd be a bright red spot right at the floor line where lots of precious heat would be emanating through the wood. There were a couple of spots like that, and a couple spots where I was looking out through small holes to the inside face of the Tyvek (that stuff that Nascar prefers), so I foamed them up real good and put the batts lovingly back into place.

One thing I did find that surprised me; it's a Sparky thing. It looks like he must've ran out of ground wire that had to run back to the main water line because when I took off some of the insulation to inspect, I saw that he had a line of grounding wire running diagonally through the ceiling of the Man Cave, and one of the holes drilled in the joist was made in a way that separated the diagonal bridging from the joist on both sides! (See next photo, showing copper cable and dangling bridging) I nailed the bridging back into place; don't know why it wasn't done earlier. I started all the insulation inspecting at 6:00 and finished the "repairs" by 10:30 pretty much on schedule.

That's when Heather arrived on her bicycle to begin the process of using all the concrete rubble stacked up in the front yard as filler, on which that giant orca-sized dirt pile in the back will provide additional fill, to build up for the front yard patio (a.k.a. "Breakfast Deck"). Daniel joined in the fun about noonish, and together the three of us worked on stacking alternate layers of dirt and rubble to make an earthwork lasagne (without the cheese).

And I had a hare-brained scheme to get a concrete saw to cut up the old basement driveway into chunks that could be neatly stacked too. That turned out to be about the slowest process in the history of Wedgwood, so I switched to a (gasp) 60 pound demo hammer (aka The Breaker) and "Owhrrr, owhrrr, owhrrr!!!") , and let me tell you, the tool only does part of the work. That was hard labor - I remember why I like working in an office again.

By about 3:30 the three of us were all just dragging our heinies because of the heat, but Judy (of the Jack & Judy hip roof and large windowed house down the street) came in for a brief tour (mostly to see the Nanawall of course). When she left, she was able to join the Thumbs Up Crowd too. Check out that shirt. We seem to be providing a pretty fair amount of entertainment for some of the neighbors. Richard came by while I was using the 60 pound mother of all demo hammers, sticky sweaty and barely able to lift the thing out of the pavement after it drilled through it like a hot knife through butter. He was talking about using it in the basement to lower the slab height someday. Oy! The worst thing is, we wouldn't get to watch him if he's in the basement.

Just a tip; if you're under six feet tall, get someone else to use this demo hammer thing. I'm just under 5'-10" and it was a chore to keep lifting it- a couple inches would have helped. But everyone needs to find things out in their own way, eh?

Meanwhile, Pete put in more than a full day, mostly leveling out the troublesome basement floors (Danny's room on the left and the Media Room on the right). My architect friend Jon was recommending some high tech cementitious self leveling stuff, so I almost bought some yesterday, but I called Pete to find out how many bags to get. He said "How much are they?" "Forty bucks a bag." "Oy! Ya know - I am positive I can do it with good old fashioned concrete and that's only three bucks a bag." "You're the boss!" Amazing. So he was in the nice cool basement all day, mixing and pouring thin layers of concrete while the rest of us were out in the hot sun entertaining the neighbors.

At the end of the day, we are just totally exhausted from moving dirt and rubble, amazed at how Pete and Steve can just bang out this kind of work day after day, and on weekends they go on thousand mile long bicycle rides - or hundreds of miles anyway. They are amazing. Danny and I drove by the house about 8:00 and Pete was still finishing up a few things. Long weekend day for the wicked, huh?

The original blog is still toast; it must be forever. Ah well.....this'll do. Ciao.

As you can maybe tell by the fact that Heather is shielding her eyes from the sun, it was a gorgeous afternoon in Seattle today, as Richard and Sarah took advantage of our visit to the house to get another tour. Heather's been choosing to not visit every day like me; she holds out for at least three or four days so that every time she does come through the doors the degree of change takes her breath away.

Today, Pete started taping and mudding the drywall on the main floor! Totally significant milestone. And the cool thing is, Pete likes doing taping and mudding! If you're a D.I.Y. homeowner type at all, you probably think of that part of the job as the one you really want to hire out to someone else. And that someone else turns out to be unreliable, alcoholic, doesn't show up, and can't seem to finish the work - but as H and I gave R & S the full tour this evening, Pete just kept on plugging away happily with his trowel and tape, covering up the seams and screw holes, working his way around the living room, dining room, and kitchen.

Meanwhile, Sarah and Richard gave us two thumbs up for the bathroom, noting the Jacuzzi tub, the skylight, and the storage niche. And of course, two thumbs up for Nanawall. Sarah was itching to see it two weeks ago the night that Pete was installing it and we heard the "@&#!*#!!" emanating from the living room...., so we left him alone and Sarah missed the grand unveiling. But tonight she did get to check it out, and was able after careful deliberations with Richard, to give us two thumbs up for Nana.

And as we were leaving, Richard and Sarah to go do their thing and H and I headed off for the Bon Voyage party for our Burning Man adventurer friends Karin Kough and Phyl Stewart, they were able to give us the two big thumbs up!!!

Check Out The Headline Act

At Vancouver, Washington's big social event of the year!

Moisture Mystery Mistake

Pete left me a note last night about the huge wetness by the basement door. It turns out he left it open during the heaviest rain yesterday, after going in an out of it a lot earlier in the day. Whew. The real leakage amount will be much easier than trying to plug a three foot wide by six foot eight inch rain opening! Talking to the oak floor guy tonight at 5:00.

The Bucks Are Back!!!!

I may have lost the old blog, but the dollars we tallied are still in the system!

So keep clicking on that ad on the top right. I just learned that there's a way to get picture ads to show up there now, too. That'll keep you clicking!

Drywall, Insulation, & Moisture

(These are a few of my favorite things?)

Speaking of moisture, it was certainly a bit moist out there today; so moist we had to cancel the outdoor tennis thing for the third week in a row, though it wasn't for weather reasons the last two times. We'll be rookies again next time we get on the court. Last week it was my fault - I needed to do the speaker wire and cat-5 cable before the insulation cluster started last Thursday. Since then, Pete's been covering up stud spaces all over the house, and the insulation inspection happened today, (we passed), so Pete can now cover over all the insulated walls too. The phot on the right is the ridge skylight over the entry now; nothing but drywall and skylight trim now, even over the ridge beam. I don't konw if there's a mandatory requirement for those stickers to stay on the glass- I think it's like those tags on mattresses and pillows - "Unlawful to remove" or something like that. I pulled one off a pillow once when I was eight and I expected sirens and cops to show up any second. Hopefully the window and skylight labels aren't in the same category.

You recognize this insulated area on the left? That's the Heather Murchison Kayak Storage Facility. The walls are insulated because we're going with the new fangled insulated crawlspace concept instead of that old fashioned (but traditional!) cold dank uninsulated mold producing bug infested vented crawlspace. The underside of the floor was actually not supposed to be insulated as shown, but apparently Pete's command of the Spanish language is insufficient to serve him in the realm of local trade worker management. They had the stuff in the joist spaces before he could go to the online translator program and say "Uno momento senors; no ponga el aislamiento allí, por favor." So we got insulation there wher it don't need to be. The intent was that we use what looks like aluminized mylar bubble wrap, about a quarter inch thick. It keeps the air in the joist space sufficiently "dead" and warm (according to Evan Conklin the Hydronic Heat King), but still allows some heat to bleed out into the crawlspace to keep it warm enough to not have to ventilate it. That's the theory anyway; I went to a very expensive seminar to learn that.

That expensive seminar also taught me that whenever there's a possiblity of condensation occurring in a stud or joist cavity, it's a very very bad thing. So I've been a little concerned about the making sure the perimeter of the basement wall at the ceiling intersection is nice and tightly insulated, because that's where the greatest risk is of any cold air sneaking into the house. It's where the carpenter's work (in 1948) might have left a little gaposis occasionally at the rim joist. So Pete and I discussed using some of that spray-foam insulation to essentially cover up the rim joist on the inside, and I gave it a try this evening. See that thing that looks like a really wide Santa Clause beard? That's my first attempt. It was slightly less than totally successful, but it does provide a good seal right at the wall and ceiling intersection, so it might work. I checked out very many of the insulated areas and I must say the insulation guys did a pretty good job of filling those cavities with batts after all, so after checking it out, I looked at just sealing that ceiling gap with the spray can foam, and it seems to work pretty well in that fashion, and may be sufficient for what we need done. I'll talk w/Pete tomorrow.

To do all that insulation work, I was using the magic "light in the cap" hat that my brother Tom gave me for Christmas last year. Besides illuminating the joist cavities real well, the other thing it did for me was pretty much cast light wherever I looked, and when I was leaving, I happened to glance down at the new concrete wall where the garage door used to be. See that little dark area? One guess as to what that is. H2O. Seems like the lack of gutters so far and the driveway still causing water to zip on down to the bottom can still cause a bit of a moisture issue there. When the gutter go in that'll help, and when I take out the concrete driveway so moisture can just infiltrate the sandy dirt around the house that'll probably solve this issue. We will see soon, I'm sure.

Then I noticed that the new basement door is even wetter than that; take a look at these pics. The moisture extends all the way through the bathroom wall into the bathroom floor area (small photo at bottom right). It looks like the door sill needs some serious sealant and CLH* treatment. The gutters will help enourmously - right now the roof area drains directly into this little area. We'll have to watch this area closely.

*CLH = Caulk Like Hell

Reboot!!!!!

OOPS

A week ago today, August 12, I tried to create a new blog for BottleRockit, but changed my mind and decided to cancel it, so I hit the DELETE button, but it was for the wrong blog, and I completely destroyed, apparently forever, what I'd been working on for the last two and a half months.

I tried to get the Blogger guys to put it back up, but it looks like after a week, it just ain't gonna happen. I'm sad. Pissed off that the DELETE button didn't say "You are about to delete Heather & Michael's Remodel" - it just said "Are you sure you want to delete this blog?" And I thought I was deleting the band blog. Damn.

HERE fortunately is where you can still find all of the pictures that I had posted on the blog - they were automatically placed in the Picasa system. That's cool; 196 photos that are still there. At least that's something.

SO with this new blog, I'll start again. Interestingly, the demise of the blog occurred at the same time Steve let for Mongolia, marking the transition from his work on the exterior being the primary focus to the work that Pete is now doing, mostly on the interior.

Today the insulation guys came in and blew white fibrous stuff into all the stud spaces of all the exterior walls of the main floor, even the ones that still had the original plaster. Here's a shot of what they did; first they put a fine mesh tightly over the bare studs. Then they cut about a 3 inch hole in the mesh and blew in some type of cellulose that has a stiffening agent that keeps it all very firm and tight so it doesn't sag. It's really very cool, and when it's done, it's all white, so it gets just a little bit closer to that finished wall look, which is a little exciting.

So the first time since the house was built 60 years ago, the entire house is fully insulated. Later this week, they're coming back and blowing even more insulation into the attic space. With that new electric heating system, even though Seattle has about the cheapest electricity in the nation, it'll be important to make sure we retain as much heat as we generate. At least anything we spend on heat won't be going to the oil companies anymore!

Before the insulation guys came, I took time to go around the entire basement perimeter with the ShopVac, sucking out all the detritus, sawdust, concrete chips, spider eggs and cobwebs, so that all that stuff wouldn't be buried inside the wall cavities. Would it make a difference in the quality of life in the house? Not likely. But having all that crap (especially the spidey eggs) buried in the walls would have bugged me and the boys no end. It just needed to be done. Pete and I still have some monkey business to do with the insulation around the perimeter for the in-floor heating because the insulation sub workers don't speak any English and their boss has been on vacaton since last Wednesday and things weren't done right. It's been a bit of a cluster actually. Somewhat unbelievable. Almost as unbelievable as some guy accidentally deleting a frikkin' blog.

We decided we needed a little comfort food for dinner last night, so we went to Piatti at University Village, where it so happens they have white butcher paper on all the tables, over the linen tablecloths. As luck would have it, I happened to have a pen with me, so I started to draw an aerial perspective of the kitchen, just so I could show Heather where she could plug in the Giant Light From God on the new countertop. We then got into a discussion about the old driveway and what we're going to plant there. After some initial hesitation and the oligatory "I'm not an architect so I can't draw" statement (for which I get another hypothetical dollar on my way to being a millionaire), Heather found her Inner Designer and started sketching out her thoughts on the planting plan in the terraced area where the driveway now slopes down towards the house. She's got some great ideas there, and we'll be working with Mary Fisher to sort through them all soon.

Here's a peek at what the kitchen looks like today; the insulation on the outer wall is all white like drywall. The wall that will hold the cupboards is all sheetrocked now, and as you can see, so is the whole ceiling.

Lastly, here's a shot of the Media Room in the basement; that's fully insulated now too. The ceiling insulation is there to keep the upper floor heat out of the basement and in the upper floor. The basement has its own hydronic system using fin tube radiators. That's the old water heater in the middle of the room for now in case you're wondering.

I'm going to insert some of the very early pictures from the original blog here since that one's gone.

This is what the house looked like on June 4, 2008. Steve was the only guy on site at the time, hadn't met Pete yet, and I was still looking for an electrician. Steve was piling up all sorts of stuff from the basement in the front yard and driveway, but the big dumpster hadn't arrived yet. This turned out to be the last view Richard and Sarah had of the house with the old roof line. By the time the dumpster came and went, the roof line had changed, and the new windows were all installed. And Tyvek became the advertising word of the day.