scrapple

As scrapple is often defined as 'everything but the oink', this here post is a mish-mash of things recently past and about to be recently past.

First, all that crapola taken out of the attic walls last week, mostly windows, trim, and siding, has to go somewhere, so it looks as though a dump run is in the works today. I may try and borrow a truck. It's getting a bit overgrown in there,

Next, I have taken advantage of the client's time in NYC to caulk around the shower fixtures. Exciting times! Only 1 year late. If you can't see the caulk, that's a good thing. There's a fan going full bore in there right now to hasten the curing process so she can take a shower and wash that city off her when she returns.

Finally, what a weekend! We went to Lopez Island and camped on the beach at Spencer Spit. Beautiful. The weather was a little dodgy, but it was warmer and more beautiful than it looks. We went over the two tent per site rule by about 11 tents, but it seems that the ranger was too intimidated to come down and cite us. Seamus wondered if perhaps he didn't have a large enough notepad to record all of our violations. Lots of cycling around, playing cards, staying up late singing, throwing the football, making delicious chow...

What happened to the gravity?

Rainier-fueled evenings

Is this really the best way to see if the grill is hot enough?

vision ruination redress

As a point of information and in an attempt to assuage the client's feelings of vision ruination regarding the view of the water from bed, I did some math this morning. As it turns out, one can see the water from a height of 13 " above our current bed height, meaning a 155 degree bend at the waist requiring a 2 pillow raise at the headboard. The old window height would have required around an 162 degree raise, or 1.5 pillow height, to view the water.

Viewing the water while lying flat on one's back or on one's side was never in the cards without some sort of mirror apparatus.

window reactions

The new windows were mounted with sills 8" higher than the old ones so that it would be tougher to see in and we would have some more privacy in the bedrooom. The windows are larger than the old ones, so the top of the window was also raised around 10 inches. Some reactions:

[With the new higher mounted windows] "...you'll have so much more sky view and less rooftop view." -Stu, architect

[With the new higher mounted windows] "...you have so much more usable wall space under the window sill." -Robert, expert carpenter and window installer

[With the new higher mounted windows] "...it has ruined my vision of laying in bed and looking at the water, but I guess I'll learn to live with it." -the client

more window

Today I put in the small window that will go above our headboard on the south dormer wall of our bedroom. Having had a great refresher course in window install Tuesday, it went relatively smoothly.






new window on the left


Actually, not that smoothly. I forgot. I had to reframe the window because it sat too low- too close to the roof decking. So it is now 3 1/2" higher than it was, high enough to get it out of the roofing. And, now that I reflect on it some more, I remember that it looked as if the existing flashing actually goes underneath the sheathing. Which is bad. It actually directs rain to go under the shingles. And this on the rainiest and windiest part of the house, so I'll have to fix that before it rains.

That's the new window on the right.

I also put on the final weatherproofing around the windows installed Tuesday. Exciting times on a hot, sunny day with a spool of shiny plastic tar in your hands.

shiny plastic tar spool

New windows, round 1

Yesterday Robert and I put in the first round of master bedroom windows. As always, the project got a lot more involved after we got started. When we started to take apart the siding and the roof to make way for the new window framing (the windows are larger and they are moving up around 8" so as to get more blue sky view and less rooftop view and afford us a little more privacy in the bedroom), it was noticed that the roof underneath the dormer was really poorly constructed and needed to be repaired. So we took care of that. We fixed the roof sheathing, put down some new underlayment, repaired the flashing, and relaid the shingles. Fortunately, Robert is an expert at (among many, many other things) fashioning flashing corners. Saved the day.

You can kind of see how uneven the roofing looks underneath dormer. If you look closely, you can also see that there isn't really any flashing between the wall and the roof.

Unfortunately, this all had to get done before we could really start even getting going on the actual window install. Once that was all taken care of, we could move on to removing windows, making new holes for windows, preparing the new holes for windows, and dropping the windows in.

When we removed the old window, we had this giant sized hole left and we had to make some decisions. I accidentally blew out that piece of siding on the left with some exceptionally spirited demo. This is about the time that we noticed just how damaged the siding, flashing, and roof were.

We decided to take off all of the siding, because once we subtracted what we had to remove for the new holes and what was too damaged to reuse, there frankly was not much left. It didn't make much sense to leave a couple of pieces of siding and try to match new material to it. In the long run, it would be far easier to just take it all and redo it. We also took some of the sheathing so that we could replace it with stronger 3/4 " plywood. I think that by this point, the roof had been surgically repaired. We also took out a big header over the window- you've probably already noticed that the hole is higher than where the old window was sitting. Best part: we can reuse the vintage 1920s header over the new windows going into the south bedroom.

The next step was to build a new sill piece for the for the windows. That's an extra 8" of privacy. And it cuts off some of the view of the rooftops to the west.

After tar papering the exterior, we actually got to start installing some windows. In a full day of working (no stopping for lunch because we were on a deadline), I would say that less than an hour was actually spent putting the windows into the walls. Robert would muscle them out the window (they nail in from the outside) and I would push them into place from on the ladder. Of course I was wearing safety ropes and carrabiners and a helmet. You would even have to ask?

All in place! There are four casement windows and they all open up to 90 degrees.

From the inside, the higher up windows not only means a better view, but also more usable wall space underneath them.

Tica offered moral support all day long, only attacking Robert two or three times. Here she is modeling how she will be using the increased amount of sun in the bedroom.

Why not work late?

Well, it's 6:00, but I'm not doing anything else, so I may as well keep going. I'm getting a little bit anxious that the summer is slipping away without enough getting done, so maybe I'll sleep better tonight if I'm totally exhausted.



I use leftover stuff from the demo all the time in the new construction, waste not want not and all that, but today I used a special piece, the old Andrew Jensen phone number scrap, for some
blocking. It got me wondering what other stuff I might hide in the walls. I have some old license plates, and I may as well put those creepy legos back in...

I'll need to move the wire that's on the left of the stud over to the other side of the stud to accomodate the window that will be stuffed into this spot. See where it kind of wiggles into the stud bay at the top? Unnacceptable. The client demands as much glazing space as possible: "I need to see the sky, Stephen. It reminds me that I'm free." If I move it over, I gain 1 1/2" and then all of the windows in the room will be the same size. The wire is kind of a long run, around 40 ', but it is all within the room, so it's just redoing a stretch from one junction box to another. And yes, I'll check and make sure the power is off before I start.











The light colored furring strips here show the dimensions of the new window going into the south bedroom. Pretty giant. Tomorrow or this weekend I'll get started on the header. Robert's coming over to let me know if I need to do any temporary shoring up of the wall while constructing. Residential Construction was disappointingly lackluster in dealing with cutting windows out of existing bearing walls.

Closing some walls

First of all, why am I bothering with home remodeling when I could be building this? That is the most awesome thing I have seen in a long time.

On the home front, though, I put up some soundboard between the laundry closet and the south bedrooms. It will help muffle the noise of the laundry machinery.

There's also a psychological advantage in that things are actually starting to look like rooms up there. Today I'll finish with the soundboard, maybe even insulate it and sound proof the other side, and then get started on the south wall window framing.

The windows for the bedroom will be arriving on Monday! That's exciting. So Tuesday, the bedroom should look really, really different.

Super Furry

Today, the stairwell and south bedroom windows were ordered (screw triangle windows, too much trigonometry. We're sticking with rectangles), I fixed the front door lock so it will actually open with a key now, and furred out the entirety of the wall in the stairwell.

Some serious Spiderman wall crawling was recquired to get the nailers in place at the top.

Except, of course, Spidey isn't carrying a framing nailer when he's scaling walls. Spiderman probably doesn't do a lot of carpentry however. What a waste.

The eleven windows pop out a bit more now.

This is the area that will get all changed around tomorrow. Instead of the one large window, there will be three smaller windows, all up higher for a little privacy. The furthest west space (right in this picture) will have a smallish awning window that will end up underneath the lofted sleeping/storage area. Next to that will be two larger casement windows. All in all, there will be more light and better ventilation. The furthest east was going to be a triangle window that would follow the line of the roof, but forget about that. Looked totally goofy in the scaled sketches.

Heading to the window store

Well, it's time to place that final window order today. So far, I have the 11 fixed stairwell windows, and I'll need a little help figuring out the south bedroom configuration. I have mocked up a loft to see what it looks like for wall space and made some preliminary drawings. It'll need
to be an egress window, so size will, as they say, matter. We'll see what the window guys say and then we'll run it by the client tonight.



preliminary fact-finding drawings

mockable mocked up loft

Missed it by that much.

Only one small revision to be made today along with framing the final two windows. The client would like this window moved two inches to the left. The way that it is situated now is such that it is about a half inch to the left of the window above it; just far enough off so that it looks like a mistake, not intentionally random.

After that, I'll need to draw out the windows for the south bedroom and get that order in.

nine-elevenths of the window framing

I managed to frame 9 of the mini windows today. 2 left to do tomorrow along with furring our the whole wall. Why fur out the wall? To make more space in the wall cavity for thicker insulation. The client was feeling generous and fit her vision mostly into the existing stud bays so I didn't have to put in too many new headers.

These windows go to eleven!

So it's been tough getting back into the swing of things and documenting, but I think I'm ready. This past week, it's been back to the grindstone after some weeks of other projects. Operation Get-A-Bike and Operation Launch-The-Kayak are now completed.

Yesterday I started furring out the south wall of the master bedroom (and moving all of the electrical boxes to fit) and framed the south window. It's a bit lower than we had anticipated, due to the persistent closed soffit overhang problem.

This morning I finished that off and the client and I mapped out where exactly she'd like the small windows in the stairwell located. I had made ten cardboard templates, thinking that I would have at least four or five left over, but as it turns out, what we really wanted was eleven (!!!) windows in the stairwell. And, as it also turns out, making windows look randomly placed is not as easy as throwing them up and seeing where they stick.

There's one that didn't stick so well.

All that old insulation will go.

This is one of last week's projects- putting in a small closet in the northest corner of the south bedroom. The new and improved safety ladder (borrowed from Lawrence, who was terrified of what I might do to myself on the old improved safety ladder) is resting in the closet now.