We Are the Ronchampions, My Friends

Yesterday, all eleven stairwell windows were installed along with the three windows in the south bedroom, which is quickly shaping up as this year's 'must have' bedroom.

The first part of the project was actually Operation Defenestrate Fife, wherein the windows had to be surgically extracted from the manufacturer. If you've never been to a fiberglass window manufacturing facility, well, it's huge and loud and kind of smelly in a solventy way, but really clean and full of trucks. I had to wedge my rented truck, which you can tell is a real gem, in between the many semis picking up much larger orders than mine.

As it turns out, I may have rented a little too much truck, but I wasn't really sure how much space the windows would be taking up.

On my way back from Fife, I passed this huge bus fire on I5 going in the other direction. It was scary. The bus was fully engulfed in flames, tons of black smoke everywhere, and it was really, really hot.

I had to call in reinforcements to get the larger windows into the south bedroom. Fortunately, I know a lot of teachers who do nothing but sit around and eat bonbons all day every day in the summer, so I gave Thatcher a call and he dropped the bonbons and was right over to help me muscle in the big guys.

Next, the stairwell one by ones. I figured out a good method to 1) get the windows in and level and 2) not fall off the ladder by the second window. Which means, of course, that I only had to do a do-over on the first one I did.

I stacked all the windows on my building platform inside and pulled them out one at a time to install. First I would put a bead of caulk around the window hole. Then I put a deck screw in one of the side holes of the window so that it would stay in the wall and I could still adjust it for level. After I levelled it, then I pounded in 2'' roofing nails through the rest of the holes in the fin. Wash, rinse, repeat times 11.

The window on the tippy top left is the only one that I had to redo.

Too pretty for captions. I thought I might have broken the client's camera, but no.

Super Exclusive Sneak Peek

The client-designed Church at Ronchamps-inspired staircase. Even I think it's going to be cool.







From the upstairs.



















From the downstairs.

Roofers are not on my Good List

Seeing as we are going camping next week, there are things that absolutely just have to get done this week. Among those things is that the windows must go in. I've reserved a truck to go down to the Milgard folks down in Fife, WA to pick up the 15 windows for round 2, and they have to be installed by Saturday.

Since I had just gone through the process with Robert and then on my own, I really figured that I had this figured out. But, as with so many things, the roofers had it in for me. If you thought that drywallers were shortcut driven cavemen, well they look like overachieving Mensa types compared to roofers. The roofers who most recently worked on our house, I would assume maybe a year or two before we bought it, decided that instead of flashing the point where the roof hits the wall over our bedroom bumpout, they would just sheath over the old flashing and then bend some shingles up from the roof and tar them to the wall. This on the wall that takes the most weather in the house. Unbelievable. Unconscionable. Really. It's going to fail, and quickly. We're lucky we made it as long as we did without something catastrophic happening.

Anyway, I had to take a three day break from window prep to fix the roof. I tore out the top course of shingles and tore out the old flashing, which was enough tearing. I did the step flashing weave (like around the skylight) on the angled part of the roof and put some 4 '' flashing on the horizontal. Then it was a layer of bitumen (rhymes with 'haiku, son'- not 'vitamin') which was underneath the construction paper. I didn't really know what I was doing, so I used the Google, and I tell you what- when you Google 'roof flashing', the first few results you get have nothing to do with weatherproofing. My goodness, the internet is governed by perverts.

I eventually got some good help from the good folks at the FEMA website. Heckuva job, Brownie.

I had to do some serious hanging out over the edge of the roof, so I revisited my Knot Book and used a double bowline, which I tied to the inside of the house. One loop around each leg made for a good harness.

No flashing.

Superflashing.

Finally, I got to the windows, which went pretty quickly. I had to cut out the rest of the space for the new windows and then sheath over the places where there was going to be wall and no window where there was window before. Then tarpapering over the whole thing.

New framing.

New framing + new sheathing. Still need to cut out the rest of the top of the window. Which I did but I didn't take a picture of.

header's up.

It was a very exciting day around here yesterday indeed. I cut out a large part of the south wall's supporting structure and put in a giant header for some new windows.

The first step was to take out the existing window. I forgot, until I was about halfway through it, that you should always close the window before you remove it. And probably lock it. Otherwise, you have an issue of the stupid thing sliding open while it's being taken out and being very heavy on one side and not on the other. It came out pretty smoothly, despite my best attempts otherwise, and it is now relaxing, getting ready for the big move to the pile of other old windows.

The next step was to put in some braces to hold things steady up top. I don't actually think that these two temporary posts were actually holding too much up, but they made me feel better.

Next, cut the studs! 4 in all. 1 if them is too close to the camera to see. It was a little nerve-wracking, but there didn't seem to be any pressure on the saw blade as I was going through, so it didn't seem like too too much load was being exerted on them.

Then I had to make a little jig to hold up one end of the header as I jammed the other end into the wall. Pure, unadulterated muscle time.

There it is! Bracing is out and it seems to be holding up the roof and everything. Today I'll need to cut out the actual dimensions of the new window, build a new sill, get some new sheathing on the outside, and do the tar paper.

There was one last thing- I couldn't leave the big hole in the wall while I went out shopping, so I needed to cover it up. Of course, I didn't have enough plywood to do it, so I used what was at hand, which happens to be an old door. There won't actually be a sideways door here in the future, but I think that I'll be able to get some serious mileage out of it with the client.

Egress window code and whatnot.

weekend projects

Well, it's the weekend, and not just any weekend. It's Seafair Weekend. The highlight of which is, for many, the annual visit of the Blue Angels. Also known as the U.S. Navy's precision flying team, also known as the U.S. Navy's very expensive way of recruiting high school dropouts into the service in hopes that they'll be top gun pilots when they are really going to end up refilling vending machines on aircraft carriers team.



I'd be less grouchy if they'd stop buzzing my house.



There's a lot to do around here, and Seafair is not enough of a reason to stop. Yesterday I embarked on what could generously be called a fool's errand, my own kind of wrestling with a plane.

On Tuesday, Robert and I pulled a big header out of the wall when we were putting in the new master bedroom windows. It wasn't really holding anything up, it looked more like a 12' spacer more than anything else. But now, we have the opportunity to actually use it as a header, holding up the roof over the new windows in the south bedroom. There was only one small problem- the 2 x 8s were not exactly the same size. For some weird reason, one of the beams was about a 1/4'' wider than the other. Which could lead to an out of balance issue when the beam is actually carrying some load. Maybe. Of course, it could just be me reclaiming my 'Most Cautious Man in America' mantle.



Anyway, I decided to plane the overhanging beam with my tiny little hand plane. 12 feet by 1/4'' is a lot of hand planing. It's fir, so it's kind of soft, but it was a solid hour of muscling it out. After I was finished, I screwed and glued the thing together and tomorrow, we are ready to set it in place. By we, I mean me and my muscles.

too tall on one side!

almost halfway there in the planing

Action shot! Lefty, even!

Done

Still done

Tomorrow: stuffing it in the wall!

new policies and insulation nation

Well!

This week's new policy of not allowing the client upstairs is working out very, very well. The main reasons being, I think, that she hasn't demonstrated any desire to venture upstairs and that I haven't actually articulated the policy. It's all for the best. It's an especially messy time right now and it wouldn't be good for anybody. I'm not completely sure what will happen when she finally does get the urge to head up.

It has been an insulating week and it will continue to be so. It's a disgusting, messy, will-sapping kind of work. But it does make a huge difference. At least it is not terribly hot, which helps. And the Mariners are not playing terribly right now, which also makes it easier to work. So far I've done the exterior wall in my closet and the master bedroom. I've also done the interior walls, which are really just insulated for sound, in the client's closet. For the exterior walls, I used the standard kraft-faced fiberglass bats, which get stapled to the studs. The overlapping little wings make it so you don't have to put up an additional vapor barrier. For the interior walls, however, I'm using this Ultratouch Cotton Insulation product, which I'm pretty sure is just shredded blue jeans.

I got it at the Environmental Crap Center, which has been changing it's name to ecohaus (with a small e nod to e e cummings or whatever) over the course of the last 9 months, though apparently just in it's signage and branding, not their listing in the phone book or their web address. It's typically ridiculous. How does this company stay so rigidly and wholeheartedly disorganized? For so long? Not only do you pay more because you want to build green, you also have to know their products and inventory because they don't, you have to wait around while the person helping you works on solving their cash register login like it's a Sunday sudoku, and if you don't know exactly what you want when you go in, it's like walking into Dante's Inferno. Only the fact that they are located in a city of Prius driving do-gooders explains their continued existence.

Anyway. Insulation. The thing is, the fiberglass is very personally damaging to install. It's long sleeve-glove-respirator time. The cotton is easy on the lungs and the skin. However, the fiberglass is easy to cut to shape. It can be made to fit snugly in odd shaped cavities and around electrical boxes and things with a straight edge and a razor knife. The denim stuff does not cut. You have to tear it apart, which makes neatness an issue and little voids unavoidable. And it takes a lot more time. The compromise will be that I'll continue to keep the inside walls forever in blue jeans and stick with the toxic stuff on exteriors. And I'll be done this week!