Tiny windows... In the wall...

To borrow a phrase from Michael Ian Black, this will totally blow your mind all over your face. Wall color drama over, drama about trim being too huge over, figuring our ladder logistics over.














It's a virtual photographic pep talk.






































It took awhile, but it's nice to have one little part done. On to upstairs walls, radiators, flooring and dooring!

New Beam Redux

What's better than one beam? You guessed it: two. I was feeling some concern that although I had put in the new beam for the client's bathtub, the studs that came down into it were really compromised because of the horizontal vent cutouts.

Another call to the architect was required. More sage advice administered.

Delete the cutouts and lay another beam on top of the one that was just put in.

So here's that. Again with the UFO photographs.

Here's a better view. The new beam is a 4 x 4 that rests on top of the other one. I'm not totally sure how the dormer wall was staying up before. 4 out of 8 studs were cut almost all the way through to accomodate the vent.

On the back side, minimal damage to the bedroom wall. It looks a little goofy pre-painting, but it is smoooooth and will look great once finished.

3M Is Not Your Friend

When two walls come together that are different colors, I thought that it was standard practice to paint one side, let it dry, then tape over the painted part and paint the other side. Well, that may well work, but don't you try to do it with 3M Painter's Tape. I painted the ceiling in the hallway and let it dry for about three days. Then I taped up the line and painted the walls. The tape was off within three hours and the ceilings were definitely dry when it went on. And yet this is what happened.

Total crap. I'll be doing it over again today with a brush. After razoring and sanding and spackling it, of course.

How Different Is Different Enough?

The Client has decided that the color for the accent wall in the stairwell needs to be more of an accent. It doesn't jump out. It doesn't highlight. It's too subtle. It's matches too closely with the other wall color.



Really?





I know this photo has a certain UFO quality to it, but I can still see the Shrek-green on the right and the camel hair on the left. The Client correctly pointed out that the fact that I would have to be the one repainting it was impacting my judgment as to what constituted different enough. True enough, but I say the fact that she doesn't have to repaint it leads to excess vacillation.

But no, the Client brought in her Sister with all her design cred and they agreed: Go from Shrek to Toad.



















But see? This still the before/not different enough shot. All we have to do is to equip anyone walking up the stairs with a flash and anyone can see the accent wall clearly differentiated.








At least my weekend is setting up.

Winter Hiatus

It has certainly been awhile, but here I am back in the driver's seat, with news from the crusty underbelly of remodeling in a recession.

Let's jump right in, shall we? Last week I met with the architect because I was thinking about a new roof load issue that first came up over Thanksgiving weekend. In the spot where the Client's Big New Tub is going to be, we are going to be cutting off the roof and building a wall with a big window where she'll be able to have her bath and look out at the lights of the big city. I didn't really think about it too much then, but cutting off the roof and propping it up from somewhere else actually does have some ramifications in terms of how the roof gets held up. Especially if, as in the Client's case, a big window has to go in the wall that's going to be holding up the roof in the new spot.

Credit goes to Peter O. for pointing this out in the first place.

Happy Thanksgiving.

Fast forward to this week. Over coffee with our architect, I found out that this was one of those situations where planning and foresight would have saved money and time. But who wants to always take the easy road? Where's the character building in that?

The new solution is to build a beam into the wall that will disperse the point load created by the window in the wall made necessary by the viewtub over 5 or 6 joists, therefore saving the roof from collapsing and leaving everyone happy, warm, and dry when it rains.

Here's the wall that needs reinforcing. Notice the horizontal vent pipe near the bottom. I had already removed the vertical part of it and patched the roof up on Sunday. That was awesome. Every time go up there, the roof gets steeper. Not literally, the construction is sound, but in a metaphor about aging way.

The next step was to screw something to the wall to hold it up while I cut the bottom out. The 2 x 10 plank for painting did the trick. By the way, avoid Dewalt driver bits. I broke 6 (!!!) while hanging this.

Then, jam in the new beam!

Jam it!

And barely disturb the new drywall on the other side. I am amazing.

Inspiration Nation

I took a walk around the neighborhood this morning to try to glean some inspiration by looking at projects that are bigger in scope than my own. It's been a few weeks since I've done any work upstairs let alone written about it here. School is cranking up again and that has been the major focus of all of my attention. I need to get into a new routine for the fall. Here are some highlights.

Date started: They tore down the house on this site sometime in 2007.

Uncompleted

There are some interesting things about this house. Looking through the windows, I think that they are going to be leaving the trusses uncovered on the third floor. The rectilinear cube thing with Hardipanel siding is all the rage right now.

Date started: spring 2008.

Uncompleted

This is a really wacky one. I couldn't get too much closer because there were people hanging out in the backyard and I wasn't feeling chatty. These folks are putting this crazy dormer roof deck thing on with an exterior staircase to get there. How will they finish this too blend it in?

Date started: I think they secured funding in 1998 or something.

Uncompleted. Scheduled to be completed summer 2010.

This is the new Jefferson Park underground reservoir vault. The new graded graveltop is new since the last time I was there. This is a really, really big project.

Date started: I don't know, but when I walked on this block three weeks ago, there was a regular looking house on this corner lot.

Clearly uncompleted

The foundation for this new sure to be space cube house is really small. It makes me think that they subdivided the lot and there will be a couple of townhomes on the site.

Date started: Who knows. They've been working on the light rail station forever.

Scheduled to be open Spring 2009.

Any time you have someone working on your project whose job title is 'miner', you know you're into something big.

Date started: Last fall

Uncompleted

The old jack up the house project. Yipes. THe client and I almost fell into this trap back in the Rainier Valley. These guys have had a massive dirtpile in front of their house for a long time.

Date started: This spring

Uncompleted

Embrace the density! These folks are going for the Cinderella tower/treehouse without a tree effect. It kind of looks like the bridge of a containership to me.

I guess it's time to stop fooling around and get back to work. Windows, finish the insulation, and cover!

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!