…so I thought I’d post about the sweet finds I scored today at Rejuvenation for our 3 new upstairs bedrooms, staircase and back dormer. I found 8 gorgeous light fixtures on clearance + got an additional 25% off on most of them.

The master bedroom will sport two Turner swing arm wall mounted fixtures as bedside lights in Antique Copper ($72.75 down from $165 each),

and a Willis fixture in a matching copper finish ($55 down from $119) that has an old fashioned cloth covered electrical cord for a ceiling light.

The staircase that leads up into the back dormer/sun room will be lit by this funky fixture called Mock’s Crest in Burnished Antique ($100.50 down from $259), which harks back to when electricity was a new invention and nobody knew if it was going to replace gas (hence the double lights, one powered by electricity and one by gas),

and the back dormer will get two Mt. Angel fixtures in the matching Burnished Antique finish (regular $133, discontinued at $38.25 a piece).

The girls’ bedrooms will each have a Thurman light in Burnished Antique ($42 down from $80).

We still need glass shades for all of them, but that can wait for another day!

And yes, this means that the upstairs is *this* close to being move in ready! The walls for all the rooms are up, drywalled and mostly completely mudded. They still need priming and then they will wait for us to win the lottery, so we can afford to have American Clay earth plaster installed everywhere.

The old growth fir floor is going back in as we speak (well type), and will be refinished in the next few days. There’s still lots to do: framing in new closets in the kids’ bedrooms, trim work everywhere, and finally the huge undertaking of adding a 2nd bathroom upstairs.

But, at the very least, we plan to move into our new master bedroom by next week! So exciting!!!

all sorts of stuff. huge stuff. construction rubble, demolition debris scattered amongst the ground, tens of tons of things to carry and stack.

lets start inside, where things are nice and calm… and pleasantly lit, after a series of splendid finds in the Rejuvenation clearance area (read: we justified purchasing a shitload of new lights, because of the “clearance” status).

the living room went from a seriously classy oak veneer and wicker ceiling fan, to this craftsman style piece:

the brothel chandelier was next. not that there’s anything wrong with a piece of lighting that looks like it came out of a turn of the century lady of accompaniment parlor… because really, we all know nothing says class like that (not even a oak and wicker fan)… but the feeling that any moment the madame of the house would appear, was getting a bit odd.

couldn’t leave outside untouched… the spider web encrusted (and it turns out, wasp nest infested) 1950s glass light was replaced with this bit of sweetness… complete with mica shade, giving it some awesome light at night…

there’s also new kitchen lighting, which appears to not be on my camera. i could get up, walk the 15 feet over to the one out of 3 lights that’s installed, take a picture, come back and upload it (probably in about as much time as it’d take to write this explanation as to why i’m not)… but i’m not.

ahh… now for the real mess progress!

start with digging. lots and lots of digging. luckily it wasn’t me doing the digging… though i’d not mind taking credit for it, the digging was done by a couple friends. i was almost ready to be content with just the trench… toss the garden hose in, fill it up… get some anwry guppies and call it a moat. a quick draw bridge, and we’d be set…

but then this arrived:

roughly 30k pounds of dry stack block, concrete and gravel.
the wee one looked at me and said “do you want to play blocks with me? i help you!” we spend some time playing with legos… it was pretty cool that she put it together in her mind that these huge things are like huge legos. huge legos that weigh 65 pounds each.

with great luck, i had lots of help.

it’s not quite done… but already worlds of difference. now there is visible PROOF that something is being done! that huge f’ing mound of dirt looks less like a prehistoric ant hill, and more like a temporary mound (despite having been there for the better part of a year).elsewhere on the house, we’ve hired a contractor. it was admittedly a bit tough for me to accept the fact that i can’t do everything by myself, i don’t have enough free time, and i need to hire someone to pick up where i’m failing. may not sound like a failure, but it kinda feels like it… at least a pretty good hit to my pride. but… on the plus side… a bunch of stuff is getting done, which should make everyone happier.

• the cedar shingles are being pulled off the house, to be replaced with #1 shake.
• the rear chimney is being pulled down and rebuilt, as there was worry any time a bird landed on it, the chimney would come tumbling down.
• the side chimney is getting strapped to the house, so it doesn’t come tumbling down
• the house is getting wrapped so it has an actual vapor barrier
• all new marvin dual glaze, low e, argon filled all wood windows are going in the upper floor. 3×5′ double hung for the bedrooms, 2×3′ double hung for the bathroom, 2 casement and 1 picture on the front dormer.
• finally, those new shakes are going on… all nice and treated

we also decided to ditch the biodiesel furnace in favor of a natural gas furnace. permit in hand, gas company scheduled to come install a meter, 80 some feet of black pipe and tons of fittings ready to go in… now just to figure out what furnace we’re gonna get. it’ll be NICE having actual heat this winter!

i changed my schedule at work a bit, so i could have more time at home… 7am to around 4pm. might try to do 6am to 3pm in a bit… but the 7am is already kicking my ass… not to mention it’s after midnight right now and i’ve gotta be at work in well under 7 hours… shower, sleep, get up and ready for work… work… by the time i get home, i’m f’ing beat. time to stop playing around blogging, and do that sleep thing…

with all the research i’ve been doing on fireplaces, wood stoves, masonry heaters and the like, i’ve become a bit disappointed with our fireplace: not all that efficient, well designed or effective.

still, this inefficient thing is easily keeping the living room in the 70s when it’s in the mid 30s outside, without aid of the furnace (which has been off for a couple hours). sitting here next to a roaring fire and feeling like stripping down because jeans and a t-shirt are too damned warm, and the crackling is putting me to sleep; can’t complain much.

not a big day for the house. i cleaned the gutters while it was raining pretty good (what better time to do it?). pulled a few handfuls of leaves out, and water was once again gushing down the downspout. i stood there on the ladder for a minute, watching just how much water comes off the roof. just a sheer guess, but i’d imagine it wouldn’t take long to fill a 55 gallon drum.
now, given that we have no landscaping to water (”mud” doesn’t count as landscaping, does it?), i’m not exactly sure what we’d do with the captured rain water… but it seems like such a waste to let it all go into the sewer. it was about that time that i noticed just how much rain was going through my jacket…

my quick backwoods engineered lift crane came in handy, today.

wasn’t a boyscout, but i can tie a bunch of different knots…

hauled the OSB subfloor up to start covering the floor joists… it’s gone beyond sheer luck that we’ve not stepped off a joist and put a foot through the plaster below.

when the biodiesel furnace fires we get a strong rise in temperature, reasonably well balanced throughout the house. when the temperature of the thermostat has been reached, the burner ceases, but the warm air continues for a few minutes (using every bit of heat in the exchanger). that part is great…
10 minutes later when your toes start to feel the chill that’s falling across your body, though… not great.

as of this evening, there are no bare areas of floor in the attic that are uninsulated. with some hope and apprehension, not to mention desperation, we’ll see how it goes tonight. 5 gallons of biodiesel hasn’t been lasting 24 hours, lately. the lows are just below freezing, tons of wind and the high today was 39f. every bit of insulation is bound to help.

now, the image above might lead one to ask “but dan, the vapor barrier is facing upward, what’s with that?” if prodded, i have an answer… although i don’t much care for being prodded, so the answer would be something along the lines of “well champ, if you’d paid attention to earlier posts and could piece simple things together, you’d know.” but if i’m being nice… which is somewhat often i suppose, the answer would probably be much more helpful (and actually give an answer).

while the vapor barrier is supposed to face the primary conditioned area, what happens if both areas are conditioned? one conditioned more than another? one only conditioned part time? ok… that’s not an answer, that’s actually more questions.
here we go: the ceiling directly below the insulation is wood lath and plaster. the flooring directly above the insulation (will be) OSB and douglas fir tongue and grove, bathrooms to be OSB/durock/ceramic tile. i have no concern with heat flowing through the plaster and meeting cool enough area to produce condensation, nor any concern with heat going the other way. in fact, an unfaced insulation would have worked fine. the problem with that: can’t seem to buy it locally, and this stuff was a damned good deal. therefore, the faced stuff will work fine in our situation. we’ll have potential for more heat upstairs, so that’s where we decided to face the… well… facing. that and it’s easier to install facing up.

the rear bedroom protrudes past the foundation of the home, and has a couple feet of it’s own roof, perpendicular to the main roof, and just below it. can’t for the life of me remember what this is called… and i’m not about to go outside to take a picture as it’s 35 degrees and drizzling. my poor description will have to do. anyway, this little side roof was packed with cellulose on friday. as i was only doing a small area, renting a cellulose blower wasn’t cost effective; so i rigged set up the 5hp shop vac to blow cellulose. this worked surprisingly well, actually… not very adjustable, but did a fine job of dense packing the cellulose in the nearly impossible to reach area. surely sealed any air intrusions, as well as the fate of any spiders that were inhabiting the space.

the lowest ceiling temperature is 59f, tonight… up from 51f of a few days ago, with the same outside and inside temperatures. guess we’re making progress…
but my feet are cold again…

time to make one of these:

after much experimentation, and some good advise found online… the picture above shows the best way to burn scrap lumber (for our fireplace, anyway). burns hot, pretty slow, lots of radiant heat, no visible smoke from the chimney, and there’s little ash after the burn is complete.
the only problem… i don’t seem to remember to cut the wood before it’s nearly freezing outside…

i wonder how many homes are catching on fire this evening, due to turkey deep fryer mishaps? being vegetarians (or vegetarian-ish, in my case… i eat some meats on occasion), we are not partaking in the ghetto tradition of deep frying a turkey in a propane fired pot of questionable construction quality… which could likely lead to either a spill, causing flesh to fry… or a fire, causing the house to fry. either way, probably not the best way to spend a holiday, really.

ok, so no deep fried turkey, today… we still did the whole traditional thanksgiving dinner, just not at home. eating out is a fine tradition, i feel. i also feel that it’s a pain in the ass to do anything in the kitchen when there’s no lights to speak of. another good reason to eat out. we’ve got some crappy under-cabinet lights that partially work, and a 20w stove hood lamp… but that’s it for now. have to finish that part of the house’s lighting wiring…

for the parts of the house that do have the wiring finished, we spent the day cleaning 94 years of ick away, then laid insulation. roughly 1/3 of the attic/upstairs has R19 in between the floor joists, now. only R19, because the upstairs won’t be a non-conditioned space for much longer… and what’s covered in R19 will only be separating living areas. we’ll go much higher (or at least as high as practical/possible) separating off the side attics and roof.

the infrared thermometer measures a solid 5 degree difference in main floor ceiling surface temperatures between areas that have insulation, and areas that do not. i’d call that a pretty strong difference. we burned through 4 gallons of biodiesel in about 24 hours… so the more insulation we get in here, the better (and the sooner the better, as well).
we also filled almost 3.5 square feet of open space where rafter meets the top plate… and tons of ice cold air blow in directly over the (previously uninsulated) ceiling of the rear bedroom. that could partially explain why that room is always so damned cold…

as for the rest of the insulation:  once we get the subfloor in place, there will be room to move the various piles of stuff  off the rest of the flooring that has yet to be removed (because of those piles of stuff).  the “stuff” is mostly fir flooring that’s been removed… kinda shifting everything around like a puzzle.  a puzzle that i trip on and then jack my shin up, while trying to not fall through the plaster ceiling below.  fun.

the roof needs the new rafters put in… then we can insulate it.  decide where the windows are going, and we can insulate the exterior walls.
think i’ve prettymuch decided against a prior decision on radiant insulation. it would still leave thermal and acoustic bridge issues.  i like this idea, better… i’ve never done it, but it doesn’t appear difficult by any means:  the “mooney wall,” (which i suppose it’s now called) is cheap, apparently works well, and saves precious space compared to some other methods.  the exterior walls upstairs would be around R23, total (if my math is right). not just the insulation- the entire wall, minus windows.  guess that’ll do. better than just fiberglass mat- R16, total.  if we did the ceiling the same way (don’t see why we couldn’t), it would be something along the lines of R32 (didn’t bother with the math… just a guess).

along with the wiring in the attic/upstairs, the knob & tube to the wall switches needs to be changed out. although (apparently) knob & tube can legally be joined to romex circuits (given that the circuit is limited to at most 15 amps), the junction boxes to join them would be inaccessible as they’d be under insulation, subfloor and finished flooring. unless “guessing where the junction box is and busting through the plaster from below” counts as access? probably not. because of this, i’ve spent too many hours today fishing through the walls.

the bathroom was particularly tricky because there was no clear path down the wall. first there’s a triple top plate… no idea why, but triple. easy enough to drill a 3/8″ hole to drop the fish tape in, and pull the romex back through, right? would be, but there was something else about a foot below that. ok, drilled through the mystery piece with an extension. fished through that… and again, something about a foot below that drilled through… and damn it, again, something below that. my extension is 3′, so there was no drilling through that last piece with what i had on hand… so i decided to go beside the next stud over. but still, not so cool. that was much more successful. carefully cut out the plaster with a couple swings of the hammer, to fit the new switch box, pulled the wire up and tied it in. the old switch was plastered into the wall… one of the screws was touching the hot wire… so with a wet enough hand, there could have been a nice little zap. it wouldn’t have felt much worse than a really strong static shock… ok, pretty cool if it’s someone else getting shocked…

all the knob & tube has been cut off in the attic (and the corresponding breakers disconnected), so anything that’s not new at the moment doesn’t work. that leaves us with no ceiling lights in the back bedroom, bathroom, kitchen, breakfast room, dining room, living room, front porch or basement. basement? yeah… for some reason the basements lights were connected in the attic. no clue why. their hot runs up to the switch by the kitchen, then keeps going up and 15 feet over to a hot above the living room. weird. guess i’ll run a new circuit for the basement.

we do have lights in the front bedroom (as shown in the pic… love that fixture!)… but that’s about it; the only part of that circuit which is connected. a floor lamp, desk lamp, some under-cabinet lights and a flashlight… that about covers the rest of what’s working in the house. a few more connections tomorrow and we’ll have light in half the house again. then we’ll lay insulation and OSB subfloor over that half… so the stuff stacked up on the other half can be moved and that part of the flooring removed (yeah, i’m lost too). then the wiring can be finished… insulate and subfloor that side…

once insulated, we’ll be able to keep the heat produced by the furnace… such a novel idea! we went from around 1 gallon/day to 2.5 gallons/day of biodiesel, recently. a great deal of that has to do with the whole “complete lack of insulation or weatherization in the upper half of the house” thing. i like the cold weather… but don’t the cold weather in the friggin’ living room.

i’m pretty torn on what to do for heat upstairs. i’m pretty set on the solar-assisted hot water heating… but keep going between using old radiators, or subfloor hydronic (tubing run in a pattern under the floor) . old radiators look cool, are relatively cheap, have pretty good thermal storage ability and are quick(ish) to install. subfloor would make the area more evenly heated and is more efficient; even 100f water will warm the floors, 120f will make the room reallywarm. the radiators start feeling good around 140f. using a large (500+ gallon) storage tank and solar heat collectors, we could easily get to at least 150f in the tank… giving us 10f of room. the lower temperatures required for subfloor hydronic probably make it the best choice as we’d have lots more room with the temperature (thus likely requiring less assistance by another fuel source)… but the installation wouldn’t be as straight-forward. bah… i dunno…

now that the temperature is dipping into the mid 30s at night… and the forecast calls for high 20s by week’s end… we’re happy that the biodiesel furnace is able to heat the house up quickly. unfortunately it’ll cost a fortune…

… as the house was built before insulation was a requirement, or really even much of a passing thought… we don’t have any (save for a bunch of 30s newspapers laid about here and there). further, the attic/upstairs has a window completely removed, no wall or ceiling covering, and 1/2 of the flooring is removed. at least when the flooring was in, there was somewhat of a buffer between the main floor’s plaster ceiling and the frigid air wafting through the attic. all of this means that while the house comes up to temperature very quickly, all that precious warmth is taken by a main floor ceiling that won’t break above 58f. we need to install all the insulation that’s so conveniently sitting in it’s nice bundles, in the basement.

(more…)

even though not a foot was stepped into the upstairs today, some progress was made. bought a pretty nice fixed curb mount Velux skylight from the portland rebuilding center. the dimensions are a bit odd, at 21″ x 50″… but i won’t complain for the price. it’s in used but perfect condition, new enough to be within their “comfort glass” range (argon filled dual glaze, no UV filter so we still get the passive solar heat we need)… and less than 1/4 the price of a new one. it’ll go above the stairs and flood the area with sunlight (that is, when portland actually gets sun).

have to go back tomorrow and pick the thing up… and rummage through their window selection in hopes of finding some matches for what we’ll need… at the prices they sell the removed original windows for, it’s awesome. $12 for a nice double hung double light. it’s a bit of work getting double glazing to fit into the original single glazing frame, but the energy savings are worth it. not as good as argon filled… but better than crappy storm windows (which the rest of the house is covered in, at the moment)… and worlds better than the god awful modern windows people love to put in nice old homes, taking one more step away from their character and charm. originals will do nicely, and it’s tough to even notice the dual glazing on them when done right.

1. removing tongue and groove without destroying any of it is difficult impossible.

2. removed windows in the attic/upstairs + uninsulated floor = friggin’ cold in the rest of the house.

3. demo is in no way as much fun as building.

roughly 1/4 of the tongue and groove removed from the walls and ceiling is sitting in a mangled pile in the driveway, right now. some of it can likely be cut down and planed to be used for furniture or other future projects… the rest can be crappy fast burning fire wood. so far that sounds like 3/4 of it came off in wonderful condition… but that’s not the case. i’d say maybe 1/4 is great… 1/4 is fair… 1/4 looks like ass (not nice ass… we’re talkin’ mcdonald’s supersize ass), but with some creative trimming and piecing together can pass as aesthetically ok.

the ceiling joists, in all their creative framing, are the polar opposite from the tongue and groove as far as removing. they practically come down on their own. removed 3 of them in about 1 minute. that includes carrying them to the other side of the room and stacking them nicely. they’re not supporting any load, not adding tension or any actual support to the roof. i guess that’s a good thing, as they’re partially made from whatever scrap that was laying around and only held on by a couple nails.

we have to remove the doug fir flooring next… hopefully without destroying any of it. we don’t really have enough as is, given that we’re adding square footage to the upstairs… and this stuff cost a damned fortune at salvage yards.
once the flooring is out, what knob and tube wiring that’s left can be replaced and we can lay insulation. that part i want to get done soon… now that the paneling is all down, and there are removed windows in the attic. the complete lack of insulation and weather-tightness isn’t the hot ticket for energy efficiency when it comes to maintaining a reasonable temperature in the house. the heater brought the main floor up to temperature real quick… but 15 minutes later, it’s pretty chilly again.

after the insulation goes down and we’re all able to enjoy a bit of comfort rather than shedding the sweater when the heater blasts, then nearly losing a toe to frost bite once the temp drops again (ahh, the joys of oil heat… great if you can retain it, mean temperature swings if you can’t)… damn, where was i? oh yes.. then an OSB sub floor can be laid. along with the subfloor, we can start the fun stuff: framing! oh, i love framing. really. it’s my favorite part of construction.

the front dormer is currently just decorative. we have to frame in a ridge header, along with new double (or triple) rafters to carry the load. as it sits, there aren’t even valley rafters… all the load is carried by the sheathing and likely some jedi force. the common rafters that run just in front of the window will obviously come out… and right now, they’re under a lot of stress… one is cracked, another is so tight you could… well, nevermind. it’s tight, anyway. it’s gonna be weird doing all of this with no ridge beams… we’ll just use a double valley rafter to connect to the ridge header, double up on the valley jack rafters. (i’d draw a diagram to demonstrate it… but the temperature in the living room is back down to it’s low point… fingers are a bit numb at the moment.) along with framing the front dormer, we’ll be doing major changes to the rear dormer pretty soon: widening it by about 4′ on one side, 6′ on the other, so we have room for the 2nd bathroom, and so it sits centered on the house. why the hell it’s off center now, i don’t know… but guess it fits with the apparent common theme: alcoholic builders without tape measures.

the attic could have been stripped to the studs in maybe 6 hours, if we weren’t trying to save all the tongue and groove cedar…

… but since we are… it’s slow going. day three, the walls are (mostly) stripped. the ceiling remains. about 1/4 of the removed planks are now only good for kindling, but guess the 3/4 that’s left usable is pretty good.

now, if we didn’t care about any of it… swinging the 20oz estwing leather handle rip hammer with all i’m worth would be a blast. love that thing. great old school hammer, that’s near indestructible. instead, i’m reduced to prying with a wonderbar and gently beating. not as much fun.

the hammer… to hell with a sledge, i grew up swingin’ one of these.

pics of the attic, as of this evening… the pics are bad but i’m no photographer, can’t see worth a damn when it’s not bright in the room, the camera sucks and chewbacca was a wookie but he lived with ewoks. that makes no sense.
anyway… the pics…

from the top of the stairs, facing the front left corner of the house (viewed from the street), rotating counter clockwise. if the description sucks, see the thing above about chewbacca.

it’s a good thing OSHA doesn’t come ’round here. by the pics above, i can see at least 6 things that could get the job site shut down until they were corrected. by the oozing cut/scrape/lump on my head, the lack of a hardhat would be the 7th violation.

~

something that’s different about working on this house, compared to any other project i’ve had: the help. the help is hot. other jobs, i’ve worked with construction guys. now, i’m sure some people find construction workers hot, but really not my thing. at all. i’ve worked with a few construction women as well… but they were often more manly than the construction guys… so again, not really my thing. now on this, working with rebecca… it’s pretty cool, despite having a difficult time focusing on actual work for more than 90 seconds at a time : )

~

walking with the wee one down to the coffee shop this morning, i snapped a couple pics:

the shingles on this house (actually a carriage house) are a bit too dark for ours… but love the way they look…

pretty cool entry door…

looks like they added to a stock 2 panel/6 light core, to suit the style of the house better. or it just came like that, i dunno…