…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…

the attic (along with the majority of the other projects) has been on hold for the time being. bunch of unfinished projects in a home restoration? start more!

the horrible vinyl flooring in the kitchen and bathroom just scream “i sucked even when installed in 1985!” add that to a growing curiosity to what may be under the vinyl… and we now have a mess in the kitchen and bath!

the bathroom has vinyl over what appears to be original linoleum. i’m pretty sure they sanded the linoleum, because the vinyl is actually adhered to it well. the linoleum looks as if it was laid over bare tongue and groove fir, like the front bedroom. now, the front bedroom was a complete fucking nightmare. 7am to 11pm, two days in a row, working all-out the whole time. the tar/asphalt/who knows what based mastic that held the linoleum to the bare tongue and groove was a mighty foe. one it appears i’ll be facing again.

douglas fir flooring in the bathroom? yes… the linoleum is likely going to be a major pain in the ass to remove… but the thought of matching fir in the bathroom makes it seem worth the pain, blood, sweat, tears and emotional turmoil involved in stripping down to bare wood. can then sand the hallway and bath together, then stain to match… a few layers of urethane, and it should make for a fine bathroom floor.

now, the kitchen… the kitchen floor is vinyl on top of 3/8″ particle board (no, not MDF… low grade particle board). the particle board is nailed like crazy to… more linoleum over (i think) bare fir. i know for sure it’s more tongue and groove… not positive it’s bare. some areas of linoleum came up at the edges with no difficulty, and the wood appears dark… so there’s a (mild) chance that the floor was at one time finished, then had lino laid over… which would make removal so much easier. for now, we spent an hour or two pulling up the particle board to reveal what i think is some pretty sweet linoleum…

having the entire lower floor all matching fir would be awesome… think the kitchen would look great with wood. if it’s all there, then we can refinish it… saving a lot of work compared to stripping down to the floor joists so we can tile.

after blowing half of saturday in bed with a migrane, having really weird dreams about spinach and tractors, i managed to actually do something to the house.

about 2/3 of the basement ceiling/lower level floor is insulated. had to remove some incredibly dusty/dirty/cobweb ridden tongue and groove siding that was haphazardly placed in spots along the ceiling, likely filling my lungs with all sorts of fun stuff (even though i wore a 3M mask; i don’t believe them to do much of anything).

since i’ve lost any fear of getting fiberglass on me, insulating went pretty quickly. grab a piece, unfold the backing, slide it in place overhead, reach in and slam a bunch of 9/16″ staples along the edge. pretty regularly had fiberglass rubbing all against my arms and neck; no itch. i’ll tell ya, though… get that stuff in a cut and it just plain doesn’t feel right. didn’t itch… didn’t hurt… just felt like there was something there that was wrong. as i’m pretty sure fiberglass doesn’t actually belong inside open wounds, that was the likely culprit. by the time i finished for the evening, the small cut had closed up pretty well. either the blood washed the fiberglass out… or the fiberglass is now part of me, and will give me at least a mild superhuman strength or ability. it happens. i’ve read comic books.

~

today, we tackled part of the attic. not really “demo”, as we’re trying to salvage just about everything up there… but we’re removing it all, down to the studs. then we’re removing many of them, too.

the roof is framed with 2×4s, stick/barn style.

close to a century of gravity, and there are areas of sagging. the sheathing and shingles are about 7 years old, so no sense in removing any of that… we’ll sister larger rafters along the 2×4s, jacking them straight along the way.

the front dormer on the house is currently just cosmetic. i’m not entirely sure why, as it wouldn’t have been difficult to have framed it to be used, rather than how it is now… and actually might have been easier…

so we’ll pull it all out, put in a header and walls, have a nice 10′ x 12′ area that’ll look cool in the new master bedroom.

now here’s where the problems and decisions begin. putting 2×8 rafters along the current 2×4s will give us 7.5″ of space from the deck. for a cathedral ceiling in this area of the country, R38 insulation is recommended . R38c fiberglass is 10.5″ thick + 1″ for air circulation… made to sit in 2×12 framing. yeah, that won’t work. why don’t we just put 2×12s in, instead of 2×8s? because we’d lose quite a bit of legal square footage, keeping the average ceiling height above the bare minimum… and that minimum is a bit on the claustrophobic side.
staying with 2×8s, the most fiberglass we can place would be R21. getting close to R38 with spray polyurethane could probably be done, although the cost is insane. oh, and that 40 year roof would completely lose it’s warranty.

ok, now what? we can go with R19 + prodex foil/foam/foil between the fiberglass and ceiling material, giving us about R33.. using deck vents, we can actually use a 2×6 rafter with the R19 between ‘em (yeah, tight… but breathable with the vents), plus the foil/foam laid completely across the rafters… ceiling flush to the foil/foam insulation… sealed well, and we should be able to keep all that (expensive) heat inside the house during the winter… and have a decent ceiling height.

what about the summer, and trying to keep the house cool? since the prodex (i just keep switching what term i use for the stuff… here, i’ll do it again: FfmF) is primarily a radiant barrier, it should keep what heat gets past the fiberglass, within the fiberglass. since owens corning (the manufacturer of the fiberglass) has no warranty issues with this, nor does the maker of the prodex (sorry, let’s say “foil-polyurethane-foil” this time), nor the manufacturer of the shingles… we should be golden. plus, even with absolutely zero insulation, it was quite bearable during the hottest days of this past summer. keeping warm is more important

if all goes to plan, we’ll use the tongue and groove cedar that we’re removing, on the new ceilings. haven’t worked that into the equation yet, but i’m sure 3/4″ thick cedar has to have some insulating value, right? laid on top of completely sealed (hmmm, what term this time?) thin layer foil/foam insulation, should be at least as good as drywall, right? i dunno… it’ll look nicer, though.

guess that’s the end of decision time, right?
probably not… i’m sure something will come up.

we’ve got a bunch of R19 sitting in the basement, just waiting to go up to the attic. we’ve got a bunch of R13, waiting for the walls (R11 is all that’s called for, here). we even have R13 for the interior walls, between the rooms (sound deadening makes for happy families). gotta get some cellulose to lay heavily under the front dormer (above the front porch), and a ~R14 layer of cellulose between the first floor and 2nd floor/attic, partially for sound deadening, partially for zone heating efficiency.

now we just have to finish tearing it all out…

… but we’ve got some squeaky clean sofas!

while i was out of town for work, rebecca got an upholstery steam cleaner and went to town on the sofas. you wouldn’t imagine a black sofa looking “brighter”… but they do. it all smells great, too… that “sofa smell” is gone. guess sofa smell = grunge.

while i was gone the oil tank contractors dug a big hole and pumped out all the old oil.

eventually (i suppose) they’ll come back to fill the thing with gravel, and fill the hole back up. this is the first of (hopefully) very few contracted out jobs to the house…
675 gallon heating oil tank… no idea how long it’s been there, but i’d guess at least since the early 50s. now that it’s empty and decommissioned, our sole source of warmth is stealing the blankets. as i’m not particularly good at either stealing them from rebecca, or protecting what blanket i have: it’ll be chilly for a while

(more…)

there was a minor issue with the site (and my other sites, and all the sites i host), due to a wee bit of malicious behavior. servers crashed bad, data needed recovered… but it’s (mostly) all back.

anyway… on to house stuff:

the floors in the rear bedroom. for decades, the beautiful hardwood was covered with tared linoleum. until now. did we remove the linoleum, and restore the hardwood? nope. two reasons… one, the linoleum is on very, very well. two, the hardwood isn’t there. it’s plywood. don’t even know where to begin guessing why… but it’s plywood.

so… given that it’s plywood, there’s no sense on spending hour after hour of removing the very well attached linoleum, right? for a temporary fix so the room can be used, we sourced some salvaged and restored old growth southern white hickory planks. or were they knock-off brand pergo laminate floors that were on clearance for 85 cents per square foot? i forget…

ugly floors? cover ‘em!

my little helper…

“poppa, i’m helping!” (think this is when she’s putting the marker down my pants)

and the approval on the finished job!

we also painted the room. still needs the trim to be re-painted…

***

sorta got some more work done on the back yard, too… by selling the dog run! the guys spent about an hour taking the thing apart, getting tangled in it’s chain link, and getting torn up on the rose bushes on the way out.

***

now i’m sitting in some quasi-crappy hotel in downtown los angeles, bored out of my mind, missing the family and thinking of all the other work the house needs ASAP…

exterior:
• strip clapboard siding and allllll the trim
• remove cedar shingles, replace with new hand-split ones we’ve yet to source
• paint the siding, trim, eves, and all the other stuff with colors we’ve yet to decide upon
• strip the porch and restore the wood
• skim coat the masonry portion of the foundation
• figure out if the chimneys are going to fall over
• decommission the oil tank (oil heated house)

interior/mechanical
• re-rope / restore all the windows (guess that’s sorta exterior, too)
• get the leaded glass repaired
• new (tankless) water heater, before the rust completely consumes the current one
• new HVAC + heat pump
• new wiring to replace the knob and tube

landscape
• grade the land so the house isn’t in the low section of the yard
• trench for curtain drains, irrigation, underground conduit, moat (ok, no moat)
• sod!
• retaining wall in the front, to level the yard
• redwood playhouse / swing set / slide / activity center

the ASAP list is actually a lot longer than that….. a lot, lot longer…

in the morning i fly back to so-cal, have to show up at work for a few days, then will drive back up here with the girls. until we’re all up here, this is how the house sits.

moved the sofas into the living room. as un-manly as the whole “like to soak in the cast iron tub” thing is… i reckon that being as i carried the large sofa in, by myself (and i do mean carried: not dragged, straight dead lifted and carried on my shoulder), things are evened out. carried in the smaller two, as well… but they’re not as impressive as the large sofa.

the floors are hardened/dried well enough for moderate traffic. in 2 days they’ll be completely cured.

the rear bedroom is a different story. all the staples and tack strip are gone, now… but the damned linoleum remains. i leveled in the area that a small amount was removed from… and am thinking the best thing to do for now would be lay something else on top of it all. i was thinking 12×12 linoleum (not vinyl). linoleum is made from linseed oil, cork, cotton, wax and a few other natural materials. it’s 100% hypo-allergenic (unless you’re allergic to cotton… then you’ve got bigger things to be concerned with), non-toxic, durable and clean. ok so it’s ugly, too. vinyl on the other hand, emits quite a few chemicals into the air for at least the first year after it’s been laid… and quite poisonous in case of a fire (one reason vinyl floors are not allowed in sleeping quarters, under many building codes). anyway, i was thinking about letting zoe pick out a linoleum tile she likes. then, when the new bedrooms are complete upstairs, strip this all down to the wood and refinish.

patched area:

more floor.
2 coats of varathane water-borne polyurethane with hardener, 1 wet coat without hardener, in the dining room and living room. it started pouring rain and the temp dropped to 62f (16c) in a matter of minutes… raising the tack level of the polyurethane quite a bit…. resulting in some impurities in the last coat. being a non-hardened coat, it’ll all buff out. needs to be buffed before the layer of acrylic wax goes on in a few weeks, anyway. in another 4 hours, the floors can safely be walked on (barefoot or with socks). 4 more and i can move some of the furniture inside (on cotton pads), because i gotta go back to LA tomorrow… don’t think that leaving our sofas on the porch is the greatest of ideas.

dining room, still (very) wet:

living room, 5 minutes after the last application:

cool pocket doors between the living room and dining room:

the front bedroom just has one coat of un-hardened polyurethane, for now. not entirely happy with the outcome of the sanding, particularly the part along one wall that rebecca is giving me a hard time about
i’ll feather/blend it in better, sometime later… then put 2 more coats of poly.
the hall still needs to be stripped and blended into the front bedroom, and the back bedroom…… damn that room.

the back bedroom still has linoleum on it. it’s likely staying for a bit. i figure it’ll take roughly 20 hours to remove it, another 4 hours of sanding to level it… then stain and poly. for now, just plain don’t have the time before leaving.

soon, we’ll have to decide if the back bedroom’s floors will be done before moving everything into it… or later, after the bedrooms upstairs are done. i’m a bit torn between the two, as the linoleum is clean (save for a 1 square foot area i removed)… and it would be nice to actually use it as a bedroom. or, on the other hand, it would be nice to finish the floor and be done now.

* for today.

front bedroom:

dining room:

living room:

stained 1 coat 75/25 mix of minwax oil-based dark walnut stain and odorless mineral spirits, hand rubbed with cotton.
tomorrow i can screen sand with more mineral spirits to bring out the grain of the wood more…. then decide on a final finish:

old-school paste wax, orbital buffed…

acrylic wax, hand buffed…

water-based polyurethane…

the wood looks good in person; a bit dark in the photos. it actually came out darker than i intended, but after a screen sanding tomorrow it’ll brighten up a bit.

not the manliest of things…. but after working for 14 hours, the cast iron tub rocks. spent an hour in it, tonight. too sore/tired to get out of it…

(note the vinyl flooring… it’s coming out, 1″ hexagon tile going in… more work to do)

today has been eaten up, thus far, with arranging to have a storage container delivered before the movers arrive… and getting the city to issue a permit so it can sit on the street. need the container because we can’t move our furniture and belongings into the house due to our apartment being infested with some kinda mold i can’t pronounce, let alone spell. it’s black, and sounds scary. the furniture all needs to be cleaned in some magical voodoo-ish way (ok, hepa vacuum and some anti-mold stuff) before it’s moved in. gives me a bit more time with the floors, at least…

front bedroom, after 2 passes with 36grit, 2 passes with 60 grit, 1 pass with 80grit. still need to do the areas the large floor sander won’t reach.

dining room, after the floor sander…

living room, after the floor sander, and after 3 passes with the handheld RO sander, edges done… can finally see the detail work in the corners…

the floors are all quarter sawn old-growth douglas fir. best guess is the tree was around 200 years old when it was sent to the mill, by the look of the grain. fir is generally a softwood, but the really old trees were dense… this stuff is about as hard as oak… and went through a lot of sandpaper. driving 6d nails through it feels like trying to drive 16d nails through concrete.

the floor sander is about 85lbs, 4.5HP, and feels like tug-o-war against a drunk mule. no fun to load in/out of the volvo, either… nowhere to get a good grip, awkward, and slippery yet quite pointy in parts. lost a bit of blood on it, while trying to maneuver it into the trunk, in the rain, after ~12 hours of use.

still need to strip the armored floor (linoleum) from the rear bedroom… and strip the hallway. due to the size/shape of the hall, the big sander won’t fit. just going to strip the stain, hand scrape and sand with the handheld RO.

something in the house that’s actually in perfect condition… 1920s cast bronze, leaded glass, retrofitted to modern-ish lights most likely sometime in the 50s.