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:

* 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:

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.

more pulling of linoleum in the front bedroom…

6.5 hours later, and all the linoleum is out. the 16gallon shop vac was filled twice, with small pieces…

after 2.5 hours of hand scraping to remove the tar paper backing of the linoleum, and some of the previous paint

so far i have about 14 hours of labor into that floor. i’ve drank 5 liters of water, and gone down 1 belt hole today. guess it’s at least good exercise…

the carpet in the hallway practically took itself out, compared to anything else in the house, thus far…
no matter what i can’t seem to get a good picture of it, due to the hall being completely void of light. the odd thing is i put a shop light in the hall, and it didn’t get any brighter. the only obvious possible reason for this is a black hole. a mighty small one, but enough to suck the light away.

luckily the black hole in the hall didn’t do more… because the one in the bedroom sucked my ego away. more linoleum, this time very, very well attached to the wood flooring.

this is after 1 hour of scraping, followed by 10 minutes of 35grit on the RO sander.

at this rate i figure the room would be done by this time next year. i did a quick experiment with boiling water, and it looks like heat helps a bit… so i’m off to home depot for a heat gun, then trader joe’s for dinner. after crying, of course.

but on the plus side…. here’s roughly 700lbs of old carpet and padding, removed!

another hour and a half of back breaking labor:

that’s about 1/4 of the front bedroom scraped.