Heat!

Heat's on in the big house, now that the weather is in the 50's. Ah well. It's still progress.

Finally back to building!

New target: the east door on the carriage house. The ultra-frigid weather of two weeks ago is gone, but there are still some serious drafts howling through our nice new family room, so this effort is important.

For orientation, note that you can see the sunroom roof through the transom of this door, and the Japanese maple that's between the buildings. In the backyard picture from July, this door is to the far left of the picture, and it is directly under window #2.

The cord hanging down is my quick-and-dirty wiring for the security light outside; part of this project will be to wire that properly and insulate the arched space above the transom.

As always, the first order of business is to fix plaster. First, I removed the inner board of the arched space (look at those arched bricks - aren't they neat?) to see what fell off. The large chunk of plaster at the right above that arch did so, and so I took my caulk/adhesive and glued it back in place. I caulked the right side of the door (light showing), then I mortared the missing plaster there, right on top of the caulk. The left side of the door is in better condition, for whatever reason.

This is getting to be my pattern for this plaster. I'm using mortar as a base layer, then patching plaster as the top layer. I'm sure the patching plaster isn't as strong as a true plaster top coat, but this is working OK for smaller areas like this. And you can't beat mortar for strength, assuming you mix it right. (Ahem.)

Anyway, that was yesterday's work. Today, I put a deadbolt on this door. The old lock was missing, so there was a 1-1/2" hole in it. This is not what we in the building trades consider winterized. So now it's better.

Friday, my HVAC friend is coming, and we'll have heat in the big house for the first time. (Ahem again.) Then we can get back to plumbing over there. So more on that in the days to come.

The pipes froze anyway

Dammit.

The good thing is that since I had at least shut off and drained part of the plumbing, the part that froze (in the big house's kitchen) didn't harm any of the pipes. Judicious application of space heaters has thawed some of the problem - but still no water to the carriage house yet.

I clearly should have wrapped these pipes with heat tape.

Not The House

Even crazy house people need a vacation from time to time, so we're visiting friends in Puerto Rico. This is a picture taken at the Campamento del Caribe, which is run by some of those friends, who happen to have an apartment free until the 10th. We had to drive to Atlanta to get affordable air fare, but it was so worth it.

In the meantime, back at The House, nighttime temperatures are down to 9 degrees or so. Yeah, I drained the plumbing in the big house as we were leaving - I haven't gotten that flue replaced, so no heat there yet. So far it hasn't been an issue, but as cold as it is, I think it most certainly will be now.

So - happy New Year to all! In lieu of resolutions, I just have a to-do list.

1. Big house heat


• Flue and chimney liner (to be done by an HVAC friend of mine)
• Ductwork as needed (to be done by me)


2. Winterization


• Carriage house
• Weatherstripping around two downstairs doors
• Deadbolt on "utility door" to replace present 1" hole
• Insulated board for small window on south corner
• Still a little caulking/plastering above the south wall and in the closet area on the southeast corner
• In the event of warm weather, the most urgent mortar replacement work


• Big house
• Urethane in obvious holes in basement walls (mortar later)
• Boards over vents under first back addition
• Board up two basement windows on east basement


3. Gutters, sometime prior to the spring thaw


4. Carriage house bathroom
• Attach and plumb vanity


5. Carriage house electrical work
• Replace stolen ground wire outside
• Overhead light for washer/dryer area
• Separate circuit for bedroom to permit use of air conditioner


6. Carriage house paint and trim
• Paint walls and trim in bathroom
• All window trim


7. Equipment closet in big house
• Reroute incoming DSL into closet in dining room
• Add an electrical outlet there for the Linux box


8. Carriage house garage area
• Remove superfluous fiberglass insulation (40% complete)
• Still some miscellaneous plaster, and more paint, aye!


9. Dining room
• Remove and scrape wallpaper (30% done, thanks to daughter)
• Remove all damaged plaster on walls
• Remove damaged drywall from ceiling
• Restore plaster on walls
• Drywall ceiling
• Paint (I'm still liking that semi-gloss ultra white)
• Clean and maintain the woodwork and buffet
• Shore up under floor (soft spot from long-standing leak in roof fixed in 90's)
• Polish floor


10. Carriage house kitchen window (after spring has sprung)


11. Remainder of big house


• Upstairs bathroom plumbing
• Addition of sink in kitchen
• Cleaning
• Electrical systems: oh the humanity!

Merry Christmas to all!

And to all a good night.

Fencing

No, no, not épée or foil, but wrought iron - if we're going to be out of town this coming summer, the more security mechanisms we've got, the better, right?

Here's another company.

The Floor: done!

OK, so the latest in the southwest corner saga has been the decision to put in a raised floor covering the southern half of the downstairs in the carriage house. Once we started painting those walls, the prospect of a family room kind of area there just sort of leaped out at us.

That effort is complete.

The first step was to frame in the section of floor we wanted to use. The layout of the upstairs of the carriage house actually shows this pretty well; the new family room area is the square on the south end of the downstairs, with the stairway to the east of it. That turned out to be an area just shy of 16'x16'.

Since we were using 2x4s taken from the big house's basement, they smelled rather moldy. So as you can see, we decided to paint them with a Zinser sealing primer after dousing them with bleach. After the bleach, they actually no longer smelled moldy, but man, some of them had branching mold structures etched on their sides, so we just didn't want to play around with them. Plus the kids did the painting, so it was no extra work for me.
This framing work took about a week.

Once the framing was done, it was time to start laying the plywood, a 3/4" moisture-treated subfloor. This stuff was heavy; I could lift a sheet, but since all sawing had to be done in the big house (to minimize sawdust propagation), it all added up to a lot of physical labor. As you can see, we also laid down Styrofoam insulation board under the floor. It's about R8, so I don't know whether it's going to have a huge impact, but the completed floor is indeed comfy.

As I went, I tried to insert shims under the 2x4 frame to make sure it was solid on the concrete. I found that attaching the plywood warped the frame somewhat, but the final floor is still pretty solid and has no places that bang when you step on them, so I call it a success.

Here's an extremely important trick I learned from disassembly of the floor in the big house's basement - as you lay the plywood, take a 4' straightedge and draw a line over the joist. Now, you know where to put your screws. I forgot this on one sheet of plywood (until it was too late; I'd already put down the next row) and kicked myself repeatedly as I sank screw after screw into empty space.

Finally, though, yesterday, eight pieces of plywood later, it was done. I don't know if you can see this, but the plywood is cut to fit into the irregularity in the south wall (also the west wall) where the doors used to be. I'm pretty proud of this floor, actually. It's kind of silly - but this is really the largest carpentry project I've done. I actually ran through a box of screws for the first time in my life.

Anyway, today's project was to get the carpet down. What you say? Carpet? Yeah, even with the dust allergies, we decided that a thin, easily cleaned carpet with no pad was still a better choice for the floor than a cold linoleum - and we can't really afford a wooden surface here. I'd love a laminate or plank floor, but it's just a temporary house for the winter, not the main show. This picture, by the way, shows the carpet cut in under the west window (remember that first picture of that window with the Truck 'o' Stuff piled next to it?)

So here's nearly the final result for the southwest corner. I still want to put a bit of drywall over that exposed brick section, and the little window needs sealing and insulation, and there still needs to be some caulking done here, and painting of the trim and repainting of the dings and scrapes from putting in the plywood. And the trim's not finished yet, and actually I still have about six feet of tacking on the east wall, but:

The tree is up in time for St. Nicholas Day. And the shoes are in the window. Happy Holidays.