More necro-threads bumped to the top.
Haven't been posting progress reports too much, not because I haven't been doing anything, but I've been busy enough to not get around to it. Here's what's been going on for the last five months or so:
Where to start? Well, I did do a lot of plumbing, electrical, insulation, and drywall in the house, getting the kitchen walls put mostly back together. I think I mentioned some of this in my "
A Red Letter Day" topic thread.
Once I had the garage side of the kitchen wall done, I began mounting one of the Bosch instantaneous LPG water heaters that I bought at the recycled building materials yard a couple of years back (got two of them for $25, both were repairable). I mounted the heater above the electric water heater, and plumbed the output of the electric heater into the input of the gas heater, with some bypass valves to allow water to circumvent the gas heater when it's not needed. The idea is to have an LPG backup heater for those times when the utility power fails during the wind storms we have in the winter. I bought 5" type "B" gas vent ducting and a roof jack, and punched the vent through the garage roof.
Sometime during summer, I installed an electrical circuit breaker sub-panel to supply power to the garage and my shop tools, and began some revisions to the wiring in the garage, and in particular, the carport. The previous owners had hacked up the wiring there, adding in outlets by stripping back the sheathing of the non-metallic cables, and simply wrapping new wires around the exposed conductors. A little black tape completed the job. I put in proper wiring boxes, connected ground wiring correctly, replaced undersized conductors, and distributed the power more equally across several circuits. Now I feel safer plugging loads into the outlets in the garage and carport. Before, it was shaky enough that I could see a fire being started by the shoddy connections.
The master bath, which I'm using now, has an opening window, but I found that it wasn't very effective at removing steam from the shower, so I purchased a vent fan and installed it in the ceiling, running it's output through a 4" roof vent designed for the purpose. This job called upon me to spend quite a lot of time in the far end of the attic, so I ran some spare 2x4 lumber along the rafters of the trusses to create a kind of "railroad" for me to shuffle along on, making the trip in and out much easier.
Once the fan was in, I started thinking about clammy cold winter weather, and bought a door for the bathroom. How modern! Last year I used a sheet of black plastic stapled to the door framing, as Prakash had tossed all of the doors in the house into the dumpsters.
After seeing the results of the bathroom door installation, I liked it so much I bought another one for the master bedroom, even though I only use it as a "dressing room". So far, the master bed and bath are the only rooms in the house that have been painted, as that's kind of the "Here's what it'll look like when I get done" part of the house.
Last winter, I had to tarp up the chimney, because the mortar cap was deteriorated, and was allowing water to seep down the brickwork, puddling up in the hearth. This contributed to the moldy scene inside the house, and resulted in some weird growing stuff coming out of the rock face of the fireplace.
This year, I wanted to be able to use the wood stove insert in the fireplace, so in late September, I got busy with the pneumatic chisel, pressure washer and wire brush, and removed the eroded and cracked mortar from the top of the chimney. It was a fairly easy half-day project to mix up a bag of mortar and build up a new cap. After 30 days of curing, I put multiple coats of waterproofing sealer on the cap, and painted it down the bricks on the sides of the chimney. Caulking was applied where appropriate. The end result seems to be doing a good job keeping the weather outside where it belongs:
Before the good weather got away completely, I installed two high quality glass skylights in the roof of the garage. Even during summer, the garage is dark inside, and I wanted to be able to see what I was doing without turning on lights. My shop at the old property had a large central skylight, so I was used to having a lot of natural light over my bench and table saw. Here's that project going forward:
In this photo, I'm just getting the second skylight in place, shoving it up through the hole sawed in the roofing. Behind the second skylight, you see the vent for the gas water heater, and all the way at the end of the roof, behind the 3" plumbing vent is the bathroom fan vent. All of these penetrations, and no leaks to show for my efforts. The previous owners had dozens of leaks around every vent. In fact, they did such a crappy job putting on the roof, that it leaks even where there are no vent jacks. I've spent many hours on the roof chasing down leaks, and have inserted a couple of hundred "tin shingles" (pieces of cut-down aluminum pop cans) to try and stop the water from coming in at all of the places where they made mistakes putting the shingles on. I just want this roof to last one more winter, so that the new roof can be applied after all of my skylights, vents, and other penetrations are installed. Makes sense to flash around existing construction rather than cut holes in a new roof and try to waterproof after the fact.
I put up lots of firewood this fall, I'm not going through another winter like last year, burning wet scraps and yard debris to keep warm. Had to purchase a new electric chainsaw, as my old one was worn out, and it was a cheap POS that couldn't be repaired. This time, I put out some $$$ for a Husqvarna, which is built like a proper power tool. Light weight, slim in profile, quiet, and best of all, no poisonous exhaust fumes from evil gasoline! I power it from a set of batteries and an inverter on the tractor. About the only drawback to electric is that I have to drag an extension cord around, and it gets tangled up in brush and limbs when I move around downed trees.
This is tuning into quite a missive...
Two days ago, I put some time into repairing the horse's pasture fence. Antlered Rats (Elk) had gotten into the pasture some months back and knocked down posts and broken fence wire while jumping in and out of the pasture. Trace has been so sick and lame that I didn't see much need to repair the fence, it was strong enough to keep her inside. Now that she's feeling better, I decided that I needed more security, so the bad posts were replaced, and some new barb wire strung along the top of the field fencing.
Yesterday, I finally did something about the big truck frame that the previous owners left in the yard. It was the first thing that you saw when driving into the yard, lying alongside the driveway. I used a jack and timber to raise one end, then slipped my tractor's utility trailer under, and secured it with clamps. I used the rear winch on the tractor to raise the other end, and towed the frame away, dumping it farther back on the property where it is out of the way until I either find a use for the steel, or cut it up for scrap. This frame is the second bookend to the giant tire, and now there is very little of the previous oakie's trash out in plain sight.
This evening, and each evening, before dinner, I work in the second bathroom, preparing the floor and getting ready to repair the drywall so I can paint in there (and put on a door!). That room always smelled like urine, even after Prakash tore out the vinyl flooring and a good part of the particle board underneath it. I finished the job, exposing the floor all the way down to the decking, and scraping off all of the encrusted tar paper. It smells less bad now, and I will give the decking a coat of Kilz sealer before replacing the underlayment and putting on new particle board. When done, I'll have three rooms to show as an example of the house's finished appearance.
That's it for now. I have a new winter project that keeps me busy at night after dinner, but I'll start a new thread about that in a day or two.
