Friday, October 27, 2006

Yrch!

The next goal I've been working towards is clearing out the old bedroom so I can move my office into it out of the dining room. That will allow me to take out the cabinets and take down the wall into the addition.

I knew that we had a mold problem in the old bedroom, but I figured I could deal with that later. However, as I discovered previously, the existing walls are completely uninsulated and lack a proper vapor barrier. Couple that with inadequate heating (there used to be just a floor furnace in the middle of the house, which meant the extremeties got pretty cold), the fact the bedroom is on the north side of the house and shaded partly on the west side, and a large dresser against the wall that kept air from circulating, and well, yrch! The mold problem was worse than I thought -- much worse. More than a quick coat of Kilz would take care of, and more than I wanted to continue breathing.

So this week I've stripped the drywall off, run some new wiring for a nice, properly grounded 20 amp circuit for my computer equipment, and insulated the outside walls. And because there's diagonal bracing inset between the studs, the insulation and attached vapor barrier are more cut up than I'd like so I added a separate vapor barrier, too. Today I'm hanging new drywall and can hopefully have everything taped and mudded by next week. It all goes much more quickly with a simple rectangular wall and not so many windows.

Monday, October 23, 2006

And She's Climbing a Stairway of Sisal...

Not much progress to report. Since moving into the new bedroom, I've been super busy with other stuff like Habitat for Humanity, Oakland Firefighters Random Acts, church media -- the stuff that usually keeps me only a little busy so I have time to work on the house.

I have managed to do some stuff like finally stain and finish the dresser that sat in our old bedroom for a couple years, hang the mirror, and most importantly (from the standpoint of the cats) build a ladder for access to the loft. Katarina and I had been using a stepladder for the time being, but the cats didn't much like the slippery metal under their feet. Rosie because she has no front claws and almost no front toes, and Star because she's "Wuss in Boots". Now we can all use a nice custom-made ladder, with sisal on the steps for gripping with kitty claws (for thems that's got 'em). Star still slides her paws down the side rail one step at a time, but Rosie has become quite comfortable with the ladder, the loft and a few other places we hadn't quite counted on.