Just When You Thought it Safe...

Apparently I can't stop working on the house. K has been out of town with her mom, so we arranged to take advantage of her absence by doing some work on her office. Starting with pulling the drywall off the outer walls, so I can run proper electrical, insulate the walls, and fix the door that sticks now that the house has settled. Other tasks (like work) keep getting in the way, but I've got most of the drywall pulled off and the boxes for the new electrical placed. Hopefully some pictures soon...

I got a little dirty...

mmm...dirt

OK, I got a lot dirty. Probably the dirtiest I've ever been in my adult life, and possibly in my entire life. But it was for a good cause. I was helping friends and fellow housebloggers Ayse and Noel at Casa Decrepit with another demolition project. I was there back in March to help them tear down the lowered ceilings in some of their rooms and hallways. Above those most of the original plaster and lath ceilings were in good shape. But in the dining room, roof leaks over the years had not been kind to the original ceiling. Now that Noel has (hopefully) patched the leaks, it was time to tear down the damaged ceiling. We also took off the plaster and lath on two of the walls that was in bad shape. I hosed myself off before we settled in for a late lunch and beers, but I was still filthy. When I got home I had to wash my hair 4 times before it was clean. That's saying something considering how little of it's left.

More pics and description on their blog.

big-time clean up

original plaster medallion

Casa Decrepit

Yesterday I loaded my step ladder onto the Golf, and headed over to Casa Decrepit in Alameda for a party -- a demolition party. They're restoring a lovely Victorian that's had unspeakable crimes committed to it. Lowered ceilings, covered over ceiling medallions and window arches, dark brown faux wood paneling, and to finish it off, bright pink trim. It was great to meet Ayse and Noel and their animal menagerie, and the others who came to help with the demo party. A great bunch of people. Read their post on it (with lots more pictures).

Elaine the panel-ripping machine

let it snow!

Rosie and Goldie

One Step Forward, Three Steps Back

new framing

That's how this week felt, at least. Thursday evening I was basically back to where I'd been at the end of last week. To be sure, things are in better shape than they were now that the termite-damaged wood has been removed, but it's frustrating as all get-out (frakking frustrating for you BSG fans) to not be any further along than I was a week ago. And I thought I was basically done with framing back in September. I've gone through most of a 5 lb. box of 16p nails since then.

But it wasn't all doom and gloom. Our neighbor, upon hearing of our kitchenless state offered to bring some food over for dinner. She recently returned from working in Europe, and wasn't able to cook while there, so she's happy to cook extra and share with us. And we're happy to have some home-cooked food (though we've been finding some good microwaveable stuff from Trader Joe's, it just ain't the same).

Today I was out to Habitat for Humanity for my usual Friday volunteer gig. I spent the day cutting stringers for stairs for the 20 houses in the upcoming build-a-thon (it's not too late to sign up or donate!), but what was of note were the helicopters. The Edes site is just south of Oakland Coliseum, where the memorial service for the 4 Oakland police officers who died recently was held today. The site is also near the Oakland Airport, so helicopters, small planes and jets aren't unusual, but the sheer number of helicopters in the air quickly caught our attention. I was thinking about the officers, their families, and their friends and co-workers frequently throughout the day.

Tomorrow I'm off to Casa Decrepit in Alameda for their demolition party. It'll be fun to meet some other Bay Area housebloggers, and a nice change of pace from demolishing stuff in our house. This week was more than enough of that for me.

The Tell-Tale Poop

Sawzall Hero II

So those few dark bits that I thought might be termite droppings, alas, were. I pulled out the channel in question, and there were tunnels running the length of one of the boards. I'd already replaced the bottom plate, so I turned my attention upward, and removed the top plate and the doubler. To be sure, I even removed a ceiling joist and part of one of the roof rafters. At that point there wasn't much to hold the siding in place, so I removed it, too (carefully stacking it in a corner). Today after a dump run, I'll go ahead and remove the last vestiges of that wall and rebuild it. If I'd known, I would have just demolished the whole wall from the start and rebuilt it then. Sigh.

Ooops...

ooops...

Here's a quick quiz: at what point did I decide it was time to quit working on the kitchen for the day? If you guessed "when the flatbar broke", you're right! I knew it was theoretically possible, but didn't think it would be quite so easy.

I don't use a flatbar for pulling nails very often; usually it's just my framing hammer and if necessary, a cat's paw to get it started (one of these days I'll have to do a how-to post on the right way to pull a nail). Only rarely do I use the flatbar to pull, and even more rarely the long end. Anyways, this was one of those mysteries of our house, a 20 penny nail where normally it would be a 16. It was in a channel between two studs where one of the old front porch walls met the outside wall, so my hammer wouldn't fit. I tried the short end of the flatbar (which has more leverage) and couldn't get it, so I tried the long end braced against one of the studs on the side, and there was a *tink* and it snapped. No injuries, but I stood there stunned for a second, trying to figure out if what I thought had happened had really just happened. Alas, it had.

The really bad news is not the flatbar (aka a Vaughn Superbar), but why I was deciding to pull that nail is that I thought I saw some tell-tale termite droppings along the edge of the channel. Tomorrow I'll go ahead and pull out the boards involved just in case. I did get the final bit of the ceiling drywall pulled down, puzzled over some more on where to run the plumbing (particularly the vent stack), and placed a few electrical boxes for countertop outlets and such.

Where the Deer and the Tabby Cats Play

smash!

Yesterday as the sun was going down, the deer that had been sitting and grazing in our yard decided it was time to play. There's a family / herd of 5 (mom, 2 from this year, 2 from last year, we think) that we frequently see in our yard. Mostly they eat plants, eat birdseed, poop, and sit around. Yesterday we saw 4 of them, doing their usual. But the young ones started running around, up and down the hill to the neighbors on each side. Then the others started getting in to it. Occasionally one would stop, breathing hard, and then join back in. It was, in short, hilarious. When not chasing around with the others, one would occasionally just hop in the air. It was almost as much fun as watching birds bathe in the birdbath.

Today I worked more on the kitchen. I spent a while puzzling over the plumbing (made more difficult by the foundation changes needed because of past problems), then went back to work pulling out drywall, bits of framing, etc. K was working at home today, so Rosie had someone to entertain her. Mostly. In the late afternoon, K had a video meeting, and Rosie showed up outside the plastic into the dining room. I went out and carried her to K's office. At some point while I was carrying debris up to the carport, she snuck past the plastic, up the back of the chimney, and into the attic.

who, me?

I was picking up bits of drywall, and heard a rustling noise from above. I called her, and saw her peering down, looking innocent. She wouldn't come down, so I went up the access ladder, and she jumped down the way she'd come up.

We had a bit of worry, because in addition to all the debris she could hurt herself on in the kitchen, there's plenty of stuff in the attic, too. K took her outside to eat some grass in case she'd eaten anything she shouldn't, but she seems fine now. Her usual goofy, playful self.

Oh give me a home
where the house cats roam
and the skies are cloudy some days
Where some times is heard
an unpleasant word
because Rosie has decided to stray

Home, home of deranged
where the deer and the tabby cats play
Where some times is heard
an unpleasant word
because Rosie has decided to stray

Sign Sign Everywhere A Sign

unhappy trails to you...

• sign that you've got termite damage: see picture
  
• sign that you've been watching a lot of Battlestar Galactica: you say "frak!" upon discovering said damage
• sign that a board has termite damage even though it looks OK on the outside: it sounds like a frakking rain stick when you tilt it

This was a joist below the area of subfloor that looked a bit spotty, so I'm very glad I decided to replace more subfloor. I took out the entire joist, but the one that was sistered to it I could only take out 8' of or so without major work. It looks clean after that, but that's no guarantee I've gotten all the infested wood. Still no live termites or even corpses, just trails and castings, but bleah.

I did actually say "frak" when I discovered the damaged joist, and didn't think about my word choice until later. K and I don't watch much TV, mostly movies from Netflix, but we recently discovered the new version of Battlestar Galactica. Besides the character names and the basic premise, it has very little in common with the cheesy 70's original that I watched as a child. This is much darker, better special effects, and deeper, more interesting characters. (The other word I've picked up from a sci-fi television series is "shiny". Bonus points to anyone who can name the series.)

Dark Side of the Fireplace

This is why the kitchen is not quite a rectangle. I'm going to tear down all this drywall, but I gave a little test tear to check things out. This is the back side of the chimney. It's dark, though these days the front side is dark, too. That's because we pretty much stopped having fires several years ago because of the particulate pollution they produce. I became more aware of that after visiting Yellowstone NP and reading about the problems they were having from campfires some times. Of course, even if we wanted to have fires, we frequently couldn't because the local air quality district realized the same thing, and passed regulations limiting when people can have fires, and only EPA-certified inserts, wood stoves, etc. can be installed in new construction. Glass doors I installed many years ago plus the damper keep it from sucking too much warm air out of the house, but the fireplace sits dark.

There's a hole...

a great big hole

There's a hole in floor, dear Liza, dear Liza. A great big one, dear Henry, dear Henry. There's a hole in the roof, too. Fortunately not nearly as big, but big enough that water is sneaking in somehow when it rains really hard. I discovered the latter after ripping down the drywall in that part of the kitchen. I created the former by ripping up rotted and termite-infested subflooring.

I ripped up a lot of subfloor today, and decided I'm going to rip up more that's spotty. So after making another dump run, I got another piece of T&G 3/4" for subflooring. The hole will be bigger than what's shown before I'm done. Including the old porch, it'll be three 4x8 sheets total, which ends up being two thirds of the kitchen. Hopefully that'll be enough.

ISE = mark of the beast?

I read recently that disposals are evil. Not only do they discourage composting, but they use water (precious here in California) to flush solids to the water treatment plant where they then need to be trucked to a landfill, encourage blocked pipes along the way, and use a bit of electricity to boot. I had no idea they were so bad. InSinkErator responds that they're not evil, and in fact are better environmentally. Given the choice between chucking food in a disposal and throwing it in the garbage, maybe, but composting is the way to go.

evil?

We didn't use our disposal much since we compost, and after removing it, it's a good thing. As I was cutting the drain pipes, it fell away. Apparently it had been held in place primarily by the drain pipes, the top having rotted away to nothing. That along with the lower cabinets which were rotting away, between being cheap-ass particle board and having the occasional influx of moisture (rusted out drainpipe and original dishwasher, I'm looking at you). So besides the kitchen sink, there wasn't a whole lot to salvage out of the kitchen demolition.

Instead of getting to the vinyl flooring, I made a dump run and got some new subflooring material and some 2x4s to rebuild the wall where the old window had been. Ripping up the vinyl flooring and replacing some of the subflooring is on today's list.

Bloomin' Idiots

That'd be and some of the flowers. The flowers for starting the process of blooming a couple weeks ago in the warm days we had before winter returned. Me for deciding to tackle more plumbing work than I needed to today.

space...the kitchen's frontier

This week started off well. With the clock ticking, I got an early start yesterday (thanks to Star; if she can't sleep because of some perceived problem, why should anyone?) K headed off to work and I ran the dishwasher for the last time. While it was running, I hung plastic in the doorways and moved the last items out of kitchen. As soon as it was done, I started removing the cabinets and the remainders of the walls. It was messy but fun work. I alternated between the sawzall and a hammer and prybar. I'd planned to have the mess cleaned up by the time K got home from work, but when I looked at the clock it was 5PM and I still had a lot of debris to remove. I was still hauling stuff when she got home, and did so for a while after. I took a shower and was in bed before 9PM, and asleep not long after.

After 11 hours sleep, I awoke today and got a much slower start. In order to remove the lower cabinets, I needed to remove the plumbing. After K left for lunch, I turned off the water, and started chopping pipes. And now we come to my moment of idiocy. Rather than just sweat some 1/2" caps on the stubs of where the kitchen supply lines had been, I took a look the mess of 3/4" and 1/2" and tees and such where the plumbing for the addition had been tied in and galvanized pipes replaced, I decided it was time to clean it up. So I cut out the mishmash and then spent the rest of the afternoon cutting copper pipes and sweating fittings. I only had one failure, but with plumbing that takes a while. The results are great: no mishmash, 3/4" all the way to the master bath, and I think I fixed the last of the water hammer by securing the new pipes better. But it took me all afternoon instead of the less than an hour that capping the stubs would have. I did get the drain pipe removed and capped, and the old dishwasher pulled, so there was some visible evidence for today's work, but I'm feeling almost as tired tonight as I was last night.

Tomorrow I'll remove the sink and take out the lower cabinets, and remove the last bits of wall. Time permitting, I'll start ripping up the vinyl flooring, too. I did a little test strip, and it shouldn't be too bad. It's glued to 1/4" plywood instead of directly to the subfloor, so it comes up with out leaving adhesive gunk behind. The bad news is that I'll have to replace some of the subfloor, because I've already seen from below what bad shape it's in.

Sawzall Hero

Yes, it's the latest game sensation for the Wii and Playstation, Sawzall Hero! Be sure to pick up the less exciting sequel, Shopvac Hero, due out in spring 2009.

This is a slightly Photoshopped image of me preparing to take out part of the wall between the old front hall and the kitchen. Not because it was the next logical step, or it was a particularly good time to (I should be busy finishing up the the media for the Christmas Eve services at RLC), but because I felt a need to do something. So do something I did.

I hung plastic to try to control the dust (fail), and went to town on the section of wall. I cut through the lovely 4x4 header they'd put over the 1' wide broom closet, and preserved the even lovelier 4x6 header they'd put over the doorway to the kitchen (this is a non-bearing wall, remember). A sawzall cuts drywall like a hot knife through butter, so it was just the few nails in the framing that took a bit of time.

Now there's less wall

And then K and I got our first look at what a beautiful space the kitchen and dining room are going to be. The rest of the wall I took out will come out once I remove the old kitchen cabinets, and much more of the far end of the kitchen will be open to the dining room, but even this amount is pretty trippy. Rosie is clearly unimpressed.

But I got my hero points without the sawzall, by rearranging the drywall in the dining room, moving tools into the basement, and then moving the kitty's litterbox and a table into the dining room. That gives us an actually usable dining room space in the living room, with Uncle Al's old table. There's even enough room for a table leaf or two. I think K was worrying about our house become like the house up the road that burned, packed with so much stuff we couldn't get through it easily. Besides which we plan to have a few friends and family over after Christmas (so we'll need those table leaves), and prospect of trying to cram into the existing space around the table was pretty grim.

Bustin' Loose

Today I rented a jackhammer again, and removed part of the walk in front of the house. Katarina and I had decided to remove it after I'd discovered and starting fixing the problems with the foundation and rot in the sill plate and rim joists. We're going to raise the remaining area up to match the level of the bottom step down (on the left in the picture) from the front walk, as well as slope it away from the door, but Katarina wants a more natural look around her office door.

I'd forgotten how much stuff makes up the walk. Going back 3 years (!), I find that I had known this fact, but I rediscovered today that the walk is thick: 1.5 inches of pavers, 2 inches of mortar, and 5.5 inches of concrete. The stone and cement came out pretty quickly, but the concrete took me all afternoon and into the evening. Given the space to work, I had to remove a lot of the debris to make room so I could chip away the next patch, and that slowed me down considerably.

While working away, I had the chisel of the jackhammer stick in the concrete a number of times, which is pretty normal with dirt beneath. But then it dropped quickly and got stuck, and I knew something was different. It turned out there was a fairly large space underneath part of walk. The opening looks like the home of the Killer Rabbit of Caerbannog, or maybe a false tomb (to fool grave robbers) of the pharoah Ratsrkhamun.

Some years back during an El Niño year, we had water flowing down the hillside and some flooding in the basement. Since then we'd added a French drain around part of the house, and with the addition and its drainage, pretty much eliminated the flooding. But that particularly wet year, and some of the normal winters that followed had clearly eroded a bunch of soil. I plan to add some more drainage up hill from the front walk, so hopefully this won't be a problem any more.

Knock, knock

Knock, knock.
What's not there?
Isn't that supposed to be "who's there?"
So? What was the last thing about this house that was exactly the way it's supposed to be?
Good point. OK...what's not there?
The old front porch!
Hmm...interesting, but not very funny. Don't quit your day job.

Yesterday I touched up the paint around the tile in the bathroom, then I went into demolition mode. I hauled the last bits of debris from the front porch 'round to the back yard, chopped up some bits of rim joist that had been rotting away in the back yard, and then went to work on the front porch with my sawzall. After working on the media for church, I went back at it today.

The good news is that I got a lot of stuff removed. The bad news is that I need to take out even more, because the termite damage goes beyond the porch itself. The mudsill, the rim joist, parts of the floor joists...I hope it ends soon. I still haven't seen any live termites, but the damage is pretty extensive. And the construction was pretty sketchy in any event. The ledger board that the joists under the porch were resting on wasn't attached to the foundation, just to the joists themselves. So instead of it holding them up, they were holding it up. And not very well, give how rotted stuff was.

Sigh.

¡Y escuche! Mis brazos están cansados.

As mentioned earlier, I'd already decided to hire one or more laborers to help with clearing the site and digging for the foundation. In Oakland and Berkeley, there are various locations where you can hire day laborers. For example, near Truitt and White in Berkeley, there are dozens of men waiting every morning, hoping for work. I figured I'd try hiring one, and when I found someone I worked well with, keep hiring them as long as I needed them. Good for them to have steady work, hecka easier for me.

But several weeks ago when I was volunteering at Habitat, one of the future homeowners was working there putting in some of her 'sweat equity' hours. She'd brought 3 friends with her. Unfortunately, while she speaks English quite well, none of her friends spoke any English at all. Which relegated them to menial tasks, because no one wanted to try to explain more complicated tasks to someone who was likely to be there only once, and in another language to boot. But we eventually got them helping us hanging drywall, and in the course of things, my limited Spanish led me to believe one or more of them was in search of work -- they'd done the 'wait to be hired' thing many times, with not much success.

I confirmed this with Angelica, the future homeowner, and told her I was waiting for permits from the city ("permiso de la ciudad"), and would hopefully need at least one worker in a couple of weeks. We exchanged phone numbers, and I figured it was as good a place to start as any.

Fast forward to this week, and I called Angelica and set up things to hire one of them. I wasn't sure which of the three, nor where exactly they lived (near Fruitvale and Foothill), but I had phone numbers, so Wednesday morning, off I went. I ended up with Edis, a young man originally from Honduras. He's been in the U.S. for about a year, 8 months or so in Houston, and the last 4 months in Oakland. He lives with his mother and his uncle (another of the 3 I'd met) in the Fruitvale district of Oakland.

It's no exaggeration to say Edis works like a man half my age. In no small part because he is half my age. But it's more than that...he's an incredibly hard worker that would work a lot of people into the ground. I know I didn't work that hard when I was 19. He's a nice kid, intelligent, patient with my limited Spanish, and great to work with so far.

Yesterday we dug, pulled up ivy, chopped roots, and Edis did most of the work of digging up a huge stump. And I cut off the corner of the deck where the addition will be. Today I rented an electric jackhammer, and we went back at it. Edis dug for the foundation footing, and I began breaking out a small brick wall and the front walk which is paved with flagstones. Unlike much of the house (minimum perimeter foundation, stick-built framing for everything including the roof, such that the two halves of the house don't line up), the front walk was incredibly over-engineered. Instead of 3 inches of gravel, 3 inches of mortar, 2 inches of pavers, it's more like 5 inches of concrete, 3 inches of mortar, 2 inches of pavers. And not surprisingly, a bear to get through, even with a jackhammer. And boy, are my arms tired.

My Spanish has been rapidly improving, too. The most recent lesson was pulgada: inch. Which makes a lot of sense when you think that pulga is something small, namely a flea (yes, Alameda de las Pulgas on the Pennisula is "way/walk of the fleas"). The joys of language. It's a lot more sensible than English with all its homonyms and words that are spelled one way and pronounced another.

The Mexico mission trips have been good practice for this. There's always stuff to talk to the family about, like where they want their new house, where the door and windows should go, etc. I've gotten enough time to talk with Edis that we've gotten beyond the "hello, how are you" stuff. Yesterday covered some politics ("el presidente es el diablo" got a laugh out of him), and today we talked about biking. Turns out he loves to bike...he has two bikes, a racing bike (bicicleta carrera) and a 'normal' bike (fat tires). I told him about moutain biking in Redwood Regional Park, and he told me about cycling fast in Honduras.

Oh, and we made good progress on the worksite, too :-) Still more of the walkway and brick wall to break out, and more footings to dig for, but we got a lot done.