Wedgewoodium Leviosa!

my familar, Rosie

Installing the cabinets and moving back into the kitchen before putting down the flooring had one big advantage: we had a working kitchen sooner rather than later. It had a number of disadvantages, not the least of which was dealing with our antique Wedgewood stove. It weighs a frakking ton (or in honor of the proposed term for 10^27, it's hella heavy.) Back when I bought the house and moved from an apartment in Berkeley, the movers complained about the weight. But one of them complained about everything, so I didn't think much of it. When it came time for K and I to move it out and then back into the kitchen, I thought a lot more about it.

So when I installed the linoleum, I cheated. Rather than move the stove out and back in a second time (moving it out made more difficult by the space being made to exactly fit it), I rented a couple of small house jacks and lifted it out the way. The minimum time for them was a day, but it was still very much worth it. Hella easier than moving the hella heavy stove twice.

Linoleum!

100 lb. roller

After much debate, some shipping delays, and yours truly moving slowly, we finally have real flooring in the kitchen and dining room!

I picked up the order last week, and rented the one tool I didn't have, a 100 lb. roller. I've been working slowly but steadily since then, and installed the last pieces under the antique stove today. A couple things slowed me down (the antique and very heavy stove not the least of them), but overall linoleum tiles are pretty easy to work with. The aforementioned antique stove was a challenge to work around (or more to the point, under), and the irregular shape of the dining room by the back door made for some interesting shapes to cut, but the real sticker was that we'd decided to do a pattern with the tiles. And not just a pattern, but a pattern involving partial tiles. Whole tiles would have been a snap, but we decided that the size of the room wasn't large enough to look right with whole tiles, so we decided to do a border with half tiles.

cornery goodness

Let me just smack you upside the head if you're thinking of doing such a pattern yourself. It's not impossible, but it does add a ton to the work. Even after I figured out to make a jig / miter board for cutting tiles in half, I still had to note which were 'left' halves and which were 'right'. The error in my jig was probably a 1/32 of an inch or less, but when all the full tiles are exactly the same size, and you don't have grout to hide the differences like with regular ceramic tile, that 1/32" adds up to a noticeable difference when you start putting halves together.

begin in the middle

If you're not doing some sort of insanity like a pattern with partial tiles, the layout for the linoleum squares is exactly the same as with regular tile. Find the middle of the room, adjust 1/2 tile width if necessary, and then snap some perpendicular lines.

After I got past the 1/2 tile border in the dining room, things went pretty quickly. Except for the angle by the back door and the space under the stove, of course. But we're pleased with the results, and I even had enough energy left today to install the toe kick under the various cabinets (I'd measured and cut it ages ago, and temporarily taped it into place until we had flooring.)

Blast from the Past

Edis at work 4.5 years ago

This morning I had a blast from the past: Edis, who worked with me frequently while I was building the addition. He stopped by to say hello (we'd long since lost each other's numbers), and not surprisingly given the economy, see if I had or knew of any work for him. He's currently working part time at Target and doing some painting, but there isn't much of the latter work for him these days.

We talked for a while (his English is much better), and I showed him the kitchen (which I did after he worked with me). I told him that I'd ordered linoleum for the kitchen and dining room floor (yes, that's right -- after lots of hemming and or hawing, I finally decided to go with natural linoleum). I'll call him when it arrives, but if any of you in the Oakland/Berkeley area are looking for a hard worker with some basic carpentry skills, email me at designsinlight and I'll hook you up.

Ready...Set...D'oh!

ladder to nowhere

I've been slowly working towards getting ready for the final inspections. I called Tuesday to schedule them. I anxiously awaited the call this morning between 8AM and 10AM to find out when they'd come. The inspector asked if I'd had my zoning inspection yet. Huh? Oh, yeah. I'd had to go through a design review way back when when I'd first submitted the plans. Not because the addition is very big (~350 sq. ft.) but because the percentage of the addition versus the existing house was above 30%. But it turns out that any addition has to get a zoning inspection before the final building inspection. So now I'm somewhat less anxiously awaiting a call from the zoning inspector so I can set that up.

In the mean time I'll work on all those things that aren't quite done yet, like the bit of trim outside near the kitchen windows, the corner trim (I still have to figure out how to mill that or build it up from parts), and figure out what we're going to do for flooring in the kitchen and dining room. Staining didn't work because the wood filler, while stainable, took stain very differently than the rest of the wood (even with pre-stain treatment applied), so right now it's a choice between painting it and real linoleum (tradename Marmoleum).

Rip It, Rip It Good

wet sanding

K and I ripped the plywood into 2' widths today. Not because I'm ready for it yet, but because K worked at home today and ripping full sheets of plywood is a 2 person job. Unless you've got a much nicer shop set up than I've got; I had to set up the table saw in the yard to have enough room to maneuver a full sheet.

I finished mudding the kitchen over the weekend, and spent the balance of today wet sanding it. Alas, the potentially boffo sponge (I bought one for the good folks at Casa Decrepit, too) wasn't so boffo. The rough 'scrunge' side separated from the rest of the sponge after not too much use. I'm still a big fan of wet sanding vs. dry sanding, but a regular sponge works just as well if not better than the special one.

In other exciting news, our new dishwasher arrived. It's a lovely, water- and energy-efficient Bosch SHE43M02U that K picked out. It'll be a while before I can hook it up, but we are so looking forward to not doing dishes in the bathroom anymore.

More Life as a Truck

at the lumber yard

Today I finished the next coat of mud, showed the addition and kitchen remodel to a long-time friend from Habitat, and actually got the 1/4" plywood to smooth out the subfloor.

The plywood is so smooth and lovely that we're considering using it as the flooring. I just need to find a durable enough (and non-toxic) finish to protect it, and a good way to fasten it down. I'm contemplating ripping it into 2x8 or maybe 1x8 strips, so it can be laid out in a staggered pattern. In any event, we'll have it as our flooring for a while to consider, so we can see if we like the look or not.

The plywood is so smooth that I had a hard time securing it to the roof. It seemed OK, but it slid significantly when I braked. While I was stopped to refasten the load, someone stopped and asked me for directions that I could actually give (and had a map to show them), so it worked out nicely.

Muddy Kitchen

one coat on, two to go

Last week was a blur of putting up drywall and taping and mudding it. The momentous part of that is that I'm done with the drywall lift, so it'll be headed over to Casa Decrepit for them to use in redoing the ceiling in their dining room. That room will eventually become their kitchen, but regardless the plaster needs to be replaced as it has water damage coupled with the damage inflicted by the lowered ceilings. Drywall lifts make putting drywall on ceilings so much easier, they're worth borrowing, renting or buying if you've got very much to put up. Even more so if you've got high ceilings like they do.

Today will be a (final?) dump run, and buying some more mud for the second and third coats, and some 1/4" plywood to put over the subfloor. That's because we'll be putting down linoleum (the natural stuff, not vinyl flooring), and it's best to have a smooth surface for it. The OSB subfloor would probably be OK, but the old 1x8 diagonal subflooring that I didn't replace doesn't come close to qualifying.

Is Bamboo Flooring Green?

Recently Todd over at Today's Green Construction asked "Is Bamboo Flooring Green?". I asked a similar question last year about the greenness of different flooring options. I hadn't heard about widespread clear cutting of old-growth forests to plant bamboo but he indicated there were many references about it if I searched on Google. I don't know about "many" since I had to search for a while, but the upshot of my searching suggests that much of the bamboo flooring currently available is not green, particularly the cheap stuff (sorry, Home Depot and Lowe's). But if you're careful to get bamboo made with non-VOC glues, properly aged, and now FSC certified, it can be.

There's still the issue of shipping it from China or Vietnam to the U.S., which is a non-trivial problem. Though cork mostly comes from Portugal, linoleum from Canadian linseed, and tile from Italy or Mexico, so there's no 'free lunch'. As with many things these days, it's a balancing act, finding the right products for your needs and finding the greenest option available. Linoleum looks pretty good these days, though only has a life expectancy of 30 to 40 years.

The other thing that came up during my recent searching were questions about the durability of bamboo. Some people report lots of dents and dings, and some report gaps between the boards. The first is more common with darkened bamboo, because it's darkened by heating it and that weakens it. But it's much more common to have dents and dings because it's cheap. Bamboo grows very quickly (it can be harvested in as little as 3 years), but if it's not aged for a couple of years, it doesn't harden (lignify). The problem with gaps is generally an installation problem. Bamboo (which is a grass), like wood, expands and contracts depending on the moisture content. So the first thing to do before installing bamboo or wooden flooring is to let it sit in the area where it will be installed, to acclimate to the moisture. Obviously there will still be changes in moisture, particularly in places with hot, humid summers and cold, dry winters, but skipping the acclimation is pretty much guaranteed to cause problems.

While our bamboo floor isn't from FSC-certified bamboo, it's made using non-VOC glues, and has thus far been very resistant to dents and scratches. It's beautiful, and we've been very happy with it so far. So is bamboo flooring green? It can be, but not all bamboo flooring that's available is green, so shop wisely.

Cavalcade of Shmë

The plumbing in this house is in sad shape. Not the parts that have been replaced, like the water heater, or the new stuff in the addition, but pretty much everything else is in need of replacement. I've known I was going to have to redo the plumbing to the sink in the old bathroom for a long while. Over two years ago a leaky faucet led to a sizable project replacing things there, and the discovery that the hot water side was completely full of corrosion. Fortunately my good friend Jim had convinced me to replace the plumbing to the shower with copper back when I had that ripped up, but I'd left the sink and toilet supply alone since I hadn't opened that part of the wall.

Since the last blog post, I've finished painting the new bathroom, tiled the floor, installed the vanity, toilet, associated plumbing, and all those little details (minus window trim) that go into a bathroom, and basically got us up to a 1.5 bathroom house. The new toilet is a wonderful thing, a Toto Aquia that has two buttons, one that uses 0.9 gallons for a flush, and the other that uses a full 1.6 gallons. More expensive than the cheapo ones at Home Depot, but it does a better job with 0.9 gallons than many of them do with 1.6 gallons or more. And if we'd been replacing an old 3.5 gallon one, we could have gotten a nice rebate from EBMUD. It was a bit more complicated to install because of the streamlined design, but it looks nice and works great.

After I'd installed the vanity, the drain pipe, and the supply lines, with much fanfare I turned on the hot water faucet. Sploosh! as expected. After some adjusting of the pipes in the trap, I turned on the cold water faucet. Dribble...not as expected. We've had low water pressure on the cold side in the kitchen for quite some time, but I hadn't worried about it too much since the kitchen plumbing will be redone in the remodel. But I'd tapped into the water lines near the kitchen, and it turns out the cause of the low pressure is further up stream than I thought. D'oh!

The plumbing in the old part of the house is a mishmash of galvanized and copper, with dielectric unions and bronze fittings scattered about to connect the two. I really need to replace the galvanized all the way out, or I'm going to hit this problem again in the future. Sweating dielectric unions is a royal pain, so I decided I didn't want to just replace a little of it to start, but the water pressure in the kitchen and new bathroom is low enough that there's no point in finishing the shower until I do something about it.

So this morning I took Katarina to the BART station (our friend Tess is borrowing the Golf for a while, since her car died) and headed on over to Home Depot. A long time and several hundred dollars later, I left with a bunch of new copper pipe and fittings, came home, and went into the basement to get started. And realized that more work and more parts would be needed. I'd missed counting one of the branches (ironically, the cold water supply for the old bathroom that I've known for years I was going to need to replace). But I also noticed that the pressure regulation valve is badly corroded on one end. So before I pick up Katarina this evening, it'll be another trip to Home Depot...

A Lighter Shade of Green

Habitat for Humanity East Bay uses a lot of green building techniques and materials, proving that affordable housing can be built green, too. I've incorporated green things into our addition and remodel, and continue to learn more as I go along.

Some of it is absolutely, completely 100% free. Proper placement of windows and roof overhangs, for example, costs nothing. Put them mostly on the south side (in the northern hemisphere) and arrange them so you get direct sun in the winter and not in the summer, and you've got free solar heating that didn't cost you any more than putting the windows somewhere else. It's also green -- there's no question of where the materials came from, what went into making them, how long they'll last, etc., compared with putting the windows somewhere else (which windows you buy does bring up those questions, of course.)

But it's harder to figure out the 'greenness' of a lot of other stuff. Take flooring. There are a lot of green options these days: bamboo, stained concrete, natural linoleum, tile, cork and more. But they're not all equally green. Bamboo is a very renewable resource, as it grows to maturity in only 5 to 8 years. It's also very durable, as hard as red oak and lasts a long time, and it's beautiful. But the bamboo used in flooring is grown in China. Even ignoring socio-political questions of labor practices, it means the bamboo has to be shipped halfway around the world before it gets to your house... not the most efficient use of fuel. (Note: yep, I installed bamboo flooring in the bedroom in the addition. Based on what I know now, I'm not sure if I'd do it again unless there were a bamboo source closer to the U.S.) Cork flooring isn't nearly as durable, and comes from halfway around the world the other direction, from Portugal.

Or stained concrete. Concrete is somewhat recyclable, extremely durable, and it can be beautiful. With a high fly ash content, it's using what would otherwise be a waste product. It also makes for a wonderful heat sink for storing passive solar energy and releasing it at night. But it's not a very kid-friendly flooring surface. And concrete takes a lot of energy to produce and transport. Of course, you can't build a modern house that's up to building codes in many areas without some concrete, but it does bear thinking about just how much you use.

Or natural linoleum. Not to be confused with vinyl flooring (which took over in the 1950's, and was frequently infused with asbestos, and being made of PVC it outgasses nasty stuff), it's made from natural products. It can be dyed into a rainbow of colors and patterns. It's flexible and water resistant. But it only has a life expectancy of 30 to 40 years, which while better than vinyl at 10 to 20 years, is still a long ways short of hardwood flooring that can last 100 years.

That brings us around to tile. It's durable, beautiful, waterproof and doesn't necessarily use eco-unfriendly materials. It even works nicely with radiant heat and can supplement concrete for storing passive solar energy. But it's not particularly kid-friendly, and without radiant heat can feel cold in winter. And it's very heavy compared with bamboo, linoleum or wood, so if it gets shipped any distance, it's not a very efficient use of fuel, either.

So what's the right answer? I think "it depends". I'm still not sure what we'll put in the kitchen, but what I've learned since I started this project means I'm going to put a lot more thought into it.