This cOld House 29

What's new this week? We met with Dick about the landscaping last Monday and although we lined out where the retaining walls were to go, the ensuing rains washed out all our work. Back to the drawing board.

We finally saw the roofers. They came last Monday and Tuesday and then disappeared. As bad as the concrete crew have been about showing up, the roofers are even worse. To compound this problem, when we first got the estimate (in December,) we were told that the roof was essentially sound and we were not advised to replace it. Instead we were told that it could (and should) be repaired using re-claimed slate to match. However, when the installer came out last week he said we should replace the whole thing and we should NOT use salvaged slate. So I called the office and said what gives? Your estimator and your installers are giving me two diametrically opposed opinions. So on Friday we had TWO estimators show up. We came up with a modified plan and I'm waiting on numbers to make a decision.

Bob Sr. is hard at work on the doors. It's beautiful weather now so working outside is wonderful. He's making the new screen doors (which he built from scratch,) fit up front today. It's a bear to get them in right since the opening is neither plumb nor square, and they have to swing, too. Still no decision on the back half of the house, (whether we have to take out the windows upstairs as well as the dining room,) and materials are looking to be a problem. 10 X 10 oak beams are hard to come by. We may have to use pressure treated and wrap it in oak or cedar.

The new garage is looking like a new garage. Dan piled a bunch of junk into it last weekend. The lift door was installed last week. They guys doing it didn't inspire a lot of confidence. The door weighs about double what a regular door weighs. They assembled it like they usually do but with the garage being brand new and no power in it yet they failed to secure a way out. There was plywood screwed from the old garage side in the cut opening between the two and the door was too heavy for the guys to lift up manually so they essentially locked themselves in the garage and had to break down the plywood to get out. All I heard was a bunch of cussing and hammering but when I saw the mess (and damage) in the old garage I figured out what happened. The blue pipes in the front are part of our elaborate drainage system that we hope will end our water problems in the garages and basement for good.

This is the final sand coat on the stucco where the old garage doors were. The guy doing it was having a heck of a time matching the texture of the existing stucco until I explained that the existing was original to the house and began its life as a smooth finish. When I described the ivy we've heard covered the place he finally understood. I told him to go ahead and just do a smooth sand coat. Dan and I both love the color of this stuff but sadly it's a little out of the vernacular for our house. But seeing this color has galvanized our decision to go with a slightly warmer cream color than we currently have. And we may use this terra cotta color somewhere on the inside... I was thinking the dining room.

Last but not least, we have a mason diligently working to build the parapet wall on top of the garage. I picked brick last week and found a hand made brick that mimicked the age and condition of what we had. The color was close, only a couple shades lighter. I think it'll work out ok. We are still deciding about what to do on the top of the wall. I wanted it scalloped, and it will be stucco, but we don't want to have to paint every year, which is what will happen if we stucco the top. Rob suggested limestone on the top and it's pretty expensive. We're still looking at options.

This cOld House 28

Since my last post we've had little completed, but some forward movement on several projects. Most notably, we finally got poured so the new garage is totally enclosed, (except for the lift door which will go on after the driveway gets finished, since concrete guys are not known for their finesse and we don't want to have to strip and sand and repaint the door.) The guys poured the slurry on Thursday and it looks great.

Something else popped up this week. Remember Dan's desire to address some of the outside beams? I had Bob Sr. take a look at them just in case it was too much for Dan to handle and guess what - it was! The first picture is of the bank of windows in the dining room. There are two rows of five sashes, one on top of the other. This whole unit is flanked by two massive 10" x 10" posts that go all the way up to the roof. These had been jongineered with caulk and a 4x4 piece of pressure treated with a strip of aluminum (painted to match, of course) and when we pulled off the metal strip, lo and behold ROT straight through and through. The second picture shows the base of the post on the right - the 4x4 isn't actually sitting on anything, the wood behind continued to rot beneath the patch job. (That's my foot for perspective.) While we had noticed some water damage on the post on the inside we were kind of hoping it was from condensation or window leakage. No such luck... the wood has actually rotted all the way through to the inside. That's 10 inches of wood! Oh, and that's not the bad news. The bad news is that these posts are structural. We will pull out the entire window unit and both posts all the way up to about a foot above the adjacent roof lines (since the rot extends up from the gutter line about that far.) Bob will then build a whole new post and beam structure and stand it up, marrying it god-knows-how into the remaining posts that hold up the roof hip over top the girls window above. The good news is that we will probably finally find the yellow jacket nest in the the process. Small victories.. that's our saving grace.

This is a picture of the guys lathing the new walls in the old garage door openings. We should be stuccoed today and Monday. Bob Sr. finished the window openings and ordered the windows yesterday and they only take a couple of days. We are still waiting on hardware for the walk thru door but Bob rigged up a handy cross bar so we can get in and out without having to walk all the way around the house and opening the door with a drill-driver.

I sort of finished my part on the girls' bath windows... I got the sashes out of the frames and Bob and I will meet with yet another art glass guy on Monday. He'll give me a bid on doing the windows one by one, (important since we have the ten in the dining room in the pipeline now.) We aren't sure if we want the art glass guy to do the whole restoration or if we want to take the steel frames to a metal shop to be stripped, primed and painted. I was thinking there's no reason why we can't use a marine grade or automotive grade paint on the suckers and never have to paint again. I refuse to paint windows every five years - with over 80 of them it's just ridiculous!

This cOld House 27

I haven't blogged for a while which is more of an indication of the pace around here than my schedule... it's going pretty slow these days.

Steffan (the bug guy,) came out to spray for the yellow jackets in the girls' room. We spent some time staking out the back of the house to find the entry/exit of the nest, but came up short. We did find one hole where they were going in and out but we were not confident it led to the nest that is troubling us. There are so many gaps outside big enough for a yellow jacket to get it! All the beams have shrunk and pulled away from the stucco. And then there is the problem of rotting wood in the beams adjacent to the windows where we think the yellow jackets are nesting.

This is another one of those jobs that keeps popping up. Dan had been interested in restoring the outside timbers but after he punched a gaping hole indicating substantial rot, I had the big man (Bob Sr. - Rob's Dad) take a look. Because it was the first beam we decided to restore, and because it was so very rotten, and because it is a major STRUCTURAL element, (no, not decorative,) I felt we should have the professionals handle it while taking notes for future forays ourselves. We will be using a hybrid solution, part epoxy, part pressure-treated lumber, part white oak overlay to match the original beam. What you can't see in this picture is the perspective of depth. The beam is about 8 inches square, and the little hollow you see from this side is about 3 inches deep. Bob just kept picking away at it until he found solid wood. You know you're in trouble when you can remove structural elements with a dull soup spoon.

So along with the beam project, while we have the big guy working with us, (freed up from Rob's other job-in-perpetuity, a total remodel they've been working on for two years,) I asked for a bid to re-do some doors. The patio doors from the living room and dining room are in kind of rough shape. The metal frames have corroded and they stick, making them difficult to open. With the leaded sashes being so large (and old, and brittle,) they've sustained damage in the form of bowing, cracked panes and loose supports. New metal frames would have to be manufactured from scratch to match (since they don't make 'em like that anymore,) so rather than go through that expense we've decided to re-use the leaded sashes in a custom built oak frame instead. And he'll refurbish the existing screen doors and build us some for the front door (which are missing.)

Rob and Co filled the gaps in the flexicore with cement this week, as well as various other nit-noid stuff that needed to get done to prepare for the waterprooofing and final pour for the garage. the concrete guys cut the existing driveway to make way for some piping to carry storm water away from the house. We've been a little concerned about the down-spout situation in the back as all that water eventually shows up in the basement after seeping under the house.

And last but not least, the garage lift door is finally framed. Rob is eager to install it as it is taking up quite a lot of space in his shop. Some progress was made on cleaning out the garage space last week with Larry having at the large slabs cut for the walk through door to the old garage using a hand percussion hammer. There's still more to do before it's all gone - (the back hoe couldn't reach it when it back-filled a couple of weeks ago so it has to be removed by hand.)

We've had a cold spell hit again so the concrete guys can't do anything. Hopefully next week we'll get waterproofed so we can pour the week after that. I'm thinking we may be finished by June.