This cOld House 6

The last couple of days have been very very busy around here. Dale started on the attic HVAC unit, cutting through ceilings for duct work and hauling the hardware upstairs to the attic. Hey did you know there's not a scrap of insulation between the attic and the the living space below??? There's a quick fix for some efficiency. I'm waiting on Rob's insulation guy (Rob - my general contractor,) to get me some numbers. Dale was missing today, working on fashioning ducts in the shop which worked out terrifically as the power (and water) was off in the house for most of the day.

Rick,(the carpenter who fixed the living room floor,) Larry and Bob Sr. have been tag-teaming on the beam in the garage. Rick and Larry built three support walls to hold up the cantilevered room over top and then mid-way through the second day Rick and then Bob worked to remove the beam that was all ate up. There were three 2 x 8 planks and a 2 x 4 involved, with one 2 x 8 remaining pretty solid. They replaced the remaining two and the 2 x 4 with three more 2 x 8 planks and hung the joists on hangers. The sub-floor was pretty ate up as well, but we can't really get to it as it is under the wall from above. Bob was confident that it wouldn't be an issue.

Tim the plumber was able to get all the water pipes out of the way, shutting down the downstairs bath until the project is done. He had to move some valves and add a couple to get it isolated and shut off, and then cut and capped the pipes. The electric remained in the way.

Right when Rick was getting down to the nitty-gritty pulling out the beam the electricians showed up. These were replacement electricians as the original guy was too busy to get to the panel to meet Bob's schedule. So Tom and crew swarmed in at noon and cut the power, ripping out the old 200 AMP panel, moving the meter and installing a new 200 AMP panel over by where the new A/C condensers will sit outside the old garage. Then they added a new 100 AMP sub-panel where the old panel was, and hooked up the rest of the house back to it. All of this took care of the main line which had to be moved out of the way of the beam replacement project, as well as various and sundry fire hazards discovered when we ripped down the drywall ceiling in the old garage. Tom is coming by tomorrow to see what all else needs to be done. (Making the plugs kid-safe, fixing the code issues in the kitchen, running new clean power to the A/V and computers, adding a phone jack so we can answer the phone in the living room.) Dan also said something about running some CAT6 (ethernet) around as well.

Rob and Co. (That's the two Rick's, Bob Sr. and Larry, so far,) will have no more to do once the beam is done until I get a firm bid on the new garage and the bathroom remodel. As it is we're about 2 good man-weeks into T & M (time and material) stuff and that makes me nervous. The living room floor had a price tag on it but they found more damage than anticipated, and I have only my own estimation on what the beam will cost us.

Tim the plumber had some good news for us in that we now have a pretty good plan on how to clean up the miles of pipes in the house. The girls bathroom is now a must do, for several reasons, but once it is done, we will have over half the house re-plumbed, (correctly and legally,) including all the supply in the basement. It will be great to get rid of all the old galvanized piping down there as it's corroding as I sit here, waiting to spring a leak. (Not to mention the 17 rusting valves in the laundry room alone.) He managed to replace the main shut off valves, install a pressure regulator and baffle, several angle stops and bring the kitchen gas valve up to code. Unfortunately when he reduced the water pressure from 115 PSI to the recommended 85 PSI, we lost all pressure to the upstairs fixtures. (The cold lines are almost completely corroded shut, which is why doing the girls' bath has moved up the priority list.)

I met with a landscape architect to work up a proposal for the front of the house when we tear it up to put in the garage. He seems to be right on track with what I outlined and I'm sure if he watches his spending, he'll do a bang-up plan for us. I meet with a different landscape architect tomorrow to do it all over again.

My other landscape guy dropped by today, (the one who did the clean-up on the yard) and I grabbed him to talk about the stretch of mud along the back of the house. He's working up numbers for me for putting flagstones down. Dan wants to get a second opinion on the catalpa tree, so I'll be calling around tomorrow to get someone out. It is not an immediate need - we can probably wait a year or two before we have to yank it down.

Today the gutters were cleaned for the last time this season. All the trees are now bare so we no longer have to fear a gutter back-up, (provided we don't have a problem with an ice dam.)

All in all we've had a pretty good week with no real surprises. (Although when Tim grabbed an old recirculating line to indicate it needed to be removed, it broke free of its moorings and fell on his head. He had to temporarily tack it back up.) As it turns out, once the termite-beam was removed, the joists were found to be solid, so we didn't have to replace any of them. I haven't had the heart to tell Rick we still have a soft spot in the living room floor behind a duct that he probably didn't see. (He is nursing broken ribs from a car accident last week and I can't imagine shimmying around my crawlspace would be very good for the ailment.) And Other Rick, (the one who worked on all the doors earlier in the week,) appears to have glued my back door shut, which will have to be freed. That back door really needs to be replaced, but we are holding off on frivolous stuff like that. It works just fine for now, (if you put your shoulder into it.)

I'm actually starting to see some light at the end of the tunnel. Of course, this tunnel is a detour I was forced into on my way to building a garage. Still, it's good we are taking care of these things in such a manner that they shouldn't bother us for another 30 years or so. I'm really quite thrilled that the plumbing has presented itself to be a short term project that won't be nearly as difficult as I had feared. And Dan, who is the voice of reason (budget,) also agrees.

This cOld House 5

We are really starting to move along now that my general contractor has freed up on his last job. He cut loose his uncle (a finish carpenter) to work on our place, and as we speak he is making the doors open and close with a fluidity not seen in decades in this place.

Dale the HVAC guy replaced two furnaces last week, and is heading up to the attic tomorrow to start work on installing our bad boy up there. We took out a 60% efficient 113K BTU unit and a 92% efficient 115K BTU unit and replaced them with two 96% efficient units, a 60K and a 40K. It has evened out the hot and cold rooms, and although we haven't installed the new upstairs unit, the house is essentially comfortable. Our gas bill should go down substantially. I am eager to get the attic unit up and running as once that is done, we can start storing stuff up there with no fear of having to haul stuff out of the way again.

Dale also ripped down the ducting in the garage that we need out of the way to replace our termite-shredded beam. When he got it down, even more damage was visible (if at all possible) and it looks like we'll be replacing some joists as well. (Yippee.) They guys will be building walls to hold up the main floor so they can replace the beam sometime this week with a nice solid laminated one.

I've met with a couple of window guys. The first guy confirmed our fears, while the second one allayed them. I have yet to see numbers out of the second guy but he says he can RESTORE the existing windows, (leaded sash, steel casement, new glazing, etc. plus custom storm windows that fit the existing notched frames that hold the summer screens,) for less than retrofitting new Pellas or Andersons. If so, it's a no brainer - it would fit our budget and our aesthetic sense.

I also met with a tree guy. The gigantic, enormous, humongous, ancient, stately catalpa tree that dwarfs the house has a bit of a root rot problem and may have to come out. He's also given me an estimate for removing the two trees that we will lose when we build the garage. We have a guy who has a portable sawmill that can handle the smaller trees, so we may have the oak stock that Dan needs to re-work the living room floor currently growing in the front yard. Wouldn't that be cool?

Met with a painter this afternoon to get an evaluation of the problems. He reassured me they were minor and normal and probably mostly due to cheap paint and poor prep/application, as Dan and I had suspected. He said most of the stuff I showed him his guys could handle and so it's just a matter of me talking Dan into letting someone else to the painting and us working on other items.

Most of the outside wood is still in pretty bad shape, thanks to years of neglect and a band-aid approach to the decay. Our carpenter says he can get Dan started on what needs to be done and then Dan can work on it at his leisure next summer. It will be time consuming and tedious and will ultimately fix the problem in a much more permanent way instead of just addressing the symptoms of decay. I sense that buying scaffolding is in our future.

My family's visit was great. There was enough space and beds and bathrooms for all. The universal observation, however, was that it isn't a quiet house. The floors creak and groan in the night with midnight trips to the potty and with no carpeting to speak of, it echoes something fierce. It did not disturb me, so perhaps I've adjusted to the volume. Or perhaps I was just too tired to wake up.