The Driveway

I plan on finishing the driveway today. Everything this week has pretty much gone as expected, although I still need to spread one more load (about an hour) of gravel/sand this morning before moving on to the bricks. I could have bought it yesterday and driven home, but that would have saved no time whatsoever. Spreading it yesterday was not an option since I need to make this very level and there wasn't enough daylight left to be able to really see what I was doing.

So my plans for today are, get the base material and spread it, then move on to the bricks. The driveway is about 37 square feet per side, and a brick weighs in at 0.2 square feet each. This means I need 370 bricks. Each brick is 35 cents, so this won't be a huge cost. However, a brick paver weighs about 4lbs each. This comes out to just under 1,500 lbs so I'll have to make two trips.

Tomorrow I plan on starting/finishing the landscaping, as well as figuring out what to do with about a yard and a half of dirt that I excavated last weekend. I may build up the high side of the house to try and keep water from pooling up in the area but I have no clue what to do with the rest.

Pics to come once there is something more interesting than a pair of holes in the ground to post.

At home, I haven't really done a lot. Staining a little bit of the deck has been disappointing and I've really been focusing my energy on the house on Poplar St. The only reason I'm bothering to stain this 10 year old wood on the deck is because I'd like it to last just a few years more than it otherwise would have. I'm not ready to decide what to do with that part of the house and this will buy me a little time to figure it out. I'll probably keep the outline of the deck the same (The structure is fine) and drop it down a step. There's a strange step up/step down to go out the back door and dropping the deck a few inches should take care of that, in addition to resolving a small code issue since it's a few inches above the limit where it needs railing and a hand rail on the stairs.

I've decided that I want to go with a Miele dishwasher (translation: this will be in the proposal to the wife), and that it would be really nice to work with a kitchen designer to finalize the layout of this thing.

December Already?

I can't believe it's already December...

Not a lot has gone on at either house since the last update. I had to spend a lot of time catching a car up on maintenance so we could go on a road trip to Maryland over Thanksgiving, and since we got back I've been trying to get over a nasty cold. Every day I think I'm finally better only to realize that I'm not quite there yet.

I measured the driveway next door to the house on Poplar St since that's the design I intend to copy for ours, and dug out the two tracks that need to be excavated. This may be part of why I'm still getting over the cold... in any case I wanted to add the road base and compact it today but that's not really looking very likely because that would be hard work.

I can, however, do easy work... I already removed the paint from the bottom panel of the middle garage door so I can sand and finish that, and standing around with a power washer isn't hard work so I may clean the deck and stain it this weekend.

Pics to come if any of this happens...

Goodbye, Ghetto Fence!

I haven't been up to anything too exciting... mostly cleaning up and refreshing the place on Poplar St that I really didn't think would take this long to do. Things change once you find out how dirty everything truly is. The good news is that the interior is complete, minus replacing a bit of broken formica on a kitchen countertop.

I moved on to the outside this weekend. Most notably, I bought a power washer and completely blasted the exterior except for one side of the house that is difficult to get to. The deck was especially dirty but it cleaned up. There is a white film in some area... I'm not sure what it is but maybe it's the remnant of something someone else put down to protect the wood. It's 3 years old according to the date on some of the boards. The fence and deck need to be stained/sealed, which at first sounds like way too much effort for a place we'll be renting out but I want it to stay in good condition and last for as long as possible so I need to do it. Thinking solely in the short term leads to too many problems.

Today I took down a chain link fence in the front yard that had probably been there for 40 or more years. It was a simple task made more difficult by all the plants growing through it. The whole thing is gone except for two poles I'll need to borrow an angle grinder to remove because they're way too thick to cut with a hack saw. I'd dig them out along with the others but the sidewalk must have been capped after the poles went in and removing them would cause a lot of additional damage.

This is the most attractive part of the fence. Also, a reminder to beware of someone's dog.

This is the ugly, rusty part of the fence. It was going to fall down soon on its own anyway.

Altogether there are two reminders to watch out for a dog and a third sign to just leave. Not pretty.

The place looks better without the fence, but now that it's gone all the overgrowth that was hiding is now standing right out in the open. I'll cut that out tomorrow and Tuesday. I found a number of stumps and bits of things that are long gone, and that'll make building the driveway more difficult than I thought. The front yard must have been a real maze to get through in recent times because they don't look that old. I found the decorative scroll piece that goes on top of one of the gates and a lawn mower blade in the overgrowth. I have no idea how that managed to hide in there so long.

 

Looking better, but those poles still need to go.

The front yard without the fence or any signs that someone would just ignore anyway. It's too bad the old columns are no longer there anymore.

My plans for this week are to finish all the digging for the driveway and come up with some road base, and with any luck some of it will be in by next weekend. I plan on just copying the one next door so that'll make life a little easier. After the driveway is finished I can focus on the landscaping, which I need to completely rethink since apparently the large bush in the front yard doesn't make any flowers.I may steal a design idea or two from next door for this as well.

I checked out the house next door with all the outdoor ideas I plan on borrowing and was amazed. The person living there designed everything and did the work herself, and her craftsmanship and attention to detail are beyond words. The quality is well beyond what someone could readily find a contractor to do - a person would have to search out a contractor who was a true expert to pull off work even close to it.

There will be more to come soon, I hope...

Upcoming Plans - This Place and More!

I haven't wasted any time on getting started with the next small project around the house. It's nothing too exciting - last fall sometime I started stripping the paint from the left garage door and eventually finished it this spring or early summer. Now I'm working on the middle door. It's moving along much faster thanks to everything I learned with the last one. I'm also working on one panel at a time instead of trying to do it all at once.

This Friday we close on another rental house downtown. This one is not in a historic area but was also built sometime around 1920... my guess is no earlier than 1915 / no later than 1925. Based on the neighboring houses, it looks like one of many George Trescott built (his foursquare pattern like the one on President St is easier for me to spot) and he was active in the Rose Garden area this one is in. For whatever reason I never bothered to take a good picture from the street so these will have to do until Friday.

Here's the front porch, including a visitor who decided to come along to the inspection. It's pretty typical of bungalows in the area.

This is the living room - immediately to the left when you enter. I'll most likely change out the light above the fireplace but leave the fan alone for now.

The dining room - also with a fixture that will probably be changed out soon. The flag does not convey.

The kitchen. Small, but most importantly it's already been redone so I don't need to do much here beyond cleaning up.

The bathroom. To the left is a space for a stacking washer / dryer. They're all over Craigslist so it shouldn't be difficult to find one.

Facing the rear of the house from the deck. Nothing too exciting.

The back yard is surprisingly large for such a tiny (.08 ac?) lot.

The side of the house... nothing exciting going on here either.

Foundation - DONE!

It's been too long since I posted anything, but I've been busy.

Over the last couple of weeks I finally raised beams #2 and 3 into place, which means that the foundation in the 2002 addition of the house is finally reinforced. It's nice to not have to crawl around underneath the place for a change. That means that I'm ready to move on to a lot of other activities now.

I was originally going to move straight into redoing the living room and kitchen and then progress on to a couple of smaller things, but I learned something this summer. It's hot here. Really, REALLY hot. Outdoor activities like pulling out the endless number of weeds from the landscaping near the house and doing anything that involves movement is horrible. If I start on the living room and kitchen now I'll wrap up just in time to start the outdoor stuff in the hottest time of the year. Instead, I'm going to paint the house, take care of the landscaping and the other two garage doors before working indoors.

What this really means is that I'll be working on this stuff off and on for maybe 2-3 months if I take my time. It may not be the most interesting stuff to post about, but it's better than occasional updates with pictures that look like I took them from inside a cave. Speaking of, here are a few from the foundation work.

The red is from a marker - not because something bad happened.

The bottom of the joists aren't all even with each other, probably due to the moisture that built up from the insulation that's now gone. They're cupped slightly and I made shims to take up the difference between them.

This is the third beam in place. The sad thing about all of this is that I didn't use a drop light until the very end. I was just carrying a small flashlight with me. I also did all the nailing by hand, except on the last beam when I bought a framing nailer. I'll get loads of use out of that when we start moving walls around.

Slow Progress

Something I've never really taken into account when working on a house is the time of year. It's really never caused me any trouble in the past, but I've been lucky enough to do big outdoor projects between November and January, or the project has been small enough to fit in a weekend from start to finish. That was until we moved here and bought a house that needed structural work before I could really proceed with tearing rooms apart and rebuilding them. My luck would've continued if I was able to start and finish the rental house as fast as I had originally planned (ha!)...

So here I am in early September, still working on the foundation. There have been a few other setbacks... mostly helping someone look for work and dealing with some small things that came up around the house but now I'm back at it when ever I can. At this point, to put up the second beam I need to pour the last footing, build one pier and then put the beam together. Not bad. But for the 3rd beam, all I've done is measure and mark where it should go. That's a nice way of saying, I still have a lot of work yet to go and it's hot outside (and under the house). I'll consider myself lucky if I'm finished with this stuff by the end of the month.

Once all that is done I'll enlist the help of a designer to help us figure out the kitchen layout, and bounce a couple of ideas off of them about the entry area and living room. Once I have a better idea of what the end result is supposed to be I'll be able to really get to work and move a lot faster. It'll also make this site loads more interesting.

To make up for the lack of updates, here's a bit of what I've been up to...

Your day is never going well when you look up and see this in a bedroom. I finally repaired the stained and low area where the ac drain leaked all over everything.

30 minutes later it looked like this. Not a bad way to end the evening, but only a couple of days before someone was coming over to visit and they needed to stay in that room.

This is the texture I had to match. I think it was added around 1970... it's present in some rooms and not in others, and sometimes on the ceiling. Everything came out ok.

And of course a few days later the other air conditioner decided to leak all over the place. This time I knew what was happening and took care of everything before there was permanent damage to the ceiling in the living room.

Back to the foundation... this is what it looks like heading in. Bug killer is a must... just in case.

I like seeing these. This is a completed hole for a footing, ready for concrete and rebar. Each hole is 2 feet wide/long and a little over a foot deep.

This is where the next beam is going - under the main bedroom. There really isn't anything interesting in this area aside from a couple of pipes that will need to move a bit to allow for the beam. For some reason there was 30 cents down there, and a piece of the original bathroom tile from the old main bedroom. Whatever.

This is looking into the nothingness below the original part of the house. I can really see over there what the insulation did to the subfloor over the years. Hanging fiberglass insulation below the floor might have been good for energy savings, but it was terrible for the wood the house is made of.. In a humid area like it is here it really should be banned in favor of a conditioned crawl, no insulation down there at all or an extreme amount of ventilation to keep the area dry. Every new house, and older one in the area where insulation was retrofit like this will run into the same problem. In the older areas I can see where moisture caused the plywood to delaminate. Good thing I was already planning on replacing the subfloor throughout the house, I guess.

It's been a while since the last update, but I wanted to wait until there was actual progress to write about. I've been working mostly on the foundation over the last month. It hasn't been an all day / every day thing, but something I've devoted maybe 1/4 of my free time towards. I might be more motivated, but at this point the heat index has been over 125 degrees more days than I can count and I don't really enjoy being outdoors when it's that bad out.

This is the start to a pretty normal day of pouring footings. For some reason I thought I was going to be able to haul all those cinderblocks under the house to where they belong. That's one of those things that didn't happen... I also ended up using another 7 bags of concrete that day. It takes a lot of the stuff to fill holes that are 1 foot deep x 2 feet wide.

 

Here's the work environment. Not a fun place to be, but at least there are no bugs.

I didn't take any more pictures after pouring concrete all day. For some reason my motivation to do that kind of thing disappears when it's hot out, and when I manage to somehow get a sunburn while working under the house. Although, I dd discover that it's not that uncomfortable under there when you have a fan pointed at you.

The last few pictures are from this last weekend, and the rest from today. This is where I cut everything and pre-assemble the beams. They're made from two 2x8 layers with 3/4" plywood in the middle. Everything is glued and screwed together. The only problem with that is the weight... the first beam is 13 feet long and there's no way I could move something that heavy on my own - especially under the house.

 

The way around that was to make tooling holes, and hold the beams together with some long bolts I have. It's also important to remember which way everything goes back together so it was all marked before being taken apart. I put a link to this site on both ends of the beam. Who knows - maybe it'll be of interest to someone later.

I don't have any pictures of the beam going together because I was more concerned with building and raising it than anything else. Here's how the first one came out though. 

A three ton truck / SUV jack works great for lifting the thing and getting it in place. At this point everything is as level as the joists allow and the floor in this area is MUCH more solid. It feels loads better and I really can't wait to get the second footer and pier finished so I can put that one up too. Then there will only be one more beam left to be built while underneath the house.

I can't make it run the width of the living room because the old patio is still there (sort of). That'll need to be broken out because airflow under there is really bad. The joists are in bad shape over there and the only way to make things right is to get that brick and fill out of here. Think: 2013 here...

The next update will hopefully have pictures of the second beam in. One of the in-laws is coming over in less than a month and there are a lot of other things that need to be finished first though...

Slow Going

I've been back at it with the foundation for a while now, but had to take a break due to weather. It rained pretty much every day for a good week or so, and that's not very conducive towards bringing a half ton of concrete back from Lowes / HD in the back of my truck. The weather has improved though, and today I'll be back at it. If I can dig the last (small) hole for footing #4 on the first beam, pour it and pour footing #1 I'll consider today a tremendous success.

For those keeping count, on top of what I mentioned above that leaves me with four footings to dig underneath the bedroom, one additional small one to dig under the living room, and eight to pour. Four of them will be relatively easy, but the four under the bedroom will be harder because it's much farther to go between the opening to get under the house to where the concrete is needed. I've been using a skateboard to help carry dirt out and concrete back in, one bucket at a time.This has been a bad combination of slow, tiring, and not very rewarding.

Here are a few pictures of how the garage door came out, and the foundation work is going.





















One down, two to go!

Here is my home for probably the next month or so. This picture is taken from the entrance to the underground crawlspace.

















For any prospective landlords out there, we're about a month into looking for renters and today will make the third time I've had to drag a lawn mower over there to cut the grass. Someday hopefully it'll be someone else that gets to do that but you have to start somewhere.

Since I can never have too many things to play around with, here's our latest addition - a 1987 Mercedes 560SL. It runs and drives great - the big thing it's lacking is working a/c.

Yes, that is tape on the seat bottom (courtesy of the PO). This afternoon I'm buying some fabric to make my own seat bottom covers. I'm planning on working on the house for another week+ and then giving a couple of days to the car. It's pretty fun to drive, for something with an automatic. I'm amazed how well the colors in the interior have held up over the years.

Back at it...

Once upon a time this blog was about a different house... one that I live in. Then in December everything went crazy when I bought another place to fix up and keep as a rental. I think I've posted more about the other place than the one this site is supposed to be about. I finally finished up with the other house and have been able to get back to work here.

I'm trying to pick up where I left off - basically just finishing things I started. By my count, that's moving in stuff (unpacking, organizing, donating), the garage door that I stripped the paint from, and the foundation work. Once that is finished I'll be able to move on to new endeavors; mainly renovating the living room/entry/kitchen. I'll admit, the delays haven't been entirely bad. We've been able to put a lot more thought into what we'd like the kitchen to actually look like. Anyway, on with the updates...

The garage is where all the organizing and donating has been going on. A few days ago it looked like this.

 

The empty space to the left of the truck pretty much shows the outline of where Danielle's car goes. Now it looks a lot more like this:

 

There are still a few more things to take care of, but overall it's a HUGE improvement. Of course, part of the open space will be taken up (temporarily) by Mt Cinderblock pretty soon. Some of the cinderblocks will go underneath the house as they get used, but the rest need to hang out somewhere. I'm getting tired of parking outside so this will probably happen sometime next week.

This afternoon / evening I finally restarted work on that garage door I stripped the paint from. Being exposed to the elements for six months beat on the wood but it's nothing sanding it couldn't take care of. I plan on finishing the rest of this door tomorrow. I"m not sure if the color will lighten a bit or not, but the finish will shine less. I used satin finish marine spar varnish, but it was still wet in this picture.

 

And in case anyone was wondering how landscaping at the rental house came out, here's what it looked like before / after. 

It's hard to tell, but in the 3rd picture you can see the bricks I added to fill in what was missing between the ground and the house. All plants are perennials, so we'll see how long they last. They were pretty healthy looking last time I looked at them a few days ago. Hope they're still in good shape next time I go over there to cut the grass on Saturday.

Another Nameless Update

I've been busy, so here's an almost pictures only update. Things I still need to do at the other house...

Indoors:
- Quarter round trim in the laundry room.
- Whatever other cleaning up I find I missed and feel like doing

Outdoors:
- Landscaping in the front yard (3 small bushes)
- Replace some missing bricks between the bottom of the house and the ground

Also... get someone to replace the broken a/c. Of course the outdoor unit is at the end of its life, but the indoors part is in great shape. Too bad they don't make R-22 air conditioners anymore or I'd be able to reuse it and replace only the outside part. I'm sure the a/c people will track all kinds of stuff in from the attic that I'll get to clean up.

On with the pictures!

A view of the back of the house...

New flooring, paint, and blinds int he laundry room.

Another shot of the new... everything in the laundry room.

Updated view of the front of the house. I wanted the vent at the top/center of the house to be maroon, but didn't notice that it was white until just now. Guess it wasn't that big of a detail after all. The view has changed since I took this picture because the bushes are now gone. A long time ago when this was a bad neighborhood people planted bushes next to the sidewalk, kind of as a way to fence in their yard without actually having to build a fence. It doesn't look very good and I'm replacing them with small, normal landscaping next to the porch.

More shots of the bathroom. They probably would've come out better if the lights were on.

Again, the bathroom...

Completed view of the vanity area.

Here is where I need to replace the missing bricks. I already dug out a trench to fill with concrete, so the bricks I put in there should be able to stay where they belong. Who knows where the ones that were there went...