Floor Plans

When ever I read a magazine article about a remodel I like to see the before and after floor plan. So, I thought I'd post the before and after plans in case anyone else who might read this is like me. The plan above is as it was when we bought the house. There was a double door closing the entry off from the living room. The dining room was completely open to this wierd entry and there was a pass through from the dining room flanked by collumns on the angled wall. I removed the columnns and closed the wall between the entry. I also removed the wall with the strange double doors opening the entry to the living room rather than the dining room.




The other major change to the plan was to close off the hallway. This added a measure of privacy to the rooms that open off the hall so that you can't sit in the living room and look directly into the bathroom and bedroom. I also deleted the hideous wet bar. Yuck! The hall now separated from the living room has a lower ceiling which created the really cool alcove above the hall where I have installed cove lighting and gives us a place to display our little Christmas trees.



The interesting thing about the demolition was the discovery of the original floor plan(above) which was very different than either of the configurations shown here. After removing the tile the original chalk snap lines could be seen. In the original plan the hallway was not open to the living room. The current closet was a short hall that connected to the main hallway with a coat closet on one side. I think I like the way it is now better.

One of my current favorite programs on HGTV is a show called "Holmes on Homes". It is a Canadian program as many of the best ones are. Holmes is a contractor that fixes renovations and new construction that was done incorrectly or that have gone bad. It is very interesting to see some of the disasters created by licensed contractors and builders that have to be completely torn out and re-done. Renovating this house I can really relate to that.

The Dining Room

These two photographs are of the walls in our dining room after I sanded the texture with a belt, and random orbital sander. After I finished sanding it had kind of a cool distressed look. If not for the peeling part I might have left it that way.
The next two pictures are of the same walls after I skim coated them with drywall compound.



I decided it was time to get moving on another room remodel. The dining room was next on the list. I walled in the opening to the entry a couple of years ago and had it professionally textured when I had the living room done with a nice knock down texture. The other three walls were still the same wierd texture that the rest of the house has. I am not sure if it was applied with a trowel or a roller, but I could not match it. I successfully skim coated and re-textured three walls in the spare bedroom recently and it turned out really well. I decided I would do the same in the dining room. I hand applied the skim coat in the bedroom and it was a lot of work. I thought I would try a different method in the dining room. I used the texture sprayer and sprayed on a thinned coat of drywall compound then troweled it smooth while it was still wet. It worked pretty well and went a lot faster than the trowel on method.

I sanded down the highest spots on the wall before applying the mud and I think it helped a lot. Now all I have to do is sand it all smooth, re-texture and paint.

The floor in this room is not level. There is a low spot in the corner nearest the front door and a high spot just in front of the opposite wall near the door to the kitchen. The difference in the two is 3/4 of an inch! I had the same problem in the entry and tried everything I could think of to level it out. I rented a large floor grinder, which was heavy and very hard to control and did very little to take down the high spot. Then I found a diamond grinding wheel that fit my 4.5 inch grinder and it worked a lot better. It made a lot of dust though. To finish the job I tried the self leveling underlayment. I finally did get the floor level enough to lay the tile.

I used the grinder on the hump in the dining room with moderate success. Although I burned out the motor on the grinder. Oh well, lesson learned; don't use a 6" wheel on a 4.5" motor. I think I will fill in some of the lowest spots and let it go. Carpeting will hide the rest.

Replacement windows

This is my second try at installing replacement windows in our current home. There are some challenges doing the installation in a brick sided house. It is way harder than with wood siding where you just cut the siding around the window with a circular saw and remove the fasteners, most likely nails, and the window comes off and the new one goes on. You can install the necesary flashing and cover the opening with trim.

Brick is a whole new ball game. Unless you want to remove the brick which could get very expensive and messy the window must be collapsed in the opening. That means all the glass must be removed from the fixed side of the frame and the frame is pried out of the opening. There is generally a 1x nailer installed around the opening to nail the fins to. The aluminum fins sometime tear out leaving the nail in place, but my experiece has been that the nailer generally splinters out.

Replacement windows don't have nailing fins for obvious reasons so the are secured by screwing the side and head jambs into the framing. Sounds easy but in my case there is a 1/2 inch styrofoam insulation board on the outside of the framing, then the 1X nailer is outside of that. Even though the replacement vinyl window frames are an inch thicker than the old aluminum windows the inside edge is just barely into the framing which means you have to hit that 1X nailer with the screws you put through the side and head jambs to hold the window in place.

Another challenge is fitting the window into the opening. I have always used the measurement of the rough opening in the framing when purchasing replacement windows. The manufacturers always make the window 1/2 inch smaller than the rough opening to allow room to shim. however the opening in the brick doesn't necessarily match. since you want the window to extend past the edge of the brick you need to take that into account. In this case the window was slightly larger and I had to use spray foam to fill the void on one side so I could caulk around the edge of the window.

Sofit replacement

It seems like everything on this house is wearing out. The mortar on the brick is failing in many places, window sills in particular and the fascia and soffits are rotting. This one was particularly bad and had to be replaced. There was evidence of some leakage and some of the supporting structure needed to be replaced as evidenced by this soffit falling down. I replaced it with hardy siding boards. they are not as thick as the original boards which left some gaps between the soffit and the brick in some places.



I think the hardy plank looks pretty good. I even found an abandoned wire for a light and put in a box to install a light at a later time. The original soffit material had failed long ago and someone had covered over it with 1/4 inch plywood. I guess they didn't want to bother with the light. None of the spot lights have electrical boxes.

Home made tool

We returned to Houston Saturday afternoon and discovered a number of little "issues" including no dial tone, signs of mice and no water. I began to investigate at the water meter box where the shut off is and sure enough the water had been shut off. Just then my neighor drives up and informs me the city workers shut it off about a week ago. Now this trip for me was a three week stay in Utah, but for Robin it was about a year long stay in Longview and a week in Utah. I traveled to Washington and I had another trip to Utah in there somewhere. So Robin decided it would be better for the smooth operation of the household if she had all the mail forwarded to Longview so she could pay bills and keep things under control. Great idea in theory, but somehow the post office neglected to forward our water bill. Hence the water shut off. I was thinking great, no water until we can get this sorted out Monday.

When we first moved in we didn't know where the main shut off was in the house and we had to have the city come shut off the water for something and I watched as two guys struggled to turn the shutoff. Probably had not been turned since it was installed. It is in a little box in the ground and has a valve that takes a special tool. I've used a crescent wrench in Washington, but the valve wasn't as hard to turn as this one and the box is too small to get any leverage.

Anyway, I was thinking no way am I going to wait until Monday for a shower, so I hustled to Home Depot because they sell the tool to turn the water on. I was skeptical that their tool would do the job as it is made from a three foot section of rebar with a little key welded to the bottom that fits the valve and a handle welded to the top. It looks like a T. Turns out I was right to be skeptical because the handle came off on the first twist and I didn't even have to twist very hard. I tried the old crescent but no way was that going to work. So I went back to the Depot and bought three pieces of one inch black pipe and a t. Back home I used my grinder to cut the slots in one end of the pipe to fit the valve and made a handle with the t and the two shorter peices.

Needless to say we had water all weekend. Robin got the issue straightened out with the city monday. I got the dial tone to work, now if we could just catch that pesky mouse.

I Hate Fireants

I have never gotten fire ant bites on my hands. They usually get me around the ankles or feet depending on my footware. Yesterday after we returned home from Utah the grass needed mowing, and I had some time. Our nieghbor cut the front yard while we were gone but it needed it again and the back was really long. It takes about an hour and a half to cut the entire yard. The back half is mostly weeds and doesn't grow very much but this time the weeds were pretty tall so I cut the whole thing. It was close to eight pm when I finished so it was starting to get pretty dark. I decided to pull some weeds that had grown up in the cracks between the driveway sections. The second section had a fire ant hill in it and they got in 4 good bites before I brushed them all off. They are exceptionally quick little buggers. For those of you who have never had the pleasure, fire ant bites are kind of like a cross between a mosquito and a wasp. They are not exceptionally painful initially but right away they start to sting and itch. Then after a while they just itch, a lot. They make a little welt that oozes liquid when you scratch it, which is most of the time. They go away after about a week or so, but I swear that when you get a bite it re-activates every other bite you have ever gotten and you think they are biting you again. Or maybe it's just my imagination. They are truly miserable little critters and as far as I can tell serve absolutely no useful purpose in the ecology of the planet. I mean most bugs have some purpose like helping to decompose and break down other organic matter or serve as food for some other useful bug or animal. I am pretty sure nothing would eat a fire ant and I have never heard of anything useful that they do.

Cutting the grass on my litle riding lawn mower is really just a poor imitation of real farm work, with a real tractor. Just to prove I can do both I have posted these pictures of me loading one thousand lb. hay bales on a trailer last week at Mark's place. The top picture was taken just as I successfully droped the bale and stood it on it's side. (second try. the first time it rolled completely off the other side)

Pantry

I have a list of projects that I think need to be done on the house, and Robin has a list. Generally I think the lists are the same, well somewhat the same. I really think mine is much more extensive than hers. One thing that was on the top of Robin's list that didn't make it on mine at all was paint the pantry. It was sort of an off white color and there was a patch on the wall necessitated by the plumbing project. We moved all the stuff from the pantry into the dining room which also had been converted to a bedroom for Gasser's visit.

Robin sanded the shelves and got them ready to paint but never got around to the painting part. It has been that way for a couple of months. I can totally relate to that. So here I am at home for three days between trips and I decided to finish the pantry. I thought about renting a sprayer to make it easy on myself but Robin had purchased this nifty little paint roller just for this job so I decided to try it out. The thing was amazing! It is only an inch in diameter and 6 inches long but you can paint right into corners with it, no cutting in! It was hard at the lower part where I had to lie on the floor to paint under the shelves, but I think it probably took a couple of hours to do.
As you can see, I had a slight mishap with the paint tray. Not to worry though that floor will ultimately be replaced anyway.

Then I made this nifty little door out of some scrap wood to cover the opening for the main shut-off valve. I used to have to lie on the floor and remove 4 screws from a panel to shut off the water. I had the plumber move it to make it easier.

Now all that is needed is for Robin to move all that stuff back to the pantry.....Just kidding.

Haulin Fence

So I loaded up my trailer with fence sections and drove over to the trash company office to unload it. They allow people to dump wood waste in a dumpster at their yard. I guess I knew but forgot that it is supposed to be green wood waste. Usually when I have gone there has been a lot of other trash in the bin. I was about half unloaded when a guy came out and said they wouldn't take fencing. He told me I'd have to take it to the landfill. So I came home and loaded up the rest of the fence and took it to the land fill. As I was unloading a couple of rigs with dump trailers pulled up and unloaded. That looked much easier than all the work I was doing. One of the larger sections got away from me and hit me on the temple drawing blood. But I got rid of almost 270 feet of old fencing.

The "Scout" trailer

I think it was in 1990 or sometime there about I concluded that I really needed a utility trailer. We had a Ford Aerostar mini van and an eighty something Buick Skylark that I bought used from State Farm. I needed something to haul stuff around in and a pick-up truck wasn't in the budget right then. I had previously owned a Toyota PU but it was small and only had room for one passenger. What I needed was something that would allow me to carry people and stuff. My Friend Jarit Pitochelli had a small utility trailer that he would let me borrow from time to time and it would haul a lot of stuff; more than a pick up actually. I began looking around for a trailer to buy but the new ones were sort of expensive, at least by my standards at the time. The used ones were mostly junk. I couldn't fine one that was exactly what I wanted so I concluded that I should make my own. My Dad had always had a utility trailer, usually something made of wood with an axle and tongue bolted to a wood box. When he would hitch it to the car we would either refuse to ride with him or duck our heads so no one would see us. I didn't want a trailer that would be an embarrassment to be seen with. I knew it needed to have a steel frame with plywood sides and floor but the sides needed to be 3ft high rather than the two ft sides that were common. There were a lot of people building trailers that would utilize one sheet of plywood for the sides which dictated the size of the trailer. Many utilized old mobile home axles and wheels. Technically they were illegal and were hard to find tires for. So after a lot of research and though I designed my own trailer. I copied a lot of the specifications from a Portland company's trailers with my own modifications.

I went to another friend in the ward, Paul Duchateau, who seemed to have a lot of expertise in just about anything a person would need to know. Paul also had a lot of tools and an old barn to work in. I told Paul that I wanted to build a trailer and asked if he would teach me how. Paul is a quiet guy who wouldn't say much but would give the shirt off his back as the saying goes.

So Paul showed me how to weld and suggested a place where I could buy the steel. Turns out that they would not only sell the steel but cut it into all the lengths I needed. I brought my trailer kit over to Duchateau's and began the process of building the trailer. I really don't recall how long it took but I was over there a lot for a couple of weeks I guess. When it was time to square up the frame Paul showed me how to do that. I probably wouldn't even have thought of it. I bought an axle and someone gave me some wheels off an old Aerostar. Grandpa Brinkerhoff gave me the old tongue jack off their travel trailer in spite of the fact Grandma didn't want him to. I painted the metal parts blue to match the Aerostar and the plywood white. Well it kind of matched.

That little trailer turned out to be the most useful thing. It hauled stuff on scout outings, furniture when people needed help moving, yard and household junk, you name it. It took a high adventure trip to Utah that I didn't even go on. When we moved to Medford Phil Jarvis lamented the loss of a "Scout trailer" more than the loss of a Scouter(me). That little trailer made several trips to Utah. When Alison went to BYU it was filled to the top with all her accouterments which were way more than any other freshman in the history of universities. It hauled stuff back to Oregon when my parents cleaned out their Lewiston house and divided the spoils. It has continued to serve well and faithfully everywhere I have lived, Salem, Medford Or. Tumwater WA and now Friendswood TX. The scouting duties have diminished. The Ward here has a very nice enclosed Wells Cargo trailer to haul their equipment around, but I and others still get great service from my little trailer.

The trailer had one slight design flaw. It was exactly eight feet long, five feet wide, but the tailgate fit inside the frame taking up about an inch of the length. That made it impossible to carry 8' sheet goods with the tailgate on. One time while we lived in Tumwater I was hauling several sheets of particle board home. since I could not put up the tailgate I laid it on top of the boards. when I got home my tailgate was missing along with one sheet of particle board. I was panic stricken! I had driven down the freeway and could only guess where that thing would be. I was lucky. It was a short distance from my house, on the side of the road(actually the freeway off-ramp). There was a tire track on the particle board, but it was not damaged otherwise. Obviously someone had moved them to the shoulder. After that I modified the trailer and added three inches to the length overall and braced the back end sides, and re-painted it black and white. I also replaced the old car take-off tires for some load bearing tires and white spoke wheels. The first year we lived in Tumwater I had to re-build a retaining wall that was falling down. I decided to use railroad ties, relatively inexpensive. I had to buy them where ever I could find them. I found some at a home center in Lacey and went over with my trusty little trailer to haul them home. As I was walking around the trailer I happened to glance at the tire and noticed a large bulge on the inside of one of the tires. I made it home ok but bought the new tires and wheels right after. It has endured a lot of hard work and abuse. Kevin used it to haul stuff to Texas. He pulled out of the driveway without cranking up the tongue jack and bent it. I bent it back with a few whacks with a 2lb sledge hammer. The wood sides and floor are rotting out again. In Tumwater, Hardel lumber sold oversize plywood which was very handy because I could make the floor one solid piece instead of two. I doubt I'll ever find 5x10 plywood anywhere again. Maybe I'll have to go with a steel floor and sides.

This has been a long post, rather odd I suppose to go on for so long about a trailer. But I think it represents something much more than just a vehicle to haul stuff around in. I think it was my initiation to the idea that I could do things myself. It was a freedom of mind and action. I built that little trailer myself(with a little help from Paul). And with it I could do a lot of things for myself, and for others that I could not do with out it. I guess you could say that in a funny sort of way this little trailer is a sort of symbol of independence and self reliance that I learned doing something I had never done, didn't know I could, succeeding beyond my expectations, in a home made project.