Huffing fumes

So we're at a pretty decent spot with the house. The drywall is done and today the hardwood floors were wrapped up today with an extra coat after some uneven drying overnight, and our cats. But I'll get to that crime shortly.

First off, Christina and the (not yet born) baby are doing great. She's been in the hospital for just about a week now, and at this point she can shower unsupervised, has no IVs and can even take a 20 minute wheel chair ride around the joint once a day. It's just a wait and see and if she doesn't go into labor by the 23rd, the docs will induce. It'll be at week 34, but that's ok.

So because of all of this I've been playing a pretty hard-assed GC trying to to get everything done right after one another. Case in point, the drywall wrapped up on Tues, and Wed the floors were going to be refinished. I had to finish some electrical stuff to get some lights on, as well as haul out a couple hundred pounds of trash created by the sheetrocking. But whatever, it's managed fine so far and my work is being great about my hours. I'm trying not to press anything, but at the same time things need to get done around here. Pretty fast.

The floors we have on the first floor came with the house and spent most of the past 40 years covered by rugs. When we removed all of the rugs a few months ago, you could really see that the floors were dirty and had never been sealed, and the same was true for the stair treds. Odd, but whatever. I'm sure you can traverse into the past blog entries and see the floors before. The pictures here are obviously the floors refinished. These were taken this morning and since then some spot sanding was done and another coat was applied.

A quick story: So last night it was really windy here in Philly and I had a committee meeting of just myself, and decided to leave the bathroom windows open in our suite, but close the bedroom ones. Well in hindsight that was a HUGE MISTAKE. At 1:45AM I woke up basically hallucinating and gasping for air. I opened both bedroom windows and quickly pressed my face to the screen to get fresh air. Dumb dumb dumb. Once the windows were opened the cross breeze was great, especially when we had gusts of 50 mph here in the city. But still, why did I do that? Nothing like huge amounts of VOCs in your lungs for 2.5 hours. This is why I'm not in Mensa.

So yesterday when the guys were in between coats I was running around the house trying to find the cats. The guys started so quickly after arriving that the cats had already hid and that was that. So in the end I just closed the applicable doors, and wished upon a unicorn's pot o' gold that all would be well when I got back in 8 hours. Well, the cats wound up being in the basement, and that posed two distinct problems.

Problem one is that the flooring extends under the basement door about 1 foot so that means the door would be opening and closing as they worked. Hmm...well that wound up not being an issue since the cats are terrified of anyone in work boots.

Problem two is that our genius cats can open doors. Bing has been able to open doors that open out (away from you) since we brought him home. And that skill seemed to have been on display last evening as well. Great, now let's book him on Letterman.

The pics here show the that once the cats opened the door and wondered into the stinky and sticky new world, that they left behind their Neal Armstrong-esc footprints. You can see Marco returning this morning to the scene of the crime...what a little s*&t.

Our guy Van was cool about it and spot sanded a lot of of the marks before slopping on the last coat. So I'm here in the hospital room hiding for a bit before I can walk from the front door to the first step of the stairs.

So that's that. I'd like to tell my mother that it was BING that opened the door, so that both of the cats are guilty here. Marco might be in the picture to the left, but he's there for demonstration only.

The subtle art of window trim

Today was my part 2 of the window trim work that was long overdue. After creating and installing the sills yesterday, I start out this morning AGAIN watching Tom Silva's trim video. I referred to that in my previous post, so if you haven't seen it and need to do any window trim then you need to watch it. I truly think that if he were to walking into your flooding basement, that he would be able to walk on the water to shut off your water at the meter. He's my Mr. Miyagi.

What I realized about trim today is that all you really need is a fresh 60t blade on your compound saw (especially when your old blade was really used for cutting up demo debris and hardwood flooring), and tons and tons and tons and tons of patience. I was good on the former all day, but the latter started to fade on me after about 5.5 hours of the work today. I won't go into the details, but I'm pretty sure I could be heard yelling some choice words down the block.

In the end I got in the casing trim and installed all of the aprons as well. That's really all there is to it. The tricky parts were in measuring the side pieces to be at least even with each other, and to nails those as straight and flush to the wall as possible. If the nailing isn't flush, then the mitered joint will leave a gap that you will try to work with for ever just to give up anyway with a sigh and that sad feeling of being bested by poplar.

A couple of the windows had that problem from bad drywall, curvy walls, or casing that I had to previously hand plane down (making some high spots along the length). I was able to make the best out of most of those areas, which was a win.

Whatever, this isn't a how to post, because I'm the last person that should be dishing that out in the area of...well...anything. In the end I still need to go back to each window and fill the nail holes.

Side note: I am also on the hunt for a product that I can use to fill 1/8th inch gaps in the trim on some joints. The standard wood fill (at least the Minwax kind I have) is too gritty. I need to find something that is more like a putty. If anyone who read this knows of such a product please don't be shy.

On Tuesday we're getting our baseboard moulding pieces delivered and so I guess next weekend I get to miter for another 12 hours. Only this time on my knees.

After proof-reading this post, I realize it lacks my usual flare for the random thoughts. I think the trim and the dragon slaying yesterday have sapped my strength. Lord knows the celebratory beers at the dragon feast last night didn't help matters. Ugh....

Oh, last thing. Once reason we made our sills so deep is so that the cats can lounge in the windows. It's really the one thing that they seem to enjoy that doesn't involve using clothes or piles of contractor bags as a toilet. So we've encouraged them to lounge and not pee randomly.(I don't think his peeing is random thing myself, I think he knows exactly that contractor bags= loud noises and dirt. Both of which harsh his mellow, so he just wants to make his wishes known- Christina) You'll se my man Marco test driving one of the windows this evening.

Good man. Now learn to use the litter box ALL OF THE TIME!

Between stucco and a hard place

Between having a cement crew here all week putting stucco on the back of our house, the various leaks that facilitated, and the cats deciding to be daredevils....we had a week around here.

I'll start slow. Our house was (as I type this) all brick in the back and side. After moving in to the house 3 years ago it became very apparent that the brick was an issue. Sections were turning black and there was obvious moisture seeping through the wall and really causing problems with some plastered rooms. Anyway, so after years of saying "you know, we really need to take care of this" we had the guys come out and well...take care of it.

The timing was planned to be after windows for the third floor were in with the exterior trim in place. Done. And the other factor was making sure that we could pay the guys in U.S. currency. Done. Three days later, the back of the house looks something like first the picture on the right.

And for some weird close up of the stucco work, for those who are not that familiar, I guess you can enjoy the picture on the left. Do with it what you must.

Anyway as I eluded to at the top of this number, some of this work created some issues for us in the water department. The byproduct of the guys peeling some of the rubber roof off of the existing wall was that when the stucco doesn't meet the roof...water goes RIGHT INTO that seam and floods the floor below. Great stuff!! A+++++++

Whatever. Our cement contractor is really nice and felt bad the guys left the area like that. He's coming over tomorrow with a roofer to fix it all no charge. There are still some decent contractors out there as hard as it is to believe.

So the last fun thing happened yesterday morning. I never mentioned this previously (in spite of Christina's insistence I admit) but our cat Bing had an escape a few days ago. He decided to hop out of the front windows on the top floor onto the top of the bay windows. I found this out after closing the windows, and a few minutes later wondering what "that f#$%ing cat" noise was. Yeah...I felt kind of bad seeing the little dude out on the window still 30+ feet over the street. With a very large tail he made a B-Line for the inside of the house.....

But our other cat Marco took the prize Saturday morning. At around 8:30 AM Christina was milling about the house and heard a noise coming from outside. She looked out a window and saw my man Marco staring up at her. Outside. From the roof of the first floor closet. Marco, upon seeing her shining face, started to wail in that way cats do when they're about to be run over or something. Long (and winding) story short, I threw some clothes on and ran outside with a ladder to rescue the dude.

I have created a little something to illustrate HOW he managed to end up outside (click on the image for the full effect). Please, no requests to jazz up other pictures, this one was a SEVERE waste of time tonight. In the end we realized that he went out of the small bathroom window on the third floor and DOWN to the closet roof. 20+ feet. Cats really commit to something.

So anyway that was way too much excitement for first thing in the morning. Now we're double checking that all of the new windows are closed, at least until the screens are in.

Our friend Graham has asked a few times to finally see a picture of Christina working on the house. Now she's normally the shutterbug and not myself, but I did find one that I took that is proof the Bear has put in some time on this mess that we live in. It's old but it still counts.

That's it for now. Tile will be done this week, and my parents are dropping by for a couple of days on their way to a wedding in DE. Good stuff!

- Bryan

Bing the Electrician

Even though he doesn't have his hard hat on, Bing decided today was his day to be a helper for some electric work! Bryan has been working on removing ALL the knob and tube wiring throughout the house. It is hard to tell from the picture, but Bing is on the 3rd floor looking through a hole in the floor to the hallway on the second! We are trying to do a few more things around the house before our contractor starts. The tentative schedule is for the contractor to start the week of May 19th, but we have to find a claw foot tub before he starts so it might move a little bit. So check back for updates!