We can see through the walls

Look, windows!

<-- Here are the windows in the garage

And back in the bedroom.. those are the only two openings in the wall! hen they're up we have a nice breeze, and - and here's the best part - when they're down, there's no breeze!

Back outside, you can see more of the waterproofing.. the housewrap adds a moisture barrier between the plywood and the siding, which is 2 layers of goodness we didn’t have before

Our house is a never-ending construction zone.. the piles move from one spot to another, but there are always piles.

WWW (Walls Windows Waterproofing)

We're pretty big on waterproofing anyway, because it increases the lifespan of the materials, but the fact that we had to cut off the bottom several inches of our house because the bottom of the studs was all rotted out is putting us on even more of a mission.

<-- Here you can see the flashing up to drive the water away from the bottom edge of the sheathing, out over the foundation

The sheathing and the flashing are up all the way along the length of the house

And the bumpout is freestanding again, still with no sag!

And here's a shot of the crazy and highly specific nailing pattern on the plywood sheathing. This wall adds an enormous amount of lateral bracing to the house which should (knock on wood) keep everything secure in an earthquake

reFraming

The bumpout is up on crutches, but it’s better and stronger than ever before! The jacks lifted it back inline, and the sag is gone

<-- Check out the underside.There's a new 2x10 sistered onto each joist from the edge of the bumpout through to the super-beefy beam running down the center of the garage.

It feels much more stable there too, walking and jumping on it from above. And soon we can get back to stapling up the heating fins so sometime this winter we have a chance of having heat. It'll be much easier to get the fins and tubing out under the bumpout with the underside exposed like this.

<-- These are those joists from the inside. You can see a bit of daylight coming through at the ends, and the sistered joists are resting on our super-beefy garage beam.

You can also see one set of window openings framed in with the new header and post.

Here’s a better view of the window framing in the garage/workshop.

The openings have new 6x6 headers, which are supported in the middle by 4x6 posts

This is the window framing in the bedroom in back.. there's actually wall back there now!

Which makes it reeeaally dark in there.. this pic is blindly taken with the flash. If only we had some windows..

the Wall, continued

Here we have the beginning of the sheathing.

The windows you see there leaning up against the house are from the garage.. they don't match any other windows in the house and because they’re double-wides we had some problems with the framing that needed fixing.

From the inside a couple days ago you can see what the problem with the header is.. there isn't one! There's just a couple 2x6s turned on their side.. Not sure if you can see the sag in this picture, but it's pretty pronounced.

To span the opening over 2 windows with two stories above, we would have to put in a pretty beefy header, which would mean moving the windows down and buying new expensive beams. The alternative is to split up the windows and put a supporting post in between to support the header in the middle, which is what we decided to do.

Another issue we need to address is that the bumpout is underframed, and sagging even worse since the foundation was done. We figured it would be much better to deal with that now, before we closed up the walls. So we need to sister 2x10s to all the joists that cantilever out in the bumpout.

Here you can see the supports in place to prop it back up to level. Next, the joists can be attached nice and straight-like

the Wall

The East wall of the house has been a bit of a problem, particularly the outside wall of the downstairs bedroom. Between the 2 falling apart windows, and the “windows” that are essentially panes of glass somehow suspended midway up the wall, and the door opening we got rid of, there's pretty much no wall there anyway.

There's nothing to do but rebuild the wall from scratch, which of course means up to all modern codes with shear wall and housewrap and flashing.. so we talked a lot about what we should do with the rest of the wall towards the front of the house. Although it wasn’t a cost we weren’t expecting now, the obvious best thing for the house in the long run is to sheath and waterproof the whole length of the wall. We had a pile of 2x6s from an old project (which I spent HOURS moving from a pile out back to a pile along the side of the house.. but that’s not a very exciting blog post), which made a huge dent in the materials we had to purchase for this.

Another issue is that, because of all the openings in the outside wall of the bedroom in back, there is very little siding longer that a foot or two long. Short of having custom siding milled to the thickness and profile of the original siding, there would be a bunch of work to shim out anything we could buy off the shelf to line up with the original siding at the front of the house, and it would not be likely to wind up seamless, even with all that effort.. Ultimately, we decided to use the new siding we bought for the back of the house (which, conveniently enough is still sitting on sawhorses smack in the middle of the garage in the way of everything we try to do down there) and get more of it to replace everything along the wall with the new stuff. The original siding will be perfect for the back of the house.. we have enough long runs to do most of it, and the short runs will be fine for what’s hidden behind the stairs.

Once we decided all that, we were stuck with a decision on doing it ourselves over the next several months, or hiring someone who could get it done well in a fraction of that time. Dan interviewed at least a dozen contractors, and found a local team that came very highly recommended, sounded like they knew what they were talking about, and who does excellent work.
(Note to one of the contractors we talked to.. if you fail your contractor's exam A) do NOT bring that up in an interview, and B) if you happen to let it slip, you might want to consider charging slightly less than what a licensed contractor would get)

So, they got started today and should be done in about a week

Check out the new use of our former plywood backdoor!

New windows

Our new windows are here!

I'll explain more about why we bought the windows as we go into the impending framing in the house, but the price of these was also a factor in buying new instead of trying to fix and move the old ones.

Plus, I read all the time about how windows are the one thing that you want to buy new instead of salvaging from old houses.. The performance and efficiency of double-pane windows are far beyond the old single-paned ones.

We went with Marvin Integrity Wood-Ultrex series windows, which seem pretty great.. They're clear pine on the inside, paintable fiberglass clad on the outside (I know that we'd never have to paint them if we just got them clad in a color we want for the trim on the house.. we're just not beige people..), with low E insulated glazing.

And somehow, because they only come in a handful of sizes, they're really affordable. So, as you can see, we loaded up ;)

Pretty door stuff

I somehow totally missed posting pictures of the gorgeous hinges doing their gorgeous thing!

<-- And look, they hold the door up too! The doorjambs are also very pretty, made from douglas fir, so when we finally get around to staining and sealing them they'll match the doors perfectly.

And in the meantime, we've got some knobs!

It's funny.. I was just getting used to having the deadbolts in place, so now after I unlock the door I keep pushing on it, expecting it to open, and thinking it must still be locked somehow. And then I finally remember to turn the knob and everything works just like it should. I must be tired, because I keep doing that..

<-- This is the unfinished, interior fire door. The reproduction privacy sets have a fake keyhole cut in them which I love! That little detail is why I bought the knobs from Nostalgic Warehouse instead of one of the dozen or so places online that carry similar hardware.

I was planning on drilling it out so you could actually see though the door, but I think I'm going to paint that spot black instead.. at least to start off with.. I can always drill a hole later if it looks weird.


Sorry for the lack of posting recently.. it's been a bunch of behind the scenes stuff and some non-house related work which I'll post some pix of soon