Super Duper Victorian Exterior Restoration part 1

This post could be subtitled,
A Paint Job Only An Insane Person Would Agree Too

Since the end of August we've had a crew of painters helping me prep the house for paint.....
We've been removing the paint inch by inch by inch, with heat guns and carbide scrapers.

We followed lead safe rules all the way. Plastic tarps entombing the areas we are working in.
Then during the day the paint glop gets swept into a hazardous waste container. At the end of the day we hepa vac off all the plastic, then roll it up tightly for reuse and then we hepa vac'd off the surrounding area just to be double safe. Our mantra has always been, paint chips only on the tarp.
As far as I know there has never been a release of lead paint dust, chips into the environment at large.

The Painting Methodology
First we take as much paint off as we can with the heat guns and scrapers.
Second, we Jasco every single inch of the exterior of the building.
Then on the now lead free building we did a light sanding with orb sanders.
This is the time where all the dry rotted trim is fixed, missing trim is fabricated and things are put back the way we think they should of been in the beginning.
Then, the entire house is coated with a layer of penetrating epoxy from Smith&Co.
Then on goes a quality oil based primer.
Caulking wherever its needed.
Two coats of color finally.

I've heard it said that a good paint job is 90% prep.
Check Out This Prep Work

All of the following shots are after just heat scraping.

 One of the great things I like about these guys
is that they do the entire bottom 10' of house before they call for the scaffolding. Why pay for scaffolding when you don't really need it?



South Side of House

 Crap new wood next to the old growth redwood.
Gee, which type would you pick to build a
house out of?

Fugly, Those BS boxes below those BS Ionian
columns...

 Big Front Window.

 Porch

 The house was red at one point.

 Porch Ceiling.
The wood here is just gorgeous...

 More Porch

North Side












The above shots was how the house looked the morning that the scaffolding company came.

Up Next:
Wait till you see how absolutely beautiful the old growth redwood looks after its stripped fully and sanded....









 

HVAC Madness!!!

The first of many catch-up posts.

Holy Moly Batman have we been doing a lot of HVAC work.

Because our stupid network attached storage drive also chose to fritz out on us at about the same time my computer went belly up you're going to have to imagine the following sequence.

Hey, look, its the old furnace room, lets demo the entire heating system and remove it.
Yay, that was fun.
Then a LOT of work (and money) later...

Here's the close-to-being-finished furnace room.

We took out one old over sized furnace and in its place are two new two stage condensing furnaces.
One furnace is for the basement apartment the other is for the main floor of our unit.

Take a look at all of that sheet metal work! Lucky for me (not him) a good friend of ours who is a custom car fabricator got laid off work just as I was about to start this project, he's a good with the sheet metal.

Question: Since I am a madscientist and he works for me, does that make him my minion? Or how about my Igor? When he's not working very well he's my mexi-can't. Is that going to get me in trouble with the PC police?

We built the furnace stands, and figured out how to do all that crazy ducting in as small a space as possible. The vents on the sides are the intakes and on top of the furnaces is the uh, out-take? We never could decide what to call that.

Shot of the two trunk lines headed towards the back of the house.

We had Golden Gate Sheet Metal make up the rectangular trunk lines because on this stupid coast nobody stocks them...in the Midwest or Northeast these things are standard, not here...










Closer up shot of the duct craziness.

We had to do a lot of custom on the spot metal work to make all this fit.

















If you peak behind the furnaces you get.

The intake manifold for the basement apartment.

A shot looking through the basement intake plenum.

We did it like this so the furnace would pull air from both sides of the apartment.

















The furnaces have to be vented with 2" PVC.

Here's how we decided to have them penetrate the one hour fire barrier.

Then they run inside a joist bay.

 And exit on the exterior wall in these cool dual concentric vents. I think its a much cleaner look than four separate pipes sticking out of the wall with elbows on them.










Here are the two trunk lines that run towards the front of the house.

The branch ducts come off the top of the plenums so the entire branch runs are all contained within the joist bays.











Still many problems to solve.
Like how to get two trunk lines through this much space.

Yep, all that plumbing is just exactly right in our way!!!!
Hurray!
We're going to have to move the gas line and the sewer stack we believe.









That's it for now.
Next up, (maybe) painting, or Halloween or...

Sorry!!

Yes well, its been a while since we've updated the house blog...
Its just been work, work, work, around here I tell you.
Well that, and my computer crashed and I've been so busy I haven't had a spare second to fix it until recently.
Have you ever been so busy that you think, 'Okay now....when exactly was the last time I showered..?'
We've had non-stop house work going on around here.
A whole heaping helping of paint prep going on.
There has been a ton of work on the HVAC in the basement.
Of course there was Halloween.
Then more HVAC and more paint prep and on and on and on.

Oh, and I've learned that my back is much, much worse than we thought. Yay!
Got a recent MRI that shows that I basically have no discs left between L4-L5 and L5-S1. As in, its almost bone on bone....yay...  :(
Also, one other disc slightly higher up is starting to bulge and causing a different type of pain.

Oh, and, remember that whole, 'Can we finish the basement apartment and get it rented out before we totally run out of money thing...' Ya, we're running out of money....hurray...

Coming Soon
I'm going to do a burst (I hope) of blog posts that will catch us up.

 

The Ultimate Haunt-Nerd Accessory

I've gotta say, I'm super excited about the newest addition to our Halloween décor.

Hey, what's that under the drop cloth?

Its a real for-real solid wood coffin!

Yep, the neighbors are concerned...

Check it out.

Okay so its not in perfect condition. It needs a little touching up on the wood and the fabric from the base is missing and it needs a little tweaking in some parts.

ahh-hummmm, excuse me...

Yay-Hurray I have a Real Coffin Yay-Hurray I have a Real Coffin!!!!

The coffin even came with two stands.

Boring Stand

Fancy Stand

Fancy Stand Boo-boo...

I think that the broken part is cast Aluminum so I should be able to get that welded back together...I hope. Cause this stand is waay more fancy than the working stand.

Gotta tell this story

The picture above is exactly how I brought the coffin home from deep in the heart of the West O ghetto. You should of seen the double takes I got from folks...sooo funny...wish I would of had a camera with me.

Okay, okay, okay, no more of this Halloween Goofballness.

What's up next?

Lots and lots of HVAC
 

Final Spider Project Post.......I swear....

Well, its with mixed emotions that we bid adieu to the animatronic spider. Its been fun Wolfy(our nickname for it) but its time to go to your new home.

But First Some Pictures Of How The Spider Breaks Down For Travel

Standard Spider

All Cords and Widgets Wrapped Up

Spider Removed

It takes two bolts to remove spider and the airlines and electrical fittings are color coded so it can't be 'cross wired'.

Out Riggers Removed

The out riggers bolt to the plywood base with two 3/8" bolts per side.

Everything easily fits into my tiny truck bed.

 

But of course we couldn't resist one last series of animations.
These are the new final ambient modes and scare modes of Wolfy.

The client had a really great idea for the scare sequence. He wanted the chittering sound to start to get louder like the spider was getting angry. Then have it get more and more angry until it leaps up to get you. I think it makes the prop more interesting.

Final Scare Sequence

The client did not want the spider always making noise so we changed the ambient animation to be 15sec on and 15sec off.

New and Final Ambient Sequence.

Bye Bye Wolfy...sniff....

Spider Project...Actually Done!!! I hope....

Sung to the tune of, 'The Never Ending Story'.
The Never Ending ProoooJeeect la, la, la, la la la.

Okay so, we think we're done. The spooky red eyes are added...the whole thing is flat blacked.

Check out some pics.

Creepy Night Time Pics

Videos!
Day Time
Ambient Mode

Scare Mode

Night Time
Here's a couple of night time videos.
The first one has a couple of seconds of ambient mode.

This one is probably the best version we could get.

The new animation and scare sound has been testing really well with the neighborhood kids and their parents. I think we have a winner!!!

This prop is definitely going to be a pants wetter...
 

Spider Project Done!!!......almost....

Well...with this spider being a one off prototype it seems like the tweaking will never end...but.

Its done, its done and its FREAKING AWESOME!!!!!!!
If I don't say so myself.

Check out these pics and most importantly videos!!!

Side Shot

Spooky lavender!!! We haven't flat blacked it yet either.
This is the general setup LED up-light, two strobes and a motion sensor.

Front View

The business end.

Front Shot of Tower of Power

Yes we need to work on cleaning up the wiring.
The tower holds all the electronics, speaker and power supplies.

Rear Shot of Tower of Power

Yea and we have to cut the airlines to size also...

Creepy Night Shot

Wow, isn't that little LED spotlight pretty great? Did I mention how happy I am with the spot light purchase? Waterproof, color changing, brighter than I thought it would be all for $13.

Spazzy Night Shot

Just because. Well there is a lot of motion in the arms.

Videos!!! Woo-Hoo!!!

Daytime Ambient Mode

The controller I'm using has a pretty cool feature called ambient mode. You can program a separate audio track and trigger one of the outputs. For this project the ambient mode is a chittering sound and the jaws clap together randomly. The idea is that people will not see the spider right away but the chittering sound and the sound of the clacking fangs will draw them in and then via the motion sensor they soil their shorts with the main scare.

Daytime Startle Mode

 What acting! Sign that girl up to a contract!

Night Time Baby!

 I think this looks awesome. With the strobes going it makes it look like the spider is moving even more than it is, which is quite a lot. Yes the stupid air compressor kicks in at exactly the wrong time.

We've been durability testing the prop for the last couple of days. We had to rework a couple of the leg joints and I added a plywood stiffener to the base. Other than that it looks pretty solid.

Did I mention.....

Damn I'm Pleased With How This Thing Turned Out!!!!!

This is the most complicated widgety-doo that I've ever made and I'm just so glad that it turned out well.

Now Taking Orders!
Want to absolutely blow away every other house on your block? Want to be legendary with the neighborhood kids? Order one of these spiders and you'll be a Halloween God in your neighborhood.

I've figured out all the issues, know how to do it now and where to source all the widgets and can turn another one around much, much quicker.
Email me, lets talk.