Sunday, October 24, 2010

2nd Coat...

A few days later, the floor is looking really good!  The second coat of finish is going on now, and we've adapted our living space around it.  The ladder to the second floor deck is a bit awkward, but it gets us to our biggest living space for now...

After this coat, the floor will dry for about 24 hours and then we'll put on coat #3.  The week will be interesting as we will need to stay off of it.  But the end result will be beautiful!

Friday, October 22, 2010

Dust to Poly...

Much more dust was generated today!  It seemed like we just kept hauling out full bags of dust from the maple hardwood floors.  They are really nice looking now...with some neat characteristics of different types of maple on various boards.


Once we sanded 40, 50, 60, 80, and 100 grit passes over the floor and edges, it was time to clean up.  A good twice over vacuum job did pretty well.  Then it was time to get out the polyurethane.  One first thick coat went on today.  Then tomorrow afternoon we'll do a second.  A third will follow on Sunday afternoon.  We hope to be able to gently walk on it by Sunday evening!

Its tired time...that was lots of work!
More pictures here and in my album!

Thursday, October 21, 2010

Floors!

When we moved into this house, we agreed that 'sometime' we would love to refinish the floors in our house.  Sometime has come!  With much help from Duane, a.k.a. the Sandman, we spent the day on phase one of floor work.

Over the past two nights, the family has all kicked in to get all of the furniture moved out of the living room and dining room.  That, in itself, is a big task!

This morning, I removed the baseboard and made final prep for Duane's arrival.  We started sanding just after 9 and worked until about 5:00.  The photos tell the story!  More sanding is ahead tomorrow, but we made great progress getting the finish off today.  The floor is in excellent shape, and made of very good quality wood, says Duane.

Enjoy a few pictures knowing there are more to come!

-EJK  : )

Friday, October 15, 2010

Windows...

I've spent a good part of the past week and a half rejuvenating our windows.  I scraped paint and removed old caulk.  Then replaced caulk and primed.  Finally, I painted all of the 'old style' windows on the house.  That makes about 12 of them.  Now to put the storms back on and we'll be about ready for winter!

Thursday, August 26, 2010

Progress...

This has been a big one.  I'm finally putting things back together.  After exposing the rotten wall, I removed all of the bad wood and began to rebuild.  I'm ready now to reinstall the siding panels, redo the wiring, and put the inside wall back together.

Many pictures are ready to view here:
View my photo album

Thursday, August 19, 2010

Another Curveball...

Yep.  We call it the house that keeps on giving!  Anticipating a repainting job, I recently took a walk around the house to inspect the stucco and wallboard and see what prep was needed for painting.  In the process, I got out the stepladder to repair a small piece of wallboard just below the second floor deck off of our bedroom.  The piece was hanging slightly loose, so I grabbed a hammer and expected to tap the nails back in.

I soon learned that the wall behind it was really quite soft...and no nail would do any good in it.  While on the ladder, I reached up to grab a support joist from the deck above me.  It was totally mushy...instead of the solid 2x10 it should have been.  I headed into the garage to take a look at the inside of the same wall.  After pulling off some sheetrock, I was greeted by a nasty, wet, rotted pile of framing.  The stud, the wall sheeting and the insulation clearly had been quite wet.  And, as a nice bonus, now it was all crawling with carpenter ants.

A couple of hours of digging later, I had lots of sheetrock removed and found hundreds and hundreds of ants.  What a mess.  One stud of the wall was totally rotted, as was the sheeting between the stud and the exterior wallboard.

Over a few days, I emptied off the shelves in the garage and kept exploring.  The wet rotten mess turns out to span about 10 feet horizontally.  It is about 3-4 feet vertically below most of the sliding glass door to the deck.  At the worst spot, the rotten wood extends nearly 9 feet down the garage wall.

I've now stripped several sheets of wallboard off of the outside of the house and am just about ready to remove all of the rotten lumber and replace it.  I will use a few sheets of plywood to replace what was there as well as rebuilding a portion of the wall.  Once rebuilt, I'll invite an exterminator to leave a collection of poison for the ants in case I didn't get them all.

Oh what fun.  Wait, I still need to paint the house!

Aargh...

Wednesday, August 04, 2010

NEW ROOF!!

With great relief, I sat on the ground and watched 9 guys pull shingles off of the roof of the house!  Tuesday was unbearably hot.  The day started with hot fog rolling over the roof as the crew took off shingles.  But early afternoon, the heat index was getting dangerously high, and the crew decided to call it off. 

By 3:30, they had tar papered the back and front of the house, now stripped of shingles.  But that was it for Tuesday.

Wednesday, the full crew of 14 arrived at 6:15 AM and got to work.  The temperature was slightly better, but still very hot!  We set up a sprinkler in the yard to cool the crew.

Over the course of the day, the roof was transformed to a shiny new surface.  The last of the crew cleared out by about 6 PM.  That was a BIG job at about 46 square!

Lots of pictures tell the story very well!

Enjoy...
http://picasaweb.google.com/ekphys/ReroofingTheHouse#