M99's Live Journal

Interesting Weather Zone

2009-01-07T06:21:43Z

OK, we seem to be in that part of the wintertime when we have interesting weather on a daily basis. We had a warming trend late last week which melted almost all of the accumulated snow (approximately 1 foot) we got between Christmas and New Year's. Then we got another 2 inches of snow over the weekend coupled with very cold temperatures, creating a hazardous mix of ice and sharp snow on the ground, especially the driveways and parking lots. Now a chinook wind is blowing, gusting between 30 and 45 miles an hour. The snow has vanished entirely. It is 55° outside. I ventured out to collect various items from the yard that were starting to blow around like the lid of the garbage can, and a spare cat litter box. During the new construction, we had to demolish the old shed which used to hold a lot of this stuff. A fair amount went to the dump, but other items are simply stacked against what is usually the lee side of the house. When the wind comes out of a different quarter, it pays to go and check and make sure things aren't straying away.

At least now that the builder's work is completed, windstorms like these are no longer sucking out pink insulation flocking from the attic and distributing it over the neighborhood.

So far, the new construction is holding up well, having been tested by a fairly decent snow burden, ice, torrential rain, and now wind. The new part of the house is less noisy than the older part; I think modern insulation conducts less sound between the outside and inside.

Of course, my bedroom being in the old part of the house and on the windward side, it is subject to all sorts of little noises, many of them due to the fact that an old TV cable is hanging loose and tapping on the wall outside with every vagrant gust of wind. I really ought to go out and find some way of clipping it to the siding so it doesn't flap around in wind storms like this, but I never think of it when the weather is calm. -__-

Happy New Year!

2009-01-02T06:26:17Z

I'm back! Alive and well, and as sane as I ever am. :D

The house remodel pretty much ate my brain the last couple months. Phase one, the addition, is finished. I'm sitting and typing this in my new office, which is still a novel feeling for me, not to be sitting at the kitchen table with the computer gear taking up most of the floor space.

Next phase will be to get the carpet replaced in the living room, the kitchen floor replaced, and stuff moved around to free up the master bedroom for my mom. We hope to finish combining households this year.

We spent a quiet Christmas together, around heavy snowstorms and "weather". We were hoping to be joined by my sister and her family, but the roads kept closing and the passes over the mountains were full of avalanches, so they stayed home and stayed safe. New Years we spent with friends, watching the Dark Knight movie, eating cookies, drinking coffee, and chatting till midnight. We're such a wild bunch. :D

I hope everyone has a wonderful, healthy, and safe 2009.

And in Other News

2008-08-09T06:42:10Z

One of the outdoor kitties, S'mores, got into a fight with his brother last Friday and got a nasty bite wound to the chest that needed a trip to the vet, stitches, a drain, an injection of antibiotic, and a "buster collar" to keep him from pulling out said stitches. Needless to say he has been an indoor kitty for almost a week now, and once he recovers, I'll be looking for a new home for him where he can live indoors away from his brother. The two of them just don't seem to be able to share the outside territory without constant spats. And while S'mores may start the fights, he doesn't seem to win them. Or learn from the experience. Brother Sable got some scrapes, but he definitely came out ahead of S'mores. -__- What is weird is that he's getting along OK with my cats, it just seems he can't stand his brother. It figures. So... anybody want a gorgeous snowshoe cat with a lovely people-oriented personality? :) click for kitty-pic

And in other news, I got home tired, laid down for a nap, and was awakened by my across the street neighbor ringing the doorbell. I opened the door and saw a whole bunch of police cars clustered around my next-door neighbor's house. What the heck? It turns out a pair of young men were fleeing from the city police, at speeds around 100 mph (according to the policeman who filled us in), tried to turn the corner onto our street and didn't quite make it. He sailed over my neighbor's lawn, through/under the chain-link fence, and crashed into their garage. Just like something out of a movie. If you look at the photos below, you can see a taillight shining in the garage. Unfortunately he did not drive in the entrance of the garage, but made a new one through the garage wall. My neighbors are fortunate that the idiots didn't end up in their living room or in their backyard pool. And the garage didn't collapse on them. Amazingly enough the two men inside walked/limped away from the crash, to be collected by the police a few minutes later. I'm not sure what exactly they had done to be trying to flee from the cops through a residential area at such high speeds, but I doubt it was anything intelligent.

The view from my front door. As you can see, the front yards are not terribly big, so the guys in the car cut the corner badly and pretty much flew into the neighbor's garage. They are lucky to be alive. At least we ended up having a nice neighborhood get-together with everyone, hanging out, watching, and chatting for about an hour.

It's been an interesting week. :)

House Remodel -- Drywall

2008-08-09T05:36:35Z

Yep, some "dry" pictures for you -- it doesn't get much drier than this!

A load of drywall was stacked up in the pantry on Friday last week. The drywall team arrived this Tuesday around mid-day and went to work like a team of crazed beavers, sawing, routing, and power-nailing till 8:30 pm. Actually, I think they used a power screwdriver, because the fasteners were not ordinary nails.

I was warned this would be dusty work, and they were right. I washed the kitchen floor twice that day, and wiped down all the kitchen counters multiple times, plus had to rinse off any dishes I had left out on the counters.

These photos show the results of that day's work, plus Wednesday they cleaned up some of the dusty mess and scrap and laid out paper to catch the drips from the taping/mudding team.

The office, all drywalled. It looks like a proper room now. :)

Bathroom - photo shot around the shower.

Greymalkin inspects the box of vent covers for the air ducts.

And now that there is a back door, Rum wants Out, of course!

The taping and mudding team worked all yesterday, and checked their work today. It was humid the past couple days, so things weren't dry enough for a second coat, so they will be back tomorrow to work a bit more. I'm very impressed with the results - wow!

Siding

2008-07-30T14:33:45Z

The exterior siding is done. More photos to come when I get a spare minute. This shot shows the siding about 7/8ths complete on the back side of the house.

Still some cleanup stuff to be done in the yard, but not too bad, really. The work crews have tried to keep the mess down, although they managed to tidy away the sewer clean out cover somewhere, and I may have to ask the contractor to get a new one. -__-

And the city has passed the electrical work, so the interior drywall work can begin, yay!

Pipes and Piping

2008-07-19T16:38:08Z

This week they pretty much finished the roof and switched from exterior to interior work. Quite a lot was done, but since it was done inside the house it is less-visible from the outside.

To start with, the plumber tackled the old piping monster that has been hanging out in space behind the kitchen wall.
Click for "adventures in new piping". 0__o

What a job! First they had to get a concrete saw and cut a big notch into the new slab and into the old slab in my kitchen to expose all the pipes and the water main into the house. I returned on Tuesday to a kitchen draped in plastic sheeting and a note saying, "sorry about the smell". Messy but necessary work.

They had done their best to try and air out the smell of gasoline exhaust, but I kept the windows open and the fans running until later that evening to make sure none of us got carbon monoxide poisoning.

The next day the workmen left a note asking me to clear everything out from under the sink so the plumber could work. I spent the evening going through all the junk I had been stashing under the sink, throwing some stuff out and stacking cleaning supplies neatly in the spare bedroom with everything else that used to be in the utility room. If nothing else, by the time this whole renovation is completed, I'll have a lot less junk and old stuff in my possession. :D

Mom dropped by while the work was in-progress and was impressed with the plumber, who was lying under the kitchen sink wrangling pipes.

The new sanitary water supply hooked up, along with new piping which will serve the washer and dryer.

By Friday they had completed the job, and patched the trench cut in the concrete.

I asked Mom to check the house during the day on Wednesday because I had gone ahead and penned the cats up in the back part of the house, their litter boxes been in the bathroom all this time, but I also moved their food and water dishes in their and used the foldable metal panel fencing that I used to use for their cat run to corral them in the back half of the house. Since the workmen were at the stage where they were actually poking holes in the walls to make doors, there was going to be nothing that would keep the cats from running out into the addition and then out into the yard. They are strictly indoor cats, and I wanted to make sure that didn't happen. Of course, a little wrinkle was that the bathroom was behind the fence and so the workmen would have to maneuver themselves in and out to use the facilities. The first day I came home to find Rum waiting for me in the living room; he had obviously managed to slip through when someone used the bathroom. Fortunately, I think he was too shy of the workmen to actually try and get out through the openings, and before they left they put up plywood panels and plastic sheeting to block off the rough doorways. So far so good; Rum's one escape notwithstanding, every time I have come home, the cats have been where they belonged. Of course the minute I turn them loose they make a beeline for the kitchen to check the work and see if maybe they can't get into the new addition.

The addition has windows, but no back door yet, and so I really don't want them getting out there. During the evenings, I have been taking their Fence and propping it up in front of whichever doorway opening offers more gaps for them to squeeze through. I'm tickled with how they are turning out even in their messy phase, I can see how they should look. I will have a French door from the kitchen into the family room, and a single door with a window into the pantry.

This means I will have to move the refrigerator into a different position in the kitchen, and do some rearranging, but that's all right. In return, we will be getting more natural light into the kitchen since the French doors will have glass, and that will let the light from the picture window through into the kitchen.once I get the camera recharged, I'll see if I can take some photos of the doors from the interior of the kitchen space. They don't look very impressive at the moment, since they are just gaps with particle board over them.

By Friday the potable water lines had all been upgraded. Once that job passes inspection, the plumber will replace the drain piping and my household piping will be about 90% updated. There is one long old pipe that serves the front exterior spigot that I'm leaving alone for now since it would involve cutting a trench across the width of the old house to get to it. That pipe seems to be OK, so I'll just leave it be. :)

The outdoor kitties have been following the renovations with great interest. This little narrative would not be complete without at least one picture of them, since they have been able to wander through the construction zone at will once the workmen go home. This is Sable inspecting the work in the pantry/laundry room this morning. You can see the bathroom with the new shower stall in place and my office through the joists.

Off to get a bit of rest -- Every day after work, I've been moving, sorting, and packing stuff. Yikes! Hey, I may actually get in shape from all the physical work! :)

Roofing

2008-07-16T14:07:38Z

Even as I type, the workmen are tromping over the roof, new and old, putting on the new shingles.

Interior shot of the picture window in the family room.

Fresh tar paper on the roof, and a vapor barrier around the exterior plywood. And windows! :)

New roof on the front of the old roof -- yay! :) Doesn't look that much different in color than the old roof, but it'll last a good long time now.

Vapor barrier and windows are now in the frames. I'm getting window sills in big enough to support potted plants, which will be really nice.

Time to dash off and corral the cats in the back room soon so they can poke a hole in the wall through the old kitchen window to make the door into the pantry. Things are going along quickly.

Roofline

2008-07-12T14:45:20Z

Oh my goodness, I actually have something up there that looks like a roof! This was the proof of my conceptual design -- that I would end up with a nice little peak over my old roofline and that it would look decent. Even though it isn't finished with shingles and siding, I think it looks good.

The pantry side of the addition, showing how the roofline forms a T. with the old roofline. When I showed one of my local friends a photo, she said "you're building a new house onto your old one!" I suppose that's a fairly close description, although there are houses in the neighborhood where people really did build a two-story home behind the old one and connected the two together to give their family more room.

The backside of the house, the pantry and entrances on the right, the very large picture window into the family room is in the middle, and on the right is the window looking into my office.

This is the office corner, the smaller window closest to the house looks into the new bathroom.

Trusses!

2008-07-11T06:11:17Z

They put up the trusses today and we had a terrible windstorm right afterward -- it figures. Mother nature is stress-testing everything. The interior of the addition was a malestrom of dirt, pink insulation flocking, dust, lawn debris, bits of tarpaper... ugh! I've got a sand dune in my scalp!

Look, Mom! A roof line!

Why was I inside the interior of the addition in such terrible conditions? The builders had put a nice heavy piece of plastic over the area where the hot water heater was nestled, but in high winds it tends to tear loose and make a lot of noise as it flaps against a wall of the kitchen. So I sallied forth with duct tape and scissors to tack it all down again. I'm debating washing my hair before I go to bed since bits of gravel and dirt fall out of my hair when I shake it. 0__o

Mom is having the interior of her house repainted this month, and I went over this evening to bring dinner, and help her move stuff out of the first areas that are going to get painted. When I got home, the wind storm was pretty much over, and the new trusses were still standing. Hooray for modern construction! One of the builders was swinging by to check on it as I left the house; I really appreciate their care and professionalism.

A view straight up through the middle of the house, showing the attic trusses in place.

The front of the addition-- well, actually it's the back of the house --notice the big prop running up to the ridge line. The front truss was tied into the frame as well, but they put in the prop as extra insurance, and I'm glad they did.

I took Saki to the vet today to get his teeth cleaned, and rescued him on the way home from work. Like his brother, he had a little bit of that reabsorbtive disease and they had to extract one of his pre-molars. He also had a little cyst in his mouth which they removed, but his teeth were in better shape than his brother's. Hopefully this will help to keep him healthy and sassy for many years to come.

Electrical and Trusses

2008-07-10T06:12:43Z

They finished switching over the electrical system today. At about quarter till 8 the contractor's electricians showed up, followed shortly thereafter by the city Public Works electricians.

This is what the electric meter, and assorted power cables looked like before they started.

Our electrician is an artist -- he put a little doodle on the cardboard covering the place where the electrical meter would go. :D

At eight o'clock they took down the main power and commenced switching everything over to the new system. I left for work, and mom dropped by at 9:30 to see how everything was going. The day turned out to be incredibly hot with a high at or near 100°. The electrician told me yesterday the power would only be down for an hour or two, max, but I was a little worried if it took longer than that the house might start getting uncomfortably warm for the cats. I needn't have worried. They had almost all the power to the main house restored by the time mom showed up. They had the important stuff like the air conditioner and the refrigerator running, and by the time I got home at the end of the day all power in the older part of the house was functional.

This is what it looked like when I got home today -- the power cable had been switched over and tied in. I wonder what they used to splice the cables together? It must be tough stuff to withstand the wind load that is going to happen over the years it is in service.

Something else had been accomplished at the end of the day -- the roof trusses had arrived and the preparation work had begun to start fitting them on to the frame of the addition. I can tell it's going to look rather messy until that part is done, since they have to peel off old roof tiles to make new for the new trusses. At the moment, the trusses are all stacked up neatly -- mostly over the framing of the new edition with some of it laying on the roof of the old house. I was concerned about the weight, and then I realized everything has to bear the weight of the trusses anyway, so I quit worrying so much.

Trusses! Laid across the span of the addition.

The trusses viewed from inside the pantry/laundry room. There is a smallish attic zone in the middle of the trusses, where we might be able to store light stuff like the Xmas lights.

Click for cat pictures! :)

Finally a fairly decent shot of Sister, who is very shy.

And Tarzan, who is getting less shy as he gets fed. I can pet him a little now, while he eats.

And Sable, who is very Not camera-shy. He caught a mouse this evening and was showing it off with great pride.

The Rocket's Red Glare

2008-07-05T14:54:46Z

Well, we seem to have survived the night of the young pyromaniacs. Our town still allows people to buy and set off fireworks for the Fourth of July celebration, and so most of the evening is spent in a haze of gunsmoke and the sound of mortar rounds and screaming shells going off. Some of the displays were quite beautiful, but I at least get a little nervous about misfiring fireworks and the potential for accidental blazes. I managed to get nearly the entire lawn well watered yesterday, which helped a little and then kept an eye on the house and yard.

I finally figured out how to get photographs out of my iphone, so here is a picture taken on Wednesday of almost the entire span of the addition.

On Thursday the electrician arrived and began putting in the new electrical meter, circuit breaker box, and the supports for the power cables which will come in through the new roof. The electrician says the power supply will be enough to support power for a 3000 square-foot house, which is almost twice as big as what this place will be when it is finished. So I guess I don't have to worry about power issues for awhile, if ever.

The new breaker box which is on the interior wall of the pantry.

You can see the riser for the power cables above the box. This neighborhood was built in the late 1940s and so all the power comes into the houses from overhead cables rather than buried underground.

Framed-In

2008-07-02T07:31:12Z

The building crew arrived and went right to work at eight o'clock. I left them vitamin water and cookies, and I came home to the result of their day's labors and took pictures. I'm very impressed. I can't believe how quickly it goes up and starts looking like a real house. My contractor says the roof trusses should arrive soon.

This side shows the pantry room door, and the picture window into the family room.

And this side shows the same picture window and the window into the office.

Click for interior shots of the rooms.

An interior shot of the pantry. I wanted plenty of windows for the sake of good natural daylight.

The pantry again, a slightly different angle showing the door.

The bathroom. I asked for ADA compliant doorways throughout and accessible interior fittings for the bathroom.

And this will be the office -- not too huge, but with plenty of light. Once the walls are finished, it will probably be 9 x 10 feet, big enough for my computer, a drawing table, and bookshelves. I'm told such a room nowadays is too small to be called "a bedroom" since it is smaller than 10 x 10 feet and lacks a built-in closet. On the other hand, nothing would prevent someone from using it as a bedroom. The semantics of modern construction.

The things you learn when working with contractors -- because I'm living in a World War II era house I'm permitted to put in windows of the same size as the original windows, they call it "grandfathered construction". Technically all modern construction should have windows that are even a size larger -- large enough to admit a fireman in full rescue gear. The windows certainly will be big enough to permit everyone to bail out if necessary. There are small homes in the neighborhood built in the same time period as my own with very small windows that probably would not allow an adult human to escape in the event of an emergency. I think if I was renovating one of them I would upgrade the windows for safety's sake.

Framing Started

2008-07-01T14:45:22Z

The framing-in was started yesterday, with the builders working in 103-degree heat. I gave them vitamin water and access to the house so they could get cold water and maybe cool off if they needed to.

We had more thunderstorms and dry lightning last night, but I don't smell any more range fire smoke. Not sure if that means there weren't any new fires made, or if the breeze is pushing the smoke up the valley.

This side will hold the office and the bathroom. A bathroom with a window, yay!

The start of the family room wall. The large opening will hold a big picture window.

The view of the work area yesterday noon. The power cords are fed through a hole in the wall around the old piping into the kitchen, which has modern grounded outlets. Heh, no outside power sockets on my house (yet). I think I asked for one on the new addition. More to come, the guys are just driving up.

Coming Soon - Framing

2008-06-30T04:48:01Z

Got a call midweek from my contractor saying the lumber for the framing would start to show up Monday or so and that the roof trusses were on order. Once the material arrives the framing-in will start and evidently that goes very fast. He said, "soon it will look like a house!" Cool. :)

This meant I had to make a decision on what color shingles were going to go on the roof. I took Friday off as a little minivacation, so Mom and I went down to the contractor's office and looked at samples of shingles and siding. We were torn between a color called "weathered white" and another color called "pewter". The weathered white looked like its name, while the pewter looked like a nice medium gray. I was leaning toward the pewter color because it would make a very lovely contrast with the pale siding we wanted. The very nice lady in charge of the office said there were two homes the contractor had just re-roofed, one with each color, so we could go and see how it looked in daylight. I got the addresses, printed out maps from Google maps, and then Mom and I went on a little drive around the area to find the homes. It turned out it was time well spent, the weathered white colored shingles actually look like a soft silver gray in daylight, which is a color I really like and so did Mom. The pewter shingles looked almost black -- very handsome -- but in this climate in the full sun they would really retain the heat. So we decided on the weathered white shingles and a siding color called "Pearl", which is a very pale warm gray close to what I have on the house already.

The concrete is now hard as... well, concrete. I've been walking over it as I drag the hose and sprinkler from one end of the yard to the other in an attempt to keep the lawn alive. Summer is here with a vengeance -- it has been 105-107 degrees F the past few days, ugh. Looks like the weather may moderate toward the end of the week, but is IS July, and that means hot. This probably means the various builders may be showing up very early in the morning to beat the heat. Guess I should get to bed before 1 am, huh?

Here are two photos from last week.

The concrete slab all nice and set up. This is before a bunch of birds decided to poop on it after eating wild cherries. :P

The back of the house as it looks right now. The exposed wall doesn't look terribly nice, but it is holding up well despite the vagaries of the weather. As of this moment it is wind storming outside and there were big thunderheads on the horizon before the sun went down. Maybe if we are lucky we'll get a little free water out of the deal, but this time of year we are just as likely to get a dust storm rather than a rain shower.

The concrete folks very nicely strung the hose from the old washer faucet and nailed it up along the side of the house to keep it out of the setting concrete. Someone also turned on the exterior faucet on the front of my house which was a really big help since I'm now using that to run all my sprinklers. At some point, the plumber is going to replace all that old piping and life may get a little bit easier in terms of the water supply.

Foundation -- All In A Day's Work

2008-06-20T07:05:06Z

Here we go, the highlights of the day's work by the concrete crew.

This is how the forms looked as of yesterday - they added insulating foam and rebar to the dug footings. Turns out the city had made some changes to how they wanted footings prepped, so the guys worked like beavers to get everything ready.

We started off bright and early at 6 a.m. when the crew showed up in pickup trucks. About 15 minutes later, the concrete pumper truck arrived and set itself up. They parked diagonally in the middle of the street and pretty much blocked the entire road. Fortunately you can get around the block without major problems.

Once the machine had set up, it snaked a long multi-jointed boom around the tree and over the roof of the house into the back where the footings had been prepped.

Another view of the pumper boom and pipe. The pipe isn't that huge, so I'm assuming the weight of the flowing concrete isn't too bad.

And here is what was waiting when I got home from work -- a tidy slab with the new plumbing and fasteners sticking out. Wow. I had asked the guys if it needed to be wrapped or kept wet and they said "nope".

Now we wait for it to finish setting. I'm just amazed at what technology and the right machinery can do -- and how fast! The thought of a usable room on a level with the rest of the house tickles me greatly. :D

They're Heeere

2008-06-19T14:25:43Z

The concrete folks arrived at 6 am! I'm gonna bail to work in a few minutes and leave the place in their hands. I've got a huge tube suspended over the house so they can pump concrete over the old place and into the new footings and forms that will form the foundation of the addition. Yikes! I hope nothing leaks. The foreman said, "We've got good insurance, don't worry." 0__o :D

A nice young man with a cement mixer arrived yesterday at 7 am, looked around and went, "Where IS everybody?" Um... I dunno... 0__0 Turns out there was a slight miscommunication back at the shop -- they needed to do more foundation prep before they could pour, so here they are today to DO it. I am impressed with the work and the logistics. Yow!

More updates and piccies after work, I had to run out and take photos of the boom and tube over my house.

Spring! Summer! Work!

2008-06-15T04:47:52Z

The weather *finally* got good today -- clear skies, bright sun, temps in the low 80's, and no gale force winds. Which meant I got to sally forth into the junky jungle of my back yard and tackle some long-neglected yard work. So today I:

1. Tackled the outgrowths sprouting from the weeping cherry tree - scions of the rootstock that were definitely NOT weeping in growth habit but instead shot up 20 feet in a year. Cut off two of three big limbs, then asked mom to bring over the saw with big teeth that is better for heavy woodcutting jobs. The small pruning saw I had took forever and sure gave me a good aerobic workout. :P

2. Pruned grape vines and put them on their trellises where they belonged.
3. Pruned the weeping cherry, forsythia, and some of the lilacs.
4. Tried to cut down a persistent willow-thing that keeps trying to grow through my back fence. Will work on it tomorrow again with the bigger saw. Geeze, turn your back for a season and you get a jungle! Also tried to take out the walnut-grove the squirrels keep trying to plant.
5. Picked up the clippings and put them in the trash can (mostly). The larger limbs from the cherry will need to be cut up smaller to fit.
6. Planted catnip in the hanging planter.
7. Pruned the roses out front.
8. Planted lavender, verbena, and some petunias in a nice pot.
9. Watered the 3 earthboxes (tomatoes and basil) so far planted.
10. Dragged out the hose, connected the sprinkler and began watering the back yard the old-fashioned way. This is how it will be till I can get the irrigation fixed. Oy vey.

Time to collapse, I think. Will post a few more pics --

More rough plumbing, this for the kitchen and laundry area.

Sable mugging for the camera.

Click for more cat-pics.

Rum looking noble, Grey looking cute and probably plotting something "fun".

S'mores and Sable on the front step.

Saki dead to the world.

Let the Wind Blow!

2008-06-10T06:29:51Z

Goodness, it is blowing yet another windstorm, interspersed with spates of rain. The wind is averaging 30 mph, with gusts up to 45 mph. I had to re-wrap the washer and dryer, which are sitting under a blue plastic tarp along the side of the house -- the wind keeps working the tarp loose, and when I came home today, the tarp was in the hedge. At least it hadn't totally blown away.

Then I had to duct-tape the plastic sheeting protecting the circuit breaker and power cables, since the wind had torn most of it free of the staples holding it in place. Yay for duct tape! I really don't want water getting on the electrical stuff.

A closer picture of the plumbing stubs for the new bathroom. Interesting how it is done. Sometime this week the concrete will be poured, I think, assuming the weather cooperates. I doubt anyone would want to work in this gale. My scalp is full of sand from my sojourn outside. The outdoor kitties, came, ate, complained bitterly about the weather, and disappeared to their kitty house for the night.

I bought herbs on Saturday - rosemary, parsley, and catnip. I parked the catnip on top of the fridge, but Grey found it all too soon. So it is now in the back bedroom behind closed doors till I can put it in the hanging planter.

House Remodel - Plumbing

2008-06-08T03:45:05Z

This week the plumber put in the "rough-in plumbing", which are the connections to the sewer and water main needed to supply the new bathroom and laundry area.

The start of putting in the plumbing for the bathroom.

The long trench down the middle shows where they dug down to connect up with the sewer main. The old pipes sticking out in thin air are the old pipes for the now-demolished laundry area. I need to check with the contractor on Monday about when/how they will upgrade the old kitchen pipes, some of which you can see on the exposed wall of the house.

And this is the start of the plumbing for the laundry room.

In other news, Blackjack the rescue kitty has gone to Seattle to be offered for adoption. I hope he finds a wonderful, loving home. Now I just need to find homes for the rest of the outdoor tribe -- the two Siamese brothers definitely want to move in with people, so perhaps in the fall, we can put them up for adoption.

House Remodel - Footings and Forms

2008-06-05T07:27:39Z

The young man with the backhoe and dump truck finished leveling the area for the new addition and digging the footings. The work was completed Monday and I was much impressed with what one person with power machinery and a laser level could do.

Most of the pipe-like objects sticking out are the irrigation lines, which will have to be fixed after all the fun and games with the foundation is completed.

Then it poured and thunder stormed all day Tuesday. The packed footings weathered the weather just fine.

Today the crew came out and started in on the concrete forms for the foundation. It is kind of like having house-elves -- I go to work, and when I come home something new has been done.

I also put in a request to have the contractor's plumber check the old piping that is now exposed and easy(er) to get to and give me an estimate on the cost of replacement. If I can, I will, since the old galvanized pipe is the same age as the house, which was built in '48 or '49. Might as well upgrade that while it is relatively easy.

House Remodel - Lot

2008-06-02T14:37:54Z

Took me awhile to find the old drawings from back when I bought this place, but here is the footprint of the original house on the lot.

It's not a huge lot, but then I didn't want to mow grass all weekend (and currently I pay the neighbor boy to do that). My mom's place has more than 1 acre to care for, and that is way more than either of us want to maintain, even if it does look like an English park.

This is my try at adding the new part to the old house -- not to scale, although I did the best I could, since I really want to eyeball the remaining space and work out where other things need to go & think about landscaping. The addition sits about four feet beyond the old porch roof, which spanned the back of the house. I think there is room enough for a modest garage behind the house (someday).

The backhoe man arrived at 7 am today and started in with an earth-compactor, much to the cat's distress. I hope my neighbors weren't planning on sleeping in. 0_o Me, I'm going to work as soon as I call the plumber to fix the commode.

House Remodel - Footings

2008-06-02T03:31:03Z

Photos taken early this morning -- the start of the footings for the new foundation.

You can clearly see the pad where the old shed used to be.

The boarded-up windows were lost when the original porch was put in. Assuming I designed things correctly, the addition will add light to the living areas by doors with glass panels to conduct light from the new family room into the kitchen. We'll see how that works out. My parent's house, while much newer and more modern, had no windows on the sides of the structure, only on the front and back. Granted, they were big windows, but if it wasn't for side windows, my place would be much darker than it is. I've got excellent light in every room but the kitchen, which lost a window over the sink back in some remodeling job done before I bought the place. So in my design all doors into the kitchen area have windows to let whatever ambient light there is pass through.

The backhoe guy returns tomorrow. And I have to call the plumber to fix the commode, which has worn internal workings and is starting to constantly run. I did install a temporary light in the kitchen to augment the old one which is running half-lit. I think the shaking damaged the old thing. Replacing it will be a job for the electrician.

Oh yeah, it is wind-storming a bit right now. 0_o

House Remodel Pictures

2008-06-01T04:19:32Z

The old family room wall and windows. Single-pane windows (uninsulated). The family room was once a screened porch with a low shed-type roof before it was walled-in by an owner back in the late 60's or early 70's. The end with the windows was barely 5.5 feet high, which made the full space of the room very hard to use. The room was ground-level with no proper foundation. The roof and walls were uninsulated, which allowed the bermuda grass to grow into the space through the concrete block "foundation".

Grass! Unstoppable, given the state of the underfloor. There was an inch-thick layer of grass under the vinyl flooring.
More pics and initial demolition after the cut.

The utility/laundry room, emptied of almost everything. The electrical service is on the wall.

A chipboard "wall" put up to close the old entrance into the family room. The cats have been fascinated by the goings-on.

Results of the initial demolition. The old exterior shed was removed as well to clear room to work and for an eventual garage.

The scene after the concrete demolition guy finished. The water main was broken so in this photo the water to the house is shut off. Repairs were done the next day. The hot water heater was moved into the old cupboard within the shell of the house, and the electrical cables were traced, labeled, and everything protected from the elements. So far, so good on that score.

Yesterday, they began digging and preparing the footings for the concrete of the new foundation. The addition will go out 16 feet across the span of the back of the house, and the new roof will T into the current roof line. I supposedly will have an attic space in the new structure - room to store stuff like Xmas lights. It's hard to visualize the end when everything is torn up, but I think the effort will be worth it when all is done.

In the interim, I get to navigate though all the interesting events that make up a renovation project. I'm learning a lot, I must say. :)

House Remodel in Progress

2008-05-31T16:12:27Z

Sorry for the month-long delay. The house remodel went from the planning stage to reality very quickly and I've been busier than a one-armed paperhanger frantically preparing for it. Activities to date in a nutshell:

Took everything out of the old family/junk/library room, laundry room, and the shed. Everything. Gave much of it to the bookstore, Goodwill, or recycle, then boxed the rest. Had in the moving men to move heavy bookcases and the washer/dryer. Time 1 week, 3 days. (I thought I would have a month for this, but nope.)

Watched the demolition crew start to tear down the old rooms. Scary. Amazing. Young guys with chainsaws and crowbars, working while the radio played "Smoke on the Water". Left for work, returned home to find shed and old rooms gone. Totally gone. 0__o

Watched the electrician working on the wiring in the rain while standing in a puddle. Left for work. Returned home to find he had done the job without getting fried.

Concrete removal guy cut/broke up what passed for the old foundation of the porch and the slab under the laundry room. Not a bad job, but he broke the water main, which was partly embedded in a deep layer of concrete. He shut off the main, but didn't tell anyone, so I came home to no water, and no way to get it fixed for the day. <__< Stayed at mom's for the night. Phoned the main contractor. Main contractor fixed the pipe so I have water again (with much muttering about the subcontractor). Backhoe "crew" arrived to prepare the new footings for the concrete foundation. One man, a dump truck, and a huge backhoe. This job should be finished on Monday, and then the concrete team prepare the forms for the foundation. Amazing choreography. Will post pics soon. Off to shop.

IK Manga and Cats Again

2008-04-21T06:35:59Z

Yep, got another panel of manga done, plus a little more picspam of cats. :)

Ch'laen is back! Mostly. >D

I *finally* catch a shot of Blackjack's gorgeous eyes. More cat pics after the cut.

Greymalkin, lurking on the new cat tree. "C'mon, wiggle your fingers at me."

Saki being a bit ungraceful. His head is still on his shoulders, even though it doesn't quite look that way.

Blackjack again, looking much better now that he's had about three weeks of decent care.

And one last pic of Blackjack, after the kitty toy which has fallen down to the next level of the cat tree.

On the home front, Mom and I took a van-full of old household toxics to the Earth Day recycle facility. Between us we had about 12 cans of old paint, bug killer, weed killer, old motor oil, ancient spray cans, cleaners, solvents. Thank goodness it is now out of our houses, garage, and shed, and being properly recycled. Now I need a similar day for old PC and electronic stuff.