Brother-in-law Tim returned to us on Friday and is still here on Monday night. That’s devotion (or insanity). But with great gratitude I tried very hard to let him do the high stuff so I wouldn’t reinjure my shoulder. We all three worked 10-hour days and continued to make incredible progress on the interior. Here …
Oh yes… when last we met, this was the imminent to-do list. It has been slaughtered. Demolished. It is an ex-to-do list. It is pining for the to-do list fjords. close up all remaining gaps and fissures (mostly between main house and porch) patch some tyvek and flashing that has deteriorated, letting rain in rerun …
Today, 6 p.m.: Earlier Today, about 3 p.m.: This Morning: This Evening: During The Day: The LAST pieces of boarding board from the second lot of rough-sawn that we ordered from our local lumberyard, cut and ready to go up on the porch face. In between working on the porch windows and wall, I got …
Before: After (in progress): More of the story When we first saw the house, the sun porch with its solid bank of windows was a memorable feature and one of the things that commended the whole venture to us. But you’ll notice: they aren’t really windows. They’re gaps. Open air. In a wall framed with …
Or three days, rather? I struggle a bit, secretly, with deciding when or what is enough. The so-called eight-hour business day is very ingrained. Our contractors have typically started at 8:30 and quit around 3:30. When we started doing full days ourselves of physical labor, 3:30 was a very welcome stopping point — when the …
As expected, the fifth and final hole dug for the porch footings had layers of cinderblock three feet down, put there as a sort of footing for the original 4×4 post. What I didn’t expect to find, about two feet down, was the long-lost septic outflow pipe: Fortunately, due to its angle, it left just …
Yesterday was upper-body and arm day. Dug two holes and poured concrete for one, mounting the 6×6 post base in the top of the pier. Today was upper-body and arm day, times two. Got the rest of the existing posts out and took down the existing beam (without dropping it on yesterday’s work or the …
At least one sister, and maybe both, asked me during this project, “How do you know how to do all this stuff? I didn’t recall that you were so handy….” Herewith — Top Ten Ways to Excel* at Large-Scale DIY *(Not that I excel, necessarily. There’s a reason our motto here is “better is better,” …
Do you like beams?? The beauty of taking a day off is that I get to post about what I did yesterday! I may have mentioned a temporary “wall” that we needed to build under the porch, so we could remove the existing (inadequate) supports, and replace them with something more robust. The wall is …
Passing the milestone the other day of removing the LAST of any rotted framing got me thinking about the scope of this project and how it grew. How at every point — including the very beginning, when we were assessing what looked like passable wallboard and paneling — we’ve tried to push our imagination into …
There’s a Right Way and a Wrong Way. Then There’s Our Way. Read More »