In a Jamb

That moment

when you realize,
after finally getting a door
positioned just right in the jamb,

you cannot open it.

You've Got Mail!

The original mailbox was in the way of where a landscape drain needs to go. It had a pink post--much like the rest of the house--that I repainted green. It's placement was practical but not aesthetically pleasing.

IMO, mailboxes distract the eye away from the house and rarely function as a decorative attribute.

But they are a necessity--no one wants their mail fluttering down the street in the wind

Stumbled across this townhome mailbox at a Sears Hardware store closing sale for $8. Now the mailbox is 'hidden' behind a column and the old one removed, which was in the way of a much-needed landscape drain. So....progress.

Master architects

My house problems. No match for Galveston's...

Closing the loop-de-loop

My hallway has 5 doors, 3 of which I roam around in circles. 

I often find myself split between which route to take.

A few times, I walked straight into it, 

having failed to decide which path to take.

At least one of the doorways needed to go.
But which one?

It depended on what the ultimate layout plan would be.

Now it is two years into reno—

countless days of pondering,

sketching,

architectural drafting.

The doorway to the kitchen will be filled,

making room for counter space

and a wall mount oven.

Hardwoods to patch the kitchen floor were sparse

so I scavenged some from where the cabinets will go.

They won't do the house any justice there anyway.

Wood dilemma solved. 

Loop-de-loop dilemma solved. 

Oven dilemma solved.

WWII newspaper discovered in kitchen floor

Discovered this in the kitchen floor. Someone used it to plug a hole in the laundry room floor (now a part of the kitchen). It was wadded up and had been painted over. I began taking it apart, curious to find out what year it was from.

The paper so fragile —it fell into pieces with even the slightest touch. Salvaging it initially seemed like a lost cause...until I pieced together the headline:

Women among Jap Okinawa Troops

Recognizing the historical significance, I decided to piece it back together. The article was from The Houston Post:

Hardwoods. Again.

Just got this section of kitchen floor pulled up that was patched with mismatched wood. The blue floor must have been a porch floor before. Think I'll just leave that as the subfloor. The joist at one end is compromised by old termite damage. So I have the option of pulling these up, sistering the joist, and relaying. Or going under the house to do it. Or just skipping it altogether.

Decisions. Decisions.

Looks like they're all face nailed. That's good. That means only a few would have to come up.

The joist already has been sistered, it's just the nails aren't grabbing. That means none have to come up so long as its not going to be walked on.

I'll just facenail it and build a kitchen penninsula over it.

Supplies

That moment when you realize...
I'm gonna need a lot more clamps for this

Home Depot shopping list

#laziness

It's definitly secure

I really feel that all of this is overkill...

Found

Remember the baby rats I found in the woodshed?

Today I was cleaning out the woodshed:



and I found Mama rat:



Guess she decided to be a mummy for halloween.

and we have DIRT!

Ok...so maybe its not the best dirt in the world, but it was free and will suffice for grading around the house. Where do you find 4 dump truck loads of free fill dirt, you ask? Well, where you find everything amazing. Craigslist. I posted a wanted ad Sunday evening (which took all of 2 minutes), and at 7am Wednesday morning received a call from an eager driver who was transporting dirt from the Montrose area. He dropped off 2 loads in my driveway and 2 loads for my neighbor Alex.

Then came the issue of 'What the hell do I do with all this??? 

Dayworkers came to mind.

Shovels and wheelbarrows too.

Dad suggested buckets. 

That sounded good until I realized that 30 square yards of dirt = 1,250 5-gallon buckets.

Clearly, that wasn't going to work either.

So I walked over to my neighbor Alex's house, perplexed—a little desperate

Though—no match for his desperation.

We'd instructed the delivery driver to drop it in his driveway,

but a 10 foot trailer was parked in it.

So Alex's 2 mountains of dirt were dropped in the middle of the street, blocking all traffic from getting through.

We scratched our chins and stared at them, 

chatted about everything but them.

They were the pink elephants in the middle of the street.

Alex had a brilliant idea to rent a dingo at the amazing rate of $125 +tax for a 24 hour rental.

This is a dingo:

This is a dingo eating lamb chops:

Maybe I'll take him out for lamp chops as a way of saying thank you for solving this puzzle.

The following night we had the dingo. Alex moved the dirt on his property then dropped it off to me.

I finished at 9pm.

Mischief managed.

Dirt.

Surprise in the BBQ pit

How to clean a rusty table saw

The $60 table saw that I scored on Craigslist was in pretty good shape, but the rusty cast iron surface definitely needed some TLC to bring back its luster. There's many ways to clean a rusty table saw, but here's a quick DIY tutorial that you can use to refresh your tool surfaces with basic household items.

What you'll need:

• Scouring pad
• Steel wool (#0 fine seems to work well)
• White vinegar
• Baking soda or something to provide a bit of grit
• Lots of paper towels
• Water
• A 250 grit waterstone/whetstone or an orbital sander if you dare...
• Paste wax (hardware stores usually have it on the cleaning supply aisle. Alternately, check the paint section where they have the hardwood floor stains)

Before

After

First, a warning. 

A level surface is critical on a table saw. Never scrub a single spot with extra force because this could create a depression in the saw surface. A good rule of thumb is to apply medium pressure, evenly distributed across the entire surface.

Now, let's remove the thinnest layer of surface rust. 

This is the quickest and easiest layer to remove. It will help you gauge how aggressive you'll need to get to refresh the shine on your saw.

Spray the top with vinegar and let it sit until the rust turns black. Then, simply scrub the top with a scouring pad and wipe clean to check your progress. Only apply medium pressure. If progress is slow, ditch the scouring pad and move on to steel wool. A sprinkle of baking soda will provide a bit of extra grit to help scrub away the rust.

It's important to neutralize the vinegar by wiping the surface with a damp cloth. If you don't, the vinegar will keep eating away at the saw.

Next, tackle the deeper trouble spots.

The surface should be showing some signs of improvement. Take note of any dark splotches where the rust has eaten deeper into the surface. Use these as your gauge. You'll want to use the least aggressive method that clears these trouble spots.

The safest and best option is to use a waterstone. A perfectly flat waterstone is good because it applies pressure evenly across a large area. This method helps to avoid creating any depressions in the surface of your saw. I found this to work best:

1. Soak the stone for 10 minutes. (flatten the stone if needed)
2. Lightly spritz the surface with water.
3. With both hands on the stone, run it along the surface until a slurry builds up.
4. Then use grade #0 fine steel wool, rubbing the entire surface evenly.
5. Wipe away the slurry with a paper towel.
6. Spritz with water and wipe it dry.
7. Repeat if necessary.

Alternately, you could use an orbital sander...this is a more aggressive measure that necessitates caution and reasonable judgement. Orbital sanders can badly mar the surface if used improperly. Only attempt this method if you are competent with orbital sanders.

Finally, apply a layer of paste wax to protect the surface from rust.

Relaying hardwoods in the bedroom

6 days later...

Auditing my time to become more efficient

I decided to evaluate my time and over the course of a month, I noted all my renovation activities on a calendar. In a way, it was an audit of my time spent working on the house.

What I discovered, was that I was dedicating roughly 2 hours each night to setup and cleanup. Indeed, one of the most time consuming tasks has been the time it takes to lug out and set up the tools.

What if I could dedicate those 2 hours to making actual progress on the house?
What steps must I take to accomplish this?

The solution was simple.

I needed a dedicated workspace where all my tools were set up and ready to use on demand. The workspace needed to be easy to clean so that dust wouldn't escape into the house.

But where? The smurf room. That blue room that had yet to find a dedicated purpose. Better yet, the floors in it were trashed by cellar fungus. Half of them were already missing, a quarter unsalvageable, and 1/4 still viable. I decided to use the floors from this room to patch the hallway and bedroom floors.  In order to cover up the exposed subfloor, I'd need to take the vinyl flooring from the bedroom.

To keep myself on track, I made a list of tasks:

1. Remove the hardwoods from the smurf room
2. Treat the subfloor with fungicide. Let it dry. Plane it flat.
3. Pull all the nails out of the woods, treat them with fungicide, and trim off the bad parts.
4. Remove the vinyl flooring from the bedroom (layer #1)
5. Reinstall it in the smurf room.
6. Set up the workshop (in the smurf room)
7. Remove layer #2 sticky tiles and plywood floors from the bedroom
8. Scrape the bedroom floors of layer #3 - sheet linoleum.
9. Remove layer #4 - the bedroom hardwoods, 
10. which requires demo'ing out the corner TV hutch and all the baseboards.
11. Finish removing the bedroom hardwoods,
12. Treat the subfloor with fungicide, let it dry, then plane it flat.
13. Pull all the nails out of the woods, treat them with fungicide, and trim off the bad parts.
14. Cut subfloor away from where it touches the chimney masonry to prevent future wood destroying fungi
15. Reinstall hardwoods in the bedroom, patching it with the salvaged woods from the smurf room
16. Finish installing remaining scraps in hallway and, with some luck, the kitchen too.
17. Have a really stiff drink. 

Currently I'm on step #11, which means the new workshop in the smurf room is all set up!!!

Get fit

A good back workout:

Pull up and lug around 14' long pieces of pine flooring. Repeat for 2 rooms.

GOOOAAAALLL!

$60 on Craigslist. What a steal!
As if that's not incredible enough, it came with all the accessories, blade and a herculift mobile base too!

Cellar fungus

The growths shown are the mycelium, which transport nutrients to the fungus as it grows. They can get very large—large enough to pull off like a piece of string. It typically presents in woods that are in a damp environment. In my hardwood floors, the dampness originated where the subfloor touched a concrete porch foundation. It spread to the hardwoods and is currently sporing under the house.

As the fungus grows, it causes the interior of the wood to decay, although the top will appear fine until the condition worsens. 

You can use a DIY mixture of white vinegar and borax to scrub it, which has anti-fungal properties, though it is not a cure-all. This stuff is really neat looking when it spores. 

Creepy stuff.

Tweezerman

I used to have a pair of Tweezerman needle-nose tweezers around. Pretty sure my best friend Renee slyly trotted off with them.

They sure would come in handy right now to get these splinters out of my hand.

Puzzle pieces and peace

Finishing unfinished projects

The kitchen cabinet doors are almost all painted! No longer pink!

Uh-Oh

This....is a problem.


I popped into the crawlspace to add a main water line shutoff valve, only to discover that the drainage issue under the house was substantially worse than I'd anticipated. I leveled the dirt as a temporary solution until the weather cools down (it's 100 degrees right now). In fall, I'll return to tackle the problem for good.

Painting time lapse from last night

Holes in the ceiling

 There was a big hole in the bathroom ceiling after I relocated the AC air duct. Figured it was an opportunity to leave a hidden message for a future owner:

Dining rooms...not just for dining

A survey of the wallpapers in the bathroom

and WTF is this? My friend Erin says is a pterodactyl.

I think she's on to something:

Found dinosaur in backyard

Landscape lighting installed in backyard

Anyone need snake food?

The other day I was loading up more aluminum siding to take to the scrap yard when a rat scurried across my boots. She darted to a hole under the woodshed where the floor had caved in. I'll take care of this, I thought to myself, stuffing a "special dinner" packet in the hole for her supper.

A few days later, after determining that my guests would appreciate some privacy in the restroom, I went to fetch the bathroom door out of the woodshed. The door was crammed all the way in the back of the shed. Noting the 25 pound bag of seeds that some critter had been munching on, I decided to clean it up as I worked my way through all the clutter. Clearly, she had been merrily feasting on the seeds, which I'd intended to use to attract red crested cardinals to the garden. 

I moved aside some leftover batt insulation that I'd found up for grabs at a construction site and started scopping up the leftover shells with a dustpan. I had half-emptied the dustpan into a garbage can when suddenly I felt something plop down into the garbage can. That's when the squeaking started. 

Glancing around to find the source of this noisy ruckus, I spotted 3 baby rats nestled on the floor in a pile of insulation and seeds. The 3 babies were teeny tiny, so young that I could see their little hearts beating beneath their hairless bodies. I gently pushed them onto the dustpan and set them out on the garden table, then went to fetch the fourth that I'd accidentally dropped into the trash can.

But wait! There were more!

Plugged up in the shop vac detailer attachment

Ever since I vacuumed out the baby socks and chicken bones from my bathroom wall, the detail attachment for my shop-vac has been plugged up with something. I finally pulled out some needle nose tweezers to go hunt for the offending matter.

It wasn't long before I excitingly shouted out a "WOAH! WAY COOL!" having discovered this little guy's skull lodged in there:

He's tiny—about the size of an index fingernail

Mystery of the day

Why was this section of hardwoods cut out?

For a vent? Possible, but it's 3x longer  than any other floor vents I've found

Wood rot? Seems unlikely, since that usually travels along the grain of the wood faster than horizontally, from one piece to another

For a room divider? Definitely a possibility. Maybe there was a wall there.

Wait. That's definitely it.
There used to be a wall there.
35 inches over is another cut area of hardwoods.
The same size as a door opening.
Brilliant!

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