Weekend work

These are not the pictures you’re looking for.  At least they’re not if you’re hoping to see what progress I’m making using my sort of a rotation - I still need to take those.

I had hoped to spend a goodly part of this past weekend stitching, but as it turned out, not so much.  You may remember (or not) that last August through the fall, Wonderful Husband and I were working on our porch, repairing the original, somewhat shoddy work and replacing screens with windows.  We had replaced the storm door and installed all the windows (14!) before the weather became too cold to continue.

Since I really don't expect you to remember our Harry Homeowner projects, here’s what the wall with the door (otherwise known as the south wall) looked like in September.

You can clearly see the window “fins” used to attach the windows to the porch structure – we knew we had to cover these with some sort of trim, but since we tend towards being seat-of-our-pants workers when we’re doing a new type of home repair/update, we had no plan for how that would come about.  Lovely?  Most definitely not.

I knew Wonderful Husband spent periodic blocks of time over the winter pondering how to make the trim look nice as well as coherent and uniform.  And now I’m thinking it was a good thing the weather got cold, since his winter pondering yielded an excellent solution. 

One huge … er, glaring reason all his pondering was necessary is that these are the first windows we ordered and installed.  The helpful people at Home Depot told us the job would be far easier if we ordered custom sized windows rather than doing lots and lots of (labor intensive) fussy trimming out of the window spaces to make them all match.  But that seat of the pants thing came back and bit us in the pants when we realized that regardless of width, we should have ordered all the windows at the same height.  (Which we did on the other two sides of the porch – at least we are capable of learning!)  The difference between the tops of these two windows is - ugh! - an extremely obvious half inch.

Uh oh.  That height discrepancy is definitely Not Pretty.  And could easily be a Big Problem.

Here’s the same spot as of Sunday afternoon.  Of course now that you know what to look for, you can still see the height difference, but scroll back up to take another look at the full picture of these two windows.  I'm delighted with Wonderful Husband's clever camouflage!

So, woohoo – let’s hear it for winter pondering!!

>^..^<

Life after Jane

A few days ago, just before the end of the year, I worked on stitching for the first time since the end of June.

You didn’t stitch in HOW long?  What in the world have you been doing?

I sort of disappeared.  After Jane was finished I ordered her frame, and then mounted her and got her hung on the wall in the living room (more about all that later).  And then Wonderful Husband declared it was time for a Break From Stitching as he needed my assistance on a house project. 

Make that multiple house projects.

(Warning:  this post is long and a bit rambling and is RL stuff – no stitching involved, so feel free to skip.)

The first few projects went quickly…. 

Painting the kitchen ceiling and walls.  Wonderful Husband did all the painting - my job was to keep track of what had been painted and what still needed to be done (it's extremely difficult to keep your place when the new paint is essentially the same color as the old stuff, especially on the ceiling).

Then it was on to repairing damaged plaster in the back bedroom closet - caused by leak between tiles in tub surround on opposite side of wall (never in my life have I seen tiles set so close together that there’s virtually no grout line – guess the original tile guy who worked on building this house in the 60’s didn’t realize, or perhaps didn’t care, that the grout helps keep the tiles in place?).  Anyway, cutting out damaged plaster, fitting shims and a fussy-cut piece of sheetrock into place, mudding, sanding and painting all went fairly quickly.

  

Next up was touching up the paint above those minimally-grouted tiles in the bathroom.  The walls looked like when the previous owner had the bathroom painted, nobody bothered to clean/wipe down the walls first – ugh.  And some of the spots looked like what happens when you paint over joint compound dust. 

Right you are – that touching up turned into repainting the entire room.

Then there was the water (ice dam) damage to the faux beam between the dining room and family room ceilings.  Roof long since repaired, but it took us quite a while to figure out how to fix this:

Not knowing what was underneath the damage, we opted to remove stray bits and then cover rather than trying to cut out and replace that part of the ceiling.  Repair involved masonite, PVC trim and lots of clamps to hold things while we got them in just the right place - in other words, lots of fussy work.  We're happy with the result.

After that came a much bigger project.  One that I didn’t want us to tackle ourselves, but Wonderful Husband twisted my arm made a deal with me:  WE would repair/fix up/significantly improve the back porch, and then we would have a CONTACTOR cut a hole through the wall in the second floor room that we created out of half the attic (there was no realistic or reasonable way to tie that room into the existing HVAC system, so it needs a wall unit air conditioner for summer and a heater for winter).

When we were considering buying this house, the screened in back porch spawned a charming daydream in my head – sitting outside-but-inside with my coffee on weekend mornings.  We’ve lived here over seven years now … do you think I’ve had my coffee out there even once?  Hahahahaha….  The porch quickly became storage for the lawnmower and various gardening things.  Sigh.  That’s what happens when the house doesn’t have a basement and Wonderful Husband claims spare space in the garage for his shop.

The porch is a little odd.  There was siding (well, sort of), and painted wood, low-end indoor/outdoor carpet and a screen door.  Oh, and our former next-door neighbors told us it was thrown up hastily - not well built at all.  Wonderful Husband had decided that it should have windows rather than just be screened, and of course we both felt that painted wood was a pain in the neck and needed to be replaced with Azek (well, Home Depot’s imitation Azek, which is considerably cheaper).

So we measured and thought and poked and measured and thought some more.  We discussed windows with the window guy at Home Depot and eventually made some decisions.  And then we began removing the painted wood, which was in bad shape because we’d ignored it for several years, knowing we were going to be fixing up the porch.

Oh, my, the neighbors weren’t kidding.  Obviously there’s a better way to construct a screened in porch, but the way ours was put together, the screening funneled rainwater into the interior of the porch walls.  Can you say rotting chipboard?  Ugh!!!

If we were younger or if the kids still lived with us, we probably would have gone about the repairs in a different fashion, but we decided the way to get it done was to work on one side at a time.  We ordered windows for the south side and, crossing our fingers, researched a way to repair water-damaged chipboard.  Amazingly, it can be done – waterproof epoxy will seep into the nooks and crannies and build up that spongy stuff, making it solid again.  We started with little tubes but quickly moved to jars of a marine grade paste epoxy.  

Epoxy repairs (both kinds shown here!):

If I’d had a chance to post orts, they would have looked like this:

Oh, did I mention that even though Wonderful Husband and I are pretty good at Harry Homeowner fix-up things, we’d never installed windows?  Or that the windows we ordered for the porch are a bit on the large side, being about feet tall?  Or that each and every one of those windows was a slightly different size because we were fitting them into the existing spaces?

Yes, we are crazy.

But by late September we had installed the storm door and all 14 windows.  And then we had a torrential downpour (native Erie-ites refer to this as “a bit of rain”), and were frustrated / annoyed / humiliated that water came in on the north side of the porch.  After a fair bit of standing in the pouring rain staring, we determined that the problem was NOT our window installation (whew!), but rather that the small soffit on that side of the porch was angled backwards from what it should have been, creating another funnel-the-water-inside situation. 

Thankfully, that problem has also been fixed, and what remains to be done on the porch (in late spring or in summer) is putting up exterior trim to cover the window “fins” and then having new flooring put in.

So what about October, November and December?  The final quarter of 2018 was basically eaten by medical issues.  After a lot of hemming and hawing, discussion, research, and nail biting, Wonderful Husband and I decided that I should have hip replacement surgery now (November – right after Thanksgiving) rather than toughing it out with shots and waiting a couple of years.  The biggest factor in this decision has to do with insurance and the fact that my doctor would be out of network after the end of the year (also that if I waited, I’d have to have the surgery done in the *other* hospital, rather than the one where I work).

And since he would have to be taking care of me, WH figured that right away (October) was the right time for him to have the meniscus tears in his knee fixed (same doctor, same issues as regarding my hip).

So I was figuring I’d get home from the hospital and after a few days I’d be stitching.  I’d be off work for five to six weeks – what a gift of time to stitch, right? 

Nope.  The days have sort of melted away.  Physical therapy exercises can be exhausting.  Healing can be exhausting.  But I’m getting around with my cane pretty well right now, and can do without it to lurch around the bedroom and bathroom a la Walter Brennan.

Did not do the New-Year-New-Start thing – I want to finish the small Catherine Theron sampler I used as a relief project when Jane was too much.  Will let myself have a new start when that’s finished.

Anyway, thanks for letting me ramble on, and my apologies if I've bored you to tears!

>^..^<

Dressing a lady

Lady Jane has consented to being laced into her fancy dress so she can take a walk in her garden!

I’m excited that the Lady’s dress is now complete, even though I’m not 100% happy with it.  The little direction-adjustment jogs in the chain stitch outline caused waves/ripples in the detached buttonhole filling.  Also, I used a slightly different shade of floss for the taupe in the skirt than in the bodice and sleeves – wanted the color change to be more subtle, but it had the exact opposite effect (phooey).  Don’t think I’ll be ripping it out to change that. I’ve had enough of detached buttonhole -  I’d rather do trellis!

I’d love to be able to see and feel the weight of the threads Jane used when stitching her sampler and to compare them to my materials.  Looking at the best photos I have of the original sampler (and also a closeup of the Lady from one of the “sister” samplers, which is much clearer), Jane stitched many more rows of detached buttonhole to fill the dress sections than I was able to fit into the spaces - so I have to think her threads were much finer.

So what’s this odd little thing?  My first effort at filling the right hand side of the skirt pulled and puckered the ground fabric and had to be clipped out – bleah!

Lady Jane in her finery:

The remainder of this band is pretty straightforward stuff and should go quickly so I’m hoping to get it finished this month, even though it *is* December.  Crossing my fingers….

In case you ever wonder about the “splinters” part of the blog name, I’m really good at catching them when we’re working on a household project.  The current one is a coat cabinet in the mud room – didn’t even feel this until later when I was working on Jane and wondering why stitching was making my finger hurt.

Here’s the cabinet-in-progress.

Hope you’ve been having a great weekend – thanks for stopping by!

>^..^<

What I did on my summer vaca … wait, that’s not right

This post should really be titled Why I’m not making any progress on Jane Turner.

This past weekend was taken up by trying to make the family room and dining room be warmer this winter. Recommended insulation value for where I live is R49 to R60. Existing insulation in the area above the family room was R-19 at best, though there were a few areas where there was R-ZERO, probably because a contractor had removed it at some time in the past and didn’t put it back after completing his job.

The family room *may* have been an addition to the house – we have no idea - but one thing we do know is that the roof angle is very acute and putting another layer or two of rolled fiberglass out there would be extremely difficult. We had installed radiant barrier on the bottom of the rafters, so could blithely fill up as much space as was left with fluffy, blown-in fiberglass.

Here’s a look at the targeted area.

Another look from a different angle, after the “retaining wall” had been installed.

And we also have a truly odd space that’s above one end of the family room and part of the dining room. We did clean out the who-knows-how-old discards before adding the new insulation. The shingled area is one side of a gable (why are there shingles *under* the roof?). If you look carefully next to the vertical plywood wall, you can see another zero insulation space.

Somehow, husband managed to get all 10 bags/packages/bales of compacted pink stuff into the car in one trip!!!

Here’s the machine and its two 50-foot sections of 3-inch corrugated hose. The guy at Home Depot told us we needed to use the entirety of the 100 feet of hose because the bumpy corrugations help fluff up the insulation.

This is an up close and personal shot of the machine – my view as I hugged this thing repeatedly to load the bales of insulation in half-bag increments. This is an incredibly well-designed and extremely cool machine!

Hose disappearing into attic.

And after about three hours of work, TA-DAH!!! We still need to even out the piles a bit – the blower does not allow for a lot of fine control and tends to make piles.

>^..^<

Walls! Floor(s)! Ceiling! (basement, part 2)

We cleared out, cleaned and painted on drylock. (Drylock, by the way, is not fun stuff – in addition to the overabundance of “adequate ventilation” warnings, the stuff is heavy! Goes on with a paint roller but weighs two or more times as much as normal paint.) The underside of the stairs also got a coat of paint – no more bi-colored storage area. And we rebuilt the wall making the under-the-stairs area into storage space, and also built a doorway wall between the finished area and the laundry/shop part of the basement. Then it was time to take care of the floor.

(hmmm… pics below show a “spoiler” for what’s coming – can you figure it out?)

The floor presented multiple problems – just like in the family room upstairs, the flooring was that old, orangey asbestos tile (do you ever wonder who thought that color was a good idea? I sure do!), and there were any number of tiles that were cracked, broken or completely loose. In addition to that, the bathroom (which we had removed at this point) had a floor made up of those small, grouted ceramic tiles – the ones that are about one inch square - on top of the asbestos tile. And then there was that pit where the floor drain was, below the washing machine location. What a mess!

What to do, what to do?

Concrete to the rescue! A few years earlier, we’d had the patio replaced – the original one was sloped exactly backwards from what it should have been and therefore funneled rain water into the basement cinderblock walls, causing the dampness and mildew problem. New patio angled water into the yard (imagine that). We’d been so happy with the result that we’d had the same company replace the front walk and the outside basement entrance stairs. We called them in again to work on this problem.

They partitioned off approximately one quarter of the entire basement floor - including the former bathroom, the drain pit, and the worst areas of broken tile - and poured about a two inch layer of concrete. Yay – insurmountable flooring problem fixed!

While the concrete was curing (several days), we put the Pergo-like flooring down at the foot of the stairs, the hallway, and the former bedroom / new rec room. Of course, the flooring pieces need to be cut to length, and also to width for the final row. We needed the saw, but it sure was in the way!

In the shop and the under-stairs storage space, we opted for commercial grade vinyl tile (yes, those 12-inch squares you see nearly everywhere, otherwise known as VCT). Yet another skill to learn (yea?). To install VCT, you put goo adhesive on the floor with a trowel – a flat, rectangular piece of metal that has two zigzaggy edges with a handle in the middle.

Once you put the adhesive down, it needs to dry and cure for several hours – you know it’s ready to put the tiles in place when there’s a significant color change to the goop.

Figured it made sense to start in the place least likely to be looked at, so we began under the stairs. Waaaaaay under, beneath the lowest step. Look at your stairs. Now imagine being under them and inching outoutout into that very small, very cramped space – ugh!

Next came the shop, but we started in the least-seen area there also – behind the water heater and furnace, then it was on to the big expanse of open floor. Oh, and we put them in with the design all oriented the same direction, rather than the cross hatched layout commercial installers normally use (wonder why they do that … it’s clearly a standard since you see it everywhere, but I always think it looks silly).

I’m rather pleased with how well the tile fits around that support pipe! :)

We took about 10 minutes to look around at the pretty new floor and congratulate ourselves on our accomplishment, and then it was time to start on putting up some sort of ceiling in the more finished area.

Oh, you say, it’s a basement – they’ll put in a suspended ceiling. Uh … no. We’ve never liked the fussy factor in the way the grid has to be installed – all those wires and such - so we found something that installs in a different way. The different system did, however, require some framing be installed in order to hang the tile holder pieces. To be honest, it was probably just as fussy as wiring up the suspended metal frames would have been.

Hey, this basement looks rather nice!

>^..^<