Just in the Nick of Time...

Seems like I always find a way to put things off til the last minute.

Way back in June, Kelby and I crawled under the house and started hanging the new insulation to replace what the bear had torn down. We spent about four hours crawling around on belly and back, bathed in dust and fiberglass. We got about a third of the way finished. Three weeks ago, I talked Kelby, Alex and Zach into helping me finish the job. We spent about four hours crawling around on belly and back, bathed in dust and fiberglass. We finished the second third of the job. Two weeks ago, despite my previous insistence that Caren would never crawl under the house, she and I spent about four hours crawling around on belly and back, bathed in dust and fiberglass. We finished the final third...

Caren didn't relish the thought of bathing in dust and fiberglass, so she took appropriate precautions...

While the boys and I were crawling around under the house, Caren was working madly to finish the chinking before the snow flies. Most everything was done except for the tiny seams on the ends of the Pioneer Log Siding. She was able to finish most of it two weeks ago. What she didn't finish, we finished earlier today... while battling wind and intermittent snow flurries. Talk about putting things off til the last minute.

Despite my procrastination, the house is finally all buttoned up for winter. I had planned to finish everything last summer, but, well, I'm pretty good at putting things off...

Oh, and before I forget... I think I might have mentioned earlier that we chose to use cold rolled steel for our ridge caps. The thought being that it would rust, and, well, it would look rustic. It went on nice and shiny.

But, over the past two weeks, with the change in the weather, it is beginning to rust...

And it looks cool!

Nickels and Dimes

The other day I totaled up all of the receipts from a summers worth of work... big receipts... siding, roofing, chinking... and little receipts... screws, nails, drip edge. You don't even want to know the total, and those are not the nickels and dimes that I want to talk about.

We are pretty much finished with the exterior, except for the chimney. The old siding is all off, the shear was installed, the new siding installed, windows and doors installed, new porch built, old roofing torn off, new roof decking installed, new crickets built, new roofing installed, soffit completed, shingles on the gable ends done, attic vented (wow, we did a lot this summer).

What is left are the little nickel and dime tasks. We need to hang new porch lights, chink and or caulk around the doors and a few windows, touch up a little stain, etc. That is what we've been working on the last few weekends.

Not many new pictures, because not much has changed in appearance, but I'm happy... happy because the big rush to finish is over. I no longer feel the need to work dawn to dusk and am more than happy for winter to come.

Up on the Roof

I almost titled this post, "The Never Ending Story" because it took forever to put a new roof on our little house... five weeks to be exact. Well, five weekends...

Step One: tear off the old cricket and build the new covered front porch.

Step Two: cover everything with tarps because it is raining. Call the inspector for a framing inspection on the new front porch.

Step Three: tear off all of the old roofing on the west side of the house, call the inspector to check the roof deck nailing, rent a roofing nailer, cover the roof with ice and water shield and/or 30# roofing paper.

Step Four: install shingles and corrugated metal on the west half of the roof. Cover the ridge with 30# roofing paper in case it rains because the ridge cap cannot be installed until the east half of the roof is done.

Step Five: tear off all of the shingles on the east side of the roof. Install new roof decking on the entire east side because the original decking was fifty years old and done for in many places. Call the inspector for a roof deck nailing inspection on the east slope.

Step Six: Build two new crickets, one over the double doors in the bedroom and one over the kitchen door. Call the inspector for a framing inspection.

Step Seven: Rent roofing nailer.  Install ice and water shield and 30# roofing paper on the east slope and gables.

Step Eight: Instal shingles, corrugated metal and ridge caps. Return roofing nailer. Wait for the weather to rust the cold rolled steel ridge caps.

Don't forget the diverter over the plumbing vent that the inspector ordered.

My neighbor, after watching me finish up last Tuesday... yes I had t take a day off of work, asked me if I would do it all again. Upon reflection, I probably would... if I didn't have to coordinate inspections and nailer rentals and labor. The actual construction was relatively easy. The hard part was making sure that I would be around when the inspector arrived and that I could get the nailer rented and returned and that I had enough muscle to lift plywood sheeting and roofing materials onto the roof. Both inspector and rental shop keep bankers hours while I can only work on the house on the weekends and my muscle (read Kelby and Zach) aren't readily available every weekend.

Anyways... as of yesterday, its finally done and we are happy with the results.

 

oops... not done quite yet. still gotta shingle the gable ends of the crickets.

Visitors

Fall is coming... the critters are getting restless.

The jays, chipmunks and squirrels are busy fighting over pine nuts and whatever else they can scrounge from the yard. Squawking and squeaking, they are knocking sugar pine cones off tree limbs forty feet in the air. The cones come down like a bomb. If one were unfortunate enough to be standing in the path of one of the cones, death would not be out of the question.

But, the jays and chipmunks and squirrels are staying outdoors. The mice... not so much.

Three or four weeks ago I started hearing them in the bathroom. Then Caren started seeing them in the bathroom. Finally, the traps started catching them in the bathroom. I've become a pretty successful mouse hunter. If they kept a trapping average, I would be trapping at a 750 clip. That's right, 3 out of every 4 traps I have set have been successful.

I set three traps before we left for the valley three weeks ago. When we returned the following weekend two traps were successful. Both were in the bathroom. The bathroom smelled like animal. Caren sprayed air freshener. I figured that I'd caught the mice the night we left and they sat, ripening, for five days until we returned.

I was wrong...

I think I solved our mouse problem. Haven't heard them for awhile. But it wasn't the mice that I smelled. The other night, morning really, the dogs started going crazy at about 3 AM. Barking, scratching, running around the house. Bears are not uncommon in the yard... recall that one lived in our little house two winters ago... so I figured that one was walking through the yard. But the dogs wouldn't settle down.

Pretty soon, we began hearing a low growl from under the floorboards. I dragged myself out of bed and stomped on the floor once or twice. My stomping was returned with huffing... I stomped some more. The bear huffed some more. More stomping, more huffing and growling. The dogs continued to bark, but by this time they were focussed on the furnace register in the bathroom floor... and the bathroom smelled like animal... not dead mouse, more like live bear.

For some reason, don't ask me why, I bent down and pulled the register cover off of the duct work. Instantly the duct work was smashed by a very aggressive bear paw. I literally jumped back about three feet.

Now I had a very angry bear under the house and some smashed duct work. I no longer had barking dogs. The surprise attack sent them both scrambling for whatever cover they could find, Pico onto the bed with Caren, Theo into his kennel.

The dogs were quiet, the bear was huffing-his snout right up next to the duct, the cobwebs moving in and out with his breath. Caren was freaking out in the bedroom. And I was at a complete loss for what to do.

Apparently bears do not like the sound of metal on metal because when I rattled the register cover in the duct he took off lickety-split.

The next morning, I boarded up the entrance to the crawl space and, upon the advice of neighbor Tom, peed all over the ground in front of it... sort of marking my territory, saying that this den is already taken.

The bear has not been back... neither have the mice. But I should wear a hard hat when I'm outside because the squirrels and chipmunks are going crazy with the pine cones.

Porch Pictures

I guess that the front porch has been the biggest piece of the Tahoe Project to date. Very labor intensive. Lots of inspections. Lots of $$$.

It started simple enough, just a couple of holes in the ground... eighteen inches deep, eighteen inches square, centered exactly six feet from the house and seven feet apart, racked for square, reinforced with rebar. Then the inspector would look at my holes in the ground. Who'da thunk that one needed to have holes inspected.

Kelby and Caren helped with the pour... a continuous pour, footing and pier at the same time. Six fifty pound bags of ready mix per hole and a about thirty pounds of cement mixed in for strength.

Of course, when one pours concrete, on must personalize it in someway.

Post are set... being extra careful to make sure that they are perfectly plum. We distressed all of the timbers before hand using a chisel and a sawsall. I have complete and utter respect for the the work that Richard does at Pioneer Log Siding. Distressing just the lumber for the front porch was a lot of work. I can't imagine how much time Richard spent on all the siding for our house.

 After the posts, the beams and deck joists... we also pre-stained all the lumber. The deck supports are tied to a ledger that is bolted to the house framing... not such an easy task considering that one must crawl into the coffin corner under the house to tighten the bolts. The beams slipped into beam pockets we created in the house framing as well.

After all the beams were hung, we played around with roof pitches. 12 in 12? 8 in 12? We final settled on 10 in 12.

Rafters, and ridge beam, California framing on the original roof deck. Cutting bird's mouths in 4" by 8" rafters and creating a tight joint is not an easy task. I struggled with it. Working very carefully, it took me two days to put up all the rafters. The joints aren't perfect, but they are close enough.

Then it started to rain... nary a drop all summer long, but as soon as we get the roof opened up, a weeks worth of afternoon thunder showers appears in the weather forecast. Caren complained about spending a hundred dollars on tarps, but when I explained that the alternative was spending several thousand dollars on new drywall and insulation, she reconsidered...

2x6 T&G roof decking... as well as the first of the shingles removed from the original roof.

and finally the corrugated metal on the gable to match the wainscoting under the windows. We used ice and water tape to cover the entire valley where the two roof planes tie together and 24 inch valley flashing. I don't think we will have any leaks. Keep your fingers crossed.

Finish up the siding around the front door... and with a few tens of hours of labor, we go from...

This...

To this... making us very happy campers!

In Between the Lines

Back when they used to make cabins out of logs, they would fill the gaps between the logs with a mud and straw mixture called chinking... They might still do that in some parts of the world, but not in Tahoe.

All of the gaps between our Pioneer Log Siding needed to be filled, just as if it the cabin was built with actual logs. We didn't use mud and straw. We used Permachink. Permachink, according to all that I read and was told, is vastly superior to mud and straw. It is applied with a caulking gun instead of by the fistful. It is weather tight and moves with the siding as it expands and contracts with the weather.

When one uses mud and straw to chink ones house, one doesn't need to calculate how much chinking to purchase. Given that a five gallon bucket of Permachink costs upwards of $250, I didn't want to overbuy, so I spent an evening calculating how much chinking we'd need for our little house.

After coming up with some way off base numbers, I finally resorted to the only thing I remember from high school chemistry... conversions. I should have taken a picture of my scratch work, but didn't. It looked something like this:

650 linear feet x 2 inches wide x 3/8 of an inch deep = 534 cubic units... but what units? Oh wait...

650 ft x 12 in/ft x 2 in x 3/8 in / 231in/gal / 5 gal/bucket = 5.06 buckets... follow that???

After checking and re-checking my work, I ordered five buckets of the stuff.

Permachink is applied over the plywood spacers that I mentioned in a previous post. It also is applied over foam backer rod. The foam fills large gaps and cracks. So, after filling all the gaps and cracks with foam, Caren and I set about chinking. And we chinked for days... I would apply the chinking using a Cox gun (basically a caulking gun on steroids) and Caren would smooth it using what amounts to a spatula.

I think that what we ended up with looks pretty authentic. As of today, we have finished chinking about eighty-five percent of the house. The remaining portions will involve scaffolding and ladders. Caren doesn't like scaffolding and ladders, so we have been putting off the last few courses of chinking.

Its the Little Things

Siding the house is not all that time consuming... the amount of time that Ive spent actually putting up siding pales in comparison to the amount of time I've spent prepping to put up siding.

The other day Kelby and I replaced the freeze proof water faucet on the south gable end. It should have taken us maybe twenty minutes. It took us about four hours. We needed to extend the faucet about an inch and a half to accommodate the new siding. Freeze proof faucets come in varying lengths... ten inch, twelve inch, fourteen inch, etc. They also are threaded at the connection point and require no soldered joints to replace. In theory, all we had to do was take out the old one, replace it with one that was slightly longer and voila! I've learned over the past few months that theory and reality rarely match...

The faucet in question sits in what Kelby and I have affectionately nicknamed The Coffin Corner. It is the corner furthest from the crawl space entrance. There is barely enough clearance to lay on one's back without hitting the floor joists with ones forehead. There is not enough room to lay on one's side without hitting the floor joists. Fiberglass insulation hangs mere inches from one's face while one lays on one's back. Inches of powder-like dust that hasn't seen water in fifty years coats the ground. It is truly a hellish place. 

After crawling into the coffin corner to disconnect the old, too-short, faucet I realized that whoever installed it years ago completely rounded off the corners of the hexagon that the wrench grabs onto. Even with my largest set off channel locks I couldn't break the faucet lose from the death grip that the pipes had on it. Picture several trips back and forth, in the dust, on my belly to retrieve larger and larger tools. Picture hanging on a very large set of channel locks with all my body weight suspended off the ground. Picture much cussing and frustration. Picture me shouting to Kelby to bring the sawsall under the house...

Eventually we cut the pipe off, crawled out from the coffin corner, and headed to the hardware store to purchase a new, longer, freeze proof faucet and all the accouterments to repair the pipe we had cut.

Forty-five minutes later we were back under the house with a propane torch, solder, flux, a copper slip joint, and a new section of copper pipe. Remember, there is about eight inch of clearance in the coffin corner. Of course, the pipe that we cut with the sawsall was too rough to accept a new slip joint without leaking, so I planned to sweat it out at the nearest joint and replace it. There was nowhere close to enough clearance to spin a pipe cutter around it to clean up the end. Picture firing the torch up... picture the torch singeing the floor joist next to the pipe... picture lots of smoke in a confined area... picture a thirty foot belly crawl to get a foil pie plate to act as a heat shield. The heat shield protected the joist and saved me from burning down the house. Even so, it was difficult to hold the heat shield with one hand, heat the pipe with the torch in the other, apply solder with my third hand... oh wait, I don't have three hands. Maybe that is why the process was so difficult... that and the fact that I was trying to contort my body in such a way that I wouldn't have molten solder drip onto me despite the fact that I was working directly overhead in a space in which I couldn't even lay on my side.

An hour or so later I shouted to Kelby, who was right on the other side of the foundation the whole time offering words of encouragement and advice, that he could turn the water back on.

Ten seconds later I shouted to Kelby, who was still right on the other side of the foundation, that he better turn the water off because the new joint was leaking. I kinda figured that it would, given that I needed three hands but only had two.

Fifteen minutes later I shouted to Kelby, still right on the other side of the foundation, to turn the water on again.

Ten seconds later I shouted to Kelby to turn the water off... again.

The third time was the charm. I laid back on the ground, checked my watch and tried not breathe in too much dust or smoke while I waited for ten minutes to confirm that there were no leaks while the system was under pressure.

Then I made the thirty foot belly crawl to daylight... Yes, I still had a few minutes of daylight in which to put up siding now that I'd done the prep work.

Pioneer Log Siding

Over the winter, Caren and I waffled back and forth, to and fro on siding. One day we'd like tongue and groove cedar, the next we'd be considering board and batten. As springtime rolled around we began looking at D log. D log is basically 2x material that makes the house appear as if it is constructed using logs. We even went so far as to start collecting quotes. That's when Caren found Pioneer Log Siding.  

Richard Gunst and his wife, Chris, are true artists, turning run of the mill 2x material into beautiful, hand-hewn log siding. Be sure to click on the link above to check out his website. Then check out the pics below to see how Richard's material is turning our little house into a true mountain cabin. Both Richard and Chris have been fantastic thru the whole process, from ordering to staining to shipping to answering a myriad of questions. They have gone above and beyond with customer service... And Caren and I are totally stoked!

We've just about finished installing the siding. Thanks to Richard's tips, it was amazingly easy to put up. The process was a simple one. Install the trim around the doors and windows, install the corner posts, install the courses of siding, alternating with inch and three-quarter strips of plywood...

Well, maybe it wasn't quite so simple. First, Tom, the neighbor, volunteered to help us with his builders level. It took him all of about twenty minutes to "shoot" the house and snap a chalk line on it that would serve as our reference line. I'm so glad that Tom knows what he is doing. His twenty minutes made it super easy to insure that everything was level and plumb.

Then Kelby and I ripped half inch sheets of plywood into one and three-quarter inch strips to serve as spacers between each course of siding. The spacers serve two purposes... they make it easy to make minor adjustments in leveling the courses of siding, and they serve as a backer for the chinking that will go between each course. Each strip of plywood then gets covered by plastic packing tape. Kelby, Zach, and Caren all had a hand in applying the tape. The tape keeps the chinking from sticking to the plywood so that it is only stuck to the actual siding, thus allowing it to move, and stretch as the siding expands and contracts with weather conditions.

With the house "shot" and the plywood spacers taped, the next step involved putting up the trim and corner posts. If you look closely at the photo above, you might notice that the posts and trim sit about three-quarters of an inch proud of the siding. We wanted to add a little depth to the transitions so we furred them out using the original cedar siding that we removed from the house. A simple enough task after one re-mills all the boards to the appropriate size... table saw, planer, miter saw... three easy steps, if you don't count removing the nails, before we could install trim and corner.

And the there are always little problems like this one to deal with. The south gable end was a complete bear. All the electrical, water, and gas enter the house there... never mind the chimney. Someday soon I will document that whole process....

Then we got to install the actual siding. Each piece was screwed into place, top and bottom, every sixteen inches. That is a lot of screws... Upon Richard's recommendation, we used "headless" screws. Phillips makes a headless deck screw that fit the bill perfectly. They even make them in colors that matched our stain. One has to look really close to see that there are any screws holding the siding on at all...

Remember the repurposed corrugated metal we got from Jesse all those months ago? It is now wainscoting under our windows. I was worried about cutting the heavy gauge metal, but it turned out to be a not so difficult process. Just a metal blade for the jig saw and a lot of vibrations... picture Caren standing on the metal to hold it in place as I cut it. My arms were pretty much jello by the time we finished, as were her legs.

We still need to finish the shingles on the north gable and the top course of siding under the eave on the front, as well as around the front door. I simply ran out of time to finish the shingles before taking a much needed vacation... think flyfishing in BC. And we need to get the new covered front porch built before completing the siding on the front of the house. The good news is that the permit for that was issued just before I left for BC, so we are ready to go starting this weekend.

When We Last Left Off...

...we were about halfway through with the shear on the house. That seems like forever ago. I've spent the last month working dawn til dusk on the project. So much has changed that it is hard for me to remember it all.  I'll use photos to help jog my memory.

With help from Alex and Kelby, we finished the shear on the house and passed the inspection. But, not without a few struggles...

Before...

After...

We replaced a small transom window in the bathroom with a large slider. That meant new framing. During the process we also moved the header up an inch and a half so that the tops of all the windows and doors on the rear of the house would be level. Moving the header required creative use of a car jack, but removed the sag in the roof line.

We also replaced the bedroom window with a set of french doors. That required more framing, just not as extensive as the bathroom. The door actually was cut an inch and a half too long, so we had to remove the sole plate from the original framing to accommodate it. It took us most of the day, but we got'r done.

Before...

After...

The south gable end was my biggest fear. That is where the gas and electrical enter the house. I envisioned having to turn the gas off at the meter and the electrical off at the street, but it turned out to be much easier... by notching and sliding the shear we were able to wiggle everything into place without disrupting any services. The siding would not be so easy on the same end, but that is a story for a future post.

It all looks so simple on paper-- just slap up some OSB on the exterior and away you go... In reality, it involved re-routing electrical, re-plumbing exterior faucets, firring out wavy walls, cutting venting, replacing windows and doors, etc, ad infinitum. It took us the better part of a week and a half from start to finish. And I would still be pounding nails if it wasn't for neighbor Tom allowing us to use his framing nailer. With a 6 and 12 nailing schedule (one nail every six inches around the perimeter of each sheet of OSB and one nail every twelve inches in the interior of every sheet) there are somewhere in the neighborhood of three thousand new nails in the house.

But, like I said, the inspector liked our work and gave us the go ahead to start covering the OSB with actual siding...

Photo Dump

So, I have a problem... so much to blog about, but no internet connection at the house to do so.  School has been out for about two weeks, and I've spent most of my free time up at the house in South Lake. Lotsa goings on, but, like I said, no internet connection. I'm currently in Davis and have a free minute, but only a minute. So, I'm gonna dump some pics onto the blog and scribble off a few brief descriptions.

The shear and insulation for the siding project arrived a week ago last Monday. There wasn't any shear under the siding on the house, so this stuff has to go up before we re-side. At least the permit was easy to get...

The siding arrived a week ago last Wednesday. Unfortunately the eighteen wheeler couldn't deliver to the house. Instead, my dad and I had to off-load the siding by hand in the parking lot of an empty building; transfer it to a trailer that Caren's truck could pull; haul it all to the house; off-load it again... then return to the parking lot for a second trip to pick up the remainder that my mom had been patiently guarding. The siding is super cool... Quite possibly my favorite item that we've purchased for the project. More on that in a future post.

Finally got around to cleaning the bear damaged insulation out from under the house... We bought insulation to replace it a few months ago. It was on sale at the local hardware store for forty percent off. Now I just gotta find the time and the motivation to put it in the crawl space.

Started the re-siding project in earnest last Wednesday. The first step is tearing off the old. Then remove the old insulation. Then replace any damaged framing. Then replace the wiring. Then put in the new insulation...

... Then put up the shear--half inch thick 4x9 sheets of oriented strand board.

Gave the shed away for free to a couple of guys on Craigslist. According to the TRPA it wasn't legal coverage and it was easier to get rid of it then to go thru all the hassles and paperwork to make it legal. Anyways, the guys came with a sawsall and disassembled the shed then hauled it off to Markleyville in two trips. I think they were in a little over their heads, but they kept at it until the shed was gone and they had cleaned up any mess they made.

By Saturday last, Alex, Caren and I had shear installed on two of the four walls... We also replaced the windows in the living room and extra bedroom. This time, the windows were done right... no oh $h!t moment in the shower the next day.

Oh... we are more than half-way done with the sheathing because we also finished this half of the south wall.

But...  we still have this much to do... including replacing two windows and adding one set of French doors. Then, after the inspector comes to check our work, we can start putting up the actual siding.