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.
Tuesday, September 25, 2012
Wednesday, September 12, 2012
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. |
Monday, September 10, 2012
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.
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.
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