Barney Help

Barney lends a hand!

New framing and some sheathing

My entry was in rough shape. Barney has been telling me he would stop by to give me a hand. He did last week and we decided that working on the entry would be a good project.  We quickly decided to peel off a layer to see what was going on underneath.  Before you know it, the whole thing was demolished.

Then came the shock.  There was a huge load of trash underneath the house.  The previous owner decided it would be cheaper and easier just to dump his trash under the house!  Within a few hours I had taken a pickup load of trash to the dump. Cost: $25.00.

Barney working on the bench

So, Barney started from the dirt and built up the structural frame. Then we sheathed it with a pile of 1x6 DF planks that I thankfully got for free through Greg. Over 3 days Barney rebuilt my entry with a little bench for shoe shedding.

My job was then to sand and stain.  Done as of yesterday. I'm happy!

Barney's work is done

Ready for sanding and stain

Done, with a newly framed picture

Color

Some people are afraid of color in their homes.  Or maybe they just don't care about color.  I was one of those people. I thought that walls in a home should just disappear, that it's what you hang on them that matters. Maybe color on walls can take away from whatever it is you want to hang on them.  But life is too short to live in a beige world, I think. 

I know that there are many great colors that make me feel good. They make my eyes hum and make my brain send out yummy messages to my body.  I'm particularly fond of yellow-orange hues. So, I'm going to go for some color. I don't really know what I'm doing - not sure about how complemetary they'll be, but I'm going to throw some color out there and see how it feels.

Photos coming ...

Getting Along?

While working on the house, I've been working on these two as well.  It's getting better.  Spanky (the cat) want to snuggle, while Rou wants to herd. This is the compromise. A somewhat tenuous truce but the beginnings of a real truce nonetheless.

Meanwhile, I keep painting ...

Year End Goals

Although I've had to scale back my expectations for the hovel as a livable space in the near term, I do have some goals.  I want to be finished with the entry, media and living rooms as well as have one working toilet before 2011.

I've been taping and texturing Sheetrock and preparing for final paint in fits and starts for months. I decided to concentrate on 2 rooms: the entry and the media room.  So far, the media room has final paint and I mounted the wall fixtures. The entry is primed and I hope to put on the first layer of final paint today.

A House For All

When I first bought this place, it was a tragic wreck. But I didn't care.  I was actually considering stapling AstroTurf to the floor and walls, adopting ten dogs from the pound and turning it into a big playhouse with balls and sticks, plenty of good food and fun - lending credence to the term rough-housing. It was going to be a space devoted to dogs, guitars, and beer.

I started with one dog.  His name was Klezmer.  He was a wonderful companion for 7 years. He's gone on to doggie heaven.

I have a new dog now - Rou - and a cat named Spanky.  It's their house too.  Now I just have to show them how to get along.

Quick Update

My hero Greg has left town.  Going back to school after a short summer working on my house. He (we) got a lot done.  I owe him huge for his creative efforts.

Over the next few weeks I'll be mudding and texturing the new sheetrock we put up.  Slow process for me.  It requires a some finesse.

It's been a bittersweet few months.  I was hoping to have the place finished and in move-in-able condition by now.  But when Greg went to do the drawings and check out the overall condition of the place, he discovered a lot of structural problems that we just had to address.  We've gone backwards on the house, but I'm glad that the work we did is solid. At least I don't have to worry about that portion of the hovel falling down.

Now I'm alone again working on the place as best I can.

The newest drag on my psyche:  my dog and faithful companion of many years is dying of terminal bone cancer.

All I can do is put my head down and keep going.

Over and out ...

Da Beam

We had been planning and plotting how to get this 300 pound gorilla in the house and into place, then we decided it was overkill.  More beam than we needed, so Greg shaved off about 6 inches, reducing the weight by maybe 30%.  Then another friend happened by to ask a question about audio interfaces and offered to lend a hand with the beam.  So, we just did it!  Ahead of schedule!

After wrestling it into the house through a living room window and barely making it around a corner, we used props and ladders and furniture movers, etc., and pushed it up into place, one step at a time.  No rush.  Safety first. 

Bring on the snow.

Big News

The beam is up!  The beam is up!

A Week's Work

In producing the as-built drawings, we discovered the roof was being held up by momentum.  That is, there wasn't much real support holding the roof up, so it looks as though the roof is staying up because it already is up.  Since it's sagging and big snow events may happen in the future, I decided to put in new supports.  This means tearing out the old ceiling.  A big mess. It also means new structural support, not only for the ceiling but for the floor, because support must go all the way to the ground.

We took a trip to Reno to buy a truck load of lumber - over $600 dollars worth.  We also got a break by taking up a friend on an offer of a cheap glu lam beam he had sitting around in his yard. Weathered but still strong and very heavy, it was a lot of work for the three of us to get it into my truck. This will be the main support for the ceiling and the roof.  Getting it into place will be very interesting.

With so much wiring being exposed, I decided I needed to map out all the wiring.  With some help from Mike, I made an electrical plan that helps to illustrate where the receptacles and lights go back into the panel.

De-struct

Alone in the hovel today - tearing it apart.

Feeling a mixture of relief, anxious anticipation and revulsion.

I wish I had done this right away after I bought this place.  I would have known what this thing is really about.  But I was not in a position to do it at the time.  I was a full time student and reeling from some major changes in my life.

One of the hard things about this is undoing some work I've done over the years. 

Gotta go backwards to go forwards sometimes.