Still not done--are we there yet, mom? Bathroom Renovation Project 26

Saturday, November 10. The Hurricane has passed and we have had very little damage, overall. We're so conscious of feeling fortunate, compared to so many others. And, we've adopted a kitten. That's another story. So Capel is sitting with new kitten Phantom on the couch, "working."

I'm on day two of prepping to paint: filling nail holes and trying to salvage the original window that we trimmed out in the bathroom and, apparently, if memory serves, and it does, rather extremely frustrated with initial results. Looks good at a distance:

Up close, especially where the insides of the frame was trimmed out with extra pieces that aren't exactly flush with the original frame (for a long post about trim and a bit on trimming out the window, see here), it looks bad. 

Here's a photo of the trimmed out right-hand side, before I puttied it:

The putty, which went on easily, but, I now know much too thickly, has dried rock hard and is impossible to sand smooth by hand. It looks horrible:

Closer:

And, the other side:

The sill is even worse, because I left the window cracked open to air the room out and the putty got too cold and cracked, deep cracks that won't sand smooth.

Before I start that exercise in frustration, I decide to take a few shots of the room, since the shower curtains, towels, rugs and normal bric-a-brac of daily life have been removed so I can sand wood putty. 

I'm also trying to decide on a wall color. I've made three trips to Benjamin Moore and two to Home Depot, finally carting along a piece of painted new trim, a scrap of the old trim and a tin wastebasket that has the color I really want on the inside of the wastebasket, where, the Benjamin Moore paint experts assure me, their color-eye cannot possible see well enough to color match it (and they're straight faced about it, gives me some respect). Here's the best I've got so far. I think it's too pale.

But, the bath is amazing. Beautiful. Functional. Welcoming. Comfy. A pleasure to be in.

After just two weeks or so, we're also very happy with our toilet choice, a choice I spent a whale of a lot of time researching -- an older model 1.6 gallon Toto that was way on sale at the local plumbing store. Some of the reviews said it was too noisy, with constant dripping sounds. I knew there was a fix, though when I wrote Toto to inquire, they said they'd fixed the model some time back. So I had crossed my fingers and had Dan install it, as is. There are a few dripping noises now and then, nothing to write home about. And it hasn't plugged once (not as of November 10, and also not as of this actual writing, January 21).

The sink is perfect. The basin is large enough and the lip around the edge is perfectly large enough to hold whatever it is one needs at the moment, a tube of toothpaste, most often.

And of all the experiences I might write about (and many you might not want me to write about), taking a bath in this bathroom is divine. Peaceful. Soothing. Restful. Quiet during the day and by candlelight. 

And the new room suits the house, too. So here's to a bathroom renovation that works. Even if I do spend several days swearing at the wood putty on the window, which, fortunately, you can't hear.

Done! (Gotcha -- not nearly done): Bathroom Renovation Project 25

I have been terribly, terribly remiss in not finishing up my posts on the bathroom renovation. Part of that is because we had to shift gears and dive into the porch column base replacement project, the minute Dan pulled out of the drive, to try to get that done before the snow flew (or, in this case, the hurricane blew), and glad I am, in retrospect, that we did so. 

But, even so, the bathroom finish has had a long, long, long, long, dare I write one more time, long ... tail. The job that is never done, um, the job that Sherry never finishes ... is the real story here. I am writing in January, end of January to be precise, and still, the paint job is not finished. The plaster finish coat had to cure, and ... and ... and ... I won't bore you with my excuses and burnout stories. So, without more ado, the photos from the very last day on the job with Dan.

So, where did we leave off? Oh right, here, one awful long day that lasted until 4 in the morning, Dan carting me around the entire house in the middle of the night to learn about the hot water heating system, and to bleed the radiator that he re-set in the bathroom. We both sleep maybe 3 hours and are back up. Maybe Dan was up before me, because my first shot is of the finished curtain ring, now up, well, half-way up:

The medicine cabinet, fully installed, still waiting for the towel ring.

And now, the curtain ring, fully up. You can see the one ceiling rod that has a pivot on it (in this photo, the furthest to the right), which allows us to install it on the slanted ceiling.

It's hard to get the whole tub and shower assembly in one shot, even backed into the furthest reaches of the opposite corner, but here's my best attempt:

And, through the door, from the side:

A flurry of putting up of towel bars, towel rings and toilet tissue rings, of which there are no photos from the time. Then, the room is done, to put the door back (original to the house), the bottom has to be shaved off, to fit over the new, higher tile floor:

Dan puts the railings back on the stairs and we're "done" (only later do I realize that we are hardly "done" at all, but set that aside for one moment and CELEBRATE with us!!).  Dan is one happy man about to go and make his youngest daughter happy that he made it home for her birthday.

The cat is happy for a new playpen, 

... but not willing to take this newfound play thing to extraordinary lengths and actually test it out. Capel takes pity on her and tries it out instead.   

HEY GUYS, IT WORKS!

Porch Column Bases 6: Just how crucial is it to secure those bases to the porch?

A big thank you to all my readers who have been so patient during this prolonged absence. We had a crazy Hurricane Sandy end to our summer season. And though we didn't know it at the time, we finished the porch column project just in time, quite literally. Another few days, and the hurricane would have blown through while our columns were unsecured, perhaps blowing the roof off the porch and who knows what else.  

Who knows? All I know is that we finished the project mere days before the worst hurricane on the east coast in decades. The worst of the hurricane passed us by, and we were fortunate, very fortunate. I was sobered and saddened to see the damage our metro-area neighbors sustained.

To anyone reading this who is working on a porch or planning a porch column job, I would give some unsolicited advice. Keep an eye on the weather forecasts for especially windy weather or storms. It never occurred to me until we were in the middle of the hurricane, how lucky we were that everything was nailed down tight. When we had the porch held up by jacks, I only worried about the porch roof falling down, not about it getting levered up and off by wind. I feel very grateful that I didn't learn that lesson by experience.

In any case, enough on that. It's been months, but let's pick up where we left off. The last post is here.  Capel had the bright idea of shimming the uneven spaces between the old columns and new bases with shims made from our cedar siding. This was a perfect solution, and here are some shots of him hammering the shims in place. 

He'd sawed and chiseled the large slats of siding into shims narrow enough to do the job and then sat/kneeled there with an enormous selection of shims, finding the right one to fit each spot, all around every column:

You can also see, here, just below, how we secured the square bases to the porch floor with a countersunk screw in each corner. I bought special Rockler countersink drill bits for this, and it was a breeze. At first we thought we'd sink only two screws in each base, ever mindful of how hard it was to detach the originals. But then I thought to myself that backing out a screw is super easy, compared to getting nails out, and that we don't want the columns sliding around or tearing loose, and so we put four in each. Boy was I glad we'd gone with four when the Hurricane blew through the next week!

In any case, this was the first column and base we put together, that had the worst gap. In places Capel had to put two shims in one on top the other, to fill the gap:

Then, when he was satisfied that everything was solid, he went around the perimeter with a chisel and cut each shim to size. There is another photo of that below, but first here is a photo of the column just above, now with its shims trimmed:

You can also see, in close up, how we nailed the column to the base, nailing through the column at an angle down into the base with 2" (or maybe even 2.5") headless nails. This was how they were originally fastened to the bases, and after a lot of thought about other ways to do it, we stuck with the original fastening method, in part, because the columns are made up of 9 vertical slats that are only held together with these nails at the top and bottom from the column shaft into the base and capital (as far as we can tell, anyway).

But getting those nails in at an angle was a huge bear. The columns are two layers of very hard cedar and to nail at that angle, we had to use nail sets. Capel made starter holes with a cordless dremel and drill bit (a regular drill couldn't fit up against the column tight enough to get the right angle), but those nails still had to be hammered in by hand with a nail set, every single blow knocking the nail set off the head of the nail, so you'd get a tiny bit of drive and then have to reposition the nail set. 

Not a very pretty job -- I'm showing you the bad and the ugly, here a bent nail that couldn't be pulled or driven further, and so got hammered up into the column. But it is what it is. As one of my bosses sometimes says: Done is done. And this one is DONE!

Here's another, showing Capel chiseling down the shims to size, after they've been well and solidly hammered into place:

And the result. In this case, the column needed much less shimming.

And, finally, the end of another long day of work, every column reattached to its new base, every base secured to the floor.

Quitting time! 

It was Capel's birthday, and in honor of the end of our second summer's work on the house, I snatched up a fortuitious haunted house cake at Carvel's for a thematic birthday celebration:

And gave him a scary mask to hand out candy in. 

Next year maybe we'll decorate the porch for Halloween. It would make a great haunted house porch.

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Addendum, spring 2013: The entire story with instructions for replacing bases is tagged with the label "Replace Porch Column Base Series," which you will find along the right-hand side of the main Life at Pugsley blog page.  Or, you can go to the next in the series, on finishing touches, here.

Porch Column Bases 5: The Sun King, or, What, you say, those bases don't match those columns? The Farmhouse Solution

So, a quick check-in on the hapless DIYers Capel and Sherry. We got stuck late last night, after hours and hours and dare I say hours of work.

We got a lot accomplished during the day, separated the other two columns from the existing bases, scraped, filled and painted the floor underneath them (all described here), got one new base put in and then, at the end of a very long, hard day, when I was putting the first nail into the second new base by lamplight, I knelt over to see how well the nail had gone in and realized I was looking straight through a giant--and I mean GIANT gap--between the column and base, looking alarmingly straight through the whole thing into the light the 250 watt worklamp was casting into my prized azaela bush, only a teeny tiny fraction of one edge of the column touching the base. The rest angled up at an alarming crazymaking angle, enough so that I could stick my whole finger into the gap -- at least a good 5/8 inch. I almost cried.

It never occurred to me that the columns might not come out level at the bottoms. But of course. Should. Have. Guessed.

After a very little bit of discussion about it, which involved Capel's suggesting we plug the entire gap with epoxy (I envision uncontrollable goo oozing out everywhere) and my suggesting that we remove the base and saw off the bottom of the column to make it level (he envisions some impossible shenanigans causing an awful lot of swearing)--neither idea a very pleasing prospect--, I threw up my hands and said, "I'm done for the night. Let's sleep on it."

I tried to feel good about the column we'd finished. Took one snap of it and went to take a bath (in my new bathtub. Yeah!)

Though even that one has a pretty ugly gap between the column and the base, like so. It's just hard to feel satisfied when the darn thing doesn't look good at all after so much work.

And so sleep on it we did. Or, in my case,  sleepless on it, for at least part of the night.

But lo and behold, I get home from work tonight, and voila -- Sun King!

Capel has found a solution, bless his heart. Where I see images of the Sun King, he sees the lowly farmer. "It's a farmhouse," he says. "Back in the 1850's they would have said, 'It's a gap. What do we have laying around to fill it in? Oh, cedar shingles. That's good.' End of story."

I laugh. Delighted. Whichever narrative you prefer, I had come to virtually the same conclusion, and Dan, good man that he is, had called to check on us in the afternoon, and said, too -- shim, shim, shim and then caulk. So, big sigh. Looks like we will be renting the house jacks for another weekend.

Thank you Decker Rentals for a very friendly weekly rental rate!

So, to sum up, here's where we are in general:

One column base secured, waiting to be shimmed.

One column base unsecured, half shimmed.

Two columns still up on makeshift perches, the paint beneath drying, like so:

Two Decker Rental house jacks, holding up the porch roof so it doesn't collapse.

And two columns we are certainly NOT touching until spring.

I took another 30 shots or so yesterday, of the entire process start to finish of the sawing, scraping, filling and painting process and will post those another night (see Porch Column Bases 4, or the link above).

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Addendum, spring 2013: The entire story with instructions for replacing bases is tagged with the label "Replace Porch Column Base Series," which you will find along the right-hand side of the main Life at Pugsley blog page.  Or, you can go to the next in the series, about how we finished securing the columns to the new bases and the bases to the porch floor here.

Porch Column Bases 4: On the Way to Done, or, Epoxy rules the day

So, it was Sunday morning. The awful day, I'll call it, in retrospect. We sit over coffee and review our plans. We've got six bases made (see here for a long post showing those), but only four of the existing bases are really rotted through. The columns bases on either end of the porch seem more or less solid enough for now. So our first decision is to work on the four middle columns and leave the two corners alone. Wise decision.

My first snaps of the day, as usual now, a review of where we stand. Here you can see the whole line. 1. Corner column 1 not to be touched. 2. House jack holding up the roof.

3. Column 2: porch floor epoxied and painted, but the top of the base is still firmly on the column and has to be removed.

4. Column 3 ready for its new base. 5. House jack holding up the roof. 6. Column 4 temporary base in place, but that one went on weeks ago and we're not sure what the floor looks like underneath. 7. Column 5 the nasty one that has completed rotted away. 8. Corner column 6 that will not be touched.

Looking to score an easy win, and move the house jacks, we get ready to install the first new base under Column 3, which is ready and waiting for its new base.

We hang a plumb line -- over which there is minor disagreement -- I'm for a plumb, Capel wants to eye it in without the plumb. I hunt up a giant rusty nail on Martin's workbench in the basement and hang a plumb, which you can see Capel adjusting here:

After much eyeing in and scrutinizing of lines near and far, the base is lined up. We decide not to secure it yet. The priority is to get Column bases 4 and 5 up and off the porch floor, so that we can evaluate the floor and deal with that. The porch floor paint takes hours to dry, and we would both like to finish the job today. (Guffaws and snickers permitted here).

We decide to divide and conquer. We lift Column 4, so that I can evaluate and work on the porch floor. Capel goes away at sawing the base off of Column 5.

Close up of sawing the base from the column. We're actually sawing through the 9 nails that hold the two together, and aiming NOT to saw any of the column off. In this case, it was actually relatively easy. This base was so rotten, that while the nails were still firmly holding, there was a lot of give between the column and the base and it was easy to identify the nails by pushing the saw up against them, and then switching to the hacksaw and sawing them.

Four minutes later, base is off. That was a record.

Here you can see the underside of the base. The square base was made with 1-1/2 x 2" wood. We've replaced it with 1x3 cedar, propped on 3x3x1/2" feet. 

The porch floor wood underneath it looks surprisingly ok. I like the paint color that the floor used to be. A light aquamarine. Capel hates it. Oh well. I guess we're not going back to that color.

The porch floor was last replaced in 1989. We know, because we've inherited a bottle that was found under the foundation when the porch was replaced, with a note and date.

Anyway, I say the porch floor looks relatively ok. 

It can be deceptive. Once I start in with the screwdriver and chisel, the soft, punky wood yields.

There are places, particularly where a nail was driven into the tongue of the tongue and groove (thus, hidden under the groove of the next piece of wood), where the water seems to penetrate down into the interior of the wood and sits in little puddles, mostly underneath the lower corners of the square base, like here:

And here:

You can see how the water formed little channels through the wood and created rot, which I've carved away. Fortunately, the rot doesn't go through entirely, or we would have had to take up pieces of the floor. Since the bottom layer of wood is fine, I just carve away the rot and any punky wood.

Then I sand and scrape the rest of the floor that will ultimately be painted, and wood hardener onto any exposed wood. Actually, since I can tell that the water has found channels through the wood, I pour the wood hardener into the pools and let it sit. It penetrates through, and drips out the bottom of the porch floor in a few spots.

Then I work on the other base of Column 4. Even less rot there. Really very minor.

Before I lay in the epoxy wood filler, I get curious about the inside of the column. The camera can sometimes see what I cannot. Here is the interior. Way cool!

And a shot of the underside.

While the wood hardener is drying -- 2 hours minimum -- I go plant bulbs. Maybe this winter, I'll start some threads about gardening, we'll see. But I'm keeping this post focused on one thing, for your sanity.

It was a pretty day, and the gardening was a welcome respite.

Then it is back to the grind. The epoxied wood filler is my least favorite thing. Even with the mask, it's noxious stuff. But here it is, all laid in.

After that dried about a half hour, I painted the porch floor. [**See note below on wood fillers and epoxies.**]

Then it was back to securing the other two column bases. This was not fun at all. And there are few snaps to show it. But here, if you look closely, you can see 9 nails, one for each slat, poking out of the bottom of Column 3. It was not an easy job, because they have to be hammered in at an angle through the column and into the base and then countersunk. More on that to come.

**March 11, 2013 Update: Over the winter, I have done some more research on wood fillers and wood epoxies. I am seeing some reviews that the Minwax two-part wood filler is not a true epoxy and doesn't hold up well over time in exterior uses with northern winters. Abatron seems to be the most used epoxy. A good explanation is on the Minnesota Window Restoration blog here.

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Addendum, spring 2013: The entire story with instructions for replacing bases is tagged with the label "Replace Porch Column Base Series," which you will find along the right-hand side of the main Life at Pugsley blog page.  Or, you can go to the next in the series, about how we secured the existing columns to the new bases, here.