East Bedroom

Well it's been a little over three years since the last post in January, 2013. In February my wife finally decided she had had it with her boss and began the process of retiring which took til June. During the first half of 2013 we also had to liquidate my mother's estate and help my wife's father move from his home into a senior complex. Then our youngest daughter and her family moved overseas the end of summer so we spent several months helping them organize the move. Six months later, the beginning of 2014, she called to share her husband was leaving the marriage under very damaging circumstances so we moved her and our two grandsons into our grand old Victorian with us. Fortunately I had begun working on the worst bedroom so in a matter of weeks it was available for her use. The boys are in a usable bedroom that we'll finish when they move out. But it's been over two years of lot's of babysitting and not much remodeling and no posts.
One of the previous owners had tried to modernize a number of the rooms by making them contemporary looking so in this bedroom we removed the can lights, patched the holes, put double-hung windows back in that matched the rest of the house, rebuilt the sills and added casing, plinths and rosettes that matched the rest of the house. We also added closets along one entire wall as only one bedroom has a closet.

Former owners efforts to make the home contemporary.

Baseboard water heaters were throughout the house often fed by bare copper pipe.

Removing the contemporary trim and replacing windows to match others in the house.

Lots of mudding and filling.

Old efforts to add electricity to house.

Reconstructing the window sills.

Added closets along entire wall that will eventually look like a paneled wall.

Walls around windows are now all repaired.

First coat of paint.

My Aging "Hippie"

Well it's been just over 18 months since my last post and some projects have been completed and others still remain but on this quiet New Year's Day I thought I'd write about my latest experience with a contractor.  In 2012 we worked on two major projects, getting the exterior painted and the chimneys repaired and lined so we could install gas coal baskets (like gas logs but designed to look like coal baskets that were used in the small Victorian fireplaces).  The painting went relatively well with the usual glitches but I'll write more about that project in a later post.

In July and August I got a couple of bids from chimney specialists and the second one was not only a little cheaper but he suggested doing the job the way I thought it needed to be done as opposed to the first contractor.  In mid-August I paid him a 50% deposit of several thousand dollars to tuck-point one chimney, rebuild the top 12 rows of another one and install copper caps, metal liners and inner hoods over my old cast-iron inserts.  After consulting his schedule we agreed to a starting date the first week of September. THAT'S WHEN I MADE MY BIG MISTAKE.  I told him the job wasn't a big rush and if a couple of other jobs came along that were a rush he could move me back on the schedule. The next week the liners for my two chimneys were delivered so I was encouraged.

At the end of September, he hadn't made an appearance yet so I called him.  I think the first excuse was his battered old truck (which I've seen) was in the shop for four days.  The next week when I called he and his son had had the flu for four days.  In mid-October, the scaffolding he needed was on the other side a utility trench and he couldn't get to it.  The next week his son showed up with the scaffolding and stacked it against the house.  After two more weeks I called and by now he wasn't answering or returning my calls.  I suggested somewhat forcefully that he just return my deposit and pick up his stuff.  Still no response other than late one afternoon his son and a friend showed up and assembled the scaffolding.  I explained to my wife I didn't expect to hear from him again - that he would just show up and start to work planning on that taking care of everything.  And that's what happened in mid-November.  His only comment to me was that he was glad I didn't have a gun in my hand.  They worked for two days, got the main chimney tuck-pointed and the other chimney disassembled and started making the copper caps. 

Initially I questioned his fabricating the caps but then I got online and realized he was doing my whole job for the cost of what three premade copper caps would cost.  And as I observed his and his son's attention to detail I realized they were perfectionists.  The only problem was they are first and second generation hippies. As he worked on the caps one day I started talking to him, learned we were the same age, had lived in Denver at the same time, owned a number of Volkswagens and learned to work on them from "How to Keep Your Volkswagen Alive: A Manual of Step-By-Step Procedures for the Compleat Idiot."  But he went on to teach classes on VW repair then open his own shop which he eventually sold to become a chimney sweep when he saw an ad claiming you can make $1000 a week.  He's been doing that ever since but he never left his hippie ways.  He stills show up now and then although with the bad weather I haven't seen him for quite awhile.  The week before Christmas I did offer him a $500 advance on the balance if he would get my living room chimney functional in time for Christmas - he acknowledged that might be nice, left an hour later and I haven't seen him since.  I know the job will get done but it will be in "my aging hippie's" time and manner. (By the way - the scaffolding and metal break he uses are both rented and have sat idle for weeks.  He's actually finished with the scaffolding, just hasn't gotten around to taking it down and returning it to the rental company!)

Den Chimney needed rebuilding

Finally - some progress but not much!

Nicely done copper caps

Very careful about safety and protecting the roof

And there it will probably set until Spring!

Part of the project required drilling through the sides of both fireplaces, 16 and 20 inches for the gas pipe.  Aside from the usual little problems that job went well and we actually matched up the pipes well with the existing lines which I had installed 8 years ago when we ran new gas lines in the house.  The inserts were removed to be cleaned and put back into working condition since the linkage for the dampers was broken.  My son-in-law did a great job fabricating the metal and we found some good knob matches at Lowe's. A sheet metal hood will be built over the old inserts to catch and channel the flue gases up the new lining.

In cleaning the inserts we discovered the fascia of both inserts had been copper covered originally but most of it had flaked off over time.  We'll try to let a little of the copper finish shine through to highlight a few spots.

Front room insert

Our first fire, minus insert, hood and lining but the chimney
draws very well. We couldn't wait.

The original den insert with all its cracks
and repairs

Chimney liner delivered in August

Our "Carriage House" Garage

We've been told that there was once a barn and other out buildings as part of the farm our home was once the centerpiece of but they've all been long gone and we're surrounded by quarter acre lots filled with 1970's homes.  So we had no garage or carriage house like most of the other Victorian homes in our community.  In fact I think with one exception we are the only larger home from that era that doesn't still have a carriage house on the property and that one exception has several barns instead.  The local carriage houses are all large buildings between 2-4000 square feet.

So when we were deciding on a garage it was important to us to build a structure in keeping with our house and the carriage houses in the community.  We spent a lot of time online looking at architectural plans offered by various companies and finally found one suitable for our purposes.  We purchased several sets of architectural drawings for $300 which we were then able to present to the city for approval which the city engineer did and we began the push to get our garage built.  The garage is 30 feet long, 24 feet wide and has a second floor that is 12 by 30 feet.  The first floor is 10 feet high and the second 8 feet.

The first step in the process was to remove a large maple tree located right in the center of where the garage door would be.  Our tree guy showed up as promised a few weeks after we moved in and removed the tree in one day except for the stump which we left in order to lever the whole root system out.

Maple tree - it's larger than it looks

Taking out branches he ran into a rotten limb filled
with a hornets nest - the first time that's happened
to him in 20 years of tree work

Homemade  protection

Just the trunk left - going down 2 feet
at a time.

What you get for a 1981 Yamaha 125

A very strong root system

Success at last

I quit counting rings at 75

As I shared briefly in an earlier post getting the garage built was one of the more frustrating experiences.  At the time we moved in the house had only one closet in an upstairs bedroom so a lot of our stuff was in the backyard under plastic sheeting.  We were told the garage would be up within 5 or 6 weeks after we moved in which would have been mid-September.  But once the tree was down I couldn't get my friend with the back hoe to return my calls.  I had traded him an '81 Yamaha 125 cycle for the backhoe work but it took more than three weeks to get him to come and remove the stump and the final cleanup didn't occur until the first week of September.  From there it took another month to get the foundation dug and the footings were poured on October 6.  Now we're into it 8 weeks and it's one of the rainiest falls on record and we're constantly recovering all the stuff in the back yard when the wind blows the covers off.

Excavator with his young helper

Finally it looks like something might happen

The size of the garage required heavy duty footings

Here we are in mid-October

The materials arrived on November 4

Prefab, engineered trusses - the box is 12' wide, 6'8"
on the sides and 8' in the center.

On November 8 the framers showed up and

 made great progress until it started raining.

They finally finished on the 17th.

A crane was required to lift the trusses
into position.

We live in earthquake country so even if
our house ends up a pile of rubble we'll be
able to live in the garage because of
 its construction

The back 11 feet of the garage is my shop

A spacious second floor storage area

The roofer was on time, fast and efficient

Finally buttoned up after 3 or 4 snowstorms

Once the framing was done the cement contractor moved quickly to get our floor poured before really cold weather set in.  He did a great job and we were very pleased with his meticulous approach. Even then we had to wait several weeks for it to cure so it was early December before we actually parked a car in the garage - all this after being told the garage would be done by mid to late September.  

But the trials didn't end there.  The day after the floor was poured the framers came back to finish the stairs and gouged up the fresh cement before I caught and stopped them.  They had been told to wait until they heard from us but their boss came storming over to yell at my wife about their schedule and I ended up firing him when I heard about it.  He did offer a weak apology and wanted to finish the job but I had had it with him.

It would have been nice to do an all brick exterior but the cost was prohibitive especially given we were spending more on the garage that we had originally planned.  The compromise was to do the front in brick and the the other three walls with Hardiboard.  The brick layers started in mid-March and worked through several snow storms while completing the project.  Again they were workmen who did a very nice job matching the patterns of the house and staying on the job until it was completed.

Fortunately after firing the framing crew we discovered that we had a man who was currently attending our church who had his own remodeling business in the midwest.  His wife was on sabbatical for a year and he followed her to Utah expecting he would find something to keep busy and what he found was us.  He installed the garage stairs and finished all the exterior work on the garage but not without some glitches.  Just as he was ready to begin the exterior the city inspector came by and tagged us for violating code.  Even though we had a permit the city engineer had overlooked the fact that our garage had a second floor and was slightly over 20 feet tall - both violations for out buildings.  Everyone at the city offices was very understanding and nice but nevertheless we had to jump through several hoops, request variances, meet with the planning commission and then wait about a month for the final decision which was granted in our favor.

Our "life saver" Jim who spent several
months doing some of the big jobs we
weren't capable of and he was - being 6'8"
and from the big woods

Putting up shutters

Getting there

Finished except for trim on the window

Once the basic structure was completed we added a wall at the back to separate the cars from my shop area and I wired the garage.  We put a 100 amp breaker in the house box we had installed earlier and ran an underground line to the old breaker box I reinstalled in the garage.  That way I run a number of circuits and have 220v if I need it for the shop.