life has a sound track

the kids have had about three months of piano lessons. Tabitha says "her life has a sound track." I always wanted a house filled with live music.

Slow and steady wins the sanity

Yesterday was a big day. Our front yard is tiny and adjacent to a busy street. It has been neglected for decades and continued to be neglected since our arrival. The interior of our house simply needed too much work to make it livable. So our yard has languished while we pecked away at indoor projects. That all changed yesterday. It all began a few weeks ago when we bought a mission olive tree for Valentines day. It needed a home and the front yard is it.

We ripped out those filthy juniper bushes. I have always hated juniper bushes they smell like cat pee to me.

Here you can see the years worth of trash that has collected under them. Over the course of the next week or so we will need to dig a trench and install a french drain from along that with fence out to the sidewalk.

My work truck and a chain proved instrumental in pulling those big bushes.

After cleaning the trash and debris we made our plans and I cut the concrete walkway a little to make way for the new bed.

My worm drive saw, not really a concrete saw but it will do in a pinch.

I had some scrap aluminum that I made the corner stakes from. I used my infinitely useful metal saw to sharpen them as easily as I could a wooden stake. I had three saws going during the day, concrete, metal and wood. I also needed a hammer drill to cleanly finish out the inside corner.

Toly and Rome were big helpers while I built the box.

Now it just needs some dirt.

Other progress has been the upstairs saga. Work has continued we painted the main room and kassi's room. I finished out the doors to the future eave closets.

I had to replace all of the electrical outlets and switches since most of the were broken or cracked and filty. 

This is the new "SUN" light for the boys room. Ikea has wonderful and inexpensive stuff for kids.

Here is Kassi's closet shelves after being trimmed but before the final coat of paint.

All the upstairs progress happened two weeks ago. Last weekend I worked on the stairs. They need to be completely re-built. I tore them appart and rebuilt the first few stairs up to the landing. They were in the worst shape. I still need to finish the upper flight but I need a long weekend before I tie into that.

The kids live up there now:) and need continual access. After I rebuild them I will install the new oak treads. We plan to paint the risers ROY-G-BIV

the trial...

Mostly I am amazed that I get to live this life. Surely it is all perspective but I am truly amazed that I have somehow been granted this most amazing life. I have a wonderfully exciting and intriguing wife. She makes me a better person than I am capable. I have incredible children. I am their inferior in every way and it pleases me to be their father.

Blessed and thankful

Fixing the walls upstairs

Along with other walls upstairs the inside of Kassi's closet had big holes knocked into it by the previous residents. I hope to make these exposed large under eave areas into storage bins/cubbies. In preparation for painting we needed to repair the walls and cut the holes for the new closet doors. Here is the "before" hole in Kassi's closet.

Since there is another close by access point for the proposed new closet I was just going to replace the drywall in her closet hole and call it good. Lamenting that I would need to go and buy another sheet of drywall and staring at the problem I had an idea to build some shallow shelves out of wine boxes and recess them into this hole. 

There is a huge semi-trailer sized dumpster of wine boxes down by Oakland airport. I visit it occasionally for the infinitely useful replenishment of nice quality wine boxes. 

I use them for storage, fodder for shelves, and general construction of little stuff. The kids play with them and eventually turn them to rubble. When that happens I simply stop by the huge dumpster of wine boxes and reload. I had several of those "Priorat" boxes that would make a perfect set of recessed shelves.

I cut out the hole a bit larger to accommodate the stacked together box shelves. After screwing them to the existing stud I added additional support. 

I used the very last of my remaining drywall and pieced it in to close the rest of the hole.

I taped and plastered the uneven pieces and just need to let it dry. Now it just needs some paint and trim. I'd be doing it now but I am waiting for the plaster to dry so I can paint these walls with cover/sealer/primer.

Sadly, I did discover live knob-and-tube wiring with blown-in insulation covering it during this recent work. It is a fire hazard to cover post-and-tube wiring with insulation. This means that I must rewire this entire area of the house. This news kinda knocked the wind out of my motivation for today. :(

Upstairs flooring

The returning urine stain of doom has given us a physical and emotional setback. After a myriad of repetitive steps to neutralize, sequester, and remove the urine stain we finally got it to stop smelling, stop rehydrating, and dry out. Yesterday we rented an orbital sander and sanded two of the rooms upstairs.

The night before I had to repair a section of the flooring.

I initially cut the hole square and larger to expose proper tongue and grove to receive new pieces. I used my little battery powered saw and a chisel. Normally it is recommended to not a have a horizontal single seam but there are many other areas that have this type of seam and it should add to the rustic nature of our house.

I then cut exact pieces from Tristans future room since the floor is generally already trashed there. We will need to replace the entire thing so it makes for good pillaging.

Tabitha asked, as I was cutting exact sized pieces, "if I shouldn't cut them larger and re-saw them to fit." No, because I don't have a more accurate saw than the one in my hand.

I watched plenty of you-tube videos of how to do this and felt confident that I completely understood the concept and nature of the task. My new belt sander was invaluable to making a very tight fit.

I cut the bottom tongue from the groved side so the last piece would go down. 

Avery tight fit, I drilled and nailed them down. 

Yes, I am getting old and need glasses for reading and exacting work of this nature,

Here is the floor after the sanding and staining.

Kassi's room.

The main play room and stairwell.

After church today we will polyurethane the floor and protect it from the years of abuse ahead. 

progress thwarted

Tabitha and the kids are sick, something viral. I made chicken soup last night. I hope it helps them get better. I cannot take any time off from work right now. We are under a crazy year-end push and I am integral in several projects that are critical to year end materials delivery.

Poor sick family. Tristan is arguably the most ill. His cough sounds horrible. Tabitha was in-bed most of the day yesterday. Needless to say, all forward momentum has halted on home renovation.

Well wishes of healing for my family are appreciated.

plumbing emergency #4

I planned to work on the bathroom sink this morning. I crawled under the house to size things up. What did I find? The drain gasket on the bottom of the tub held and stopped leaking. The drain pipe from the overflow had a small drip and when I tightened it it only got worse. So I crawled out from under the house and got some gasket material and sealed up the leak. Then I noticed the real problem. The toilet was leaking and it was bad. I promptly went to the surface and claimed that we needed to disable our only toilet for a few hours.

I cut and yanked the toilet from the floor. It was really disgusting under there with someone else's filth. Tabitha cleaned while I made the run to the home depot for the myriad of things I needed to do a proper job. We were gifted a homedepot card and I managed to spend half of it right then.  I came home to Matt visiting. I had to get the toilet working so I got right to it. I reset the toilet and proceeded to visit with Matt. He got to see the house in this state.

We went to blue bottle coffee, I brought Tabitha and Tristan drinks back. He is really sick with some viral cold. A little hot chocolate encouragement always helps. Once Matt left I started on the sink plumbing. What a leaky mess. I assembled the new vanity from Ikea to see where I need to bring out the water and drain not to interfere with the drawers.

I tore open the wall to see what I was in for. What a mess. The drain line was plumbed up hill and needed to be redone to drain properly. Also the old galvanized pipe was leaking behind the wall. Time for another total re-plumb job.

I needed a second trip to Homedepot for the new larger list of stuff. Copper fittings, abs pipe and fittings hardi-board to cover the entire mess properly. After several trips under the house I cut out the old galvi pipe and installed new copper lines. Kassi was a huge help. She waited by the entrance to the crawl space for me as it was getting dark. I needed her to relay instruction to the upper world. The drain was the most difficult part. I needed to install a P-trap in a spot where there wasn't really room for one. I installed half of it in the wall with a special p-trap that has a removable bottom plug. This =accomplished the need to trap sewer gasses and afford future maintenance.

Hopefully, tomorrow brings a new sink in the bathroom. Then I can start on the kitchen sink. We need to have at least one working sink during longer periods of construction. The kitchen sink will take a few days to sort out. I shall start that on Thursday night.

One more room reclaimed

This room has taken a bit longer to reclaim back to a livable state. Rainy weather makes plaster and paint difficult to dry.

This is just after I sanded and sealed the floors. They are stained and distressed but after all they are one hundred years old. We like the look of the floors showing their age and character. The walls are still very rough in this photo. I added a quad outlet and ran power to the closet for light and future network and internet appliances.

Here a week later I have plastered the room where all the damage was, primed and painted.

White is so clean. We have decided to paint everything as we go in bright white then as time allows we'll add some color.

This is the future office, sewing room. The kids will move from the dinning room to here and unpack for a while--temporarily "the kids room."

We have been also working on the upstairs (kids floor) as time allows. I sanded the floor and exposed the great and smelly urine stain of 2012. Obvious longterm urinating in the center of the room soaked into the wood flooring. We dried it out, put down baking soda and the smell quelled.

Then we thought we had a leak in the roof highlighted by the rains. The entire urine stain floor was damp and began to smell horribly allover again. I was freaking out. A new roof is definitely not in the budget. After much investigating I claimed that the roof was not leaking and something much more mysterious was happening. With thoughts of poltergeists dancing in my head we discovered that dried urine is hydrophilic. It rehydrates itself during periods of high humidity.

Tabitha did some research and decided to douse the entire floor with straight vinegar. We had already intuitively taken the first step with the baking soda. It turns out the properties of urine are both acidic and alkaline and need to be dealt with separately and accordingly. Ah the strong smell of vinegar, a pleasing welcome alternative. Now we are drying the area again. Today promises sunny warm drying weather.

The next front to attack is the bathroom. The plumbing needs to be re-done. The drain, hot and cold supply are old and problematic. We have a new sink and cabinet from Ikea. It takes special plumbing connections to accommodate the drawers. I opted for this model knowing that I was going to have to change the plumbing connections anyway.

 Tabitha is wet-scrubbing the nasty-painted-on wallpaper from the walls. It was a buckling mess and impossible  to attack without complete removal.  The kids are so involved with this renovation/resurrection it is their house too and they also love it. Work of this nature makes you love it--Stockholm syndrome?

A much needed Thanksgiving break.

We hiked to the Mt. Tamalpais watershed with friends and family from our church. It is a yearly tradition to go mushroom hunting and hike. I estimate it was a three to four mile hike. Last year I estimated it was seven. That was immediately after my surgery recovery. Perhaps next year I will claim it merely a mile?

Chez O'Melay

We slept in our bedroom last night. It is an oasis in the sea of riffled through boxes.  In the past week we resurfaced the floor, repaired and plastered all the walls, installed new electrical outlets and switches, painted every surface with sealer/cover/primer, painted two coats of highest grade of bright white, and I installed some new trim. The room is a thing of beauty. Yesterday we found most of the bed parts and I put the bed together. Luckily I originally built it out of standard hardware and acquiring the missing parts was relatively painless.

How does that happen anyway--missing parts? I took the bed apart and personally put every piece of hardware in a plastic bag.  I can't empirically say which is to blame gremlins, senility or kids that love nuts and bolts--I have a good guess though... (trailing off muttering and grumbling) ...further more I discovered a flaw in my apple boxes as the perfect moving packaging. Some unnamed person (begins with T and ends with A) has managed to open several boxes and mix the lids (and labeling). Now it isn't simply difficult to find stuff, it is impossible. Luckily unpacking has begun in earnest and there is end in sight.

We moved our dressers into the room and unpacked clothes--underwear glorious underwear. There is a moderately sized clearing in the front room that was previously a labyrinth of teetering stacks of boxes and furniture. We loaded the fresh new closet with clothes and other closet stuff. Tabitha found bedding and we slept the sleep of the just. Did I mention the room is beautiful? Well, it is.

Guess what else happened? All the kids slept together in the dinning room. Tabitha and I slept alone together in our very own room the entire night. Rome slipped in with, the still sleeping, Tabitha for about three minutes this early morning but promptly decided a little non competitive computer time was slightly more savory.

The next thing on our list is the office/temporary-kids-room. That room currently holds all the bikes, tools and building supplies. Those things will have to move the dining room. We will rent the chipper-shredder version of the floor sander and rince and repeat most of the contents in the opening paragraph.

Father Stephan is traveling back east. Attending church is looking less likely this weekend. We missed our favorite, rosary night with friends last night. It is a sad thing. To retort though, this camping in our house is for the birds and it must end soon. One more giant push to get the office/temporary-kids-room finished will alter the reality around here to something almost humane.

The wee hours

If you notice in my last post the first picture, the green wall behind me needs to be re-plastered. Early yesterday morning I watched several videos and read a few DIY sites about plastering. I have wanted to learn to plaster since I read The Agony and the Ecstasy in my early 20's. While I was at work Tabitha unraveled the proverbial sweater of the entire rooms paintable surface. Decades ago some genius painted over wallpaper. The nature of plaster being a breathable surface and modern paints forming a hermetic seal caused the moisture from the decade of leaky plumbing from the adjoining bath to release the skin of paint and layer of wallpaper.

Looking over the wall that I finished last night I got considerably better at plastering. Perhaps the application of beer helped with the flowing frosting.

I am taking the morning off to vote, make a dump run and plaster a wall or two.

Sawdust machine

We need stop the madness of living in a house of boxes with little paths winding like a labyrinth. I know where nothing is, ever. The only way past this is to finish the master bedroom. Floors, paint and close the gaping hole I left in the wall from my shower plumbing exploits.

We rented a sander and went to work. It was grueling work with little visible reward. The layers were simply coming off too slowly. After about ten hours we admitted that this was "good enough." We switched to the next finer grit and gave it a once over. We decided that we'd leave the final grit for the morning just before we needed to return the sander.

Day 2
After sanding with sore muscles from the previous day and better light we finished it up.  I left with the rental sander. While I was gone Tabitha cleaned the entire room of dust. The next step was to seal the floor.

The gaping hole is still there from the shower but there is a 12 hour time gap between sealing and putting down the poly. We decided that people pay big money for "the distressed look."

While waiting for the sealer to dry I put new glass in the kitchen window.

I tore out the old fire trap gas wall heater.

I put in a quad outlet and drywall patched the hole.

Tabitha was scraping the overspray off the windows and noticed some glazing work that I needed to do. I use the window glazing in the tube. it works better for me. This widow got glazed and made openable.

The sealer was dry to the touch so I decided to work on the drywall behind the shower.

This wall needs an outlet. I also decided it could use a light switch to control one half of one of the outlets (1of the 4 plugs). This way we can plug in a floor lamp and operate it from a switch. I needed to go get a new box for the switch portion. 

Today is Sunday we are off to church then back to get a bit more floor work.

Bath anybody?

... The plumbing store was not open on Saturday. Feeling very defeated I tried OSH to see if they had a replacement valve for this new set. I sunk deeper into failure because they didn't have valve replacement parts for this new model. The guy working that section said that I should try the local hardware store just a few blocks from my house. I called first because I had already wasted precious time thinking my solution was simply at hand.

They said yes, they definitely had the innards for my valve. Glorious success was within reach. I stepped to the counter and set my valve down like an empty shot glass. He glanced at me then at it and spun to toward the bowels of the stacks. He returned with something that looked nothing like my valve.  Arragh, how much longer can this go on? Seeing the disappointment in my expression he went on to explain this is the valve that replaces my valve and it only looks different because it also replaces the previous model too. After asking about the return policy I tentatively drove home. Not able to repsond to Tabitha's inquiry with any confidence, "I said lets see if this one works."

Sweet sweet victory there will be bathing tonight...

Bathroom plumbing

The shower valve behind this tile was not working. I twisted the handle for the hot water and it broke in my hand.


I entertained the idea of replacing the valve portion. Replacing the innards of old valves is a very reasonable thing to do. Upon closer inspection I discovered that the plumbing in the wall showed signs of leaking. I cut into the plaster and lath wall and discovered old galvanized pipe that needed to be replaced.


I went to the local plumbing store and bought a shower set and got busy replacing it. Cutting out old galvanized pipe is difficult even with proper tools.



I was happy knowing that I am upgrading the plumbing and will soon have a beautiful new shower set.


After spending most of my day I finally got the unit installed to discover one of the valve stems wasn't tapped from the factory. It wouldn't hold my fancy new handle. by this time it was too late to exchange it since the store was closed. I decided to simply tap new threads into it--my first error in judgement. I tapped the threads and my handle held perfectly in place. I turned the water pressure on and the valve no longer worked--in the on position. arrgh.. I took the the valve apart and found that I had broken it during the tapping process.

It was late and I was defeated. I shut off the hot water and called it a day hoping that the plumbing store was open on Saturday.