The Sow's Ear

Getting Sorted

2012-01-07T04:10:00.093-05:00

Yeah. Really. It's really a little past four in the morning.

I've been down the basement till just a little bit ago, sorting out trim. I needed to dig out every piece that goes back into the stairhall on both floors, so they can be shellacked prior to remounting. While I was at it, I filled holes and cracks and gouges with Zar wood filler.

I'd likely still be at it, except I was so clever Wednesday afternoon when I went to the hardware store in New Brighton and bought only a 4 ounce container of the filler. I didn't want it to dry out like my pint pot of it did. Well, that plan worked. It didn't dry out in the plastic pot. No. I ran out first. And way before I'd gone through all the trim pieces, I can tell you. And lot of those big nail holes will need a second application. So I know what I'm going to be doing before the hardware store closes at 2:00 PM.

All this wood filling will mean sanding, of course. I didn't mean to do much if any, really: The Howard's Western Wood Doctor Refinisher leaves the wood with a nice, smooth surface. But the Bosch orbital sander really helps; it was making short work of cleaning up a patch on a piece of really messed-up closet trim (the previous owners had obviously taken it down and cracked it at some point and I'd had to do my best to glue and clamp it back together). But I saw I'd left a really big place unfilled, and had to glop the stuff in again and set the piece aside again.

The biggest problem with sanding is removing too much of the patina. The final finish comes up so much better if it's left on. with it. But it'll help if I give every last piece a sealer coat of untinted buttonlac first. Unlike what I forgot to do on the hallway floor.

But no shellacking got done this work session. It was more like this: Take a piece from the stack. Wipe it. Fill it. Sort it into its own separate stack by room and/or which door or window it belongs to. Run out of filler. Put the woodwork all back neatly, with the dining room and living room trim at the back, since it'll go in last. Cogitate whether I should set any particular order for shellacking the 2nd and 1st floor hall trim, so all the pieces in each "suite" of trim for each door and window will be available as I want them for remounting. Tell myself, good grief, look at the hour, you can think about that later!

Like after I run up to New Brighton tomorrow-- I mean, later today-- for more wood filler.

Is It Soup Yet?

2012-01-05T21:59:00.007-05:00

I've been at this floor and stair shellacking business since the wee hours of December 13th. Aren't I finished by now?

Well, maybe. Not quite sure.

You see, one thing I always liked about the shellac finish on my upper staircase is the effect it gives, not so much surface-shiny-glossy, but that the wood is somehow under water, and you could reach down into the clear finish and touch the warm golden surface an inch or two below.

In October and November of 2010 it took me about ten coats of 1.5 pound cut Kusmi #1 buttonlac to achieve that, and regardless of color issues, when it came to the 2nd floor hallway floor and the main stairs down to the 1st floor, my resolution was to keep on adding coats of the untinted buttonlac until that's what I got.

Have I?

Well, I can say that watching the grain emerge more and more with each coat has been almost a poetic experience. It's felt like each floorboard was a rough gem I was polishing, each with its own distinctive beauties, and I've been laboring to bring those beauties to light.

So has that been accomplished?

Maybe first I should say something about how I've been going about this project. I have to laugh about all the stuff I bought eons ago to make the job easier and didn't use. Like the lambswool pad and the three-part screw-in mop handle. Ha. Can you imagine me keeping any sort of control with that rig in my little L-shaped hall? With my lousy eyesight? Not to mention how much shellac it'd soak up and waste! Instead, I chose to follow the advice given on a post here by Ralph the Woodworking Guy. That is, I followed him as regards the sanding and wiping-down prep work, and especially as to the use of the 1" fine brush. Two or three years ago I bought several good, if not luxurious, artist's brushes of various sizes just for the shellac work, and I had a nice 1" model right at hand.

Well. Early into the first coat (the one that should have been untinted-- sob!), I discovered what a blinking long time a 1" brush requires and how little shellac it actually carries to the surface. Yeah, Mr. Ralph was probably working with skinny modern 2-1/4" floorboards. Mine measure nearly 4" in breadth. So I moved to a 2" brush of the same type and haven't looked back.

I think I'm getting better at the application, keeping the brush well-filled and making long, smooth strokes. Ralph's recommendation is good, to do it floorboard by floorboard. Works well in maintaining the all-essential wet edge, and the joints make a good boundary at the sides. Though given how I filled the cracks with sliced-down strips of old disused floorboards, my floor is pretty tight and a little overlap was inevitable. (*smiles*) Standing up, you can't really see where the filler strips are, unless you're purposely looking for them.

I assuredly did not use the 2.5 pound cut he advises. Yeah, I guess that'd give you good build in three coats, but I know myself and my brushing abilities. I left enough weird streaks on the upper staircase with a 1.5 pound cut to try that.

No, this time I took to heart something said in a comment on The Prairie Box blog. There Mr. (or Ms.) Anonymous recommended more coats in a 1-pound cut for quicker application and drying, and ultimately for a stronger, more durable floor. Well, anybody who's successfully shellacked a floor in a house with "3 brutal cats" with claws is worth listening to. I've also heeded his (or her) advice about the increased and increasing waiting times between coats. For the upper stairs I only waited an hour or so between each coat. And of course, I let myself and the four animals (brutal, with claws!) onto the finish way too soon. Not going to make that mistake again!

Which is why it's over three weeks since I started this project, I've worked pretty steadily on it, barring four or so days at Christmas, and only today have I finished applying the sixteenth coat of shellac.

Yeah, ten-plus-six. Sixteenth. Hey, that would have been ten or so coats at a 1.5 pound cut, right?

But for whatever reason, I haven't yet achieved the "under water" effect I'm looking for. I'm judging by the shellac's finish on a certain large piece of soft/open grain on one particular floorboard, and it doesn't look limpid and even with the hard grain next to it, it looks mottled and glisten-y. What can be wrong?

Nothing, maybe, except different wood on the T&G boards than on the upper treads. It's all yellow pine, but the treads are more close-grained. And-- this is the kicker-- I don't have any artificial lights shining obliquely on the upper stairs, as I do in the hallway. The fact that I couldn't get the effect I wanted was bugging me, so I took a light and shone it on the stair treads. Yeah, in the stairwell I get some of the same glistening effect, though there I can't see it.

Which is why I'm saying Enough with sixteen coats. On the hallway at least. On the main stairs I really have glisten where I want limpidity, and I was thinking they were going to need four more coats, at least.

But maybe not. I was on the Shellac.net FAQ page earlier this evening and it said something about rubbing-out. Rubbing out? On researching this, I find that that's what I really need to do to even out the finish and get the effect I want. I think. I've heard you don't want to make it too glossy, or every last (claw) scratch will show and scream.

Maybe I'll first experiment with rubbing out the main stair treads. They look dull the way they are, whereas the overall effect in the hallway is just fine. Very likely it won't gain me a thing to coat the main stair treads any more, and it might be counterproductive.

So can I say the shellacking on the stairs and hallway floor is done?

Maybe. I'm not sure. Because "everybody" says that dewaxed shellac is what you really need on top to shed water, and I have a nice can of Zinsser SealCoat I can use. Or I can dewax some of the Kusmi. But I recall Ron at Shellac.net telling me that the Kusmi #1 buttonlac is fine and hard for floors just as it is. And really, once it'd had time to cure on the upper stairs it had no trouble resisting the wet snow the cable guys tracked in last January. The water beaded right up. And if I lay down a coat of dewaxed shellac, isn't there the likelihood that it'd just get rubbed off in the polishing process?

If I'm going to do the dewaxed, I need to get it applied tomorrow. I definitely want to give the finish a good week or more to cure before I allow shoe and pet traffic on it, let alone think of rubbing it out. And as it is the foam insulation people may well be coming to deal with the attic late next week. So time is at a premium.

So is it soup yet? Yes. No. Give it several more days to simmer. But it's getting there!

Dark Reflections

2012-01-01T17:22:00.001-05:00

Two or three weeks ago I promised to post pictures of the 2nd floor hallway floor shellacking I was finally, finally getting done. Here they are, with commentary (including a great deal of whingeing and wailing):

The work commenced a little around a quarter to one AM on the 13th. First step was to float a fresh coat of mahogany-tinted shellac over the stairs to the 3rd floor that I did a year ago October. I made the mistake back then of letting the animals with their capers and their claws back onto the finish too soon, and in several places they'd scratched the treads to the bare wood:

With cat and dog scratches

What you see above is actually after I took some plain, untinted Kusmi #1 shellac to it and rubbed some of the worst of the scratches out. Here the upper stairs are with the fresh coat:


Too dark and red

Now, I wouldn't take the evidence of my Canon PowerShot SX120 camera to convict a cockroach. It knows nothing of accurate color-rendering, and it's useless for depicting degrees of sheen. But this photo does testify true, first that the scratches were colored in, which is good, and second, that the color of the top shellac coat is too damn dark.

All this is what I get for failing to look for the scratchpad where I wrote down the proportions of mahogany and walnut dye to shellac a year ago. As it happens, it wasn't actually up in my study where I thought I'd left it; no, that notepad has to be in the avalanche that is currently my guest bedroom, where I dumped everything before I started repainting the study in late August. In any event, I didn't even try to look for the recipe when I mixed up the latest batch. Instead I used a formula inverse to that I used to mix the walnut shellac for the trim in March (meaning, mostly mahogany with a smidge of walnut instead of vice-versa). And even with that, I used less dye than the formula called for. I thought it'd match.

So my first mistake was laying on that shellac at night, under insufficient light. It wasn't till I got to the bottom treads down at the hallway that I noticed how dark the new color was, and how I'd merrily killed the golden-brown color I'd loved so much in those steps.


This I loved. Too late now.

My next mistake was not drawing the obvious conclusion from the effect of the new shellac on the upper stairs. No, I was so keen to get things moving that I went ahead and used it on the floor. You'd think when I saw how reddish and dark it was on the first floorboards in the back of the closet, I'd dip a rag in the jar of alcohol, wipe it off, then go dilute the mix with more shellac and alcohol and start over.

But no, I had to keep going.

You'd think I'd remember that the first coat on the study stairs looked like this:

But somehow I thought it'd be All Right and marched-- I mean, brushed-- on.

This is where I left it around 3:30 in the morning on the 13th. The camera with the flash makes it look more finished than it is.

But this isn't exactly accurate, either:

Since then, it's hit me that I made another mistake: I forgot that with fully-stripped and sanded wood with no patina, the first colored coat sets up so much better if an untinted coat is laid on first. So even though I knew good and well by the next evening that what I had was too dark, in the following days I still had to lay on two or three more coats of mahogany-tinted shellac, though not half as strong, so the color wouldn't be just a watered-down burgundy red.

The next two days, the 13th and 14th, I finished the first coat on the hallway and brought it down the stairs.

The second stage starts at the bathroom door


Then on in front of the upper stairs

Did this in 3 stages, to have a dry place to perch on

And if I thought looked watered-wine color up in the hallway, did it ever go red on the main stairs!

My friend Frieda* came by about the time I finished up the bottom tread. She thought it looked "beautiful." I'm trying really hard to take her word for it and so make the best of it. Wiping it down and starting over wasn't an object once I got to this point-- too much damage to the walnut-shellacked risers and stringers. I'll follow up with a post or two on how it looks now, two weeks later, with the caveat that my crummy camera is not to be trusted . . . And I'll promise to buck up and not whinge any more. Really.

Announcement

2011-12-13T04:18:00.001-05:00

Yes, it's as late as the date stamp says.

But I simply had to announce that after a long Monday of sanding, steaming out dents, more sanding, more steaming out dents, a whole lot of vacuuming and dusting, a wipe-down with denatured alcohol, and, oh yes, a little more steaming out of dents followed by more sanding and vacuuming, I finally got things in order with my 2nd floor hall and the main stairs to get some mahogany-tinted shellac onto the hall floor.

Ta-daaaaahhhhh!!

Only "some," because I began by applying a repair coat to the stairs to the 3rd floor, and I didn't start that till after 1:00 AM. I then proceeded to lay a first coat onto half the hall. Only half, because my upstairs hall is L-shaped and I can't levitate and I don't want lap marks at the midpoints of the longest boards. Besides, it was past 3:30 by the time I finished the first leg of the L, and if I get called in to teach in the morning that's rapidly approaching, I'm going to be a big slice of burnt toast as it is.

But after all this time, I thought it was only right for me to mark the occasion. Pictures and commentary to follow.

Heading in the Right Direction

2011-12-08T00:30:00.027-05:00

12:45 AM

     Here I am in the front room, contesting possession of the sofa bed with a very determined dog.

    Yes, I've finally, finally made the long-awaited move downstairs to keep me and the animals off the staircases and 2nd hall floor until they're refinished and cured. No, I haven't finally, finally got any new shellac on the staircases and/or the 2nd floor hall floor.

    I have vacuumed the whole lot, and used a dental pick to clean the cat hair out of the joints between the treads and risers of the set to the 3rd storey. Those were wiped down with a damp washcloth and dried off, then I went over them lightly with 220-grit sandpaper. Then wiped them off with a tack rag, then with the damp washcloth again.

    The cardboard and brown paper is off the hallway floor, and I see I have a darker strip at the bedroom door where the bare boards weren't covered all these months, as well as residue on the floor from the painter's tape I stuck the paper down with. I gave those places a bit of a sanding, and it seems to be evening out.

    The joints to the steps down to the 1st floor I haven't defuzzed yet. It was rising midnight and I felt it was a good point to leave it. Still had to pull out and make the bed. And go down and get ready for bed in the basement bathroom for a change. And try to convince the dog to let me into the bed at all.

    The fun thing will be sleeping with all the electric candles around this room. And the glare from the neighbors' Christmas lights outside.

   Not to mention the cats making noise trying to find a way around the barriers I've erected in all the stairhall openings. Never mind. I'll deal with that in the morning.

Sometimes It's Good to Be Wrong

2011-10-23T23:45:00.275-04:00

Tackled the attic insulation removal this afternoon and evening. The process disabused me of a few false notions.

Starting at the back end, literally: The knob and tube wiring I discovered yesterday is disconnected; it isn't live. The receptacle I thought it served is wired up with standard white three-wire cable. Nice not to have to be concerned about that.

(Incidentally, there's also a long disconnected strand of yellow three-wire cable [sorry, I should be able to remember the gauges of these things-- yellow is 12 gauge? Or 14? Oh, never mind!) on the back side of the knee wall; I uncovered it when I took a piece of cardboard tacked to the studs down, and happily, it's not live, either. I think my electrician must've put that in; why didn't I have him connect it up? I certainly could use another outlet under my work table!)

I was also wrong in thinking there was a lot of loose-fill rock wool between the batt insulation and the underside of the sheathing. No, there was rock wool in there at one time; I could see little tufts of it stuck to the rafters and sheathing planks here and there. But for the most part, it was gone. So I didn't have to endure clouds of rock wool tumbling down on my head, as I'd anticipated. True, I was encased in a hooded Tyvek coverall suit with attached booties, my face armored with an P100 anti-mold particle mask and goggles with no vents, but I hadn't fancied the prospect, all the same.

And I was wrong in thinking my roof is structured with 2x4 rafters. No, they're 2x6s, or 1-5/8 x 5-3/4, to be exact. The foam insulation guy was calculating on spraying on six inches, covering rafters and all, to get me to an R-value of 24, at least. Not sure how this development will affect things. Technically it could mean they could spray on eight inches or more, and maybe get me to the R-38 that's recommended for attics these day. But that'd up the price beyond the just-barely-manageable figure I have from him now.

What else was I wrong about? I was wrong in thinking that the black I was seeing on the back face of the kraft paper vapor barrior was mold. Ha, silly me, that paper is black on the back side! And, examining the insulation itself more closely, it's possible that the dark stuff I saw in the pink was only dirt, and not mold at all. At least, it didn't look growy, just like dust.

Does that mean I was wrong about the whole project? Not at all. The batts were definitely damp that day in mid-September, and dirt is a classic place for mold to lodge in fiberglass insulation. And with the facing paper hanging in tatters in so many places, the vapor barrier was grossly compromised. I would rather not spend the money on this at this time, but it'll be money well-spent.

I was wrong in thinking the batts were held up solely by the lath battens that ran horizontally from rafter to rafter. Yes, they gave some support, but mostly the pink stuff stayed put by means of staples-- lots of staples-- driven though the kraft paper wings into the rafters. So I didn't have that stuff falling down on me, either. Very glad to be wrong in this case. And I was wrong in planning to roll up each batt in a piece of .5 mil plastic before I put it into the 55 gallon black bag. I tried it once, on the first piece I took down, and the plastic got woefully out of control and simply would not stay put. So I gave up on it and just rolled the batts in on themselves, taped them with cheap masking tape, and stuffed them in the bags.

Speaking of the bags, it's good that the insulation guy was wrong in predicting I'd end up with thirty bags of the stuff. Nope. Four bags of insulation and one of cardboard, small pieces of batten, and dirty dropcloths.

I've mentioned the cardboard. It appears I was wrong in thinking that it was a pis aller employed by my POs-1 (who were, I believe, the ones who installed the pink insulation) to cover the gaps at the toe of the batts. In the first place, the batts ran all the way down below the floor level, into the soffit space. In the second place, it was abundantly evident that that cardboard dated from way, way before than my previous owners two back. The cardboard lining the brick gable wall on the north end was clearly installed before the wood floor. It was wedged between the floorboards and the brick and I had to cut it out with a utility knife. Whether it dates from the time the house was built in 1915 or so, or whether it was put in to protect the wall when the attic was finished later, I don't know. I'm pretty sure that the room I use as my study wasn't original, as the 1916 tax assessment only lists three bedrooms. But I saw at least one place where cardboard was used as shimming between structural members, so it's entirely possible that the house was built with a wholly-floored attic, with exposed rafters and the stairs leading up to it, and the knee walls and plaster came later. I estimate that the room was done fairly early; pre-WWII, at least, since the trim matches what's downstairs (sans cornices) and the woodwork was originally shellacked, like the rest of the house.

Found something else curious, deeper in towards the front of the house: There are three or four bays where the tongue-and-groove flooring doesn't go almost to the toe of the rafters, but there are wide planks of removable joinery notched in between the rafters instead. I didn't lift any of them out the whole way, but when I shifted them I saw galvanized metal below. Duct work? A cold air return? From where? I think this would be over my dressing room, but the location is all wrong. This really looks original. What can it be? Those planks will be immovable once the foam is in; will that matter?

In fact, speaking of the cardboard again, I found vestiges of heavy cardboard nailed to the underside of the rafters (which I found about impossible to remove, by the way), and I strongly suspect it was used to contain the rock wool that used to be in the roof.

On the back faces of some of this cardboard I saw evidence of water marking. But it was dry now and I can only hope that that was from earlier leakage, like that which moved the POs-1 to remove the slate roof and put up fiberglass shingles. (I found a piece of a slate at the eaves!). There was also some water staining on the floor near the stub of the old kitchen chimney. I don't say I won't give that a good scrubbing with borax, but it was dry, too. In fact, the whole space was dry, and in some cases, too dry. I didn't like the way pieces of wood would flake off some structural members when I was brushing them clean after the insulation was down. I'm thinking a nice coat of spray foam will protect them, yes?

There were some things I was wrong about that I don't find so gratifying. The Tyvek suit was a success, overall (pun!), and getting one that fit me by ordering online was the right way to go. But I wish I'd gotten the gloves with the longer arms to them. The 12" cuff kind I got you'd think would be long enough. But the sleeves of my sweatshirt kept pushing them down, and they would creep out from under the elastic cuff of the suit. I did pretty well at keeping fiberglass itchies off my skin-- except for that half inch of so at my wrists.

And despite my trying to order goggles in a "women's" size, they were still too big and conflicted with the particulate mask. Great goggles, great mask, but my head simply isn't that big. The two pieces of equipment got in each other's way and prevented me from having a proper seal on either. The goggles quickly fogged up so I was working half blind, and the mask didn't sit tightly, so stuff still got up my nose and made it run. Every three batts or so I'd have to take off the mask and blow my nose, it was so bad. I'm still rather stopped up now.

But getting the headlamp was a fine idea; really, the only way to go, even though it barely perched on what was left of my forehead. From the packaging I'd expected the batteries to last only five hours, but they kept going a lot longer, and are still good now.

I mentioned the 55-gallon bags. My bright idea of throwing them out the north window once they were filled didn't turn out quite as planned. The first one rolled off the back porch roof quite easily, but the next one landed square in the middle of the roof and stayed there. And my attempts to use the second and third to dislodge it only succeeded in creating a logjam. So there I was, at maybe 11:00 o'clock at night, out on my porch roof trying to shove these big black trash bags down into the yard. Still in the Tyvek suit, which wasn't the cleverest thing I've done all evening. The booties on it give no traction whatever, so walking on the shingles was out of the question. I had to lie on my side and kind of slither down till I could put a foot to the bags and send them over. Of course they wouldn't go the with the first kick, and I had to creep lower and lower towards the eaves, hoping to gracious that any momentum I gave the bags wouldn't carry me over with them. "Wrong" wouldn't've half described that!

They finally teetered on the edge of the gutter and rolled down, taking their sweet time about it. Meanwhile, I saw that my thirteen-year-old calico cat had taken advantage of the open window from the guest bedroom to hop out onto the roof and do a little exploring of her own. Happily, I had no compulsion to go lunging after her. I slithered back up the way I came and called her to me once I was back on the sill. She came, but changed her mind at the last moment and veered off. Too bad, my girl! and I picked her up by the scruff of her neck and hauled her safely in.

One last happy example of my being wrong: It only took about three and a half hours to get the insulation down, rolled, bagged, and out the window. It took the other three and a half hours to brush down the rafters and sheathing, remove stray pieces of rock wool, and clean up the floor. One push-broom and three vacuum cleaners that took! I think the hose of my shop vac is almost shot, which doesn't help.

Is the job done? Well, almost. I found there's rock wool in the soffit space, and I haven't removed it, since I'm not sure how that'll interface with the spray foam. I want that area insulated, but somehow I don't see filling that whole space with the icynene. I mean, won't that drive up the price, and what if I do get a chance to remove the aluminum exterior trim and the wood board underneath needs replaced? On the other hand, does the foam have to run all the way to the gutter to prevent ice dams? I may have to cut 1x boards and run the floor all the way to where the roof comes down. Job for the portable circular saw, I expect.

I have the same question about the rock wool in the far southeast corner behind the lefthand closet. There's a little triangle of space with insulation blown into it; will they foam that, or do I need to create a barrier to separate the two?

There should be no question about the old birds' nest materials in the northeast corner behind the old chimney. It's got to go. But somehow I didn't want to remove it out tonight. Don't know why. May have something to do with the kink in my shop vac house. Maybe I want to see if there are any ornithological specimens in the mess. But I'd rather deal with it in the daytime.

All cleaned up, barring the camera lens

Just sitting here typing this, I can feel that the room is colder than usual. Even failing, that batt insulation did a reasonable job keeping the 3rd story warm. Here's to the spray foam doing the job even better.

The Worst of It Is Past

2011-10-22T22:31:00.051-04:00

The worst of the moldy attic insulation demolition is over.

At least, in my opinion. I have heard it said that taking down batt insulation, moldy or otherwise, is a nasty job, and I may well end up glad to pay somebody else to do it. But to someone who has sanded down the treads of two flights of stairs with all the concomitant dust, removing the insulation will be a project worth tackling. Besides, there will be the reward of seeing the sheathing exposed and the old batts removed.

No, the worst part, which is done, is the prep work. I hate prep work. And so, the dropcloths are down in the study. And the flattened packing boxes are out of the far end of the attic crawl space and piled onto the study detritus and boxes of books and Christmas decorations amassed in the guest bedroom.

In the process, I've discovered a lone knob-and-tube circuit at the farthest point of the knee wall. I think it serves the outlet that, well, that this computer is plugged into. The insulation appears to be good yet, but of course, it has no ground wire. Not good for electronics. But I won't get excited about it until I've had the current tester to it and have verified that it indeed is live, and where exactly it goes.

And nothing can be done about it (if anything does have to be done about it with any immediacy) before the bad insulation is removed. And that will be done tomorrow, maybe, or at any rate the first day this coming week when I'm not called in to teach.

Ow Gosh

2011-10-15T22:35:00.000-04:00

Listening to past Holmes Inspection episodes while you work on your house can make the time go faster. It also has a way of making you see urgent agenda items in areas you'd been perfectly happy to ignore.

Take the angle between the main block of my brick house and the brick front room, formerly the front porch. Sometime in the house's history the two began to separate. Some previous owner tried to rectify the problem by glopping the space full of concrete, and it's looked like hell since before I moved in. But it's the way things were and I ignored it. And the concrete patch has been spalling, and a wide-ish crack has been opening up between it and the brick of the house, also probably since before I moved in. I've paid no attention to that, either. Lately, I've noticed I can see daylight through that crack in the corner of my basement workshop, but neither has that hasn't gotten much reaction from me.

But here's Mike Holmes holding forth on the gospel of caulk and Keeping the Water Out, and bless me if I am unable merely to be a hearer of the word, I am goaded into being a doer of it as well.

But, oh, gosh! the path of virtue in not smooth, nor is it narrow. Actually, it's wide and it's deep; it's thick and arduous and very, very tacky.

Which is to say that when I got outside this afternoon to do the job, I followed the directions on the Loctite concrete crack and masonry sealant and set to work cleaning all the loose material out of the crevice. With that, the fun began.

Did I say "crevice"? Crevasse, more like it. Oh, gosh, once I got done rooting out the scree, I could have climbed down into my basement workshop without going around by the door and the stairs. At worst the opening was about an inch wide and an infinity deep. Good grief, what was I going to put in there to keep the caulk from falling in? What if it got dark before I could thick of something? What if it should rain tonight and flood my basement? Ohno-ohno-ohno!

The little ½" backer rod I had on hand wasn't going to make it. Hoping the clear weather held, I jumped in the car and ran up to Lowe's, where I bought 20' of 3/4" backer foam backer rod. And a second tube of the masonry crack caulk just in case I ran out.

It took four layers of that 3/4" backer stuffed in that crack before I could even think to start the caulking.

"Start the caulking." What a joke. No matter how much I pushed, I couldn't get it to come out. I asked my next door neighbor, and he told me I had to shove something long and skinny down the spout and puncture it. Weird. Haven't had to do that with any of the other caulk I've been using. Never mind, I did it. More heavy pushing, and the sealant eventually came. Hellsbells, if it'd been me trying to birth a baby, I would've demanded a C-section. Had I bought a bad tube of sealant? Maybe, it's happened before. Tried the other tube. Same thing.

Called Lowe's. Is this stuff supposed to be like this? Guy in the paint department says that yeah, because it's for masonry and it's like mortar, it is thicker than regular caulk. OK, but this thick? He said if I couldn't get it to flow, to bring it back and they'd take a look at it.

Very nice, but it was after 5:00. I had to get this crack filled before nightfall. I kept pushing, pushing, pushing, and eventually the stuff came out. But what an irregular mess! And how frustratingly sticky! Ohhh, gosh, was I glad I'd laid in a gallon of mineral spirits, because slopping that on my gloved fingers and using them to "tool" the joint was the only way I got it halfway smooth. Sure didn't come out of the tube that way.

But at least it's done and the crevice is filled. Can't see daylight on the inside any more. And the sealant color is good, a nice grey-beige that kind of matches my brick. And it smells like chocolate! And though it looks like hell, it's definitely upper circle compared to what was there before.

I'd hoped to fill the much narrower and neater crack in the corresponding joint on the entry side of the house, but it got too dark. Did fill a break in the stone step to the side door. It glares, rather, since the sealant is so much lighter than the old stone, but it'll keep the water out and it'll dirty up eventually.

But if it doesn't firm up and it turns out that was a bad tube of sealant after all-- owwwwww gosh!!!

Once More into the Breach, Dear Friends, Once More!

2011-10-05T23:50:00.002-04:00

Is there a such thing as a serial caulker?

I started this process with a couple of baseboards last Thursday. Then late Monday afternoon I noticed how awful the gap looked between the surface-mounted conduit and the wall surface at the north end of the room. And the rest of the baseboard under it.

And what about the yawning chasms between the painted door trim at the bottom of the stairs and the yellow walls perpendicular to them?

Yikes, nasty.

And there I was with a partly-used tube of white painter's caulk, and everyone knows what happens to that if you just stick it on the shelf of your workshop and forget about it. So really quickly, just before time to change for choir practice, I ran beads of caulk along all the offended gaps and smoothed them down.

The next day, yesterday, after I'd touched up the dark yellow paint, I got a good look at it without the bright work light on. Of course then I saw the ridges of caulk I sloppily left lying on the trim. There was a particularly rough place next to the jamb of the doorway at the bottom of the stairs. I endeavored to use my thumbnail to scrape it off. I miscalculated the force needed and ran my thumb into the space between the trim and the wall. Now I had a big hole in the caulk there, and I was all out.

Well, I needed to run up to the stores near the Lowe's this morning, anyway . . .

In progress

But who's going to open a new tube of caulk just for an inch and a quarter hole? Not I. Besides, there were several other areas that really did need filling. Like the gaps along the sides, top, and bottom of the woodwork cover to the vent stack. Actually, I'd bought the first tube of caulk to take care of that. I'd been thinking I should get the new boot on the stack and let the plaster and so on dry out, but here I was with a tube in my gun, and hey, it'll dry out through the wood and the plaster, right? Won't it?

So this evening that got caulked. As did the crack between the window trim and the wall on the north end. And the open ends of the tongue-and-grove flooring that shows above the head of the stairway door. Et cetera, et cetera.

All this caulking has necessarily been followed with touch-ups in three colors (if you count white as a color). And scraping caulk off of where it doesn't belong. Tomorrow I still have to do the touch-ups from what I caulked tonight. I think I'm going to keep finding gaps and cracks in this room that need to be filled till the end of time. It will never, ever end.

Getting There: Caulk

2011-09-29T23:19:00.028-04:00

While doing these various repair and painting tasks around my study the past few days, I've continued to listen to episodes of Holmes on Homes and Holmes Inspection on YouTube. And it definitely gets into your head.

So this afternoon when I'd peeled off the plastic dropcloth I'd taped to the baseboard to make it easier to prime the repair on the west wall, I seemed to notice for the first time in eight years the messy, gaping gap between the baseboard and the plaster. And in my mind's ear sounded the voice of Mike Holmes saying, "It only would have taken them a minute to run a bead of caulk along that! Messy, sloppy, shoddy!"

And here I'd bought a tube of caulk for this project, but had thought I could get away without using it. Oh, all right. Yessir, yessir!

I proceeded to caulk that baseboard (what I could do without moving heavy furniture-- sorry). I caulked along the top of the baseboard at the ledge by the attic hatch door. And along the top of the base on the wall perpendicular to that. I don't think I did a particularly artistic job of smoothing it. And whether or no, I'm going to have to come back with the light yellow paint and touch it all up.

But I admit it looks better, and piddling as it is, it does count as progress.

Getting There: Repainting the Bookcases

2011-09-29T21:30:00.026-04:00

Today I also completed the repainting of the two built-in bookcases. Originally, I'd only planned to repaint the back walls of them in the darker yellow. But a week ago when I took the books out to begin, I was confronted with the black marks left on the latex paint where the volumes had stuck to the shelves. I decided I'd do better with oil base paint tinted to match, and I'd give it at least a week to cure before I put anything back.

Got the quart of oil-base last Saturday on my way to the Green Festival. Found out that due to the difference in the base, I couldn't get it tinted in exactly the same shade. And I had to settle for gloss, where all the rest of the woodwork is semi-gloss. Never mind, the durability is the thing.

But these differences led me to conclude that I'd best repaint all parts of the bookcases, inside and out. Before, I was only going to do the top surfaces of the shelves. And maybe the side walls, where book jackets would stick, too.

So early this past Tuesday afternoon I started in with the oil base primer, formulated to go over latex or oil. It's thicker than latex and takes a lot longer to brush on. Thus as I started on the lefthand case I was dismayed to see that it was already 2:40. Oh-oh. I really needed to be cleaned up, changed, and on the road by 3:00 in order to make it over to the next county for the meeting of my presbytery by 4:00 PM. But I really needed to finish the primer in one go. I'm short of mineral spirits and I had only one clean 2" chip brush, the one I was using, and intended to throw it away when I was done. So I kept working, debating within myself as to whether I would go to the meeting or not. As it was, I did finish priming and I did go, pulling primer out of my hair all the way there and arriving over forty-five minutes late. I'm glad I went, in a grim sort of way, but that'd be a story for different blog.

Anyway, late last evening yesterday and into the wee hours I got the "Decisive Yellow" latex onto the back wall of the lefthand bookcase, a second coat of same onto the righthand one, and the first coat of the oil base white onto both. Today saw me getting the second coat of the yellow onto the left, and a second go at the white oil-base on both bookcases, though this time I only did the shelves and top.

Oh, yeah, I also used the oil base paint on the ledge that runs in front of the attic hatch door. Actually, that's why I didn't start this process till Tuesday: I didn't want the roof inspector to come tramping over it while it was still wet.

Now it's all shiny and smelly and off-gassing delightfully. And hopefully it'.ll look better longer than the latex did.

Getting There: Wall Crack Repair

2011-09-29T20:21:00.078-04:00

I am getting work done on my 3rd floor study, and maybe by Christmas I can bring all the paint pots downstairs and say it's completed.

No, really, I started the repairs on the wall crack Sunday evening. I'd at first envisioned enlarging it with the 5-in-1 and depositing a little spackle in there, but whom am I kidding? Any thing that's that deep means plaster that's coming loose, and that means redoing it the Big Wally Way.

So, adhesive and anchors in late on Sunday, anchors out and first coat of joint compound applied after midnight Monday night, second coat joint compound went on midday Tuesday, and it got the third coat early afternoon and the fourth later in the evening yesterday.

Earlier today, I got the final coat wet sanded and laid on a load of latex primer, and a couple of hours ago, I painted the repaired wall with the light yellow. It's neat not being able to tell where the cracks were.

So that part is finished. More or less. Mostly. More on this presently.

Diagnosis

2011-09-27T10:30:00.075-04:00

The roof inspector has come and gone. The attic crawl space, first. There's no evidence of mold or moisture on the underside of my roof sheathing. Which is, as I observed when he pulled back some of the moldy insulation is the original 1x board. Obviously, my POs-1 didn't find it necessary to replace it with plywood when they replaced the slate with fiberglass shingles in the 1980s. And, as it'd seemed to me, he saw no signs of liquid water infiltration in the attic itself.

He told me I'd need to get rid of the fiberglass batt insulation. Yes, certainly, I was planning on that. By taking up the T&G floorboards the electrician cut out a few years ago to install the bathroom ceiling fan, the inspector verified that I have no insulation in my bathroom ceiling/attic crawl space floor. Yes, that's just as I'd remembered. Then he told me I needed to add ventilation to attic space. Well, actually, no. I explained to him what I wanted to keep that area under the eaves as a semi-conditioned space, without wide swings of temperature from frigid winter to blazing summer. That the 2007International Building Code allows unvented attics, as long as they're airtight to the exterior. That I planned to achieve this with sprayed-on foam insulation. He was adamant: Even with that, he said, I needed to keep a 2" gap between the upper side of the insulation and the underside of the roof deck. And extend it from soffit to ridge. Impossible, with a cathedraled ceiling on 2x4 rafters like mine, but I refrained from arguing.

I asked him the critical question: By any legitimate way of reasoning, might the damage I had be coverable by my homeowner's insurance? No, this wasn't a catastrophe, it was a maintenance issue.

Next, I showed him both a computer photo and the actual location of some water seepage I'd had in my study ceiling last May. He'd been using his moisture meter and found that it'd dried to an acceptable level (I forget what it was), though some areas of the ceiling showed 0% saturation.

This wasn't the case for the wood cover and plaster around my vent stack at the rear of the room. 100%. Soon as I told him what it enclosed, he pronounced, "You've got a leak around the stack. The boot probably needs replaced."

After taking a few more readings and not finding anything else serious, we proceeded outside. Because he was driving a different vehicle than the once he started out with on Saturday, he hadn't been able to bring his long ladder. So he made me no close-up observation of the condition of the soffit in the back corner where I can see daylight from the inside and the birds get in and the cats want to get at them. At first, he wasn't even inclined to believe me when I told him there was at least one hole in there big enough to allow this. But standing in my back year, he couldn't help but notice the sparrows up there in their nest in the end of the gutter, and watch as they ducked in and out of the aluminum fasçia cladding.

He used his adjustable ladder (a Werner, not a Little Giant) to climb up to the back porch roof, pulled the ladder up, then set it on the porch roof and climbed up to the top. Well, you're a better man than I am, Gunga Din. I don't mind high places, even with only two or three or fewer inches of toehold, if I've got a nice rock face next to me. Walking around on my high eight-in-twelve roof is beyond my balance and my nerves. But the inspector walked it. He verified the bad vent stack boot. And proceeding to the area above last May's leak, he verified that I had a lot of popped nails and loose shingles up there. They don't need replacement, he said, just readhered with some roofing tar.

His opinion is that all the work, excluding insulation tearout and replacement, should run me only around $250 to $300. I hope he's right.

He'll send me the report in a day or so. Meanwhile, I need to get the names of some roofing contractors and start getting bids.

Postponement

2011-09-24T23:45:00.058-04:00

8:00 this morning. I haul myself out of bed and endeavor to make myself look respectable. The roof inspector is coming at 8:30, after all.

8:43. The roof inspector hasn't arrived. I take advantage of his delay and vacuum the waves and billows of pet hair off the front room floor.

9:15. I've been worrying/wondering/getting annoyed for the past half hour at least. I leave a message on his cell phone politely inquiring if something's gone wrong, did he still expect to make it this morning, or should we reschedule.

I'm hungry. I start cooking my breakfast.

9:21. I post on Facebook that I think he's forgotten.

9:40. I'm finishing my breakfast. The phone rings. It's the roof inspector. He got himself rear-ended two miles from home, his driveshaft was destroyed, and he's temporarily without a vehicle. Could we reschedule for Tuesday morning at 9:00?

Sure.

9:45. I'm glad I wasn't a jerk on the phone message.

******************
After that, you think I'd go back to bed, or at least work on my sermon for tomorrow. No. As mentioned previously, I've been researching spray foam insulation as a possible replacement for the moldy pink fiberglass in my attic crawl space, and I found out online the other day that one of the biggest installers in the Pittsburgh area was going to be exhibiting at the Allegheny County Green and Innovation Festival (hmm. Kind of a failure of parallelism there, what?). And somehow I preferred to make my initial overtures face to face.

Here are some views of the fair:

I found the foam insulation people there, and learned the name of the rep who'd be happy to come out and look at my job, as soon as his schedule would be freed up in a fortnight or so.

I Thought I Was Finished

2011-09-24T11:03:00.151-04:00

Last night, I thought I was finished. With one exception reserved,* I thought all the repairing, patching, painting, and touching up needed in my 3rd floor study was done.

The white trim, where needed, was recoated in semi-gloss latex, and any encroachments of the dark yellow hue painted over.

I'd gone around with a sponge brush and with the light yellow paint concealed the mar-marks that wouldn't scrub off on the west and north walls.

I'd pushed my utility table and my drafting table back against the wall, and carefully rehung the oak drawer unit on its brackets on the wall.

Except for the protection over the long wooden file cabinet (owing to the above-mentioned exception), the drop cloths and plastic sheets were taken away, to lie until needed, rolled up in the doorless closet in the 2nd floor hallway below. Paint, paint trays, rollers, brushes, rags-- all or most were removed to the stairhead below, to await the trip back to the basement workshop. The carpet was vacuumed, the work surfaces were dusted and wiped.

By this time it was rising 5:00 AM. Yes, I repeat it, nearly five o'clock in the morning. I hadn't been working and straightening all that time; no, more than once I'd succumbed to the lure of the computer and sat down to watch past episodes of Holmes on Homes on YouTube. Or, more to the point of rectifying problems in my own house, I'd been researching the pros and cons of spray foam insulation, which, if I can manage the cost, may prove to be the best replacement for the moldering pink fiberglass in my attic crawl space roof.

Why didn't I save both diversions and labor for later and go to bed? Because it seemed necessary that the decks be cleared for the visit of the roof inspector this morning at 8:30 AM, so he could examine the length and breadth of my 3rd floor, if required, without tripping over dropcloths and paint cans. And until the cleanup was complete, I wasn't turning in.

But by quarter to five it pretty much was, and I spared a few moments to gaze and admire my handiwork in the stairwell.

Even so, I couldn't help noticing a problem with the touch up paint on the west wall. That light yellow was a color mix of my own, concocted when I first painted my study in 2003 from three or more Sherwin-Williams colors, I not liking any of the ones they had in stock. The can I've been working with is an attempt at matching that was made back in January of 2009 when the drawer unit fell off the wall. I wasn't wholly convinced by the match then, and the best I can say about it now is that at least it was enough to do the east wall and the part of the north wall contiguous to it in one whole new coat. But the 2009 "matched" paint has a definite grayish cast not present in the 2003 original. Usually, with the shape of the room and rarity of direct sunlight through the gable windows, the difference isn't noticeable, even at touch-up spots. But at five o'clock this morning, just above the cabinets sitting against my west wall, I noticed it all right. Don't know if I'd raked some unmixed bit of pigment off the bottom of the quart can, or if my brush or the wall itself wasn't clean, but those spots looked dirty. Flat-out smudgy, grubby dirty. As Mike Holmes would say, "Unacceptable!"

I came closer to get a better look, and that's when I saw it. Just visible above the surface of my sewing table, insinuating its winding way up the pale yellow wall, was a crack. A crack I hadn't noticed before. Not a bad crack, not a wide crack, but--

I looked under the sewing table. Oh, crappolitis! It was a bad crack. And in the run of things, a wide crack as well. And it had a brother crack along with it.

Oh! Oh! Oh! I thought I was finished with all that! I've taken it all downstairs to put away! And now it's back to joint compound and primer and paint and redoing the baseboard paint (which'll surely get mucked up in the process), and oh! oh! why can't I ever be done!?
____________________________________
*I've decided my bookshelves and the ledge outside the attic hatch need to be redone in oil based paint. And of course I still need to finish painting the back walls of the built-in bookcases.

Tiny Bubbles

2011-09-22T23:26:00.061-04:00

". . . in the paint,
Make me feel sloppy,
Like I'm doing what I shain't."

This morning the cosmic question arose in my reluctant brain: Which means more time and trouble: Continuing to use the can of dark yellow paint I already had to lay the second coat onto the walls of the study stairwell, or driving the fourteen-mile round trip to the paint store to see what Sherwin-Williams had to say about it?

The first would mean repeating the tedious process of laying the paint on with the brush, then coming after to roll it out. The second would take time, gasoline, and negotiating some very annoying roadworks on the approach to the store. Which, which, which?

Well, it wouldn't hurt to phone the shop and describe the problem. When I did, the clerk who answered said it didn't sound like the paint ("Duration Home" Interior Matte Latex) was behaving the way it should, and to bring it in for her to take a look.

Funny how having something definite to do on a problem can bring clarity. Without further ado, I jumped in the car and drove down.

I showed her both rollers I was using, the one with the 3/8" nap and the fine-celled foam one. I told her how with either, the paint was leaving bubbles in the painted surface. At first she said that was normal for the foam roller. I wasn't convinced of that: the wrapper said it was designed to leave the finish smooth. Then, she opened the can of paint and saw how runny it was. "Oh, yes! You have bubbles in here. Shouldn't be that way. We'll exchange it."

And she did. And I got the second coat of "Decisive Yellow" paint on the stairway walls with a roller. A new, higher-quality, roller. Couldn't help but notice how much more paint I used than the first time around. But maybe that was down to this new can of paint being the thickness it should be.

I can't tell for sure with the dropcloths down, but I think I'm going to like this color with the medium mahogany tone of the stairs.

This was encouraging, so I went on to remove the books from the righthand built-in bookcase and lay a first coat of the dark yellow onto its back walls. Ended up using the new brush for all of that. Too much mess and awkwardness getting back in there with a roller.

The lefthand case can wait till I can get the furniture on that wall pushed back and out of the way. A cabinet sitting out in the room is no place to pile all those books.

Nevertheless

2011-09-21T23:21:00.001-04:00

In spite of whatever I might find out about my attic storage space this Saturday morning, I'm still proceeding with getting the 3rd floor study repainted.

The stair stringer, which I stripped of paint last year when I was removing the old shellac from the treads and risers, ended up needing three coats of paint in addition to one coat of primer. Not sure why; maybe it's because the 3rd floor trim paint had thickened up in the can and I added too much water to thin it out. Seemed the right consistency to me.

Had a dickens of a time cutting in a clean edge between the stringer and the natural finish stairs. That's what happens with old construction: you get those tiny gaps that paint inevitably finds its way into. When I get done, I'll take a dental pick to it and see if I clean it up a bit.

I had second thoughts about painting some of that woodwork-- after I had two coats on and it was too late, of course. But the question would be, where would the natural finish stop? And the white, I knew, would look better once the walls on either side of the stairs were repainted.

They're getting a more intense shade of yellow than was on them before. I wanted them to pop when I first painted the study in 2003, but in the ambient light they looked practically the same as the pale yellow walls of the room.

Old color left; right, the new

And pop the new color (Sherwin Williams' "Decisive Yellow") certainly does. Especially on the panels of the attic hatch doors. There I didn't prime over the previous color ("Daffodil", I think it was), unlike with the stairway walls. Not having the white underneath definitely affects the tone. Funny, I was in the middle of priming the stairway walls when I heard it probably wasn't necessary, and new latex adheres better over (clean) old latex than it does over primer. Never mind. Those walls had so many patches, splashes of old shellac, scrape marks, and other blemishes, the primer was needed to even things out.

First coat of the "Decisive Yellow" went on tonight. Weird thing, I had to brush it on, because both rollers I tried to use left bubbles on the surface. The 9" one was one I used successfully on the ceiling, and the 4" one was a special no-texture foam roller that should have been perfect for keeping the brush marks out of the door panels. Didn't matter. I got bubbles. I let the brushed-on paint dry a little, then went over it gently with the 9" roller to get the brush marks out, but the paint shouldn't act that way.

Maybe I should call my Sherwin Williams store tomorrow and ask them what they think is going on, before I do the second coat.

Oh, No. Oh, No!

2011-09-16T16:16:00.001-04:00

I was all poised to make a cheerful post about how I was getting to the exciting part of my 3rd floor study repainting work. But about three hours ago I was wiping down the doors and frame of the hatch to the storage space, to see how much repainting they really need.* And I noticed little brown droplets at the top of the frame, inside where I don`t see it with the doors closed. They wiped right off with the sponge.

Wet. Wet where it shouldn't be wet.

I felt the paper of the batt insulation, which some previous owner installed between the roof rafters of that space and I never got rid of. Damp. I poked in the worklight. And where the paper is torn and the pink batting is visible, I see mold-- yes, nasty black mold-- in the fibers.

Oh, no, is my roof leaking? I don't have the money to deal with this!

I went outside, to see if I could get a view of my roof. From the next door neighbors' yard, the shingles look pretty good. No terrible curling or cupping that I can see. The neighbor next to them was in his back yard, so I joined him to see if he had any ideas and maybe to get a better look from there.

He doesn't think the overall shingle job looks bad, either. But I notice some definite waviness at the eaves . . . ice dams from past winters? Unlike my next door neighbor on the other side, who got up and repaired and reshingled his entire roof this summer, the neighbor two doors down can't claim too much proficiency in handyman skills. But he did have a useful piece of advice: That it's possible the problem may have been caused by the heavy rains we've had this summer, and it could be my homeowner's insurance might cover it. Yeah, maybe, but I don't want to call my agent to inquire and have my rates go up even if it turns out not to be insurable damage. True, he said, but I could get a home inspector out to take a look and see what the likely cause might be, before I make any insurance agent calls.

So. Don't know if I've followed the best procedure, but (after verifying that my home warranty company doesn't cover roof repairs at any time) I found a local roof inspector via the ServiceMagic site. Lots of reviews that were high over all. Soonest appointment that suits us both is a week from tomorrow at 8:30 AM, and I hope it doesn't rain so he can get a ladder up to the eaves and see what's happening at those gutters.

Meanwhile, I`ve cleared most of my boxes and bags and so on out of the storage space. None of it is wet. But I definitely have mold in that insulation, in the inch or so next to the brown paper. I wonder if the problem is due to inadequate ventilation in there, especially with all the rain we had last spring and this summer. I know it wasn't like that last January when the Comcast guys came up to put the cable in.

Got the dehumidifier in there running. And I don't think it'd be a bad idea to come in with the mildewcide and give those icky-looking batts a few squirts. My nose is itching a bit with that hatch door open.

Meanwhile, will I continue with the repainting? I think I shall. Those walls and trim shouldn't be affected by any roof work, and if I can get the study repainting mess straightened out and put away, I'll have more floor space if I have to clear out the closet so they can inspect the roof space on the other side of the house, too.

_______________________________________________________
*Ironically, I was listening to an episode of Holmes Inspection on my computer as I worked.

More Boring White Stuff

2011-09-14T23:02:00.105-04:00

White Thing No. 1: Got the paper tape spanning the gap between the left endwall drywall and the sloped ceiling finally mudded and sanded satisfactorily this past Friday the 9th. Yes, it took me four coats, as usual.

White Thing No. 2: Primer went on on Monday. Silly of me to use the passive voice saying that, since I had to put in a lot of work, starting with the adjustable ladder. Original idea was to set it up on the stairs to get at the sloped ceiling above it, but with the winders I couldn't find a place where the ladder was secure. I have quite an artistic new set of bruises on my legs from the time I tried to extend one side of the ladder down the stairs, thought better of it, and pulled it back up-- all while trying to keep both legs of the upper side on the slippery, drop-clothed-covered winder. Ended up laying the ladder flat between the landing at the top of the stairs and the ledge on the exterior wall opposite, and using it as a scaffold. Not ideal: still a lot of reaching and working blind, but better than nothing.

Only thing, I had the ladder down and myself virtually trapped upstairs when I discovered that the remaining primer had thickened up a bit. I simply did not care to move the ladder to get downstairs for water to mix in, so I used it as-is. Didn't go very far and didn't go on well. Wouldn't have gone on well anyway, since that study ceiling is full of dips and curves and irregularities, not a flat surface in the place. Some of this is by design; some of it is due to the way the rafters have settled over the decades. None of it made working a roller any easier or more fun.

Of course I had to go back to Lowe's for more primer. (Ironic, since last night I discovered a practically full can of primer in the basement). Thanks to more disused muscles and their contortions, finished up the priming and left it to dry.

White Thing No. 3: First and hopefully only coat of "Pearly White" paint onto the study ceiling and upper end walls. Best fun here is working with inadequate light. Couldn't use the ceiling fixture, since it was hanging from its wires and swathed in brown paper. Couldn't use the floor lamp with its open shade: I already destroyed one three-way bulb last week splashing water on it while wet sanding. It was draped with a spare shirt jacket. No, I was restricted to the halogen work light, and the Luxo lamp. The new color is a little yellower than the previous, so you could sort of tell which parts of the ceiling had been repainted, but it was hard. More contortions, more working around strange ceiling topography, more sore muscles. Found myself repeating, "I don't wanna do this, I don't wanna do this!" as I did it anyway.

White Thing(s) No. 4: No, I didn't get the study ceiling pearly-whited in one coat. Didn't have enough paint left to do a full second coat (sigh of guilty relief), but kept myself plenty busy this afternoon noticing thin spots and spots where the sheen wasn't the same and so on, and coming to the rescue with roller and tray and another dollop of the "Pearly White." Of course, one doesn't, on that ceiling, notice the next problem area until one has taken all the tools down to the 2nd floor bathroom and has everything rinsed out and wet.

Still, got in a tiny bit of what was actually on the agenda for today. The little chair rail/dado trim that separates the white of the ceiling from the yellow of the wall is now painted. On the east side. I read on the This Old House website that it can actually help you cut in the wall color if you paint the trim first and lap the paint over a little bit onto the wall surface. Happy enough to try it, since it removed the need for awkward cutting in in difficult to reach places. I was doing enough acrobatics balancing myself over the stairwell as it was.

Third and final white thing for today was more primer, this time brushed on walls and woodwork where needed. Hope I got all the messy spots on the yellow wall on the east. I really need to get it painted tomorrow.

This all really is Boring White Stuff. Ever since the ceiling plaster started coming down in 2007, I've been looking forward to having it mended, whole, and repainted. Now it's done, and I don't feel much of a sense of accomplishment. Shouldn't it have been like this all along?

I'll likely feel better when all the drop cloths are out and the furniture is pushed back where it belongs. Hope I will, at least.

A shot of what was there when I first looked at the house, just for fun

A Bird in a Guilted Cage

2011-09-05T17:02:00.128-04:00

I confess it: When I moved into the Sow's Ear eight years ago, I painted over the wallpaper on the 3rd floor. Lately, I've been excusing myself by saying that I had to get my home study set up as soon as possible so I could hit the ground running on my new pastor's job. But the fact is that though I moved in in mid-September, it was more like late October before I got it all finished and the furniture and books were fully arranged. I had plenty of time to remove the wallpaper, if I'd been so inclined. But I wasn't.

So it's eight years later. And I've been working away (off and on) since the middle of August patching, mending, readhering the ceiling plaster up there. Finally, about a week ago, I gave it a good look and declared the job done. Time the get out the primer.

Except for one thing.

At the south end of my study is a window, and on either side of the window are two closets, their doors perpendicular to the window wall. When you look inside the closets, you see that their other walls are painted wood plank. On the room side, each of these walls has a built-in bookcase to the height of about four feet, and above these is a triangle of drywall.

These triangles of drywall had wallpaper on them when I moved in, and I painted them-- I painted over them-- to match the ceiling. The bit above the righthand bookcase looked all right. But the one to the left was a bubbly mess. It's been hiding behind my reference books for years, but now, here it was, staring me in the face and laughing at me.

Should I just repaint, put back the books, and go on ignoring it? Did I have to strip the wallpaper on that portion? Or could I just open up one or two of the bigger bubbles and fill them with joint compound? I blush to admit that that's what I did.

But the nagging guilt wouldn't go away. It looked so awful, the paper must've been like that before, and I'd painted over it! And in the angle where the wall meets the sloped ceiling, the paint-stiffened paper curled distortedly, as if whoever hung it had thought to paper the ceiling, too, and at the last minute changed his mind. Was I going to let this abomination remain? Was I going to connive at this transgression of every rule of home renovation?

For a few days-- mea culpa!-- I was. But last Friday I knew I was trapped. I got out the Paper Tiger, the spray bottle of vinegar and hot water, and the 5-in-1, and had at it. For my sins, that paper was nasty hard to remove. Took several applications and a lot of time to get it all.

I found out why the wallpaper was so ineptly applied at the top. It had nothing to adhere to. There was a gap ranging from an eighth to a good half of an inch between the wall and the ceiling, and nobody had bothered to tape it, they'd just filled the joint the best they could with caulk (now hard and crumbling) and covered it with the wallpaper.

Huh. I discovered the same lame technique when I painted my kitchen in 2004. Bought some drywall tape to take care of the problem then; maybe the rest of it was down in my workshop.

Couldn't find it anywhere. So I tried to make do with a length of foam backer bead stuffed in and covered over with spackle.

Nope, that didn't make it. So this morning I was on for yet another trip to Lowe's, to get a new roll of paper drywall tape. It's on now, it's bedded, and we'll see how much fiddling it's going to take me to get it properly mudded. I bought a corner trowel once, but decided I'd never use it, and took it back. Ha. If only.

Nevertheless, the now-paperless wall looks so much cleaner and freer and better than it did before. Te absolvo.

Does this mean I'm going to be thoroughly virtuous and remove the rest of the painted wallpaper before I recoat it?

NO.

Here We Go Again

2011-09-01T21:53:00.001-04:00

The o-rings for the water softener meter-bypass valve connection came Tuesday morning. By now all the plumbing aligns, and a good shove got the unit seated and joy, joy, no leaks there.

Yesterday I called Charlie Moore at the Ohio Pure Water Company and had him walk me through the process of setting the meter for the right number of gallons per regeneration cycle. Mine is set to regenerate every eight to ten days. I'm a little concerned that the program wheel isn't engaging, though; at least, it hasn't shown any water usage since yesterday. I'll check it tomorrow and call if nothing has changed.

What has changed is that the blankety-blanked elbow joint between the outflow riser and the pre-existing horizontal run above the water softener is leaking again. Noticed it when I was on the phone with Mr. Moore. Could very well be that the water wasn't totally out of the old pipe. Or the new one, either.

I'm not panicking because those runs won't be compromised by being shortened up when the bad joint is cut out. So I made yet another trip to Lowe's last yesterday afternoon for yet more copper fittings. I was actually planning to buy me a torch and some solder and redo it myself, but the salesman convinced me to try a GatorBite instead.

GatorBite won't do, though. There's too many drips and bumps of excess solder on those pipes. In any event, Steve* says he'll try to come over after church on Sunday and take care of it. (I bought the fittings for him to do it, don't you worry.) I won't be able to be there myself, since I'm preaching way down in West Virginia and won't be home before he leaves, probably. I'm not totally happy with that, because I'd like to see what he does and how he does it. But I need to be grateful for what I'm given.

In the meantime, I've got the leaky joint plastered with plumber's putty, wrapped in duct tape, wound with a rag, wrapped with more duct tape, clamped, and wound again with an old piece of terry cloth towel. And I've laid a towel over the WS plumbing and bypass valve, to catch any drips before they hit the floor. It's a slow enough leak that so far the piece of towel around the pipe and the dehumidifier are taking care of most of it. But I'm not embarking on any big laundry campaigns until the leak is fixed.

And if Steve can't do it, I'll bring in the Big Guns: A real, live, professional PLUMBER.

Five Thirty-seconds of an Inch

2011-08-27T16:38:00.272-04:00

The angle makes it look even worse

This past Thursday, that was the difference between having my new water softener installed and having to wait till sometime early next week.

To understand the problem, you have to be able to visualize how the Fleck 2510 valve is put together. Starting with the basement wall, there is

The copper plumbing (by owner). Two stubs stick out perpendicularly from the wall and make a permanent connection by way of male connectors with . . .
The Fleck stainless steel bypass valve. This has female connectors on both the wall and room sides, and it connects with . . .
The meter. It's a dome-shaped part made of heavy black plastic and equipped fore and aft with male connectors. On each side there are stainless steel clips with hex-headed screws, four in all, that secure the connections. On the room side, the meter fits into . . .
The valve body. This is what actually screws into the top of the resin tank, and it's attached somehow to . . .
The capacity and timing mechanism/display. This is a large retangular thing with a door that swings open and allows you to make your settings.

Well. On Thursday afternoon the new plumbing finally was tight, I'd loaded the brine tank with salt and the softener tank with resin, and put the prescribed amount of water in both. Following the instructions, I screwed the valve body (with timing mechanism and meter attached) onto the resin tank. Then I scootched the assembly so the male connectors out the back of the meter were lined up with the female connectors of the bypass valve.

They should have aligned perfectly and allowed me to shove the valve assembly right in. But somehow, maybe it was when Steve* spliced the riser pipe when he redid the plumbing into the bypass valve, the connectors out the back of the meter were just about 5/32" too high. I could not make them go into the openings of the bypass valve.

So I got an idea. Maybe if I detached the meter from the valve body and slid it free into the bypass valve, that'd give me more leverage to make the critical connection between the meter and the valve body. So I started taking off the clips between the two. But before I got the second one off, I had misgivings. What if I tried to slope the bypass and the meter up to force the connection, and broke something? Besides, look at those risers against the wall. They go into horizontal runs up in the space between two joists. No reason why I can't get some give there, correct?

I quickly screwed the clips between the meter and the valve body back in, and went outside to see if I could find me some muscle.

Hmm. Next door neighbors are sometimes at home during the afternoon, but not today. Try the people on the corner. Good. Their big door is open.

The only one at home was the mother of the man of the house, helping them clean after their floors were refinished. But she was willing to come over and push up the inlet and outflow pipes for me while I manhandled the tank and valve, and it was enough. I gave it a push and the connectors went in. Quickly, I screwed in the other two clips, thanked her sincerely for her help, and let her get back to her own project.

All right, all I needed to do now was retighten the wall clips I'd unscrewed to allow the risers to move . . . okay, done . . . and make sure the unit was sitting solidly and wasn't wobbly . . . and finish connecting the line to the brine tank . . . and thread the drain hoses through the hold-down on the edge of the laundry sink. Done and done and done. Then finally, finally, at 1:55 last Thursday afternoon, I was ready to pull the handle on the bypass valve and have soft water for the first time since last April and maybe before.

Wait a minute. Directions say I have to open the cold side of the laundry sink faucet first. Okay. All right, pull the handle, gently, gently, slowly, slowly, from Bypass the Service, and et voila! the water began to run in the inlet and out the outflow and my new Fleck 2510 40,000-grain water softener at last was in service!

A few minutes later, I went to admire it. What's this? A little drip of moisture between the bypass valve and the meter on the inlet side? I took another look at the directions. Oh! I was supposed to open all the faucets in the house and make sure the air pressure was equalized or something. I'd thought that wouldn't be necessary, since I'd been using all the faucets on the bypass since Wednesday morning. Guess I was wrong.

Went up and down and ran all the faucets and flushed both johns. Yeah, there was still air in the system. Back down the basement and eased the handle back to Service and waited a few minutes. Phooey, there was still a drip between the bypass and the meter. And it actually seemed worse.

Huh. Then I remembered that the screw hadn't gone in sweetly when I was putting the clip back on the inlet side. I pushed the handle back to Bypass, and began to ease the screw out. But even with it gone, the clip had to be pried off with the tip of a screwdriver.

Fffllllppppzzzztt! Water on the wall, on the floor, on the tank, on me. Quite a force, water pressure. And yeah, I guess that clip was on crooked. I got out a bucket, and a towel, wiped everything dry, and pushed the bypass valve and the meter together better. Good. This time the clip went on nicely, the screw screwed in straight, and I redid the one on the outflow side as well.

Handle back to Service, water flowing through again, all should be well.

A few minutes passed. Oh, crumb! The drip was still there between the bypass and the meter, and now I had a regular little jet squirting out between the meter and the valve body on the inlet side! Didn't I get those clips back on straight? Or was this because I still had air in the tank?

Put in a call to the Ohio Pure Water people. I guess they were at lunch, because I got the answering machine.

Back down the basement. Went through the drill again. Unscrew the clip. Clip is stuck. Pry off the clip, trying to do it carefully.

Fffllllppppzzzztt!

Wiped everything up again, firmed up the connection, and reattached the clip. Turned the flow back on. No more leak on the inlet side between the meter and the valve body. But it was still dripping between the bypass and the meter on the inlet side. If the clip was on right, it should wiggle, just a bit. It wouldn't wiggle. Okay, loosen it up again . . . Fffllllppppzzzztt! Wet, wet, wet!

A little before 3:00, Jean at Ohio Pure Water called me back. She said there's a chance the o-rings on the wall side of the meter got damaged when I pushed the connectors into the bypass valve. No problem, she'd put a couple of new ones to go out in the mail tomorrow morning.

They'll get here by Monday at the earliest, since their office isn't in Ohio, as I'd thought, but down in Texas (the billing office and warehouse are in Ohio).

Of course I had to keep poking at it . . . I mean, was that an ooze I felt between the meter and the valve body on the outflow side? Didn't I have that clip on straight, either?

Water's on bypass already . . . Unscrew the clip . . . Easy, easy . . . Fffllllppppppppzzzzzzzzzztt!

Wow! I got that one right in the face! The force of the blowout pushed the whole unit, valve body, timing mechanism, tank, resin, water, and all, a good inch or more away from the meter into the room! I again removed the clip from the inlet side and tried pushing everything back together. But I was afraid of harming this strange ring-like piece of black plastic hanging out of the outflow orifice of the valve body and pretty soon I stopped.

That should have been the end of playing with the water softener for Thursday. But I went upstairs and when I came down again, that ring-like piece was nowhere to be found. I looked everywhere and couldn't lay eyes on it! I'd taken a photo when the connection first blew, and it was definitely there then, but now, forget it.

I called Jean back. I ended up sending her a copy of the photo, labelled to show the piece I was referring to. She said she'd show it to Charlie, tech guy and co-owner, who'd be able to tell me what it was.

Charlie didn't get back to me Thursday afternoon-- out of the office-- but I spoke to him yesterday morning. The strange circular piece was the rim of a device that focusses the outflow or something, and I guess I'd managed to push it back into the orifice of the valve body. Just as well that I spoke to him, because whoever put my 2510 valve together at the factory put that device in the wrong way. It should sit with the point of the conical strainer thingy pointing out, in the direction of flow.

Well, hallelujah. I hadn't broken anything after all!

I suppose while I'm waiting I could go ahead and redo the connection between the meter and the valve body. And it's just possible that there's nothing wrong with the o-rings and once I get the clips all in straight I'll have a functioning water softener with no leaks. But I'm not messing with it. I'll wait till the new rings get here next week, and deal with it all then.

In the meantime, I'll enjoy the job the new whole-house water filter is doing. No more yellow water! No more chlorine stink! No more orangey flakes floating in the bottom of my tea kettle! When it comes down to it, adding the filter in was the reason for all this bother and hassle and wait, and I'd say it was worth it.

Getting There

2011-08-24T23:40:00.005-04:00

I'm almost done getting everything put together to get my new water filter and softener system up and running. Steve* made it over (with the kids) by 9:15 or so to correct the problem with the stems going into the back of the bypass valve. Since the riser pipe had to be cut to get rid of the ends with bad solder on them, he used the unions I bought this morning at Lowe's and a couple more sections of the 3/4" tubing. (I think we've used nearly all the 10' length I bought). Didn't have to replace the elbows, but if we had, I'd bought them. (Yay for me.)

So everything got soldered in the right way and Steve drilled the pipe hanger/retainers into the wall at convenient brick joints, so the whole system doesn't get knocked into the next county every time I bump my head on the valve. We turned the water back on, Steve looked at his work, and said, "Great! No leaks! I always have at least one!"

But not this time, it appeared. This time, solder joint success at the first go.

Apparently.

He and the kids leave, and I go to enjoy the luxury of a toilet that actually flushed. I come out of the basement bathroom, and go to admire the work. Yes, it was messy as to solder drips and so forth, but it was done! But wait a minute. There's water on top of the bypass valve. I look up. Oh, no. There is a leak, up above, coming from the elbow at the top of the outflow riser.

Called Steve to let him know. He said, "There's things I have to do today, but I'll come take care of it tomorrow. Put a bucket under it." I wrapped the leaky joint in a strip of the old faded pink and white towel that had belonged to my grandmother (I remember back in the early 1960s when that towel was bright and new), then encased towel and pipe in the last of my duct tape.

There's a wire that connects the inside meter with the outside one the Borough reads, and we'd pushed it up out of the way so it wouldn't get burned by the torch. If I was planning on running water despite the leak, I needed to reconnect it. Got up on my stool, and as I was sliding the wire and its plastic tie down the pipe, I felt, oh, no, water at an upper joint. In the elbow about 2" away from the plastic radon exhaust pipe. It would be in an inconvenient place, wouldn't it? But maybe why that's why it's leaking.

About that time, Steve called and said frankly, "We're coming back to take care of that leak now. I want to get this done and over with."

"Good, because there's actually two leaks."

Steve, Stevie*, and Letty* showed up soon, and Steve was able to redo the joint above the bypass valve so it was sound. And he thought he got the one above the water meter taken care of, too.

They all left. I put away tools, used some more water. About a half hour passed. I was up on the stool again, cleaning the hardened splashes of solder off the top of the meter, when I felt, oh, no, drip, drip, drip! This time, more frequent and forceful than before. This is not a place I can put a bucket under. I called Steve again.

And shortly after lunch, back they came. And Steve tried it again. He loaded on so much solder the elbow looked like a messy silver-plating job. Then we waited.

Steve felt the joint. "Yeah, it's still wet."

All was not lost, however. Because of where that assembly is (connected at the bottom to flexible line leading from the outlet side of the water filter), we could afford to cut out a bit of both the horizontal and vertical runs and eliminate the bad elbow. And because I bought three elbows first thing this morning, just in case, we had one to use.

Steve made one more attempt, this time with the new fitting. It's several hours later, and the joint seems to be sound. No side of leakage. Hurray!

Anyway, with one thing and the other, it was very late this evening before I got downstairs to actually finish installing the equipment. This mainly involved fitting and routing plastic drain lines and filling the softener tank with water and resin (Safety Note: Sweep up any resin beads that fall on the floor as quickly as possible. They're slick and dangerous underfoot).

It'd be nice to say I was finished putting everything together, with or without setting the meters and timers, and the treated water is beginning to flow. But there are a couple of things still:

a) I overlooked the fact that this brine tank is bigger than the one on my old Kenmore. The instructions say, right there, "add 3-4 bags of . . . salt." I only bought two.

Then, b) There's a part, a top distributor basket, that the instructions say I'm supposed to fit to the top of the riser tube before screwing that big honking 2510 Fleck meter on top of the softener tank. Or rather, there's not a part. I've either misplaced it since June, or they didn't send me one. The directions say this device is used "when the unit is subjected to higher than normal water pressures . . . which are present in a few areas of the U.S." Maybe my area is not one of them (my water pressure is normal), so it didn't come in my shipment. I'm making no assumptions; I'm going to call the Ohio Pure Water people about it in the morning.

After I've gone back to Lowe's for more salt.

Well, Almost

2011-08-23T23:09:00.020-04:00

I got my new Fleck water treatment system installed today. Almost.

My friend Hannah's* husband Steve* came over this morning with their kids Stevie* and Letty* and by 2:45 or so had all the piping soldered and in place before he had to run to keep another obligation. All I had to do then was finish replacing the old or missing hangers and fill the filter and softener with media and water and set them going.

Only one thing: Steve's* not big on reading instructions, and though I printed out the directions last Saturday and skimmed them over, it slipped my mind to tell him one very important thing as I was assisting today: You have to have the stainless steel bypass valve in the "Service" position before inserting the horizontal input and output fittings into it. So there I was early this evening: I'd gotten the filter tank all filled with media and water (from my neighbors' hose tap) and fitted with its valve, and I'd connected it into the water system with flexible connectors. Now I could turn on and use my own water to finish filling the brine and softener tanks, assuming that the softener bypass valve, which as yet was hanging off the pipes separate from the meter and the tank, was on "Bypass." It was, but from my reaction you would not have thought so.

"Oh, carp!!" And I grabbed the instructions. Oh, carp, carp, carp. Steve had put the piping in with the valve in the wrong position, and now I couldn't turn it to "Service." I tried calling the Ohio Pure Water people for advice, but it was after 6:00 and their phone was on the machine.

Steve came over later this evening and we took the stems off, unsoldering the 90 degree elbows from the vertical risers.

Well, you can guess what happened. It's why this will be a short post, for me, with a paucity of pictures. We couldn't get the elbows back onto the bottom of the verticals. And of course, despite I'm embarrassed to say how many trips back and forth to Home Depot and Lowe's, I didn't have any spare 90 degree fittings lying around. And it probable doesn't matter, since Steve thinks he'll probably have to cut off the soldery ends of the verticals anyway. Meaning we'll need a couple of unions, too.

Steve plans to be over here at 9:00 tomorrow morning "to get this done and over with." So guess who has to be up and over to the local Lowe's at the crack of dawn?
___________________________
>As it turns out, Steve's return trip was necessary anyway. When I'd gotten it through my head that a) the softener valve was in the Bypass position, and b) that meant I could safely turn on the water, I found that he'd turned the service entrance valve off so hard that I couldn't budge the handle. It's still off till tomorrow, and I'm making do with water I put aside for this project, and hand sanitizer.

"A Stitch in Time . . . " . . . or Overkill?

2011-08-20T00:37:00.006-04:00

Looks like it's going to be Tuesday morning before I can even think of priming and painting my Study ceiling.

Why? you ask.

Because earlier this evening (Friday) I was taking out the washers from the plaster repair I did on Wednesday, and I noticed three things:

The screws were still a little sticky. Oh-oh. The adhesive I used in those was from the tube I'd cut open two years ago. Does it go bad? Maybe I'd better leave the rest of those washers in awhile longer, to make sure the glue is really cured.
Yes, that crack was a paper tape repair that was coming loose. No telling why it chose to delaminate now, but I should be grateful it did. Could've popped off after I'd repainted the whole ceiling. At any rate, once I get the tape fragments and the loose paint layer and skim coat off, it's going to take a few coats of spackle/joint compound to smooth off. At least. And . . .
I was pushing on the plaster in that area. Guess what. Yeah, it gave. Obviously, I didn't get it all secured on Wednesday. The gap wasn't much, maybe an eighth of an inch of so, but enough to make me want to stop it now.

So around 9:00 I did the process and drilled in another handful of Big Wally washers, conditioner and adhesive behind.

Couple of hours later, I'm doing the push test again. Did I just feel some give in the area around where I just did the previous repair? Yes. Guess I needed closer coverage. So I went through the process again.

Hour later (by this time it's nearly midnight), I examined the ceiling slope and got nervous about a vertical crack farther into the room. Taped up the dropcloth and drilled a couple of exploratory holes. Yep, about an eighth of an inch between the lath and the plaster. Better do it now or be sorry later. Ten more holes drilled and vacuumed out, ten more holes conditioned and squirted with adhesive, ten more washers power-screwed in.

So let's do the calculations: Allowing the full 48 hours for the newest ones to cure (and I think I'd better, this being a ceiling), that puts me to after midnight Sunday night. Maybe I might get two coats of spackle in the holes applied, dried, and smoothed down on Monday. Maybe. And a last coat over the messy spot Monday night.

Which brings me to Tuesday.

But nothing's getting done on the 3rd floor on Tuesday, because that's the day my friend Hannah's* husband Steve* has said he's going to come over and help me install my water softener and filter.†

Wednesday, maybe?
_______________________________
†My friend Frieda's* son Mike*, who incidentally is Hannah and Steve's nephew, called me last Saturday and told me his schedule wouldn't allow him to get to it till next winter. So Steve's going to tackle it, and I hope he doesn't do it all, but teaches me how to solder.

Two Steps Forward, One Step Back

2011-08-17T23:50:00.003-04:00

Or is that "one step forward, two steps back"?

No priming got done in the 3rd floor Study today, and none will till sometime on Friday.

Or not.

It's not so much that I've gotten perfectionistic about the ceiling patches I've been working on. It's true that I've wet sanded and reapplied at least two more coats of spackle today, but that's because in the stark light of day I was able to see a lot of irregularities I missed last night.

No, something else is causing the slowdown.

Ever since the Great Plaster Disaster of 2007-2009, I've had the nervous habit of pushing on the sloped plaster ceiling of my Study wherever I notice a hairline crack. I've had enough of crashing plaster for one house, and while I enjoy the pillowy, organic effect of my 3rd floor ceiling, I need to know, and know right away, if any curve or bow actually means key failure and imminent doom.

Enlarge to see cracks. Sort of.

So I push, and I wonder, "Did that give, or was that just my fingers flexing?" Worrywart! It's just the fingers. But early this afternoon, I was going round with the wet sponges smoothing out the spackle I applied last night, and there, towards the bottom of the ceiling slope on the northwestern side of the room, I saw a horizontal crack I hadn't noticed before. Actually, it looked like some previous owner had used paper tape for a repair, and it'd picked now to begin to come loose. Should I peel it and see what happens? No!! Give it the push test.

Oh, dear. That gave. That plaster definitely gave.

All right, I know what to do. Time to call in Big Wally.

Downstairs I go. Plastic dropcloths from the back porch. Painter's tape and the unopened box of PlasterMagic adhesive from the living room. Drill, drill bit, caulking gun, Big Wally's conditioner and anchors (with screws) from the basement workshop.

But wait a minute. Where was the 3/16" masonry bit? It should be in the top drawer next to the workbench. And where, o where did I put the rest of my Big Wally's supplies?

Eventually I found the latter in their box underneath the workbench, safely out of the way. But I could not find that drill bit anywhere.

O well. I needed to go to Home Depot anyway to exchange that 10' length of copper tubing (that's another story). So off I went, and while standing in the tool aisle consulting with the clerk, I realized that, Idiot! I'd been suffering from some sort of brain glitch and visualizing a three-eighths inch bit when I'd searched that drawer. My 3/16" bit had been in plain sight all along.

No matter. It was probably dull anyway. It certainly is dirty. And there was that copper to take care of.

Once I got home, I had the target area of the Study ceiling drilled and conditioned in good time (something to do while the oven was preheating for my supper pizza). Earlier, I'd been happy to find one full tube and one partial tube of Big Wally's adhesive in the box under the workbench, the latter still in the spare caulking gun. When it came time to inject it into the holes, I gave the handle a good hard squeeze to clear out the dried stuff from the tip, asking myself, "I wonder if this adhesive is still good and liquid?"

Gray smudges are on the camera lens, alas!

Whoop!!* Yes, judging from what ended up spattered around the wall and on the file cabinet, it was. That's when I realized that the bucket of water and the sponge needed to be brought back upstairs.

But that didn't take long to clean up, and I had the adhesive injected and the anchors screwed in in time for me to go down and eat my pizza. And for my boikitteh Huw to get the oven door fully open and steal a piece, but that's another another story.

Got the repairs done a little before 6:00, which, if I gave the adhesive the minimum twenty-four hours to cure (directions say 24 to 48), would mean I could remove the anchors tomorrow evening, spackle over the holes, and maybe prime on Friday.

But now that looks doubtful, doubtful indeed. For later this evening, I was doing the push test again. And even though I indulged in what surely is overkill in the spacing of my holes and anchors, I was still detecting some give. And then I let my nosy fingers range to the left, especially around another, vertical, hairline crack. Push, push. Oh, dear. Let's put the drill bit back in and check. Oh, dear, oh, dear. That bit was going in way too far. In a lot of places. Definitely some significant plaster-lath separation along that crack, and in the field between it and my earlier repair.

It's treated now, and the only thing flexing in the push test is my fingers. But the earliest I could think of taking out the anchors would be sometime Friday morning. And the way spackle tends to sink in holes, that'll mean at least two applications to get them smoothly filled. So Saturday, maybe, at the earliest, to be thinking about primer?

I can always amuse myself teaching myself how to sweat copper pipe in the meantime.
________________________
*Not the word I actually used.

Yeah, I Know, I Know!

2011-08-17T01:35:00.001-04:00

I admit it. I've been putting off patching my Study ceiling so it can be repainted.

In the first place, it's hot up there these summer days. Even if I ran the air conditioning in my house-- which I don't-- it wouldn't adequately cool the third floor. Last month sometime I went at the problem area to some extent with the 5-in-1, but that's where it's remained.

But all right, it's been cooler lately. But there are so many other, more fun, things to do downstairs. And sometimes I'm actually working. For money! So that doesn't get the ceiling patched.

Last Friday, however, I finished clearing the papers, magazines, files, tchotchkes, and so forth off the horizontal surfaces and stashed them down in the guest bedroom. And yesterday, armed with the dull-razor-blade scraper, I took the long walk up the two flights and went to work removing anything else that was still loose.

Ha. I knew it. It never ends. I thought I was dealing with bubbling in the finish layer of the plaster. No. What had bubbled was the paint, all five or six layers of it, in various lovely shades of white and pink and green. This was good in a way. Much better than failing plaster. But if the goal is to remove all the paint that's "loose," the project can go on forever. There's no end of what that blade can get under.

Finally convinced myself it'd actually be a good thing if the joint compound could seep under the raw edge of the old paint a little. And headed down the basement for the joint compound.

Ah. There we have it. Another big reason for my procrastination. I knew it, I knew it, that big five gallon tub of joint compound was moldy. OK, so it was two and a half years old. But the lid was on so tight I could hardly pry it off. So why should it be moldy? But it was, I wasn't about to put any of it on my ceiling, so it was off to Lowe's last evening for a less-ambitious quart of vinyl spackle.

Got that on last night. It never goes on smoothly, no, it does not. Surprise, finish plastering really is an art and profession. Tonight's task was wet-sanding the first, rough coat, and oh! I do not enjoy that. Not fun, not fun, not fun. And since I applied the second coat of spackle this evening, I have to do the sanding thing again tomorrow.

(Grumble-grumble-rumble)

But hey, once that's done, it's time for primer! And paint!

Once some very heavy pieces of furniture get moved. And the trim to be repainted gets washed. And everything gets festooned in drop cloths and painter's tape.

(Grumble-grumble-rumble)

Study in White, Gray, and Copper. And a Little Beige.

2011-08-02T22:26:00.002-04:00

Since I posted last, I've taken an obligatory break from house renovating. Had a couple of big exams to study for. Found out today that I passed the first one, but I'm still waiting for the results of the one I took a week after that.

But now I've got that behind me,* I've made some progress. Not a lot of progress, but some.

Which is to say that last Wednesday, I got the coat of gritted Sherwin-Williams "Pearl White" onto the basement stair wall. It was probably a good thing to let the primer sit since the first week in July. That way I could see if any water stains bled through. None did. Missed a few spots, which I touched up on Saturday. And it's nice that with the normal basement lighting and the radon exhaust pipe in the corner, the new.y-painted outside wall and the (unmildewy part of the) unrepainted interior wall match up pretty well. I think I'd have to call attention to it for anyone else to notice they weren't the same.

This past Saturday I laid on the first coat of floor paint at the foot of the stairs. Turned out the previous owners' can of Sear's "Natural Slate Gray" was not only still good, it was unopened and yet never used. No, the color doesn't match the rest of the floor in the central part of the basement. But from what I discovered when I gave the target area a good scrubbing Friday evening, it would have, once. I only repainted a piece about 3.5 ft. by 6.5 ft. That's all the floor space down there that's bare! And it's enough so it looks all right from the upper landing.

Got a second coat of the gray on this evening. It needed it. It also needed two or three days for the first coat to fully dry. I keep the dehumidifier going down there, but even so, it's humid these summer days. I'll give the second coat time to dry, too, then move the metal pantry shelf back against the wall. And touch up where its legs were.

That gray floor paint is odd, though. I guess I'm used to the variegated appearance of the old floor, with the old red paint showing through along with glimpses of bare concrete under that, and dirt and miscellaneous spills over all. I can't capture the effect with my current camera, but believe me, I look down from the landing and it seems that my basement stairs go down into a gray pool, whose uniform surface hides strange life. I'm almost glad I have to step over the side stringer of the stairs to keep from treading on it. I almost feel I'd splash in or some scaly gray hand would break the surface, grasp my ankle, and pull me down.

As for the copper, I made my trip to the Home Depot on Saturday and got the tubing and fittings to install my new water filter and softener. My friend Frieda's* son Mike* dropped by a week or two ago, and says he can do it, but isn't sure when-- it's a longer job than he'd expected. And now I've got the materials for whenever he can make the time for me.

At least, I thought I did. Talked to an older guy after church on Sunday, a man who's been doing general contracting of the residential sort all his life, and he tells me that Home Depot copper is all seconds, and I should return it and get it at a plumbing supply store instead. Oh, joy. Anybody else hear anything like that? I'm not unwilling to take his advice, but it was such a pain getting that 10 ft. piece of tubing home in my PT Cruiser, and now I've got to rope it in again and take it back? And how am I supposed to explain why I'm bringing it all back? And then I'd have to price out the local plumbing supply stores. Fun, fun, fun. Maybe I should talk to Mike and see what he thinks.

And the little bit of beige? Maybe that should be "a little less beige." Studying eight to ten hours a day for three straight weeks can get a little intense. I didn't dare take a break online. So I'd vary the routine by wandering around my dining and living rooms peeling off whatever pieces of old beige wallpaper that were willing to come loose. I was pleased to see it was coming off the drywalled-over portions almost as well as it did off the plaster. Maybe I won't have to order any special remover solvent after all.
_____________________________
*Should say, "Now that I've got that behind me for now." These tests are in two parts each, and while I did very well on the multiple choice part of the second one, I didn't finish the essay in part two, and I'm told that spells certain doom. So I'm looking at applying for a retake and trying again.

It Never Ends

2011-07-07T23:40:00.011-04:00

It occurred to me that none of the pictures from the 29th showed both white walls. There they are, though not with the floor repainted.

That got finished up last Thursday and Friday. Ended up repainting about a quarter of the laundry room floor, so the enamel table can go back and stay back, not to mention the new brine tank.

(Here's a highly-instructive progress shot of the corner where the water softener used to be. No more red and gray. [Please disregard the smudges from the camera lens: it needs cleaned.])

To my massive annoyance, between the first and second coats of pale green floor paint, I noticed that iron water stains in the mortar were showing through here and there on my nice, clean new paint job. Tackled them with a spray can of aluminum paint (as much as I hate to put anything nonbreatheable on my basement walls). Of course that meant another round of primer and paint. Of course.

It's taken care of now, so as soon as my friend's son gets back from vacation, he should be coming over and maybe we'll make some progress towards actually getting the water treatment equipment installed.

However. However. It's true, I spent Sunday through Tuesday in the garden, back and front, putting in the last of this season's annuals (yes, they are the last! Haven't I said so!?). But I've been going up and down my basement stairs past a very disgusting and grotty brick foundation wall, and I've been poking at that wall here and there, and chipping loose paint off that wall, and I've been thinking how awful that wall looks in comparison to the Two White Walls in the laundry room. And yesterday I said to myself, "To hell with it. Something has to be done!"

After scraping, before scrubbing

Scraped as much old paint off it as I could persuade to flake off. I regret to say that was a great deal. Usual scrub-down with TSP and bleach, then another scrub-down with DampRid. Dirty, dirty, dirty.

Primed it this evening, along with six brick courses of the wall perpendicular to it, which also looked a little grungy at the foot. (Not doing that whole wall now. Too much junk to move. Too much junk that presently can't be moved.) Looks a lot better with just the primer on, but I can't be surprised if this wall should need a spritz or two from the aluminum paint can as well.

I've sometimes thought that if and when I sell this house I'd refer prospective buyers to this blog to show them what I've done to the place. And I wish I had nothing but a bone-dry basement to report. A local dry-basement expert told me a few years ago that my biggest problem is humid air and not water infiltration, and what I need is to keep running the dehumidifier. The fact that I had mildew stains on the perpendicular wall supports this position, since it's an inside wall-- my workshop is on the other side. Still, I'd be a lot more complacent on the basement waterproofing subject if I could get all the brick joints repointed. I mean, it couldn't hurt.

One thing I know for sure is that the two places where the actual bricks show signs of water damage, they're right under the outdoor water faucets-- or in the case of the backyard tap, where it used to be before the POs-1 built the screened-in deck. Think of nearly 100 years of leaky hoses and insufficiently-closed spigots . . . And at least the brick in question was hard and not spalling when I painted it. I sure don't have any standing water anywhere.

I'm going on faith that the POs' can of gray floor paint is still good.

Anyway, as before, I'll gave the primer a day or two to dry, since I really had to glop it into the joints. I've got a big nasty teacher certification exam coming up next Friday the 15th and another one on the 22nd. So no telling how soon I'll get the paint on. On the other hand, considering that I'm not exactly feeling encouraged about my prospects of passing, I may get the Pearly White on the basement stair wall just to know I've accomplished something.

What's More Exciting Than a White Wall?

2011-06-29T23:01:00.000-04:00

Two white walls. Well, one and three-quarters white walls.

Tackled the basement laundry room this evening. Sherwin-Williams' "Pearly White" with perlite added. With a brush because the texture on the bricks has to be vertical to match the existing. I don't trust myself doing it with a roller.

It looks really weird having that greeny-creamy-tanny-bricky wall white now. I almost feel like I've obliterated an historical monument. (I'll get over it.)

Knocked off when I ran out of gritty paint. Brush was a mess anyway. Good idea to finish up in the daylight when I can see the places I've missed. Already noticed one when I was cleaning out the brush.

Anyway, what is more exciting than a white wall? I mean, really?

A green vegetable garden. And impatiens planted around the maple tree.

You Want I Should Think of a Clever Title at This Time of Night??

2011-06-23T03:46:00.001-04:00

The west and north brick walls of my basement laundry room are primed. Three cheers for me.

Yes, I know it's well after 3:00 AM. I didn't start till after 9:30 PM, so what do you expect? The garden work has to be done sometime.

Anyway, it's primed. Had to use a brush on the section that used to be behind the cabinet or whatever, for however good a job I thought I did last weekend of scraping and flaking and scrubbing it, flecks of the old paint would come off on the roller. With the brush it's a much cleaner process: the latex primer goes on, the old paint stays on the wall, the latex primer gets under the broken edges of the old paint, it wrinkles up, and I come around with the five-in-one tool and scrape it off. And reprime the bare places. And now the wet flakes are on the floor, not on the roller. See how much better that works?

(Yeah, right. As I said, I thought everything that needed scraped was gone on Saturday.)

Even without the paint coat, those two walls are making the rest of the basement look bad. But the point is not to tart up the basement. The point is to do whatever painting needs done before the new water filter and softener go in, so I'm not struggling to paint behind them later, and to do it so the laundry room doesn't look totally half-@$$ed.

(Half a donkey. That would never do.)

Ray of Sunshine

2011-06-16T23:46:00.000-04:00

I believe the black rod is the dip tube

My friend Frieda* called me a little before 6:00 this evening. How was I doing with my hard water situation? And could she ask me something? Would I be willing to have somebody else connect my new water treatment equipment for me? It wasn't that she wanted to cast any doubts on my DIY abilities, but she was a little worried about my plans to do the plumbing connections for my new water softener and filter myself. Seeing as I'd never actually sweated copper pipe before and all that.

No, I told her, I'd been wondering the same thing, and might end up using the mechanical-connection GatorGrip or SharkBite fittings instead of solder, even if they are more expensive.

What she was calling to suggest was, would I mind if she mentioned my job to her next-door neighbor? He does plumbing work, and would charge me a lot less than going rates. Or, if I didn't need the work done right away, her grown son would be willing to take a look at it, and he'd do it for free.

Oh, no, said I, with all the painting (and cleaning) I still need to do down there, it will be at least a week before I'm ready to do any plumbing. At least.

Well. that's good, because (with all due respect to my DIY abilities) she knows that if you get the plumbing wrong you can blow out the equipment. Yeah, I said, or spring a major and very annoying leak.

I am not proud. If she wants to send her son over to sweat these pipes for me and he knows what he's doing and he's willing, I'm all for it. It'd actually be a relief. Thanks!

Slurp, slurp, slurp!

So on the strength of this prospect I went back downstairs this evening and dismantled the old water softener. It took a little while, but it wasn't complicated. The water sitting at the top of the resin tank I tipped out into the floor drain, and the resin itself I sucked out with the wet-dry vac.

Not pie material

The spent resin went in two triple-bagged black lawn-and-leaf sacks that up to a couple days ago held last year's maple leaves for mulching. Fascinating stuff, that resin. It looks like pureéd sweet potatoes or pumpkin pie filling. Happily, it's only little wet plastic beads and totally non-toxic, so I could scoop the last glops of it out of the vacuum cleaner tank with my hand. The only real hazard about it is mechanical-- get those little beads underfoot on a smooth floor and it's like walking on ice. This I had read and this I experienced-- just enough to keep the broom handy to sweep any little spills.

Notice broken place at bottom

I don't know if any of the plastic parts of the old WS are recyclable, but I put them in the bin anyway. We'll see if the trash haulers take them in the July pickup. I did save the salt that was in the bottom of the brine tank-- put it in my sidewalk salt bin for use next winter. Yeah, it doesn't have all the sidewalk salt ingredients, but it's better than throwing it out in the alley.

The bags of resin went in the trash for pickup first thing tomorrow morning.

So hurray! that's done. Maybe I'm making progress after all.

Half-Baked and Fed Up

2011-06-16T14:30:00.027-04:00

Trudging along towards ultimate water softener installation . . .

I got the problem area primed with Kilz on Tuesday. But no, my previous owners didn't leave me any of the flat white basement wall paint. Wottoodoo, wottoodoo . . . I didn't want to have buy a whole new gallon of paint for that little corner, but a quart always seems like a bad deal.

Well, here's this: I had a whole gallon of flat white, untinted, that I got on sale last Fall. It's for redoing the ceiling up in my study. I don't need all of it for up there . . . maybe I could use part of it for repainting the basement wall in the water softener corner. I'd pretty much decided on the shade of white I want for the 3rd floor, and I brought the chip down the basement and held it against the old paint. Yeah, good enough.

So I got the paint tinted yesterday and had a packet of anti-mildew powder added in. This morning I added some perlite grit (which the POs did leave me) to a quart of it to match the existing texture, and got to work.

Yes. Well. It really looks nice where the new paint is. But it isn't a match to the old paint by any stretch of the imagination.

I don't regret going with the color I want for the 3rd floor. It couldn't've matched the existing basement walls unless I wanted my study ceiling to be dirty tan. What I do regret is not foreseeing this, and failing to wash down the entire wall while I had the bucket of TSP going. Actually, I should have washed down both the outside wall and the one behind the washer and dryer. Because both of them will have to be repainted to make the basement laundry room look decent, and it has to be done before the new water treatment equipment is installed.

And if I'm going to do a sensible and proper job of it, I have to scrape down that scabby area the other side of the window where it looks like some cabinet used to be and it never got painted the white like the rest of the room. Or maybe it was humid behind it and the paint came off. Whatever. I see it'll have to be scraped, washed, and done.

Oh! oh! I was so hoping to have this step finished today so I could get on with the floor! Now I have to go buy more TSP, and I can't use it for two or three days because the new paint has to harden up a little before I go scrubbing over it, because of course the dirty spots are above it, oh, yeah . . .

Tell me, when does the fun begin, anyway?

Amendments to the List

2011-06-09T23:30:00.000-04:00

I'm making progress on the preliminary work for getting the water filter and softener in. But there's a couple of steps I needed to add to the list.

Like washing down the walls and floor with TSP then rinsing it off. (Yeah, duh, simply spraying on the mildewcide over the dead mildew would not get me a good paint job.)

That's done, not without a lot of slop and mess. Slop happens. Slop gets mopped.

Then I failed to account for this rough place in the floor next to the west wall. By the time I got it good and scrubbed, I saw that the concrete had spalled there, as much as an inch or more deep. Was it like that when I moved in seven years ago? I don't remember. But considering that there's no loose material in the depression, and observing the lay of the red, gray, and green floor paints in the bottom of the "crater," I'd say it's been there for a long time. (You see me convincing myself I have no current water infiltration problem.).

Regardless of its history, the spalled place was there. "Was" being the operative term, because I patched it. Mixed up too much Sak-Crete; not sure how I miscalculated so badly, and too bad it was after dark and I couldn't use the leftovers for the holes in the sidewalk outside.

The patch is level and smooth enough for basement floor work. I`ll let it dry for a day or two, until it turns white. So there's another task added to the list, and ticked off.

Add this item, too: Rooting around in the paint cupboard in the workshop. If I'm lucky, my previous owners will have left me a can of the basement wall white paint. If I'm even luckier, it'll be usable.

On the other hand, I'm deleting the items about cleaning up and repainting the whole laundry room floor at this juncture. Yes, it needs it. But it's not directly relevant to getting the new water treatment system installed. I'll just paint the bit of the floor where the new equipment will sit. That'll do for now.

But First . . .

2011-06-07T15:31:00.003-04:00

My new water treatment equipment has arrived. It was unloaded around 12:20 PM last Thursday the 2nd by a nice Pitt-Ohio delivery man who took all three humongous cartons down the basement and set them in the laundry room for me. From the previous post on the subject, you'd think it should have got here by the 21st or so of May. But no, I spent a good two weeks cogitating on how I was going to pay for it, and didn't finalize the order (online) till late on Memorial Day evening. (Two and a half day order processing and delivery turnaround. Chalk up points for the Ohio Pure Water Company.)

Yesterday, I borrowed a blowtorch, some solder, and some flux from my friend Steve*. Immediately, now, you'd think I'd be running up to Lowe's and purchasing the right tubing, elbows, T-joints, and any other needed supplies.

Wish I could. But first, I need to

Scrape the walls in the corner where the old softener was, to remove the hard bubbled paint off the bricks where the high humidity got in and lifted it.
Scrape any loose paint off the floor where the old WS was (the floor was wet when I pulled it away).
Use the shop vac to clean up the debris.
Use an anti-mildew agent to kill the mold in the remaining paint, then let it dry.
Slap a coat of Kilz or B.I.N.s over any bare bricks.
Give the floor in the WS corner a good washing. Let it dry.
Give the floor in the corner a coat of Kilz or B.I.N.s.
Realize, O carp, there's no point in repainting just that corner when other parts of the laundry room floor need redoing, too.
Figure out how to take the old water softener apart so I can get at the resin tank and empty it.
Take the old water softener apart so I can get at the resin tank and empty it.
Use the shop vac to suck the resin and water out of the old resin tank. Drain off water and dispose of resin in the trash (it's just plastic and nontoxic).
Once it's light enough for me to carry it, get the old WS out of the basement.
Make sure all the piles of laundry, jugs of laundry aids, buckets, cat litter pans, boxes, etc., are out of the way.
Wash all the laundry room floor. Let it dry.
Give the floor, especially the corner that still flaunts the previous owners' old red and gray paint jobs, a nice coat of pale green floor paint. Put up a gate so the cats don't track in it. Wait 24 hours.
Give the floor a second coat of green paint. Wait another 24 hours.

Then I can move the new backwash filter and the new water softener into place and start measuring for copper pipe. (I think that while I've got the primer out I'm going to label the system as it exists so I don't end up softening the water that goes to the basement toilet and sending all the untreated junk to the water heater.) By the time I finish the list above and can head to Lowe's, maybe I'll get lucky and Steve will find his big pipe cutter gadget. One less thing to buy.

Hoping to get the scraping, mildrew-removal, and priming done before I go to bed tonight.

But first, I have to plan worship for the church I'm supplying this Sunday. But first!

Fort Necessity

2011-05-16T19:01:00.000-04:00

From Treebeard's Fotolog

I really do not want to spend money on a new water treatment system for the Sow's Ear. It makes my stomach go all twisty and curly inside.

But I'm afraid I have to. I've experimented with doing without one these past three or four weeks, and it's piling up into more and more trouble.

No amount of soap suffices for hand washing. The high-concentrate laundry liquid won't suds. Most disgusting of all, my dishes come through the dishwasher cycle with a coating of gray grease on them, and the glassware that wasn't etched before now is. I've resigned myself to doing all my dishwashing by hand for the time being, but even a little sinkful takes a lot of detergent.

Then there's what I can't feel or see. I don't even want to imagine what's going on in my pipes, or how long it'd be before they'd need a cupric angioplasty.

And this makes my stomach feel like I'm about to lose my lunch.

(Only to be expected when your water tests out at 41 grains hardness per gallon, and the sediment level is off the EPA chart.)

So having suppressed my gag reflex and done the comparison shopping, I've just put in an order for a new Fleck 2510 3/4 meter on-demand control valve 40,000 grain capacity water softener, from the Ohio Pure Water Company people, over here in Centerville, Ohio. They're a wholesale outfit, and offer free shipping, and with the discount the price of this two-piece unit is about the same as a one-piece of lesser quality from Sears or Whirlpool.

By itself, this softener wouldn't put too severe a dent in my resources. But I've learned these past weeks that much of what frustrated me about my water even before my old Sears softener broke had nothing to do with the softener at all. It was the Culligan man who pointed out, when he came by a week or so ago, that the cold water line to the kitchen sink bypasses the softener, as does the line to the basement toilet and probably the upstairs toilet as well. A new water softener, no matter how efficient, won't do a thing about the iron sediment in the toilets or the scale in my cooking water and tea kettle. If I want to be happy with my water after the new WS is in, I'll need to install a sediment filter to clean out the mineral gunk before the water gets to the softener at all.

Ohio Pure suggested a carbon backwash filter. Culligan offers an inline filter. I've compared the initial costs of both, and the cost of replacement filters for the latter (in light of the gunk in my water), and though an inline would be cheaper at the start, the backwash filter would pay for itself within the first year, and the media wouldn't need changed for around three.

But oh, do I really want to spend another three or four hundred bucks for this? Even if the unit that works for me is On Sale?

Writing it out like this, I frankly wonder if I could have put up with the hard water after all. But doing that will run me time and expense, and I'd have to get a new system in sometime, after all that and after more damage is done. And I guess I'd better get it all done at once and get it over with.

So the order is in. And when the equipment arrives, guess what? It'll be necessary for me to lay in a supply of tubing and elbows and figure out how to plumb the whole system. To keep the price down, I've got to do the job myself.

(But that, I'm actually looking forward to.)

Soft Water Is Hard

2011-04-26T20:20:00.005-04:00

So what am I supposed to do?

A couple months ago, I started noticing a little water on my basement laundry room floor. From the washing machine, I thought, and since it wasn't bad and dried fairly quickly, I ignored it.

About two weeks ago I observed that the wetness was really coming from around my Sear's Kenmore water softener, a few feet up the basement floor slope from the washer. I looked inside the tank, and it was full of water! I've never seen that before. Never, ever. I tried regenerating right away, but the water only crept higher. Not what one wants, right?

So I unplugged it, found out from the manual (which was hanging there in its plastic envelope) how to activate the bypass valve (good job for a rubber mallet), and went upstairs and called Sears. Oh. $65.00 just to come out and look, before parts and labor. Not in the budget.

I sent out a veiled SOS to my friends on Facebook. Too veiled, obviously, because I got no response, not even one word of useless advice. Oh, well, there's always the Internet. So I Googled "Kenmore water softener full of water leaking." And got advice there, yes, I did. There were at least four different things various posters recommended be tried, each one of them looked complicated, and each one of them seemingly had to be done first.

Please understand: My water softener is in a dark corner of the basement, my eyesight is not very good, I never can see that stupid gray-on-gray display, and I couldn't find the place in the manual to show me where to find the venturi or the resin bed or anything else that needed to be cleaned or adjusted or whatever it was. So I put it off.

On the weekend, at the customary front porch gathering, I asked some of my neighbors if they'd ever serviced their water softeners. No, they hadn't. In fact, the guy across the street said they didn't even have one.

Well, if they can get along with hard water with a family of seven, I supposed I could for awhile, too. And I left the softener on bypass the next ten days.

But yesterday I think I spent a half hour or more rewashing supposedly clean dishes from the dishwasher. I folded some white laundry last night and it looked yellow and dingy. I can't get my shampoo to lather, and the water tastes funny. Still I was putting off doing anything about it, until this afternoon after work.

I have lots of laundry to do. I'd really like it to come out clean. Oh, phooey, I had to try cleaning the venturi at least. I mean, come on, buck up. Found the diagram in the manual (I'd been looking at the installation guide before--oops). Found the venturi on the appliance. Took it apart. Barring a little red iron scum, it was clean. Put it back together and turned the softener on. Made no difference-- water level still high. Found the page with the Manual Regeneration Check. Put the softener through its paces: brining, brining rinse, backwash, fast rinse. Water level actually went down a little bit, out through the drain hose-- then started filling up, higher, higher, scarily higher. Oh, no, you don't! Unplugged it and hammered the bypass back in place.

Back to the Internet. No, sorry, the only way to get the water out is to siphon it or suck it out with the wet-dry vac. OK, fine, I've got one of those. After a few vacuum tankfuls (and a salty-wet basement floor), the water in the softener was gone. But my vac was sucking up flakes of salt off the bottom. Going by the mop handle that I use to distribute salt when I fill the WS, maybe 2" or 3" was hardened in there.

Time for the hot water to melt it out.

Hot water, hot water, hot water. Ram it with the mop handle to break it up. Ram, ram, ram.

Take a look to see if I'm making any progress. Poke the camera down in to document the event. Take a few pictures, using the flash.

Review the pictures to see what's going on, since I can't see down there very well.

Uhhhh, wait a minute. There's this big cylinder in the back of the WS, that looks like it's made of heavy cardboard, but when you rap it, it sounds more like ceramic. If I understand my manual correctly, that's the resin tank. And there, down at about the 0.5 salt level, was what looked like a V-shaped rip in its side.

Did I do that damage right then, myself, with my plastic mop handle? But no, the picture I took right after I got the water sucked out shows the crack already there. And I haven't gone after a salt bridge for several months. No, that resin tank cracked by itself.

I've been on the Internet (did I mention that before?). I've learned that a cracked resin tank is doom for a water softener. That if it ruptures, it can be doom for whatever's in your basement (especially if the water's still running through the WS). That the resin in a broken tank can go running throughout your whole plumbing system, and while I haven't delved into what that means, it sounds bad. And that replacing the resin tank and its contents can cost more than buying a new water softener.

My resin tank is toast. I am not going to experiment with running the WS with the tank in that condition. So what do I do? This is not in the budget. Do I stretch my credit even further and buy a new water softener? Do I run hard water for the foreseeable future and ruin my clothes and coat my plumbing with lime?

Blast it, what do I do?

Acid Test

2011-04-21T23:30:00.006-04:00

Dog and hallway before 'experiment'

This evening I got back from church and went upstairs to change my clothes. My dog followed me, and when I was almost done, I looked out the bedroom doorway, and--

That little twerp had peed all over the hall! No, correction, he'd lifted his leg on the shellacked curved baseboard, then done some urinary arabesques on the floor cardboard nearby!

Dumb dog! There was no reason for that. I had him outside a mere four hours previous.

But here's the good part: I tackled that baseboard with a wet sponge and a dry washcloth, and the dog pee hadn't affected it one bit. No white marks, no hazing; wiped it off and it was fine.

Probably can't say that for where the dog's irrigations soaked through the paper supposedly protecting the perimeter of the floor. But at least I know my shellac job passes the acid test.

Literally.

Actual Work Getting Done

2011-04-12T23:20:00.037-04:00


Shellac dries fast. This is good.

Really. The shellac work I'm doing in my stairhall is actually starting to look like something. I may actually be on my way to getting this done.

And that's scary.

(That was a joke. I think.)

The inner casings on the five 2nd floor hall doorways are all done, including the casing to my bedroom door that I had to take down to mend. That also has primer on the bedroom side. The blotchiness problem I solved thanks to some advice I dug up the other night on the Internet-- A forum suggested cutting down the amount of tint in the shellac and let the application of successive layers build up the color. I was just upstairs, and was getting a little worried that maybe I've got it a fuzz too dark, but it's not as dusky as it originally was, and we're talking at night under only a 60 watt lightbulb.

The flash makes it look brighter than it really is

The stair rail and shoe are done as well. I really like the way the bannister came out. I've figured out that if I start shellacking the piece well short of the top, work in the length between the initial wet area and the top with a dryer brush, then keep stroking upward (or in one direction only, if working flat) into the wet area, I can minimize the blotches and keep the finish uniform. It worked on the bannister, I think.

The balusters are done as well. They were theoretically mostly done last summer with the two coats I gave them then, but I saw that my intended three coats wasn't going to give the tone and sheen to match the stairrail and shoe. They have five coats of shellac on them now; six on the outside faces.

Now I have to lay on more coats of shellac to the shoe and rail fillets. They're laid out on my workbench downstairs, waiting the next time I have available. But first I have to strip (waaaaagghh!) the cap to the 1st floor newel post. I didn't have enough light in my workshop, and didn't notice till it was too late that a wide brown-black line of walnut-mahogany shellac was accumulating all around the bottom edge. Yuck. Strip it off and start again.

Stairs to 3rd floor study

The top newel post is done-- I think-- and today I got a second coat on the risers to the 3rd floor and on the main stair stringer on the stair rail side. (I ran out of the right tint of shellac after that, and the main stair risers and the opposite stringer had to wait till I could mix up more.)

Last evening my friend Hannah* and her husband Steve* were going to come over to help me reassemble and rehang the casing to the bedroom door. They couldn't fit it into their schedule as it turned out. And now that I've remembered that I really want to get the finish on the hall floor before that trim goes back up, I see it's just as well.

Guess what-- this trim isn't that dark. Stoopy camera!

But in anticipation of getting the bedroom door hung, I shellacked its stop moulding, though I haven't touched it for any door else. So this afternoon I took a piece of that stop upstairs to make sure I was getting the shellac-white primer divide on the casings right. I stood the piece up against the closed door to the guest bedroom, flat against the shellacked jamb. And, oh, my! Wow. It actually looked like something! Like real work getting done! Like maybe sometime before the Mayan calendar runs out my house might get out of my head and into reality!

That's scary.

Trumpets (But with Mutes)

2011-03-30T21:01:00.004-04:00

Yesterday, Tuesday, 29 March 2011, was a momentous day here at the Sows' Ear. For on that day, after half a week of taping and masking, I finally laid on the first coats of shellac on the woodwork of my 2nd and 1st floor halls.

(Can I get a dish of applesauce here?)

This is the first week I've had evenings off since the end of January, when I started working front desk at Dick & Harry's Tax Service.* Initially I was merely going to wipe everything down and do the shellacking Later. But it hits me that dust has a tendency to resettle, especially with four furry animals in the house. So some finish application was in order.

Started with a clear coat of Kusmi #2 on the doorway to the 3rd floor and to the former entryway downstairs. I'd noticed on samples I'd made that the tinted shellac shows up better when it goes on over a clear coat instead of wood that's clean sanded.

Doorway to Study stairs, 2nd floor

On this 2nd floor doorway you can see where the paint soaked in behind where the old stop moulding used to be. I tried sanding it out, but it was too deep. Will the tinted shellac cover that? I hope so.

Here's the doorway between the 1st floor hall and the front room partly clearcoated. The camera makes the color look more intense and orange than it was.

Old entry door, 1st floor

Then the same untinted Kusmi #2 on the sanded sill between the 1st floor hall and the living room.

Cased opening sill

My initial idea was that I'd let these coats dry overnight and do the tinted shellac today. But I'd forgotten how quickly shellac dries. So what the heck, why not?

Started at the top, with the risers of the stairs to the 3rd floor. These still have patina on them, and didn't need an initial clear coat.

3rd floor stair risers, partially done

Then the rest of the risers, the casing, and the bottom end of the stringer.

1st coat shellac, 2nd floor hall

Then the hall side of the door casings to the guest bedroom, the bathroom, and the hall closet.

And the curved baseboard and the 2x frame around the 2nd floor hall window.

Since I was rolling with it, I proceeded to do the upstairs newel post, the oak stair bannister and shoe, the 1st floor newel, the frame around the downstairs hall window, the doorway between the hallway and the front room, the sill between the hall and the living room, and the moulding that sits on the wall over the hall bench, under the bannister shoe. Then I came back up and laid a coat on the main stair tread and on the pine stringers either side of the main stairs. Drew the line at shellacking the hall bench, since it still had the protective paper on it and I hadn't cleaned underneath it.

Looking down from the 2nd floor

I don't have pictures of all this wondrousness, because my stoopy camera eats batteries like I should drink water, the ones I had in were dying, and I had no more in the house to replace them. (Last time I'll buy a camera that takes AAs, believe you me.) But maybe that's just as well, since I was shellacking without a worklight, deliberately. The plan was that if I worked by natural light only I wouldn't get too fussy about making the first coat perfectly even, but leave it to the next coats to blend it all in.

Blotchy mess!

But as you can see from this very blurry shot I took today (no battery power left to use the flash), maybe that wasn't such a--ahem!--bright idea. What a blotchy mess, and this doesn't show the half of it.

The saving grace is that the successive coats of shellac should blend it in, though it'll probably take a clear coat or two to accomplish that.

The color isn't as dark as it shows up in the photos. But I doubt I'll make it as walnutty-dark as it was originally. I want the reddish warmth and the grain to come through.

While I Was at It

2011-02-09T14:42:00.036-05:00

While I was patching and filling and sanding doorways last month, I was also up to a thing or two more.

One that I can be pleased and relieved about: On the 14th I got the sill to the opening between the 1st floor hall and the living room filled and resanded.

(Yeah, there's still tons to do)

The other thing, which I perpetrated the day before, was definitely nothing to brag about. I got myself tangled up in my grandma's old floor lamp that I was using as a work light and sent it crashing into the bottom step and broke the brand-new three-way light bulb and the globe. Yes, it's all replaceable, but why put myself into the position to have to spend the money?

And I can't get this photo to stay rotated.

Alas, alas!

Mortise Patching Exploits

2011-02-07T14:40:00.001-05:00

Okay, here are the photos from January 11th and following I promised a few days ago. (Note to me: Don't load too many photos at once into Blogger. It's nigh-impossible to wrangle them into the correct order).

The job was to fill the old hinges and strike mortises in casings where doors had been removed. I don't know why I stressed over the job and put it off for so long. When it came down to it, it was really no big deal.

First I tackled the doorway between the 1st floor hall and the front room. This used to be the front door of the house, but the door was removed when the porch was converted to a front room, and the mortises were covered up with ¼" thick pieces of plywood, which my PO-2 shellacked to match the rest of the woodwork. I tried stripping one of those a couple years back and said, No more. The old door casing was good enough for me.

I started with the mortises, with pieces of original yellow pine cut from an old disused floorboard, glued in proud:

Top hinge mortise patched

Middle & bottom filled proud

Bottom hinge-side patch. Almost right depth as-is


Old Entry Door Strike Mortise

Then I did the same for the strike. Here's what it looked like Before. (I knocked out the piece at the upper right to avoid having to make any fancy cuts.)


Mortise Patch Glued In

Same again, with the rough patch for the strike mortise glued in. Note how shallow the mortise is. No way I'm risking my fingers to cut a patch that thin on the table saw.

Then I moved operations upstairs. This is the doorway to the third floor stairs. Evidence shows that there was no door there when the house was first built (they had to hack away the bullnose on one of the treads to accommodate it), but it's also apparent that a door had been there for a very long time. Not sure if it was the same owner who took it down and filled the mortises with pieces of characterless white pine, but I knew they'd glare if I let them remain. So they'd been out ever since I stripped that doorway (mumble, mumble) years ago, and if I had a ton of money, I would have had a true-divided-lite, tempered-glass door custom made and rehung there. But that ain't the way things are, so these mortises were dealt with next.

(When I'm rich-- HA!!-- I can always knock out the patches and put my dream door up then.)

Strike mortise that needs filled

Bottom mortise rough-filled

On the hinge side you can see where the POs marked the wood to position the hinge.

I really wish I could have found some old wood to match the existing grain, but I had to settle for what I had. Hopefully, the shellac will even everything out.

Here's the strike patch glued in, with some extra help until it dries.

Door to 3rd floor, strike side

Old screen door rabbet

But one more thing needed to be done before I could leave all the glue to dry. There was the matter of the holes left in the trim of the former entry door when the original screen door was relocated, sometime in the early 1930s. I'd had ideas of taking wood filling and sculpting it somehow to match the curves in the trim, but I wasn't quite sold on the idea. But wait a minute. Didn't I have some long pieces of old yellow pine the right thickness, left over from cutting strips to fill in the 2nd floor hall flooring? Yes!

That worked, and with a little wood filler daubed on to simulated the curves, I pronounced it Good Enough for one evening's work.


3rd floor stairs, hinge side, planed

Next day, I took my grandpa's antique plane and smoothed the patches down. Really, the realization that I could use it was what got me past the brain-freeze and procrastination. Before, I'd been sure there was no way I could cut fiddling pieces of wood like that to any accurate thickness, but plane, plane, plane, and the difficulty (and the extra wood) was removed.

Old entry doorway, hinge side, filled

Then lay in wood filler to close up the gaps.

Old entry, strike patch sanded

Old entry, hinge side sanded

Day after, the downstairs doorway got sanded.

Old entry, hinge patch, fine-sanded

Old entry, strike patch, fine-sanded

Then filled some more, and sanded again.

If your eyesight is bad as mine, the patches can hardly be seen!

Wood filler galore

Nice and sanded

Strike side

This still left the upstairs patches to fill and sand and finish off. That didn't happen till the evening of the18th and early on the19th.

When you tap on the piece over the old strike mortise, it definitely sounds hollow. Don't care to think how thin it is, now it's sanded down. But it's flush, and it'll do.

Here we are in the 2nd floor hall, with all the mortises filled and most of the tape off the stairs. And that's enough for now.

No, the House Hasn't Eaten Me. Yet.

2011-02-05T20:42:00.001-05:00

Have I been working on the house? Yes. Have I been working on the house as quickly as I ought to? No.

I had two doorways to patch where doors were removed, at the old entry door between the front room (former porch) and the stairhall, and at the bottom of the stairs to the third floor. A couple weeks ago I cut old yellow pine to fit the hinge and strike mortises, planed them down, and sanded all round the casings. They look nice, but pictures will have to wait-- I loaded them onto the other computer.

Sadly, there are no new shellacking pictures. That's because I haven't laid on any new shellac. I'm still cleaning up the dust mess, and the work is going very slowly.

First, because I'm changing Internet service providers and I'm dealing with the whole old-new e-mail address transition.

Second, because cleaning my Study meant more than sucking up the dust, it also meant going through my books, rearranging many, retiring some to the storage space, selecting some to give away, and even chucking a few.

And third, it's going slowly because I don't like deep cleaning the house, and I keep putting it off. It's so much more fun to watch on-line videos that actually stream thanks to my new, faster ISP.

But as soon as I publish this post, I'm going upstairs to clean my bedroom. The curtains and dust ruffle, which were filthy, are clean and dry down in the dryer, and until the room dust is gone and I can put them back, there's no going to bed for me tonight.

The Baby Has Arrived!

2011-01-11T13:07:00.000-05:00

Fourteen of them, actually.

Early in the morning this past Saturday.

. . . in case you think I'm suddenly running a foundling home or have been invaded by the offspring of particularly fecund kinswomen, I'd better explain.

The websites explaining how to sand down your floors for refinishing consistently say it's a three-step process: rough sanding, medium sanding, and fine sanding. And, if I may quote, after the fine sanding the wood "should be as smooth as a baby's bottom."

Well, when it comes to the fourteen treads of my main staircase, the baby has arrived. The rough places that could be sanded down have been sanded down, and the holes and dings that were too deep to sand down have been filled. Tackled them with the 80-grit paper (medium) last Monday and Thursday, and had at it with the 120-grit this past Friday night. So this stage is done, done, done.

I think the nosings came out well enough. Most of them had to be rerounded, due to hard wear. Trickiest thing is keeping myself from being deceived by the work light into mistaking a wood grain line for an edge that needs more knocking down. I didn't touch the nosings with the 40-grit paper, oh, no. 80 and 120 only, and finished off with some sanding sponges I forget the grit rating of, but which helped me create a consistent curve.

(And concerning this picture of the bottom tread nosing: No, it's not Perfectly Clean. But it's clean enough for the seven coats of shellac it's going to get. And it's a heckovuhlot cleaner and better than it was in July of 2007 when I removed the carpet and revealed what you see in this post. Scroll down five photos and blast your eyes with that!)

After the sanding was finished, I gave the stairs a quick vacuuming and a go-over with a tack cloth, then put the cardboard tread protectors back and at around 3:00 AM went to bed. No reno work to speak of accomplished over the weekend-- I had other things to do. But on today's agenda is cutting thin strips of wood to fill in the hinge and strike mortises in two of the stairhall doorways that used to have doors but now don't. The mortise routings were filled or covered up before, but not in a way that would take an natural finish.

Wish me luck at not slicing my fingers while I'm at it!

Filling Holes

2011-01-02T23:27:00.000-05:00

Just to prove I continue to make progress, here are my stairs with the holes I filled yesterday.

I hope to get the treads medium-sanded tomorrow. No excuse not to, even if I do get called in to work.

But here's something scary: When I was cleaning up the dust on the stairs and bannister rail yesterday, I noticed I had cracks in my wall plaster at the point where the wall opens up to the downstairs hall and the downstairs ceiling comes in. That place was really bad a year and a half ago, and I put a lot of work into pulling up the plaster and spackling the cracks. Now I have this three-way hairline in the faux finish paint job.

Carp. I don't know if it's the plaster or the spackle. Either way, can't things just stay fixed?

That's Done, at Least!

2010-12-31T21:47:00.000-05:00

Look at that. Isn't it pretty?

Fourteen stair treads, all rough-sanded.

Yes, they need lots of filling, then a go with the medium and then the fine grit. But the old dirt and grime and roughness is off. It's gone.

And it's still 2010.

In which case, I'm hitting the Publish button and going to go party.

See you next year!

Where I Am with Things

2010-12-28T15:08:00.000-05:00

I admit it: I haven't done anything with the hall floor sanding since Monday the 20th. Too much going on since then with choir concerts, year-end paperwork, Christmas cookery, and general holiday-making. Even if I'd had time to sand, my friends wouldn't savor my bread and candy any more with a dusting of wood floor over it.

But this afternoon I really am going to do something. Need to rehang the plastic over the doorway to the 3rd floor (it fell down day before yesterday) and 120-grit sand the last 2/5 of the hall way floor. Then drape the openings to the stairhall on the 1st floor with plastic-- not my favorite sport, and the animals won't appreciate it, either. Then, then, maybe I can start on the 1st floor stair treads. Nothing gets shellacked in there until the sanding is done.

Meanwhile, here's a couple-three pictures from the most recent work:

Where I cracked a groove during the medium sanding. May've had something to do with countersinking that nail beyond the board's tolerance.

Securing down that cracked groove. I used some small annular nails I had in my workshop, toenailed in, as recommended by various websites. Wish I'd used regular finish nails instead. It doesn't look too bad in this picture. You don't want to see how it looked after I tried countersinking those flat heads.

Ran my carpenter's pencil over the surface (actually wrote myself a monitory message) to keep from oversanding before I started the 120-grit fine-sanding phase. When the pencil marks are gone, it's sanded enough. Period.

How the part that's totally sanded looks. Pretty! (I think.)

Back at It

2010-12-10T23:54:00.057-05:00

I'm too tired to say anything clever at the moment, but I thought I'd report that for the last two days, after an hiatus of what? two or three weeks, I'm back at the hallway sanding.

And I suppose it's going reasonably well. The rough sanding still isn't done, but at least I can tell the difference between what I've worked on and what I haven't.

I've been using the belt sander; it's the only effective way to get things started, my floor's in such bad shape. The biggest difficulty has been keeping the damn cord out of the way. They say to drape it round your neck, but that's only going to work if you loop it round once or twice. Which could get interesting if the sander got away from you.

Ergo, I didn't get the best use out of it yesterday, which led me to believe I was going to have to do a lot of additional filling, where the soft parts of the wood have worn away. But where I was working today, I was able to hang the belt sander cord off the newel post, and got a lot more done with it. Smoothed down some floorboards I was sure would have to be filled, and I think they're still structurally sound . . .

I'm still not sure how far I can take that. If I decide I'd better not sand the boards down until they're absolutely clean, which will look worse: shellacking over the remaining dirt, or shellacking over the wood filler? I've noticed that the latter actually looks darker than the wood around it once you've got a few coats on. And if I don't fill those areas, what will that mean for wearabilty? But if I don't, will the filler necessarily stay in?

I reflect as I work that I have no method. I mean, sometimes I use 80-grit belts and they work well enough. But sometimes they don't, and I go to 60-grit belts. And sometimes I can manage the 60-grit belts just fine, and sometimes they leave skid marks in the wood and I have to go back to the 80. A professional would be able to use a given tool or technique the same way all the time. Me, I'm no professional. I have no method.

I haven't made too much of a mess of the floor, though some of the adjacent vertical woodwork now bears marks of where I let the belt sander get rather too close.

But I've figured out how to track the belt, so that's an advance.

The rough sanding isn't totally done, but as I said, I'm tired. I'm using muscles I forgot I had. I need to cut more sandpaper for the mouse sander, and rip some more filler strips for floor cracks. Yes, there are some I didn't fill last April and know now I should have.

For a Moment, I Wavered

2010-11-23T18:08:00.002-05:00

For awhile there this past weekend, I about gave up my DIY card on the 2nd floor hall sanding.

Very early this past Friday morning I was minutes away from heading to a substitute teaching engagement, when a call came in from the school's dispatching secretary. Class was cancelled: some bright soul had crashed his car into the power pole carrying the transformer that fed both the junior and senior high schools.

I can cope with that, she said brightly to herself. That gives me an entire day to make good progress on my hallway floor. With my tamed belt sander. Yeaa!!

Or maybe not. Ever try sanding a floor with a liquidly runny nose? There I am with my goggles getting fogged up because I keep the thermostat low and my dust mask catching snot every time I bend over to work. I can't see, I can't breathe, and besides, it's gross.

And then here's the belt sander, with the belt getting off track. Damn!

I got online and looked up how to fix that. All the while, my cold is getting worse and my head more congested. Okay, it says to find some screw on the side of the sander and adjust that while holding onto the switch. Oh, gosh, that'll mean my big screw flathead driver, and I can't even fiiiiiiiinnnnndd it!!!!! I doubt I can even find the blinking screw!!

I try using the orbital sander instead. It does No. Good. At. All. Crap-crap-crappity (sneeze-sneeze-sneeze!!)-CRAP!

I find a diagram of my sander. Oh, good grief, it's not a screw, it's a knob! Why the dickens do they want to call it a screw for?

I try adjusting said knob. Maybe now my sandpaper will track and I can get something done. Between drips, that is.

But no. The belt slid over again and sent up sparks, and every time I bent over, my nose sent out snot.

I'LL NEVER GET THIS DONE!!!!!!

So I wavered. I confess it, I did. I got back online and looked up "Floor sanding Beaver County PA." And found the website of an outfit not too far away that seemed to do good work and came with good references. I measured the hallway (approximately 65 square feet) and the treads (14 at 3'-0" x 10") and put in a call.

The refinisher guys weren't in, but hopefully they'd call me back on Monday. If the bid would came in at $250 or less for the rough sanding (or all the sanding), they could have the job. Screw my pride, I didn't give a single damn. My health can't take this.

That evening, I went to bed early.

But hope springs eternal. Saturday I dragged myself to a local hardware store that was having a one-day coupon sale, and among other things bought some 80-grit belts. Maybe I could manage them better than the 60-grit I just got in the mail. And when I got home, I tried retracking the 60-grit belt that was on it (too sick, tired, or lazy to change it) and got to work. In the closet, where it wouldn't show.

Whoa! Good thing I did! It took the dirt off, but it definitely left treadmarks in the floor! Blast it, it wasn't the sandpaper, it was the forward roller of the sander.

Back to the Internet. Oh! you're supposed to turn the thing on while turning the tracking knob!

That was too much for me. I went back to bed with a new box of tissues. For the rest of the weekend.

Yesterday afternoon the floor refinishing people called back. My little hallway would be their minimum $600. $1,100, if they did the treads down to the 1st floor, too. "Treads are very labor-intensive." Yeah, tell me about it.

Six hundred dollars for that hallway? Another $510 for the treads? Uh, thanks but no thanks. Looks like I'll have to stiffen the backbone and get on with it myself. After I get over the cold.

And as earnest of that, this afternoon I took the Hitachi down the basement, clamped it in the vise, and did the tracking job properly. It's still sending out sparks from the dust it's collected, so work will have to wait till I get a new can of compressed air. Just as well-- that'll give my sinuses the chance to clear up, too.

But my DIY resolve is returning. Funny how the prospect of a humongous professional bill can do that for you.

The Slog, It Continues

2010-11-14T23:45:00.009-05:00

Sometimes it pays to be ignorant.

Back in the summer when I made up the shellac sample for my floors, I used a piece of floorboard that my previous owners two back had pressed into service as a shim piece when they moved the front bedroom door. It sanded down very quickly, and I thought the boards in the 2nd floor hall would be the same.

Um, well, no.

As of last night, I've been at the floor sanding game for portions of three days, and I can't claim to be even 15% done. Something to do with the fact that the shim board was obviously unused, whereas people have been walking on this floor and grinding dirt into it for nearly a hundred years?

But let's take it in order.

Last Saturday the 6th when I was feeling fed up about that recalcitrant stairway tread, I got something done (as I thought) by patching the nail holes and other irregularities in the hall floor with tinted Zar wood filler. The tint job wasn't the same each time, and I can only hope that once the shellac is down it'll all even out.

Thursday I got to the sanding. I hung plastic over the doors in a symbolic attempt to keep the dust out of the bedroom, bathroom, and 3rd floor, and off I went with my belt sander with the 80-grit paper! The idea being to take off the high places of the cupped floorboards.

Well, I didn't put any gouges in the surface. And the high places at the edges did go down a bit. But the dirty dark middles stayed as dirty and dark as ever. And the Zar filler seemed proof against any attempt at abrasion.

More depressing, just that little bit of work put a lot of crud in the sanding belt. And those things are expensive. Enough of that. Take it back downstairs and put it away.

All right, get out the orbital half-sheet sander. And the mouse. Both with 40-grit. Sand, sand, sand, sand, sand. Couple of hours later (when I had other things I had to go do), the three or four boards I was working on looked a little better, but like nothing that could be called done.

At the same time, I noticed that some of the bigger holes I'd filled the previous Saturday had sunk in, so I topped them off before I went to bed.

Friday, I was at it again. I extended my incursions maybe three or four more boards' worth. For another hour and a half. The photos reveal pathetically little progress.

Whereas my work light revealed that a couple of the boards right outside my bedroom door are in terrible shape and needed more filling. I filled them, and if that stuff goes dark under the shellac, I'm in a lot of trouble.

Yesterday I actually looked online to see if it was possible to rent a small floor sander. But the sites talking about technique all blithely admitted that it's very likely that an amateur like me is going to inflict a few circular gouges before getting the hang of the thing, and my hallway's too small to practice on.

Late in the evening (after an afternoon spent out in the fine weather cleaning up the garden), I was up and back at it. Decided maybe I should give the belt sander another chance. This time I was working into the hall closet. Belt sander took down a few more ridges. Nice. Interior of boards remained gunky. Not so nice. Usual dance of the three sanders. Maybe I should bear down on the orbital sander a bit more? Marginally more effective, but not much. But I suppose the cleaned up area is expanding. If I don't look at it too closely.

But something different has got to be done. I believe in taking the time needed to do a project well, but this is ridiculous. So around midnight I cleaned up, went downstairs, and got online again. This time I looked up "Good belt sander technique." And found what looks like a very good article on the American Woodworker website called "Tame Your Belt Sander." And the most useful thing I learned from it was that not only is it okay to run the machine at a 45 degree angle across the boards you're trying to level, it's absolutely advised. Oh, yes, and that you should always lift the sander vertically off the work piece at the end of the run and never turn it off or on while it's on the surface. And that you can clean up gunky belts with an abrasive stick or with a wire brush. Which I have.

(Oh. Guess I should fish those used ones out of the trash . . . )

But as to what I was saying about ignorance. I was roaming around other sites to see what else they could teach me, and I came across this forum, wherein a hapless would-be DIYer asks,

"I have no idea how to refinish wood floors, but ours need it. I suppose you rent a sander and buy materials at Home Depot or someplace similar. Anyone ever done it? Any advice? Thanks!"

And damned if all but one or two of the many replies didn't say, "Hire it out!" "It will take forever!" "It'll cripple your knees!" "It'll ruin your back!" "Hire it out!" Probably the most pungent (if not putrid) of them wryly suggested, "Have s*x with the moldering corpse of a goat. Why? It will seem like a day at the beach compared to sanding your [own] floors."

Funny, the typical houseblogger seems to be of sterner stuff. Unless everybody else is hiring out their floor sanding and just not saying?

Well, I doubt I could get anybody to come do my little hall. And I doubt even more if I'd trust anybody else to do it. So I need to invest in a few more belts for the Hitachi, and some more 40-grit hook-and-loop paper for the B&D mouse, and just keep at it. And definitely some more wood filler. I found more holes and cracks that needed filling last night and the tub is empty.

For My Sins

2010-11-10T21:00:00.072-05:00

I'm not sure how to explain it. Too much care or not being careful enough; not doing well or not knowing when to leave well-enough alone. But some diabolic fate seems now to be binding me to the next-to-the-bottom tread of my stairway to the 3rd floor, there eternally to be chained not physically, but emotionally, as I expiate my shellacking sins.

Late Wednesday night the 3rd, I assayed to get the seventh coat of shellac on those stairs. It didn't go too badly, really. I filled a divot in the next-to-the-bottom step with the Miniwax wood filler putty that you're not supposed to finish over. But I need something flexible there and the shellac ought to move with it. It seems to be working so far.

But after I got done, at just about straight up midnight, I noticed that I hadn't properly brushed out the finish at the right hand side of that same tread. You definitely could see a brown build up there.

So did I go to bed and sleep on it and see if maybe it looked okay in the morning? Heck, no. I got a brush with some alcohol on it and tried to blend it in.

Of course, it didn't. It just took the upper coats off.

I tried a little more. It took off some more.

To hell with it. I tried cleaning the whole surface with alcohol. It didn't take enough off.

Off to bed, and deal with it later.

On Saturday the 6th I went the whole hog and pulled out the Western Wood Doctor refinisher and the 00 steel wool and took the entire finish off of it. So there.

And proceeded to start essentially from scratch on that tread and started applying the six or seven coats anew.

Last Sunday, I was getting there. When I wielded a full brush with a light hand, the shellac blended in beautifully. Just one more coat and I'd be done!

Damn! Somebody remind me not to be doing that after 11:00 PM when I'm tired and the light isn't that good anyway. This last time, I failed to notice or brush out puddles on both sides of that tread! It looked terrible!

Was I going to get out the WWD and strip it off for the second time?

Not likely. An article on the This Old House website says you can repair shellac, everybody says repairability is one of the great things about shellac, and I was going to repair it.

It's taken me the last three days (and at least one dream-obsessed night) to deal with it, using a small artist's brush first to dissolve the brown ridges and then to lay on a little color at a time. But I think-- think!-- I'm to the point where I'm going to say Good Enough. I know the aberrant places are there. I will have to live with the reminder of how dumb it is to do finishing at midnight when I'm tired and not thinking or seeing straight. I stick my camera in close where I can catch every last irregularity of it. But nobody else will notice unless I point it out to them.

And if nothing else, this proves that I was right to do my experimenting and get my technique down on these upper steps. Pretty much no one's going to see them except for me.

Linguistic Reflections on Things Finished in the Past Couple of Days

2010-11-04T11:50:00.003-04:00

I really owe you a post, and there's liable to be a few inserted in retrospect. But in the meantime, here's a link to an article on shellacking-- in both its senses!-- that I just found on the BBC website:

"Who, What, Why: What Is a 'Shellacking'"?

Observe the paragraph on the use of construction terms to denote taking a severe beating. I wonder how that got started, hmmm?

Scary Things

2010-10-31T23:30:00.018-04:00

I knew the shellacking was going too well up to now! I knew the Demon of Klutziness was going to pop out and get me at some point!

Or did I just ignore the Angel of Good Sense?

Friday, I had the fresh shellac for the stairs all mixed up and ready to go. I'd been decanting the stuff into a square plastic Rubbermaid storage container, which was handy for the brush and had a nice lid to seal it between coats.

That evening down in my workshop, I poured the tinted mixture into this and managed to fill it all the way to the top.

"You're going to spill that," my good sense told me. "Pour some of it back."

"No, I won't. It's better to have more in the plastic container. I'm going to need it for the last two coats."

So I took the closed and brimming container of shellac upstairs.

Once up at the top of the 3rd floor stairs, the first thing I realized was that I'd forgotten to add the teaspoon or so of 91% isopropyl alcohol to keep it workable longer. But I was too lazy to go down the basement to get the bottle and add it.

Next thing I noticed was that there seemed to be a lot more hairs and dust squiggles landing in the wet shellac than there were last Tuesday. You think maybe the vacuuming I did a few days ago didn't last till the end of the week?

Struggling with that, I got the first four or five treads done well enough. But on the fifth or sixth one down, I was reaching for the smaller brush to do the nosing, and-- out popped the Demon of Klutziness!!!!

No, I got careless. I jiggled something, or joggled something else, and that full container of shellac tipped over and cascaded down the stairs.

I knew it! I knew I was going to do something stupid like that!

There was no time to wring hands, or be dramatic, or even take pictures. The river of shellac was washing over at least three treads, and I had to clean it up before the whole job on all of them was ruined.

I grabbed a clean jar I had at hand, and brushed all the runny shellac I could into it. Once that was closed and in a safe place, I quickly brushed the wet remainder over the treads that needed to be done anyway

What I didn't think of was that the lowest tread that was spilled on, the one with the least renegade shellac on it, was the one I should have brushed out first. By the time I'd dealt with the overflow and the two treads above, this one was splotchy and blotchy and too tacky to do anything with.

Yesterday noon I tackled it. Applied another coat of shellac, hoping it'd blend in as advertised. So I took a pad of sheep's wool wrapped in a piece of old T-sheet, soaked it in denatured alcohol, and rubbed off the top layer or two off. That removed the blotching.

Today I've been reapplying the coats to that tread, and I think it's to the point where my scary mishap doesn't show. Just now this evening I've got the official sixth coat on all the steps . . . which should mean I'm done with them . . . if I didn't think they really need a seventh coat to get the color I want.

We'll see how that goes. Hopefully the shellac spooks have had enough and will leave me in peace!

I'm Finally Doing It

2010-10-26T23:00:00.094-04:00

Finally, finally, after months and years of reading and researching, talking and blogging, ordering and mixing, tinting and testing, I'm finally doing it. I'm finally laying shellac onto a surface here at the Sow's Ear.

As you might have guessed, I'm starting at the top, with the treads of the stairs to the 3rd floor. The treads are going on in and 1.5 pound cut of Kusmi #1 button lac dissolved in 195 proof denatured alcohol and tinted with mahogany aniline dye. I'm not staining or dyeing the wood first, but putting the tone down in layers, so I can get the color I want.

I can't find the sample I did a few weeks ago, but I know it took six coats to get the right color. It's all right, because freshly-mixed shellac dries quickly (you can recoat in forty minutes to an hour), and more coats diluted to a thinner consistency makes for a more durable finish. Actually, I'm adding a nitch of isopropyl alcohol to retard drying so it won't get tacky before I get the brush marks blended in.

Here's today's progress. Please note that my camera renders the color entirely too reddish, no matter how I adjust it.

11:35 AM: The stairs to the Study stripped, sanded, dusted, and ready to be finished.

12:11 PM: All taped to keep the mahogany-toned shellac off the risers. Those'll be done in a warm walnut to like what was on them before.

(Wait a minute. Almost all taped. Missed a spot.)

12:16 PM: The top treads, without finish, and

12:27 PM: The same, with one coat.

12:45 PM: Making progress.

3:39 PM: Two coats on.

6:27 PM: After a light 220-grit sanding, ready for coat No. 3

7:10 PM: Three coats applied.

8:43 PM: Ready for No. 4

9:19 PM: Four coats completed. I'm running low on shellac, so I'll need to dissolve the rest of the buttons I have before I can finish this stage of the job.

And finally,

9:29 PM: Huw the boikitteh, thoroughly disgusted with me for enleashing all those funny smells and for not allowing him to go up to the 3rd floor study, all day.

What I've Been Up To

2010-10-26T22:27:00.083-04:00

A pictorial tour of the last couple-three weeks at the Sow's Ear:

Late on Tuesday, October 5th: Flaws, holes, dings, and dents filled with Zar filler tinted with mahogany aniline dye dissolved in denatured alcohol.

Wednesday the 6th: Nothing accomplished on the stairs. Made quince jelly instead.

Saturday the 9th: The five top stairs sanded down with 80-grit sandpaper.

Baby gate put at bottom of the stairs to keep the dog and his claw marks off the bare wood.

Sunday the 10th, approximately 7:00 AM: The boy cat knocks the metal gate on the floor. Replaced it with a wooden one.

Monday, 11 October: One more tread and part of another medium-sanded.

Meant to do more that day, but I was watching my friend Hannah's* daughter Letty*, who was off school for Columbus Day. We went to the riverside park and picked up windfall crabapples. Twice.

Tuesday the 12th: No stair work: made quince cheese.

Wednesday the 13th: Medium-sanded the rest of the treads.

Used the travel iron and a wet washcloth to raise the dents where I knocked the mouse sander and the canister vac down the stairs.

Dotted in some more tinted wood filler where I'd missed some spots. Went a little nutty and used the rest of it on the hallway floor.

Raked and bagged leaves in the back yard while the filler was drying.

Thursday the 14th: Fine sanded the stairs.

Steamed the bottom tread again where I lost control of the mouse sander and let it plow into the wood.

Decided I couldn't stand the stray nail tip some previous owner rammed through a riser from the closet below, and figured out a way to cut it off and countersink it.

Discovered I'd missed some holes and dings I should have refilled and sanded. Too bad. Any more material comes off these stairs, they'll have no intregity left whatsoever.

Since then, I've raked more leaves, gone to my second wedding of the month, gathered up the drop cloths and cleaned up a prodigious amount of sanding dust, substitute-taught a few times, gotten a sore throat, spent this past Sunday in bed, and, yesterday, had my final chemo session. What I've been up to today, Tuesday the 26th, can wait for a separate post.

A Discreet DIY-Related B1tch-and-Moan

2010-10-03T22:55:00.002-04:00

Something I didn't mention in my last post:

The other day, when I was using the mouse sander to groom the ratty nosings on the stair treads to the 3rd floor, I was doing my usual thing and taking pictures of the progress whenever I got a tread done.

Well, after I'd been working awhile I picked up my digital camera and was fiddling around with the controls, setting the focus to close-up, adjusting the light color temperature, that sort of thing. And darned if my right hand wasn't shaking and I could hardly push the right buttons at all!

Weird, weird, weird. I really hadn't been sanding that long, either.

I shook off the cramp or whatever it was and got back to work. And comforted myself with the thought that it couldn't be the peripheral neuropathy that sometimes appears as a side effect to the chemo drugs I'm taking. That would be a pins-and-needles sensation in the fingertips, and that's not what this sudden trembling seemed to be. Besides, I got over it and things seemed fine.

But by the next day . . . Well, I can't accurately describe the course of things; I'd rather keep detailed records of holes filled than of chemo side-effect symptoms experienced. (Does that mean I'm a normal person-- or that I'm not sufficiently attentive to my care? Whatever.) It's just that while the shakiness has not recurred, by Friday my right fingertips were definitely tingly, sausagey-feeling, or occasionally painful, and as of yesterday the left ones seem to be joining in.

Damn and blast! I am sooooooo talented! I can't throw up like normal chemo patients do, I gotta get peripheral neuropathy. Which damn well better not go any further and better not be permanent.

But here's the deal: this evening at church a friend who's a nurse was making noises to the effect that running a sander can exacerbate the problem. Now, the next thing on the DIY agenda is filling the holes in the stair treads. But after that, the sander has got to be run. Those steps have to be fine sanded before they can be refinished, and I'm the person who has to do it. There is no money to hire a pro, even if I trusted anyone else to do the job I want.

And leaving the stairs and hall floor unfinished isn't an option, either. In this economy nobody can afford to have a house torn up any longer than necessary, especially not me.

I know the motto on my blog banner says "I'll make a silk purse out of this house if it kills me." I don't plan on fulfilling that resolution, not really. But under the circumstances, it really looks like I'm going to have to-- Well, let's just say I hope the new Bosch sander won't send up too much vibration when I'm taking down the wood filler. In any case, I've got to try.

Inching Along

2010-09-29T14:53:00.004-04:00

This is another of those boring just-for-the-record posts.

I didn't get called in to teach this morning, so I took advantage of the time to clean up and restore the bullnoses on the treads of the stairway to the 3rd floor. Primarily used the mouse sander as my sculpting tool, at first with 60-grit sandpaper. But then I ran out of precut sheets and I was too lazy to go downstairs and cut more. So I used the 80-grit and it did just as well, maybe better.

Once I got the worst of the dirt and irregularities off with the electric sander, I went over the nosings again with a 40-grit 3M sanding sponge, one of those parallelogram-shaped affairs that lets you get into tight corners. I discovered to my great relief that sanding down the surfaces removed a lot of the bad irregularities at the nosings. It'd looked before like I was going to have to do a lot of fiddly filling, especially on the bottommost tread. But no, the splintery bits are pretty much all gone.

Filling the remaining holes and dings with Zar wood filler would be the next thing, now that I've gone over the sanded surfaces with dena-tured alcohol. But there was that hammer dent I'd been meaning to steam out for ages and never did till today. Yeah, the technique with the wet washcloth and the travel iron (less chance of burning bare wood) raised it right up just as reported. In fact, it's now higher than the wood around it, like a big black mole, since it's now as high as the original surface. That's fine, it'll get sanded down.

But not till tomorrow or whenever, since all that water has to dry.

I suppose I could fill every other tread today except that one. Maybe when I'm sure the alcohol is dry.

Back to the Salt Mines

2010-09-26T00:30:00.034-04:00

I mean, back to sanding stair treads.

The new sander came a week or so ago, but I'd decided I'd had enough of correspondence and receipts and paperwork all piled helter-skelter since last January on every surface in my 3rd floor study. And all over the bedroom, since my operation last April. I simply could not bear the thought of redraping my study with plastic dropcloths with that muddle of papers hiding under them. What if I needed some letter or bill? I'm supposed to go searching, with sanding dust all over the sheeting covering the paper mess? No, before I could go back to sanding it all had to be sorted and put into the file drawers where it belonged.
Never mind the number of days I spent doing (or not doing) that. It's done, and if I need a particular piece of paper, it's in its file. Under the newly-draped plastic.

Since I no longer had that excuse not to-- I mean, since that task was out of the way and I could now sand, last night (Friday) I took up the new Bosch half-sheet orbital sander and got back to it.

And remembered why I hated the job.

Why, oh why, does it take three steady hours with 40-grit paper to take ninety years worth of crud off one blinking stair tread? And that was one that had been started before! And was clear of shellac. Back and forth and back and forth and back and forth . . . Damn! if I weren't Protestant I'd think I was doing penance for something.

But the thing I feel most guilty about is not having this sanding done a lot sooner, which would make the penance be what I was supposed to be doing anyway.

Today and this evening (Saturday) I finished rough-sanding the three bottom treads. But 10:30 PM found me across at the neighbors' watching the fireworks the next borough over was shooting off for their 75th anniversary celebration. Got to talking about the work I was doing on the stairs and all, and the husband said, "Do you have a belt sander?" "Yes, I do. But I'm not using it for this. I can't keep up with it, it gets away from me, and it leaves gouges." "Oh," he says, "you just have to hold it down to keep it in one place. It'll take that stuff off in no time."

Well. When the fireworks were over and I got back to work, I gave it a good thought about getting out the belt sander, regardless. The bottom tread has some deep scratches in it, made I have no idea how. Don't think a dog did it, they're with the grain. A kid running some wheeled toy across it? I don't know. Maybe the belt sander would be the best thing.

On the other hand, maybe the belt sander would take so much wood off I wouldn't have any tread left. So I finished up with the half-sheet sander after all.

(Which, I have discovered, you have to be careful to get the lid firmly back onto the dust-catching cartridge after you've emptied it, or the dust will escape and go everywhere.)

By a little after midnight all the treads of the stairway to the 3rd floor had reached Good Enough stage. Next thing is to clean up (and in some cases, restore) the bullnose on them. Once that's done, I'll top up the unsandable pits and gouges with wood filler.

Which considering my schedule, may not be till Wednesday. We'll see.

Then I get to break out the 80-grit paper and, oh joy, start sanding again.

(Somebody just beat me with sticks, will ya? It'll make a welcome change.)

Not on the Agenda

2010-09-14T23:16:00.011-04:00

This morning around 6:35 AM I go down the basement for a paper sack to pack my lunch in.

I come back up the stairs without it.

Why? Oh, just a little matter of water most of the way across the basement floor.

I've seen this before, about six years ago. Last time my water heater went out and needed to be replaced.

This morning? Blame the early hour, blame the chemo, blame my lousy eyesight, blame the fact that I'm all dressed to go substitute teach (for the first time since my surgery last April), but the mind goes into freeze mode. Can I, might I do something to stabilize things and go ahead and go in?

Revoke my DIY card, but I can't think of what all I should do. What about the owner's manual? It's up in the Appliance file, isn't it? Yes, but can I focus well enough to understand what it could tell me about the subject? I doubt it.

Wait a minute, wait a minute . . . There's always the Internet. I run upstairs, get online, and Google in "water heater leaking." ( It actually comes up as "water heating leaking," but no matter). And the first thing on the first site I open tells me the water could be coming from the temperature- pressure (TP) relief valve. And if it is the TP relief valve, I, the homeowner, need to do something about it Right Away. Because, the site told me, if too much pressure builds up, my tank could blow up.

My tank could blow up????? What? Really!? I don't even know where my pressure relief valve is! It's probably someplace on the bottom of the tank and here I am in my skirt and stockings and good shoes! I'll never find it!

Back down the basement. I still need the lunch bag-- if I'm going in.

Gosh, what a lot of water on the floor. I pick up some trim that needs stripping to get it out of the way. Think, Kate, think! Could I leave this till 3:30 this afternoon? Could I, should I?

But what if this was only part of the water that's in the tank, and it keeps getting worse? Water on the loose Is Not Your House's Friend.

But I really need the money I'd be making today.

But what if the water keeps coming and coming?

I take a deep breath and call the school and beg off.

I still need to do something. Oh! My next-door neighbor is an air-conditioning repairman. Maybe he knows something about plumbing. They're up: I can see them moving around in their kitchen. I pick up the phone: "Hi, it's me. My water heater is leaking all over. What do I need to turn off?" The water valves? Check. Gas valve? Check. Kthxbye.

The water on the floor looks like it's getting worse. Slowly.

OK, notify the home warranty people. Website alleges my contract doesn't cover broken water heaters. Oh really? That's not what my printed contract says. I try the phone again. And awhile later, again. And awhile later, again. I keep getting shifted into phone-transfer limbo. Finally, a little before 8:00, I get a live person. The guy is helpful and puts in my service order. He tells me to go ahead and drain the heater. OK.

Hour or so later, I get a call from the designated plumber. He can't get to me till tomorrow. Too many appointments today and he has to get me a new unit.

Oh, crumb. Looks like I could have gone in to work today anyway.

Around noon, the plumber calls again. He's had a couple of cancellations and can make it today after all, in about 45 minutes.

And he does. And by 3:00 o'clock or so I have a new Rheem water heater, with copper pipes instead of those flexible steel kinds. Mine were leaking anyway. The old tank was leaking all over. The old tank is gone.

The plumber turned out to be the same guy AHS sent out to tackle my bathroom sink plumbing a year or so ago. That was nice. And it kept the dog happy.

Now it's much later. The basement floor is slowly drying out and the towels I used to mop up the floor are in the washing machine. In hot water.

Nevertheless, all this was not on today's agenda.

Dust in the Wind

2010-09-10T23:57:00.001-04:00

Last Saturday my friend Frieda* called and said, "I've got us a sander!"

Wow! That was fast. The afternoon before, we'd been on the phone and she hadn't yet had the chance to take the Craftsman half-sheet sander I'd busted to Sears to see if it could be fixed. And doubted she could until this morning. Could they possibly have put it right in that short a time?

Not at all. The minimum fee for them even to look at the thing was $69, with no guarantee repair the cost wouldn't be higher. So, Frieda announced, she'd bought a factory reconditioned model for less than that and she was bringing it right over for me to use!

And she did, and it's lovely. It even has a dust collection bag on it.

What it doesn't have is a template to punch holes in the sandpaper so the dust will swoop up through those cunning little holes in the pad of the sander and into the dust collection bag. Nor does it have a hose adapter so I can connect it straight to my shop vac.

And the dust in my third floor study was horrible already. The dropcloths over the file cabinets, tables, and bookcases were skimmed over with an orangish film. In some places, an opaque orangish film. Dust was on the books and on the papers in the file trays. Orangey pine dust coated the rug. It had to be controlled. So I thanked Frieda and told her that before I use this new sander I'd see if I could obtain the right dust collection accessories for it. Then when I give it back to her and her husband, the accessories will go with it, my contribution.

I spent a lot of time online Saturday, trying to find those accessories. Finding nothing, I called the local Sears. They couldn't help me there, but got me to the correct website. After a certain amount of Internet rabbit chasing, I located a pdf shop manual for the sander, that linked to an exploded diagram, that linked to a list of parts you could order from. Hmm. Here's the vacuum attachment, where's a replacement punch template?

Got on with Sears Craftsman Live Chat. Agent One passed me to Agent Two. She didn't know, but maybe Agent No. Three would. Oops, No. Three isn't connecting! But here's the number of the parts people, call them. They were already closed for the day. All right, I could try on Tuesday.

Actually, I tried on Wednesday. I called the number. No, they don't handle that sort of thing, try this other number. Called Number No. 2. No, they only handle hand tools. But here's another number. Called Number No. 3. Agent looks, and says, No, you can't get a replacement paper punch template for the Craftsman sanders. It only comes with new ones, sorry. But maybe I could call my local Sears store and ask them. No, I said emphatically. That's where I started on Saturday.

So it looks like I won't be able to rig this reconditioned sander for dust collection, and, as I've said, the dust so far has been terrible. It's been bad enough upstairs on the third floor: it'll be intolerable as I work my way down. I feel embarrassed thinking that Frieda spent her money for this thing, but I don't think I'll be able to use it. I need something cleaner.

And something should be coming, in a few days. Yeah, I dented my budget further and ordered the Bosch sander I was looking at on Amazon.com. With shop vac attachments. To make things more audacious, I did it on the computer at the public library this past Wednesday night. (My Internet connection was down this past week and the wireless router still isn't working correctly). Yes, I remembered to look for the security code in the URL. And I made sure to log out!

Anyway, maybe it'll come by Monday or Tuesday and I can get back to work. In the meantime, this evening I did an interim cleaning of the third floor. I'm sure pine dust shaken off the dropcloths is very good for the grass. And that and my fingers are the ideal tool for pushing a sticky combination of sanding dust and pet hair out of the fins of the shop vac filter . . .

Treading Water

2010-09-01T23:39:00.001-04:00

I meant to give a status update on the stair sanding earlier this week, but other stuff (like laziness) got in the way.

As of Saturday I have seven and a half out of eleven treads sanded on the stairway to the 3rd floor. Why the half? Because around 8:30 Saturday evening, I was doing the back-and-forth, back-and-forth dance with the borrowed Craftsman dual-motion half sheet sander, when all of a sudden it balked. It didn't want to glide sideways unless I really pushed it. I checked and yes, the lever was set to Orbital, but it didn't feel like the orbital setting was on.

Short minutes later, a piece of dirty white plastic fell out of the thing. The sander was still running, and I tried using it in straight-line mode, which it seemed happier about. But a little later, it coughed out another piece of plastic. At this point I'd been at this one tread for over an hour and not making much headway, so I gave it up before the tool gave out altogether.

Monday, Frieda* picked up the sander (when she came round to drive me to my latest chemo session); this evening on the phone she told me they were going to take it to Sears to see if it could be fixed. My theory is that the plastic is off the mechanism that keeps it in the orbital position. With it broken it won't stay, and I won't make much progress. At least, not the right kind.

I didn't have the cheek to ask her how soon she thought they might be taking it in. She and her husband have been nice enough to let me borrow this thing and don't plan to make me pay for fixing it. But I'd kinda, sorta, really, like to know . . . because I've been on Amazon.com where they're selling a highly-rated, greatly reduced-price Bosch orbital half-sheet sander with a lot better dust control, and if I have the excuse to spend money I don't have on something that'll get the job done better and quicker and cleaner, I'd like to know sooner, not later.

Well, patience. I do have other things I need to do, even if they're not house-reno related.

And Then I Go and Spoil It All by Doing Something Stupid Like . . .

2010-08-24T21:30:00.057-04:00

(We pause while Frank and daughter Nancy go to fade . . . )

All right. Today I got back on the 3rd floor stair sanding work. The general plan was to do as many treads as I could with the shop vac at the top, then when it would no longer reach, to move it down to the 2nd floor and finish the treads at the bottom.

But I discovered last week that with patient application with the big oscillating sander I could clean the treads off a lot better than I thought when I started this job. So before I moved the vacuum cleaner down, I wanted to go back and redo the three winders at the top. I'd given up too soon before and left a lot of the carpet knife scratches on them and some general dirt, and I knew I could do better.

So I did. The scratches aren't totally obliterated; at least, there's still some discolora- tion in the wood where they were (which shows up less in person than it does in the pictures), but for the most part the cuts themselves are gone. The winder treads look a lot cleaner and brighter and now they match the ones below.

However. Still. Nevertheless.

The third winder from the top has a crack in it, that left the pieces on either side of it uneven. You know, I says to myself, if I just keep at it with the sander I can get that levelled off and get off the dirt that's collected in there. What? You say I could switch out and use the palm sander to do that? Oh, surely not! That'd leave a depression! I'm going to use the big dual motion sander and keep it moving and the tread will come out nice and even!

Uh, notice anything strange about this picture?

Yeah, that's right. Talk about "something stupid"! No, sanding down the rest of the tread to match is not an option. I want to be able to walk on it, after all. Nor is replacing it without mass destruction, since the treads are slotted into the stringers.

Oh, carp carp carpitty carp!

OK, let's think of something. All right. How's this: The wallpaper is going to be William Morris, and he was influenced by designs from the Middle Ages. The tile I've got my eye on for the first floor hall has a Medieval motif to it. I've got reproductions of Gothic art all round the house. That's it! I'll just tell anybody who asks that I wanted my 3rd floor stairs to look like the turret stairs in a Medieval castle! Never mind that in that case the low place would be in the middle of the tread and not at the side . . .

No use! Epic DIY fail! Now I've gone and done something that future owners can rag on me about.

Down Day

2010-08-18T21:37:00.000-04:00

Got up this morning, put on my work clothes, and was going to spend all day sanding steps.

But the mild weather tempted me outside to do something about the net-bound black raspberry canes. Spent all morning detangling the net and cutting off the tops that'd grown through it; pulling up the suckers that had ranged out of bounds (including through the fence into the neighbors' yard), and lopping off the old growth. Ended up with three paper leaf bags full of trimmings. I'd glad I did it and I wish I'd done it a month ago, but after that I was scratched and exhausted.

And went upstairs and took a four hour nap.

And still felt draggy and tired after that.

So no sanding today. Damn. I guess this chemo business does have an effect on me after all.