Immer Zu

I'm still here.  Actually, I haven't really been any place much other than here.  Not working on the houseblog, no.  But working on the house.  Workingworkingworkingworkingworking ....

Tired, crabby, frustrated; no way I'll get done what I'd hoped to get done by the time my friend from England arrives on the 18th, but still at it, obsessed, devoted, immolated.

I'm only up at my computer now because I was seized suddenly by the fear that I'd forgotten in the throes of house idolatry to pay one of my credit card bills.  So I left the trim I was working on in the basement to run up to the 3rd floor study to make sure.

Yes, it was already paid.  And I'm paying this debt to houseblogdom, putting down a minuscule installment payment on what I owe to my two or three readers, to give you some indication on what's been going on at the Sow's Ear the past month.

Heaven help us, what hasn't?  The spray foam people finally came (no, that was February, but never mind, they did).  The roof repair contractor and his son showed up three or so weeks ago (he was originally scheduled for early December) and took care of everything on the list, and a couple-three other things beside.  What they couldn't rectify was the wet on the face of the chimney breast in the living room, which issue they diagnosed as being due to my having no liner for the hot water heater in my chimney-- the warm water vapor condenses on the cold brick et voilà! failing skim coat and sticky old wallpaper paste on the living room side.  So I've had plumbing contractors marching through sizing up the height of the chimney, and I've accepted a bid from one who's supposed to come install me a metal liner early next week, hopefully before Janet* arrives.  And things have gotten to the point with my own work that I had to get the electrical contractors in to bid out installing properly-grounded circuits for the outlets that go in the baseboards that I hope soon to be reaffixing.  One bid was so astronomical I thought I should suck it up and rewire them myself after all; the other, from the guy who seemed to know more what he was talking about, was low enough to make me feel it wouldn't be worth the time and tribulation for me to try to do it myself.  And unlike the other guy, he can work with the trim installed.  I plan to have him come in May, if I've got the place reassembled by then.

But me?  Damn.  A short list, in no particular order: 
1)  Shellacking woodwork, starting with the stairhall's pieces and going on to the ones for the living room.
2)  Buying select white pine 1x boards and having my friend Steve* rip them to size to replace missing or hopelessly damaged yellow pine originals.
3)  Shellacking white pine replacement pieces to try to get them to match the yellow pine originals (semi-successful, if you don't mind a little streakiness). 
4)  Finishing up the Big Wally's plaster repair I started last month.
5)  Finding out that even Big Wally's won't get rid of a wall bulge caused by settling from the floor above.
6)  Doing an obsessive amount of research on how properly to hang my William Morris wallpaper, and finding out about blankstock liner paper and mix-it-yourself wheat paste and happening on a good source for both.
7)  In the course of said researches, learning about a homemade device that should make it easier for me to remove the old paper from the sheetrocked walls in the dining room and front room, and pulling together the pieces and parts and beginning to make my own.
8)  Trying repeatedly to get the old wallpaper paste removed from the living room walls and failing miserably, unless my goal is to take off all the previous owners' repairs.
9)  Carrying on an extensive email correspondence with the proprietor of the concern referred to in No. 6 and learning from him a) that I can use a Zinsser product called Gardz to encapsulate the old paste and size, and b) what "size" is and how to make it.
10)  Doing the Big Wally's routine on the east wall of the living room, especially down at the bottom along the line of the baseboard, where the plaster seemed to be flapping in the breeze.
11)  Ordering Gardz over the Internet (Lowe's and HD don't carry it around here) and applying a first coat on the north and east LR walls.
12)  Cutting to fit and screwing in pieces of drywall to replace the plaster that fell to pieces when I removed the baseboard along the east living room wall.
13)  Taping cracks in my living room walls with drywall tape and mudding, sanding, and mudding again.  (Which I hate-hate-hate!).
14)  Locating the most workable location for the outlet I've wanted for years in the 1st floor hall, and cutting the hole for it (happily, it falls right in the drywall under what I call the portal between the hall and the living room, where my POs-1 partially closed in what used to be a large doorway.
15)  Taking up the ridiculous sheet vinyl from the hallway floor, and discovering that the plywood underneath seems to be glued as well as nailed down.
16)  Doing the long-postponed measured drawing of the existing structure under the 1st floor hall, and submitting it to the John Bridge Tile Forum to find out if it can support ceramic tile.
17)  Getting an answer from one of the tile pros there that my structure might do, but unless I tear out both the plywood and the original tongue-and-groove subfloor and sink new plywood between the joists, I'll be way out of Code due to the odd riser height at the bottom stair.
18)  Saying O crap! and checking into linoleum tile and other, thinner alternatives, and deciding probably I'll clean up and smooth down the plywood that's there and paint a faux tile pattern instead.
19)  Using some medium red-brown paint left behind by my POs on the existing LR cornice moulding to even out the place where they or somebody got ceiling paint on it, then going over that with two coats of warm-walnut tinted shellac (north wall cornice is done; east wall in progress).
20)  Stripping, repairing, and sanding the trim that goes on the kitchen side of the doorway from the 1st floor hall-- nasty job, since it doesn't seem ever to have been shellacked, so the paint wouldn't just chip.
21)  Removing the rest of the wallpaper from the east and most of the south living room walls (yes, this should have come a lot sooner, but I just remembered).
22)  With the help of my friend Frieda*, remeasuring for the new chair rail for both storeys in the stairhall, sizing the lower part of the walls there, and hanging blankstock on them, but not before going back and filling and patching ten dozen dips and holes I never noticed till the work light was shining on them.
23)  Except for an occasional mowing and covering the roses when a frost warning's on, letting the garden take its own course this spring.

Did I say this was supposed to be a short list?  Gaw.  And I need to go back down the basement and prime that kitchen side trim and the trim for the doorway to my bedroom, because oh, yeah, I got the loan of a nail gun today, and if all goes well I can start rehanging trim this weekend and that needs to go up before-- well, never mind, it'd take too long.


Immer zu!  Immer zu!  Ohne Rast und Ruh'!

Sometimes It's Good to Be Wrong

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

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.

Diagnosis

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

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.

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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

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!?
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*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.