End of Summer-2

Today I shall be building...and this is not something one would consider to be in my wheelhouse. 

It should be fairly easy. I'm building a floor on the upstairs portion of the stairwell.

I've got my stringers in and I even went the extra mile of securing them with 6 quarter inch lag bolts. Them babies ain't going nowheres, Man!

Next I cut my joists to size and hung them in the joist hangers. That's my very first joist pictured above. Not bad. I shall soon be losing my membership in M.W.C.B. (Men Who Can't Build)

Once I got going on the joists, it went very quickly.

I would comment on how pleased I am with myself but I am all to aware of the fact that pride comes before the fall.

I will try not to fall until I have the floor in.

End of Summer -1

I am hoping to accomplish a great deal of accomplishments this weekend. Today is Day One of the Labor Day Holiday...the unofficial end of Summer.

Let's see how I do!

The plan is to start the remodel of the main floor bathroom. We have budgeted $5,000.00. The big expense will be any plumbing changes we make and the possible purchase of a new bathtub and maybe a shower.

We really don't know and won't know until we have the wall down to see what we can do with the space.

Oh...another monkey wrench has been thrown into the mix. Susan is suddenly without a job. Her boss of nearly 20 years laid her off on Friday. It could be a temporary thing, perhaps a couple of months. But we are thinking we can't really wait around a couple of months for her boss to decide whether he can keep her or not.

And so...the bathroom project is on a temporary hiatus until we know what's happening with Susan and the job market. 

But that doesn't mean there isn't work to be done. Even if the downstairs portion of the remodel is on hold, we can still be working on the upstairs portion.

You see, the expansion of the bathroom involves removing the wall between the bathroom and the back staircase. We never use the back staircase and feel the space can be more efficiently used as usable living space.

So the bathroom gets larger downstairs and the back bedroom gets a nice closet upstairs.

So my project this weekend is to build a floor at the top of the stairs and maybe cut a hole in the wall for the closet door. That's pretty ambitious but let's see where we get to.

Here are a couple of pictures of what I'm starting with. An observant person might notice something unusual. There appears to be a staircase under the staircase. "WTF?", one might exclaim.

Well, when this house was a group home, they built a staircase to accommodate the code of the day over the very steep and treacherous original staircase.

So, I got to work a few weeks ago to take out the newer one.

I also got to work taking down the drywall in order to expose the walls. Here's something else to observe. The boards on the wall in the picture above are ship lath. The cover a layer of tar paper. That indicates to me that the wall there was at one time an outside wall.

This was not a surprise to us as we knew the kitchen had been added to.

This pile of razor blades fell out of the wall when I started removing the ship lath. That's because the medicine cabinet in the bathroom had a slot in it for disposing of razor blades. They just shoved them into the wall. 

I eventually got the whole wall cleaned up which gave me a crap load of wood to start cleaning up.

So cleaning up the wood was my main task today. Once again, we're going to be burning a good portion of the house this winter.

That's enough for today. We have Mom and some of her friends coming over for a nice barbecue to make up for the missed Mother's Day earlier this year.

Siberian Swan Song

I got home last night to discover the tree guy had finally showed up and started remove the Siberian Oak that has caused us sooooo much trouble.

 Before and after yesterday's pruning.

I am glad it is going but I think I will miss the shade it provided for the house. It has to go though. It's sick and falling down in pieces and it is in the way of our future garage. Not that the garage is happening soon, but the tree would have had to come down at some point to accommodate the new, super deluxe, space age two car garage.

Anyway, it looks like we'll end up with a bunch more wood to burn next season. I hope he's cleaning up the brush. That was the deal.

I found this guy, Donovan through my insurance agent. He taking down this tree for about $700.00. That's $500 below any other quote I got.

Catching Up S'Mo

To begin...and have some continuity with previous weather posts, the heat wave continues but it looks like there is light and the end of the forecast tunnel. The temperature is in the high 80's today and the forecast for the rest of the week calls for similar temperatures.

It's been waaaay too hot for waaaay too long.

We have finally figured out the next project for the house and in fact, preliminary work has already taken place.

We have begun the remodel of the main floor bathroom.

The work done so far is in the back stair well space that the bathroom will be expanding into. A staircase built to the proper code was built over the original very steep staircase.

Here you can see the space we are expanding into and the two sets of stairs.

The top picture shows the newer staircase and the bottom shows the old original one.

I have removed the newer staircase and am getting ready to open the wall between the stairwell and the bathroom.

We are holding off taking down the wall for two reasons. The main reason is because it is a bearing wall and I'm going to need to consult with my peoples on how to proceed.

The other reason is because we are hosting a party this coming weekend for Susan's friend, Sharron. The plan was that Sharron would be attending this party but she died August 8th from Lung Cancer.

Sharron still wanted the party to take place and she will be there in spirit.

It's All Our Fault

We took a trip to Colorado to spend some time with Susan's sister, Margaret and her family. We went to Estes Park, a little town in the mountains outside Denver. Susan and Margaret used to vacation there when they were kids. I assume their parents vacationed with them, but don't know that for sure.

We returned to Spokane on Wednesday the 23rd. About an hour after we got home, a tremendous wind storm suddenly rolled through town. It was like someone hit a storm switch. It came up that suddenly.

The wind howled and knocked down lots of trees around town and took out a lot of electricity.

My buddy Mike came into town the other day to hand out for a few days before returning to Hell in Saudi Arabia. He teaches English to the entitled princes that inhabit the region.

We had a party to attend last night but another light switch wind storm hit the city and continued to wreck havoc where the other storm left off.

We left for the party and had a difficult time getting there. One road I took was closed due to a tree across the street. We doubled back and realized how dusty it had become. A couple of small fires had started as well.

The party was to be a dock party out on the Spokane River in the valley. Because of the wind, the party got moved inside. Soon enough though, we were able to move to the dock and I was able to dive off the bridge like I do every year.

We had a nice time at the part, left early to go see a baseball game, which was followed by a really good fireworks show. We had a great evening all the way around.

And then we got home...to a dark neighborhood...and a dark house.

It wasn't until the next day that we discovered that our tree out back was the reason for the power outage.

This tree has been featured here before as it is slowly killing itself by having various parts of it fall off. Until now, it has managed to avoid hitting the house.

This time, it has laid itself upon the garage without causing any damage to the building.

It is time for this tree to come down before it causes some real damage.