Fence... totally done...

The fence is done and stained. Grace and the girls painted the bulk of it on Thursday; and Grace and I cut the posts to length and made caps for them on Friday.

Meanwhile back in the addition... We finished up a few details in the electrical department today, and set up a date for installing the rough plumbing.

it works!

Grace and I finished the business end of the fence this afternoon. I was going to finish it last week but a couple of things prevented me (even though I was on vacation). "Preventing thing" one was that Grace wasn't home; "preventing thing" two was that it was unbelievably hot last week. (I spent the bulk of the week down by the swimming hole drinking beer and reading.) Hannah helped me get some of it done last week but after eleven a.m. it was just too hot to be out there.

Today Hannah took a few pictures that not only show off our new fence but also demonstrate its functionality.

The important part about this first photograph is the background. It shows the fence keeping animals in (just like it's supposed to). But wait, these aren't just *any* animals - they're goats. Goats are the Harry Houdini's of the livestock world! Gwen (an adult mother goat) and two baby goats (whose names I don't know) are contentedly contained. That's almost miraculous! (That's me in the foreground...)

This next picture shows most of the completed fence. It's a little warpy but we just say we were going for "a rustic look." This picture also shows the fence preventing an unwanted animal from entering the pasture; in this case Norman. Granted he's not the brightest animal in all of God's creation but, just the same, our fence kept him outside.

Grace and the girls are hoping to stain the fence tomorrow and then I have to build a big gate; then we're done. (...and then we really should get busy on the addition again...)

New fence...

If there's one thing I've learned over the years of renovating and pretending to be a gentleman-farmer it is this - if you put up something "temporary" and it works for any length of time, it becomes permanent... Which brings us to today's topic -

When we moved in more than five years ago, we fenced off our horribly overgrown side yard. It was a veritable jungle of blackberries and six foot tall canary grass. We let the goats have a go at it for about a year and then we pulled up the fence posts and "temporarily" fenced off the true pasture. This spring our "temporary" fence finally gave out. Four years worth of sheep and goats pushing against the tired raspberry posts caused a number of them to snap off at ground level. We moved animals around and pounded in metal tee posts to hold things up "temporarily" but the shine wore off that rather quickly.

About two years ago Grace bought a bunch of surplus treated 4x4's from a local Habitat for Humanity project. She also bought a plethora of 12+ foot 1x6's from a now defunct lumber yard. We had all the materials we needed to proceed. Now we just needed to get motivated. Once the temperature climbed above 80 degrees on a daily basis we figured it was time to get out there and put up a new fence. (It would just be wrong to tackle a task like this under comfortable conditions...)

We de-stapled the old fence from its posts. We coaxed the few remaining unrotted posts out of the ground. (Surprisingly enough, they were back-breakingly solid...) We rented an auger and auged (that's right, I said "auged" - deal with it) our post holes. We fought over how the fence should look - level all the way across or parallel with the lay of the land? (We went with the "lay of the land" option.)
We went to the local gravel pit and filled our utility trailer with 5/8's crushed gravel to tamp around the posts. We ran a line so that we could get our permanent fence in a somewhat straight line. (We had "eyeballed" our "temporary" fence and apparently someone needs to get a stronger prescription for their glasses...) We got the posts all set in a fairly straight line and then proceeded to nail boards on after a brief discussion as to whether it should be a "three" or "four" rail fence. (Three.)

It's not quite done - but it's well on its way! We have it to the point where it will keep animals contained (with the exception of baby goats...)

(I seem to have packed on a few pounds...)

I'm going to start on some gates on Monday - and then our days of chasing animals all over the yard and stepping over the fence to get into the pasture will be behind us.

Progress report...

I noticed that it has been almost two months since I've posted anything about our addition endeavors. That's not because we haven't been doing anything - it's just because I haven't posted anything.

Here's what the exterior of the house looks like now. By carefully arranging the angle and strategically overlooking other things, we fixed it so that you might get the impression that we are all but done based on this shot.


It does look nice. We're very pleased with the way it's looking and truthfully there's not a whole lot more exterior-ish stuff to do. This is pretty much what it's going to look like when everything is finished. At least as far as the outside is concerned....

The inside is a different story. We framed up the interior walls, got the rough electrical done, we're starting on the rough plumbing, and have generally picked away at stuff. We're happy - we're not in a huge rush or anything.

The project is not as all consuming this summer - now that it's all enclosed we're taking a much more relaxed approach to things; which is nice.

Once we get the rough plumbing done we can have it inspected and then we move on to insulation and dry wall. Then it will look like we're really making progress! Stay tuned!

In honor of my distant relative Jan Vermeer

The Art of Painting by Jan Vermeer

I read somewhere that a lot of skills, dislikes/likes and other traits have a tendency to skip a generation. I think that's true and if so that would most definitely mean that I am part of an "off generation" as far as Vermeers and painting is concerned. Somehow I'm related to Jan Vermeer (at least that's what my dad told me - he might have lied) but there are few jobs I despise more than painting. Granted it might be different if I got to paint cool things like old JV did, but I sure hate painting houses...

The Drudgery of Painting by Al Vermeer

Paige helped me (but it was still awful). I had to do a reenactment for the picture since there were no photographers home when we mercifully ran out of paint. If you look closely at JV's painting (it's claimed to be a self-portrait of sorts) you can note that he and I share brush stroke techniques. Hey! Maybe I'm not part of an "off generation" after all!

Below you can see the final product. Unfortunately it's only the first coat - but the second one is going on with a roller.

New back door...

I don't know for certain but I'm quite sure that the previous owners of our house found the back door on a driving range - probably about 50 yards or so from the tees. It's ugly and pock marked with many, many dents and dings of varying depths. It is without a doubt the ugliest door ever made. It is a steel door - very secure, I suppose. It doesn't pretend to be anything it's not. There are no fake wood panels or anything else even the least bit appealing to the eye. I can't even describe the color - it's a nondescript greenish, whitish, beige-ish... It's basically a 3x7ish piece of steel... In retrospect, I can't believe we put up with the thing for as long as we did. If you think I'm exaggerating; check out the following picture:
Do you see how ugly that thing is? I don't know what that round thing is near the top. (The hippies who lived here before us had some kind of a yin/yang thing on there which never really came off...) You can also note that the bottom third of the door is somewhat discolored - that's from dogs sleeping against it. (I can't blame that one on the hippies...)

Where am I going with this? Well, if you didn't pick up on it from the title to this post, we got a new back door! New for us anyway. Good old craigslist came through for us again!

Today after work I took my trusty Milwaukee Sawzall and sliced the old door out of there. (We'll try to unload it on some unsuspecting hippies via craigslist.)

Once we had the old door out we realized that we didn't have any shims and so we lived without a back door for several hours while Grace went to Home Depot to get a pack of shims. When she got back it was fairly late but we were still relatively excited about getting the door installed. Our enthusiasm waned in a big way after about 20 minutes. We wedged the crooked, non-closable door shut and went to bed convinced that tomorrow would bring better things. It did! Voila!

I'll trim it up on Friday and then we can banish the memory of our driving range door forever.

So how's the addition coming along?

The title to this post is the question which we are most frequently asked these days. Short answer: The addition is coming along just fine. We haven't really worked on it for the last three months but it's coming along just fine.

Tomorrow will mark the one year anniversary of this blog. I was supposed to be chronicling the trials and tribulations of adding on to our home. As I quickly scanned the entries of the last year I noticed that by no means are all of them about the addition. Granted most of them are but not all. We've been doing a lot of other stuff too and that's kind of where we're at right now.

Last year our building project was pretty much all consuming; then the weather turned really lousy; then we got an extension on our building permit; (now the pressure is off for another six months); then when the weather got nice again we noticed that we had kind of let things slide around the place. We've been busy doing spring clean up kind of things. I recently found a fence that had disappeared under a tangle of blackberries. Grace discovered that our side yard was also being (re)consumed by them and she reclaimed it. We had cleared all of this stuff out when we moved in and it was beginning to revert to its "pre-Al&Grace" state. We also set up a fence after we discovered that lambs don't swim well. (Oh yeah, we also had lambs earlier in the spring.) I finally put up a curb using treated 4x6's so that Jesse's friends would be able to distinguish between lawn and driveway. (The first time one of them came over he ran over it and dug up the yard...)

We've done other things too. Things that don't even involve our property or house or barn... (We do have a bit of a life...) So that's the state of the blog at one year. Don't worry faithful readers (both of you) - more addition adventures are just around the corner!

Next up, interior framing! Then rough plumbing and electrical. It's going to be a fun summer.

Back to the addition...

Spring is officially here; and since that's the case we figured that we had better get going on the addition again. So today (even though it was only 32 degrees this morning), we repaired our torn and sagging Tyvek and installed some exterior siding. It felt good to work on the addition again - especially once it warmed up to over 50 in the afternoon. It's nice doing siding because you cover a lot of square feet in a relatively short period of time ( - makes it look like you've really accomplished a lot!) And so after a hiatus of almost four months, we present to you once again (insert drumroll) - the addition!

DANGER! DANGER!

If you are renovating/remodeling/adding on, I would suggest you stay away from places like this:

Throwing caution and good sense to the wind, Grace and I went to the 2009 Whatcom County Home & Garden Show last night. We had accomplished quite a bit during the day and since we're gluttons for punishment we figured for a night out we would go to the home show. It was pretty interesting. The place was full of vendors and exhibitors hawking goods and services of every kind. Thankfully, nothing really caught our eyes; so we're still on track with our original plans.... (Dodged that bullet...)

Next!

Having actually completed the bathroom in the suite, Grace and I were emboldened to finish something else. (No, not the addition (yet). Settle down!)

About two years ago we remodeled the bathroom in the house. We finished the bathroom itself but there was a small hallway that escaped our attention. Truth be told, it didn't so much escape our attention as we just grew accustomed to its not being done... We tackled that today.

Here's what it looked like when we started (and what it has looked like for a long time already.)

It's hard to capture the full extent of its unfinishedness since it is a tiny area. It's only about a 4x4 space; our photographer couldn't get the whole thing in one picture due to space constraints. I think these photographs are more than adequate for communicating its state of unfinishedness though.

Today Grace bought two sheets of drywall and a 2x4 and away we went. Even with just the drywall up the transformation is incredible! We've got to do a little mudding yet and install some flooring and then we're done. (Our photographer is gone for the night so maybe I will post more pictures tomorrow...)

Finished! (almost...)

We're so close to being done that I feel confident in posting about it... plus I notice I haven't posted at all in February - (but it's a very short month you know...)

Yes, it's true! Grace and I are almost done the bathroom in the suite. A little caulking, one more quick coat of paint and then towel holders, etc. and we're done! I'm sure we can get it all done tomorrow.

Today's big project was getting the toilet installed. It got a little more complicated since Grace found some flooring on craigslist on Thursday. I came home from work on Thursday to find Grace and Sara laying flooring. (Our original plan was to simply paint the floor. This looks a lot nicer - and it's warmer on the feet.) You can see the flooring in the pictures.

Back to the toilet... Grace picked it up a couple of weeks ago at The REStore . It sat outside and waited to be installed... and waited... That wasn't bad in and of itself. It was put to good use - as was the toilet we took out of the bathroom - observe:
But all good things must end and the toilet was installed today. I had replaced all of the innards beforehand so I figured it would be a quick job. Unfortunately, there was one part I hadn't replaced (the tank bolts) and it leaked like crazy... After a quick trip to the hardware store, all systems were go. The toilet was christened shortly thereafter - what a day of rejoicing and celebration!

Here are a couple of pictures. They show the flooring we got as well as the shower and toilet.

In the end, we managed to remodel our bathroom for well under $500. That's a pretty good deal if you ask me. Ya gotta love craigslist, the REStore and various other thrift stores!

...a diversion... (soon to be a life-long project!)

Every "Do-It-Yourself" home renovation book that I've read states that the bathroom is the most complex and time-consuming room to redo. There's the whole plumbing aspect (hooking up leak-free supply lines as well as positioning toilets and drains so that gravity is your friend). There's also electrical work that has to be done in such a way so that water and electricity can safely coexist in a small, confined space. All of this (and there's more) on top of the fact that the typical DIY'er is pressed for time and no one wants to be without a bathroom (even the second bathroom) for any length of time.

DIY books also mention that the difficulty is compounded exponentially if, in the course of your bathroom renovations, you want to rearrange your fixtures. Then you've got to deal with lining up supply and waste lines in such a way that they properly meet the fixtures you're installing. You've got to poke holes into floors and walls - and you can't always be too sure of what might be lurking on the other side...

In spite of what we had read, Grace and I have, over the course of our years in this house, undertaken three bathroom renovations. That's no mean feat, especially when you take into account that our home had only one and half bathrooms when we bought it... But wait, there's more. Not only are we presently engaged in our third bathroom renovation but every one of these projects has involved repositioning fixtures.

At this point you may well be asking, "Al, how do a couple of intrepid DIY sadists manage to undertake three bathroom renovations in a 1.5 bathroom home?" Well, I'm glad you asked; let me explain. When we moved in we had one full bathroom (about the size of the lavatory on a DC-10) and we had a room (minus one wall) in the suite with ugly, mismatched plumbing fixtures (a pink sink, green toilet and white claw foot tub with enamel chipping off it.) We got a "new" tub, throne and sink from a contractor friend; installed them in exactly the opposite places that the existing tub, throne and sink were; built a wall and called it good. Then we remodeled the bathroom in the house. We expanded the room by about 18 inches; removed the existing fixtures - installed a new tub/shower, sink and toilet (again, in brand new positions) and called it good. Then we realized how much fun we had redoing the bathroom in the suite so we thought we would do it one more time - and that brings us to the present. Now we can see the proverbial light at the end of the tunnel with regard to our latest (but I guess I shouldn't say "last") bathroom project...

Water, water (pretty much) everywhere....

Not much has happened on the home renovation front of late due to a number of circumstances.

We had the massive wind storm which tore the Tyvek off the addition; then it got bitterly cold and it snowed like crazy. (This was not just "northwest Washington snowed like crazy" this was the real deal.) We had three vehicles stuck on Christmas Day - two on Heron Lane and one in the neighbor's driveway. We got everything unstuck and prepared to hunker down and wait it out. Then the furnace went belly up on us; it got down to 30 degrees in the house at one point. Thankfully the pipes didn't freeze. Now it's warmed up; the rain has returned (with a vengeance) and we are dealing with this...

These pictures were taken from the same vantage point two weeks apart... Our pasture is on the right - a good portion of it was overwhelmed by the creek. In the summer Johnson Creek is quite a bit smaller even than the "before" picture.

Here you see Grace and Jesse surveying the "creek". Generally it is about a 12 foot drop from the bottom of the bridge to the surface of the water; water is touching the bottom of the bridge in this picture. That's a lotta water folks! You can see our barn, cars and house in the background.

As to our "diversion", we've made some progress - even to the point of seeing the light at the end of the tunnel. We managed to get the shower seated properly with the drain hooked up and water flowing to it. (That was a bit of nightmare; but it's done now...)

Here's the cupboard. The counter top and sink are next on the agenda...

a setback...

Pictured below is the result of a ridiculously strong, bitterly cold northeast wind meeting with a partially sided addition... We kind of watched it happen but it was WAY too cold and windy to do anything about it. There are sections of Tyvek in the neighbor's pasture too... We'll fix it once the weather gets a little more cooperative. The weatherman says what we've got happening now weatherwise (cold, snowy, blowy) is supposed to continue until after Christmas.

The extreme coldness and shortness of daylight is also affecting progress on our "diversion" - not a whole lot has been accomplished. The weather is more suited to hibernation than construction...

a diversion (continued...)

I fear this "diversion" might eat up our winter... Be that as it may, we managed to shoe horn the shower stall into the suite bathroom this morning. If you look closely at the shower stall you can see the reflection of the window we had to remove and replace. We did it. We had less than an inch of wiggle room. Oh, in case you were wondering why we have no pictures of the window removal, shower stall shoving, etc. - it is due to the fact that our photographers were out Black Friday shopping. They arrived home just as we were finishing up... Coincidence? I think not!

Next item on the agenda - rerouting plumbing, then rerouting electricity. I hope to hit Home Depot in Abbotsford tonight to get the necessary supplies.

a diversion...

You know of course that part of the addition involves a bathroom... I desperately wanted to put our jetted tub into said bathroom. That involved doing the following to the bathroom in the suite...
You are looking through the doorway to where the sink and vanity used to be. In the back corner there was a cupboard for linens, toiletries and various sundries.... Did you notice how the doorway is actually "doorway plus"? (There are a couple of feet of extra wall taken out of the bottom so that we could get the bathtub out of there...)

As you can see we didn't take the toilet out.... Beside the toilet is where the tub used to be...

Grace found a cheap, new shower stall on Craig's List with the hardware and everything. It's a nice big one - 36x36! We figured out that we would be able to get it into the bathroom since we already had to 'expand' the door opening..... Yeah, we can get it into the bathroom all right - the problem is we can't get it into the suite in the first place! The suite has two doorways - neither of which will allow the ingress of a 36x36 shower! But wait; all is not lost! Observe below:

If we take this window out and remove a few pieces of 2x4 we should be able to fit the shower stall into the suite. That's tomorrow's project...

All of this trouble and work for this:

more siding (horizontal...)

I was going to take Monday (Nov. 10) off so that we could put some siding up - the kids didn't have school and we figured we could get some work out of them... Unfortunately Monday morning looked pretty menacing (like every other day for the past two weeks) so I went to work. Even more unfortunate was the fact that once I got to work the weather cleared up and it turned into a surprisingly pleasant "would-have-been-a-good-day-to-work-outside" day. Well, Grace and the kids did anyway - actually just Grace and Jesse and his girlfriend, Lisa. (Thanks, Lisa!) They managed to get all of the bottom siding on. Grace painted it today. (It looks stripey in the picture but that's because she hasn't painted the little channels yet. (I couldn't live in a stripey house...) They're painted now. Looks nice!)

Siding (part one)

Grace went to Builder's Alliance the other day and ordered all of the siding we'll need for the addition. To match our existing siding we got 16 foot and 20 foot lengths of cedar channel siding for the bottom four feet and then 4x8 sheets of Hardy siding for the top. We're glad that Builder's Alliance delivers for free (I think they're getting sick of having to drive all the way to our place with partial loads though...)

The cedar siding has to be primed on both sides before it's installed so we laid the 16 foot long pieces out in the addition and the 20 foot long pieces out in the barn and started painting. Kind of a pain. It worked out all right except that Riley and Norman walked all over the pieces in the barn with muddy paws.... (Thankfully it was before I had any primer on them.) They do take forever to dry though so it will be next week before we are installing siding.

Windows!

We installed four windows this afternoon- two on the east side, one on the north and one (the bathroom) on the west. Grace picked them up yesterday along with a few other supplies we needed so once I got home from work we were good to go. Below you see Grace preparing one of the rough openings for a window. The black stuff (with GRACE embossed on it) is rubberized adhesive flashing. The bottom picture shows me nailing the window to the house while Grace and Jesse are holding it in place on the inside. It actually went very quickly and smoothly - which made for a nice afternoon but not such an interesting blog post.

One of the miracles of science...

I wouldn't have believed it if I hadn't read it with my own two eyes but Tyvek HomeWrap by DuPont is one of "the miracles of science". Wow! Now that may or may not be the case but I can tell you that the stuff is a pain in the neck to wrap a house with if your stapler decides not to cooperate... It's slippery and unwieldy. The mad scientists at DuPont cut it to a length which puts the top just out of arm's reach but it's not tall enough to cover the whole side in one pass... Oh well, least it's done (mostly...)

There's Norman "helping" me....

And here are the windows which we hope to be installing before the end of the week.

I guess we would have to admit that we've been a little lax regarding working on the addition lately. Getting a roof on the thing really took a lot of pressure off - maybe a little too much... We have done some stuff - we rerouted the furnace exhaust (which had been venting into Jesse's bedroom - thankfully, we caught that before we ran the furnace (too much...)), Grace also drew out all of the interior walls as well as bathroom fixtures and our bedroom furniture on the floor using sidewalk chalk (- kind of cool to see...)

Next time I hope to show you windows - installed!!!