We recently made the decision to try to focus a little more on the little things that have been neglected as we have long been distracted by things such as raising our upstairs ceiling, painting our house and building a playhouse.  We’ve been living with a hunk of old kitchen molding serving as our bathroom threshold (OK, actually we have 3 thresholds that look like this), so last week the decision was made to at least finish the one leading into the kitchen and this one into the bath.  The kitchen one was knocked out in no time, since we had a transition piece that had been bought with the flooring (it took me longer to find it than to cut and install it). It’s not very exciting, so I didn’t bother taking a picture of that one.

The one into the bathroom is a little more picture-worthy, since there were some obstacles to overcome.  First, none of the off-the-shelf thresholds we found really worked for this area.  Also, I found that hunks of wood that are sold with the label “threshold” are 3-4x more expensive than a comparable piece of wood.  So I bought piece of 1/2″ oak that I could rip down and add a simple beveled profile with the table saw.  It looks great and matches our oak floor really well.  Secondly, the door jamb is still covered in lead paint, so I didn’t want to just start sawing it and creating a bunch of lead dust.  That meant that I had to use paint stripper to take off the bottom 1″ of paint, not only to allow the cut but to also make things easier later by not having to strip areas immediately adjacent to the threshold.  I was able to dig out the undercut jamb saw that has only been used once, which instantly made me feel twice as justified about having purchased it back in 2005 when doing our kitchen floor.  I did a surprisingly good job on the undercut, because unlike the first time when I just marked the wood and started cutting, I took a small piece of the oak and used it as a guide for my cut.  I just held the saw down fairly tight against the wood as I cut, and it worked perfectly.

We’re looking forward to getting it stained, sealed and installed soon!

Nice cut!

60's molding turned threshold

Answer: speed it up to 120x speed. That means that every 2 minutes now takes only 1 second. I am trying hard to figure out a way to apply this same technique to my job as well.

This is something that I’ve wanted to do for a long time, ever since seeing some of the first sped-up recaps on home-improvement shows years ago. The cool side effect of speeding it up so dramatically is that it basically turned it into a stop-motion sequence of our entire project.  While I didn’t capture every minute of the construction (due to having only one large memory card with me and having to dump it every 3 hours), I did manage to come back with 38 hours of video (or a whopping 65 GB for the geeks out there.)  Working with so many large clips proved problematic for editing, so I spliced each day’s together into a single, uncompressed movie sped up to 12x real time  Once I had the four intermediate clips, I then sped each up to as much as an additional 10x.  There are a few places where I kept the speeds lower to better emphasize a portion of the video.

Was it worth the time to do?  Probably not.  But I can’t think of a better way to immortalize the time we spent building that thing. To see the best quality, make sure the change the video from 360p to 480p.

And for those who can’t access youtube at work:

After my recent learning experience on how to properly space cedar roofing shingles, I had gradually been reworking the roof.  Yesterday Chloe went to play at the neighbors’, so I had a big block of time to keep pounding away.

Installing these is tedious, but they really are beautiful.  I got everything done up to the ridgeline, so all I need to do is install some flashing on top to complete the job.

Another project 5 years in the making.  We have been sans a step down to the patio ever since we replaced the 60’s solid door with a glass one and removed the subsequently obsolete back step.  The patio door isn’t very high…maybe about 10″ above the patio, but it has started becoming a problem for Zoe, one of our dogs.  She and Porter are both 11, and there just isn’t as much spring in their step as there used to be.

The rest of the family was out of town, so Chloe and I spent some time Saturday making a new step.  We made it a full 6′ wide for aesthetic reasons, although 1/2 of it serves no purpose, as it’s in front of the non-opening portion of the door.  We used some left-over 4×6 pieces that were cut from the playhouse beams, as well as another piece of cedar recycled from our neighbor’s deck.  The construction was deceptively complex, as our patio has a slight slope down to the left, so each 4×6 had to be cut at an angle and to the appropriate height to make the steps level.  Needless to say, I botched a couple and had to do some “fine tuning.”  The top of the step is standard 2×6 cedar decking (new), and the trim piece that wraps around underneath the steps is actually made of cedar fence stock.

That trim piece is something that I am particularly proud of.  When Chloe and I were shopping for the piece, I initially picked out a beautiful piece of 1×6 cedar.  I was a little reluctant about the nearly $11 price tag, since it was yet one more wound in the constant bleeding of our wallets.  In the next aisle, I noticed some 1/2″x6×6 pieces of rough cedar fencing.  While most were the typical broken, knotty pieces, some didn’t look too bad.  After going through about 50 pieces, I managed to find two that were nearly knot-free.  As they were only $1.75/each, I decided to get a couple and take a chance.  Well, to my surprise, they sanded down beautifully, and they look like knot-free, Grade A cedar.  Not bad for $3.50 (and the 15 minutes it took to find the only two pieces that had this potential.)

Step construction, confused Zoe

A wary Porter tests the new step

Completed step. Someone should really fill in that hole in the concrete.

Rough v. Sanded

Last weekend I went down to San Diego with Chloe for four days to help my brother replace their ancient, termite-destroyed deck.  During the demolition, which he took care of before we arrived, he found that some of the framing could be removed with a broom!  Given that their deck sits at the top of a slope and that they have a 1 1/2 year old, the time had come to take care of it.

The old:

Served their useful life

At some point, joists were sistered to the sawed-off ends of other joists

Some of these posts could be ripped apart by hand!

We ended up putting in a solid 80 hours of  labor between the two of us in just 4 days.  It was pretty aggressive, but we needed to make sure that if it wasn’t complete when I left (why do I always delude myself that things will be finished in an arbitrary, unrealistic timeframe?) that the framing and posts had to at least be finished. That would leave smaller projects that could be done piecemeal, as he has time later.  And for the record, this deck is quite large…10′ deep by 34′ wide…a little larger than a weekend project has the right to be.

Without going into all the gory details, most of our problems stemmed from one issue…the concrete footing that held the upper end of the deck wasn’t level.  For about half a day I assumed that it was, since the seriously settled corner of the adjacent patio made the less-seriously settled footing look relatively level.  Once I checked it, though, we found that sloped down just over 2″ in about half the width of the deck (about 16′).  I convinced my brother that we had to make the deck level, regardless of how it looked with the patio, because it would be a nightmare to build a deck that sloped only on one half.   And, of course, it would look like hell and cause lots of other problems down the line when attaching posts, decking, etc.

Given our tight timeframe, we had to deal with the problem in an unorthodox way.  Instead of building a custom form, pouring concrete to level the footing and then having to wait for it to dry, we shimmed that end of our sill plate into position, essentially suspending it in place.  That allowed us to start connecting joists and get going on the rest of the structure.  We went in later and used long anchor bolts to attach the board to the original footing and then packed in new concrete under the board.  While it’s not a technique I’d want to use for building a house, it worked out great for this.  Fortunately, we were able to rotohammer new holes into the existing post footings and attach new post anchors to them.  That saved a lot of time and let us start building much more quickly.

The new:

New posts attached to the old footings

The board on top is level, the concrete is not

Me, attaching the first beam

Beams in place and braced

My brother's wife staining deck boards

A zillion joists installed

Beautiful redwood boards

New and improved structure

See no evil, hear no evil, smell no evil

Posts and a lonely rail

Weaving deck boards into place. The funky dimensions of the deck required a lot of extra cutting to keep the seams looking random

Look at the trim board under the front edge to see how much the patio has sagged

Me, my brother, my sister-in law, my nephew and Chloe

As you can see, we did not end up finishing.  While that was a little disappointing, there’s only so much you can get done in just 4 days.  And we met the goal of getting all the “big stuff” done.  It was also really fun to get to spend a long weekend with my brother and his family.  Most people do not think of this as fun, but it was actually a great time.  Then again, most people don’t have houseblogs, either.  Hmmm…maybe they’re the sane ones?

With many DIY projects, I know just enough to have an unjustified confidence and not enough to know that I’m screwing something up.  I had started installing the playhouse shingles based on my own recollections of how much exposure each shingle was supposed to get.  You have to keep in mind that I’ve never installed a cedar roof before, so these memories might have been based on something I read years ago.  Long enough ago that I had forgotten the important parts.

When I was about 1/3 of the way through the roof, I noticed that the back of the tag had some instructions that just had to be wrong, since they didn’t agree with what I was doing.  They said that each shingle should get no more than 5″ of exposure, but I was setting them with 7 1/2″.  Given that they are about 15-16″ long, that meant the difference between 2 layers and 3 layers.  Since I was careful about my seams and nail spacing, I convinced myself that it just wasn’t necessary to go so overkill on a playhouse.   And besides, who wants to spend more on cedar shingles than they absolutely have to?  The partial roof had already gone through several rains without incident, so I wasn’t too concerned.

Well after getting much more of the roof done today and checking on it after a rain, I now realize I screwed up.  While there are no active leaks, the problem is actually water soaking through the shingles, causing a bunch of them to look like the picture below.  I think this will eventually lead to real leaks, so my plan now is to start pulling up nails and resetting shingles at the correct 5″ spacing.  Not fun all all, but better to do it now than rip it apart or replace it later!

Soaked cedar

Q: what’s better than spending fathers day weekend working on a playhouse

A: nothing!

Birds' eye view

So here’s what was accomplished the last couple of weekends.  As always, it’s piecemeal…a few hours here, a couple there.  One of the design changes we’ve made since the “final” Sketchup design is to extend the front rafters out beyond the roof line.  Also, we switched to 2×8s for the front rafters to both give a more solid look, as well as to have extra depth to allow them to be notched around the lower beams.  Since you really can’t see any of the other rafters from the sides, they really do make the roofline look much more serious.

The cedar shingles look awesome, but they too are not very visible except along the front edge or if you choose to remove an upstairs screen and hang out the window to get a look at them.  With just a little more effort, the playhouse will be dry!   Of course, it’s taken me to the end of the rainy season, so that was bound to happen naturally, anyway

The first few shingles

The first of the larger, notched rafters in the front of the playhouse

The front rafters project out beyond the roofline

More shingles!

Or maybe it was a raccoon, an opossum and a rat.  And it wasn’t in a pub but actually a blue tarp that had been protecting (I use the term loosely) our large stack of stripped down doors until we had time to refinish them.

While doing the annual spring cleaning of our patio, I lifted up said tarp, so that I could relocate the doors, which had been lying across two sawhorses since last summer.  My first thought was that Chloe had picked up a piece of dog poop with something and then put it under the tarp.  That didn’t make sense anyway, but especially not once I grasped the magnitude of the “deposits.”  And once I got over my initial shock, it became clear that at least two different species had been shacking up under our tarp.  I consider myself open-minded, but even I wasn’t comfortable with this type of relationship.

Another possibility is that it was an opossum having a litter of babies on top of our closet door.  I used a scraper and a hose to knock everything off, but as you can see from the picture, there was definitely some damage.  I am hoping that once it’s sanded and refinished with a dark stain, it won’t be too noticeable.  That is not a job I’m looking forward to!

Pre-stained, err...pee-stained

I once again was able to press last year’s scaffolding platforms into service.  By resting them on the 2×6 ties, they turned what would be a monster pain in the ass into a relatively easy project.  As each rafter has gone in, the “floating” beam in the middle moves less and less.  It is really helping to stiffen up the structure.

Work platform #1 in place

8 rafters done!