This is pretty big on my “wish list,” but unfortunately keeps slipping down my “to do” list.  Although Portland is not as prone to severe earthquakes as parts of California, we do get them, and there is a known pattern of a catastrophic quake every 300 to 500 years in region.  Since our house is almost 100 years old, it was not built with any kind of earthquake engineering know-how.  Old houses with the mudsill just resting on the foundation are very susceptible to sliding off during a major quake.  Six months ago I got all worked up earthquakes, and we decided to just go ahead and hire someone to attach our house to the foundation.  Well, that is easier said than done, because I found that very few contractors specialize in this.  I had a very unsatisfying experience calling the one “seismic specialist” I could find (the call basically ended with us hanging up on each other - he was extremely rude).  By that time I had done enough research on the Internet that I was convinced that I could just do it myself, if necessary.  The only flaw with this plan is that it’s going to be awhile before I can get the job done.  We agreed to finish the upstairs first, although that would be quite an irony if our entire house collapsed in the meantime!

Once I get it bolted, I found that the insurance Continue Reading »

This weekend saw another closet door hung, as well as more trim in Chloe’s room. I basically just worked until I ran out of wood, which didn’t take too long. Got to pick up more MDF this week.  As often happens, I realized that my “vision” was limited when I created the closet openings.  If I had just put them a few inches over, I wouldn’t have had to do all the funky cuts in the trim.  On the other hand, I think they look kind of cool with the notches for the rafters in them.

This weekend saw some exciting progress, even if the work days were on the shorter side. Stephanie was instructed by her midwife and the emergency room doctor (when she went into early contractions) to take it very easy, so I am only going up for 3 or 4 hours instead of 8 or 9. That way I can come back downstairs and help out with Chloe.

I hung the 2nd (and final) pocket door, which closes off Chloe’s room. I found a cool little offset wrench in the pocket door hardware bag that allows you to adjust the door with it in place. Sure wish I had noticed that last weekend, when I had to take the door off and put it back on 3 or 4 times to get it aligned right. I also built the bookshelf box out of plywood and trimmed it out…all it needs now is some paint and shelves. Also, I finished up all of the hallway trim, so it and the main room are completely trimmed out, with the exception of the base shoe.

Back in February, we had a little incident with our sink supply line suddenly popping its gasket and shooting water out in our downstairs bathroom.  I had replaced the defective semi-rigid supply line with a new hose and had intended to change out the other as soon as I could.  Well, as with most things house-related, even things you panic about can lose their crisis status after being ignored for a few days.  Every once in awhile I’d think about it and say to myself “I really should change that out before it fails.”  And then I’d do nothing.  Yesterday I finally remembered to pick up a new hose and swapped it out.  Now I can stop losing sleep at night (actually, I wasn’t, which was why it took me so long to do it…)

This last weekend I finished installing the trim in the main room and cut down the Rebuilding Center door we bought for the bathroom. It was about 2 1/2″ too tall, and cutting it was a pain due to it being pretty non-square. I haven’t seen my carpenter’s square for a couple of years, which meant I had to wing it. It didn’t come out perfectly, but then I happily found that the pocket door hardware offered a lot of adjustments, which allowed me not to have to re-saw the door. Because so much of the trim goes on after the doors go in, I’m starting to face the realization that I’ll have to do the refinishing of the pocket doors sooner rather than later. Otherwise I’ll have to leave a lot of the trim until later.

As of today, ALL of the the windows we replaced have now had all their trim installed. We are still debating what to do about the front windows (major restoration of existing vs. replacement - we have strong motivations for both). Here’s how the windows in Chloe’s room look now. Because of some of the weird depth issues this wall has, it was easily the most time-consuming window trim project I have ever done. I had to cut a lot of pieces at strange angles and even scribe a couple of them. It doesn’t look complex now that it’s done, but believe me, it was! Below are pictures of the windows on the east side of the main room…