Category: Outdoor Spaces

Brothers from Another Mother?

Published on by Our Humble Abode11 Comments

I hope you all had a fun and relaxing Labor Day weekend.  If you didn’t, I hope you got some work done, like we did.  Our weekend started with a bang, literally.  Ben finished demoing the pool house wet bar with the help of his trusty hammer Meowmeow.  Thor has Mjölnir, Ben has Meowmeow.

Do you see the resemblance?  Sure, Ben can’t grow hair, but he can rock a mean hat.  Though Ben rarely wears a cape.

{unedited picture via}

For now the doors are awkwardly low, but that will change.

A little more digging and knocking down the stone wall to go.  Then we can have someone come in, cut the concrete, and we’ll have a ground level opening to install the new door and window.  Ben will build a lower header to make these the same height as the rest of the house windows.

Thor Ben and Handy Sammy started in the kitchen and worked their way down the line to the rest of the windows.  Taking out the bay window wasn’t terribly difficult.  Some prying, hammering, and wiggling and it came out.

After installing the kitchen window, the big window in the breakfast nook came out.

The original bay window sat about six inches off the floor.  We don’t consider our patio a view, so we decided to shorten this window by about a foot.  Ben built a short wall to raise the new window up to the header.

Saturday afternoon brought on an unexpected complication, this:

So many problems here.  First, someone cut out the rim joist.  Bad. idea.  Unlike Nike’s slogan, just don’t do it.  Then, some genius ran plumbing for the solar panels outside, only insulating with thin foam.  And we didn’t have any support for the window.  Good thing those solar panels aren’t there anymore.  Ben cut off the water lines inside the house and replaced the cut rim joist.  We also shortened the stationary panels on either side of the sliding door, so he built a short wall to raise these windows to the headers.

The sliding door at the back of the house is the first of six we’ll have in the house and pool house.  So, it was a good learning experience.  After reading the instructions, install was easy enough.

I guess the panels are crazy heavy though.  Oh, we found another no no when removing the old door.  Wiring for the scones doesn’t come from the floor or attic.  The right sconce is looped from the left over the door.  Fortunately Ben didn’t cut at that door to get it out.  One more reason those have to go.

Soon, Ben will start wrapping the house with insulation.  To accommodate the added depth, the new windows have supports made of three 2 by 4s.

While we love all the new windows, our favorites are the two larger bedroom windows.  For egress, these double hung windows are 4 feet wide by 5 1/2 feet tall.  In a word, huge.  And fantastic.  The guest bedroom window is about ten inches closer to the floor than the original.

And the boys’ window is about 18 inches closer to the floor.  

An outlet right below the boys window was in the way, so Ben turned off the breaker, cut down for the window and added an outlet on either side.  A nice little two for one special.

Now we’re really excited to get the pool house windows cut and installed.  That means this whole window process is done…until we’re ready for the other three sides of the house.  This is a nice stopping point as the back of the house isn’t easily seen.  And it will give us enough to do before winter sets in without being rushed.

Bring on the insulation and siding.  And tearing up the back yard.

Because this post is already long, I’ll share pictures of the windows tomorrow.  Until then, tell us what you did over the long weekend.  I saw a lot of camping pictures on Instagram.

More Doors from Mordor

Published on by Our Humble Abode7 Comments

Okay, the doors didn’t really come from fictitious Lord of the Rings Mordor.  What doors am I talking about?  Two new garage doors.  Our old garage doors were dented, bent, and blue.  Not to mention, they were terribly insulated.  Because the garage is a tuck under, it’s also heated and cooled.  So insulating the space as tightly as possible should save us some money on our monthly heating and cooling bill.

And, I’m pretty sure someone hit each with a car on several occasions, and it wasn’t us.  Basically, the doors had seen better days.  Before getting pricing, I had my eye on a modern style carriage door.  A local garage door company came out and gave us quotes on various door styles.  This style would cost about $1,550 per door, including installation.  Ouch.

Then Ben heard it wasn’t as well insulated at the standard raised panel door.  So it came down to price, efficiency, and the fact that our doors aren’t easily visible from the road.  And the raised panel style won in all departments at $1,650 for both doors, installed.  Two installers came here yesterday to get the job done in a few hours.  Behold, our new, white, well insulated doors.

Sure the doors look better, but we’ve got a lot of exterior work to make those shiny new doors fit in.

But, they’re not dented and that’s what counts.  Haha.  New weather-stripping should help keep mice out of the house, too.

Oh yes, we’ve had a few mice already.  This shouldn’t come as a shock considering the location, but it still grossed me out.  We’ve already caught two (while nibbling our bananas!) and if there were more, they seem to have left.  Ahh, the life of a DIY blogger is glamorous.  Wink.

I’d never really given garage door styles much thought before this.  What about you; do you have a preference?  Or just prefer something functional, regardless of the look?

Beam Me Up, Scottie

Published on by Our Humble Abode6 Comments

As I mentioned yesterday, we were able to get some work done in places other than the roof this weekend.  One of those projects included tearing down a load bearing wall.  In a word, gulp.  We’ve torn out walls before, like a load bearing one to open up the kitchen at our first house, but it was a short span.  Worst case scenario, our roof fell in.  Ha.  This time, we took out a wall in the garage supporting the upper level of the house.

Here’s the thing, our garage is roughly two and 3/4 stalls wide, with only two garage doors.  The 3/4 part was separated into two storage rooms, one accessible from the garage, the other from the utility room.  Because we’ve got two cars and a boat to park, we decided we could live without the storage rooms.  So Ben tore out the separating wall and the sheet rock to prepare for the change.

Then we started the time-consuming roof project and not much else happened throughout the house, garage included.  On Thursday, Ben ordered a 24 foot long 18 inch tall by 6 inch wide glue lam beam to take the wall out.  The next day, a truck dropped it off and Ben got antsy to get started.  After making us chocolate waffles and eating breakfast, Ben and Handy Sammy got started with operation wall removal and beam placement.  I stayed in the house with the boys, so I don’t have pictures of the process, but Ben borrowed a set of beam jacks from a contractor friend to hoist and support the beam in place.

Once the beam was above their heads, Ben added support posts consisting of three 2 by 6 pieces on either end.

I guess Ben enjoyed that part, learning something new and using borrowed tools and all.  Of course demoing the old wall was fun, too.  And hey, hey, we’ve got ourselves an open garage.

Still to come, cutting these bolts off.

Building a wall in place of the door to the utility room.

And framing out the exterior walls, adding insulation, and moving our stuff in.  Although, the garage currently has construction supplies in place of our cars.

Regardless, we’re breathing easy now that we’re done with the big part.  We’ve also ordered new garage doors, so we should get those installed in a few weeks.  We’ll have to clean crap out before then.  Eek, the garage might look okay and be usable in the near future.

Anyone out there have a garage that looks like ours?  How do you like to contain the tools and mess?

A {New} Roof Over Our Heads

Published on by Our Humble Abode15 Comments

Almost two months after starting the process, Ben and Handy Sammy have finished the roof.  Whew, that’s a relief.  It was a long, hot, sweaty process and I know we’re all thankful to have it behind us.  Take a look back at what we started with:

Cedar shakes and an odd solar panel hut which caused the roof to leak.  Not a good look.  I won’t get into the whole re-roofing process (partly because I don’t know every step of it, fortunately Ben does) but it took a lot of time and effort.  Working on the house part was easier, but the eight skylights in the pool room caused a few headaches.  For the two larger skylights, Ben and Sammy had to build their own step flashing.  Boo to that.  So here they are, on their last day of roofing.

In the home stretch, the boys had high spirits, striking Olympic athlete poses in the process.

Back off, ladies.  He’s all mine.  Haha.  But here’s the roof now, looking sleek and finished.

After talking with his roofing supply friend, Ben decided to use Pabco Premier architectural shingles in Pewter Gray.

A new ridge vent allows maximum attic ventilation without ugly vent holes.  Not that it matters much, because most of the roof isn’t visible unless you’ve climbed up our back yard…

The house looks sleek and modern.  Ben plans to paint the vent pipes to blend with the roof, too.

Next up, digging up the back yard to prepare for new windows and siding.  Windows are on order and should arrive in about two weeks.  Can’t wait to get that party started.

What projects have you just wrapped up?  Something outside, like a roof?  Landscaping?  Let’s celebrate our newly finished projects.

Timber!

Published on by Our Humble Abode8 Comments

Yesterday afternoon, Ben picked up another load of foam insulation.  Just as he came home with it, I went out to the post office.  In the twenty-ish minutes I was gone, Ben did something.

Can you tell?

He cut down (most of) the apple tree.  We had talked about this for a few weeks, not certain when it would happen, but eventually it would.  While we both love trees, heck, Ben planted 17 fruit trees at our last house, this one wasn’t working for us.  First off, it was too close to the house.  Structurally speaking, the roots could damage the foundation.  It also blocked a lot of our view and darkened the kitchen and breakfast nook.  Now we can actually see our back yard from the kitchen.

But the main reason Ben cut it down yesterday afternoon is this:

Hauling bulky insulation to the pool room.  With the first load, Ben and Handy Sammy walked up the stairs, maneuvering around the big rock.  Now that the tree was out-of-the-way, they could easily set the insulation on the landing, and haul it in from there.

Once through the door, the boys loaded it in the pool.

Inside the house, it’s wonderful not having the tree.  From the outside, it looks so bare.

When Ben is ready, he’ll pull the rest of the stump out and we can get to work on the landscaping.

Until then, he’s got several tons of shingles to install.

After we get our hardscaping done, we’ll figure out what plants and trees we want to add for shade and greenery.  We’ve already talked about fruit trees and a pergola for shade.  Despite being a ways off, I’m getting excited.

What are your favorite shade trees?  Do you have landscaping ideas for us?