Tuesday, September 13, 2011

September House Update

It has been awhile since I’ve done a house update and that is probably because it feels like it has been a while since I’ve made any real progress. I will not bore you with the excuses of a somewhat unproductive month though. We are back on track and working on a lot of different things at the once.
The nail holes in the Fascia boards are now filled in, sanded smooth, primed and painted and the roof edge flashing is nailed on. I just have a few vents to cut through the South side and we will get started with the shingles on that side in a week or so. For the North side we need to frame the fireplace vent but just found out the fireplace we were given and have been storing for about 3 years cannot be installed because LA County will not allow wood burning fireplaces any longer. The other issue we were having was the fireplace was HUGE! Almost too big for the wall it was going in (deeper then we’d hoped too). In order to get the one we have to fit it would have to encroach into the living room more then I wanted. The last thing I want to do is to give up floor space. McCall and I need to go shopping for a new one now, such a drag.
Dumb stuff: The inspector said that all sheer walls now have to go all the way up to the roof. Our plans did not note this but he said it still had to happen. There are a few sheer walls inside the house that we had to build up to the new roof. Seems like such a waste of time and my “Man Cave” space.
you can see the roof edge and some areas where we had to run sheer wall all the way up

One of the sheer walls we had to build above the celing joist to the roof.
John, our AC guy came by this weekend and hung the air conditioning/heating unit in the attic and ran some of the ducting. The unit is over our bedroom closet in the back corner of the house and he hung it from the roof rafters to help keep the noise down. Anything will be quieter then the AC we have in our bedroom window right now; when that thing kicks on you’d think someone just started a big rig. John is hip to my “Man Cave” plan and is keeping the ducting to the perimeter of the attic space where the roof line is too low to walk anyway.
panorama function on McCall's phone. on the far right you can see two walls we had to build sheer wall in the attic.

My Father and I are finally starting to build our door. I’ll try and dedicate a post to the process once it is done and installed. I took the train from where I work in Downtown LB to where he works in Downtown LA last night since everything is already set up there and better suited for the task. It worked out well, I got there about 4:30 and we were able to work until about 7 then clean up. I'll be going back on Wednesday to continue where we left off.  
Here is a shot of the wood we've selected

squared, plained and cut down to the sizes we want to work with, 2 hours later
The wall that creates the hallway to our new addition and divides the second bedroom still needs to be framed up but before we can frame that we have to remove the existing hardwood floor in the second bedroom. This needs to be done for two reasons. First, the room is expanding 12 feet and will end up with carpet. Second, we need to replace some rotten floor boards that are water damaged from the poorly installed sliding glass door (before we bought the house). I need to re-use the hardwood for the new hallway and dining room addition so I can’t just tear it up quickly. I’m taking it up one piece at a time with a flat bar and hammer to make sure each tongue and groove is intact. It’s a slow process and the noise echoes though the house so I’ve only got small windows of time when I can do this. I’ve got to get cracking on this one though.

reusable pieces of hardwood floor
In closing, last Sunday McCall and I drove around looking at houses with the stucco colors we were considering. The stucco guy gave us some addresses of work he had done so we could check them out in real life vs. the small swatch on paper. What a difference; of all the colors only one was a maybe! We're not too stoked on our options so far. We must keep looking.

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