French doors

We thought we'd install a french door from the back master bedroom to the porch and the eventual deck. I got a little carried away. I had intended to just make way for the door until i could get someone to give me a hand with the thing, but I just sort of pressed on once half the hole was made.

I started by removing the security bars with a grinder. They had one-way screws so would not come out the old fashined way.

I cut away the woodwork below the old window. as the door is lower than the window i was able to leave all the structure in place to make sure it remained strong.

Getting there

Ready for the rough frame

Next it was time for the door frame. The whole unit was way too heavy to move around solo, so we removed the doors to make things more manageable.

Once fitted, and despite my best effots to keep things level and plumb, the doors did not fit quite right. It made them both catch very badly and the locks would not align or operate.

The instructions should a diagram of my particular problem and suggested shimming at 2 corners. Easy...

That straightened it out. Now all that's needed is a little bit of trim and replacemnt of siding on the outside, and a bit of work inside.

Floors

(Steph writing)
So the floor has gone through a few phases since the beginning of this project. When we first bought the place, it was one of the nicest things about the original house:

But after fixing everything else up, the floor had taken a beating and was looking rough. The first thing that needed fixing was the old furnace grates. Now that we've installed a BRAND NEW HVAC SYSTEM (hooray! The irony is, we still don't have heat in the apartment we're actually living in downstairs), the old floor grates are useless.

So Steve bought some plain oak flooring and patched the holes up:

Rooney helped:

Then we rented a drum sander and edger for the week. We spent two full days digging through the stain to get down to the original oak. Here it is after 1 or 2 passes with the sander:

Keep in mind that controlling each sander is a very physical task. The edger is low to the ground and requires the operator to adopt a deep 'squat' position to use it. The drum sander is super-heavy and works sort of like a push lawn mower, except that it needs to be pulled up by the handles to make full contact with the floor. Since this requires arm strength (and height), Steve did the shoulder, back, and arm workout with the drum sander, while I worked out my legs on the edger. After twenty hours of sanding, we were struggling to get out of bed in the morning. Here it is looking better (can you spot the patch now where the floor grate used to be?):

Then we had to get into the corners and chisel out anything remaining, or sand it out by hand. That part wasn't so bad, at least we were sitting down!

Finally, it was time to varnish. Here I am painting on polyurethane:

And here I am, painting on more polyurethane. Lest I give you the impression that I did it all myself, I should mention that Steve works twice as fast as I do (on pretty much everything). So in the time it took me to do one bedroom and a quarter of the main room, he answered IT calls, took the dog for a run, took some pictures, and painted the second bedroom and 3/4 of the main room.

So, first coat is drying today, and this evening we have a hot date painting on a second coat. More pictures to come when it's all done.

Like it never happened...

Our neighbour, whose tree it was, got the tree guys on standby and we arranged for them to come by at 8 this morning. at 745 I was standing on the roof, looking at the damage when three  big trucks came rolling up the street. They showed up with a Bobcat bearing a claw, a chipper the size of our Suburban, and a crane with a 60 odd foot boom.

They craned the tree off the house, moved it over, chopped it up, chipped the chippable bits and were gone in about 70 minutes.

Our framer came and talked his roofer friends into coming today. They showed up at 1130 and the roof was back to normal by 230pm. Easy

Here come the cavalry

Craning the tree off the roof

Moving it for chopping

Feeding the small bits into the chipper

Machines!

I want this job

Chopped the remaining stump down

Like it never happened!

One strange day

(Steph writing)

So...you may have noticed in the post below that the house is looking less pink-and-scruffy than before. We haven't posted many pictures of the outside so far, but here's a little taste.

It started out looking like this:

In December the roof was replaced, which helped. But over the course of the past week, it has changed quite a bit:

As of Friday (with one day of finishing the job still to go next week) it looked like this:

And here it is today:

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Speechless.

But as Steve said, no one was hurt, no one was home, and the damage could be worse. Still, we're SO CLOSE to being finished, and SO CLOSE to the bottom of our bank balance, that I'm starting to feel a little like these two:

In other dramatic news, we spent the weekend in North Carolina, and stopped off at a ranch with some friends who are thinking of getting married there later this year. The temperatures here have been very cold (for the South, of course), and it was 19 degrees F this afternoon when we were standing at the edge of a partially frozen pond with Rooney, our friends Justin and Anya, and their dog Obie.

Before any of us humans could register what was happening, Rooney walked out onto the ice and fell into the pond! He was fully submerged, then managed to doggie paddle himself back to the edge of the ice, but he got stuck there and couldn't get out again.

Steve is today's hero-- he calmly took of his shoes and jeans and jumped in after the dog, cutting his legs on the ice on his way in. Both came out freezing, with ice forming on fur and whiskers. We got them both bundled in dry things and put them back in the car with the heat on full blast...Rooney has been asleep ever since, and Steve has been-- oh yeah, assessing tree damage. No rest for the weary, I guess.

Here is our hero with his pup, enjoying the sofa and a heater:

Dammit

I knew that tree was rotten!

No one got hurt though, so we just have to get it fixed. Shame it punctured the new roof, rather than the crappy old one.

Just for fun

Here's a before and (nearly) after shot of the kitchen. I don't miss those days

After I got up in the ceiling and kicked down the drywall

A lot of work later

More kitchen work. The counter tops have been installed, sanded and oiled a couple of times. The tiles are complete and grouted, even the fridge is installed. The only things left are the window trims and the oven and extractor fan/range hood.

The oven and range hood are expensive and finding a second hand version is proving nearly impossible due to the very specific size required.

Handles installed

nicely oiled counters and home-made wine rack

Turning out nicely. Even got the old fridge up and running again - it needs a clean

Living space

Here it is in its final colour. The colour is called 'dolphin' in case you're interested. Looks pretty nice, I think.

Floor repair

When the old partition walls came out, they left scars. The floor boards were missing where they had been, but I saved boards from the kitchen work to reuse.

They need refinishing, but you get the idea:

you can barely tell! all i need now is a lot more boards to replace that grill thing on the left. That used to be a 'floor furnace' but now is just a massive vent register and will be replaced soon.

The other side of the room with the pieces cut to length and grafted in



Nice tiles

Of the 2 neighbors that saw through the screen door to the kitchen, they both commented on the nice subway tiles. I think they're right, they do look pretty striking.

We're still on the trimming and finishing. the lights are done, you can just see the kitchen ones, the skirting/base board is going on as are the window surrounds. i'd have done more but I ran out of MDF and it's too heavy to encourage me to go and wrestle some more from Lowe's. Soon...

Now we just need an oven, a hood extractor thing and to install the fridge and the kitchen will be pretty much complete.

Steff cleaning up the grout. We chose 'warm grey' to bring out the pattern. i think it works well