Thursday, December 13th, 2007
When I mention anything about redoing the kitchen to any man, almost instantly, the response is, “You are going to put the cabinets in the basement, right?” I’m like, “Yeah, I already have a few down there, but I am going to put a few more.” I can hear it in their voices…they want to say, “It doesn’t matter how many old kitchen cabinets you already have in the basement, there is always room for more.” It’s a pretty funny scene.
This go round, I put the old bathroom cabinet and two kitchen cabinets in the basement. I just came back up from hanging the two kitchen ones. These cabinets were in great shape and will help out with storage down there. I am not a big fan of floor cabinets, because the floor is dirt. They would be pretty wobbly. The hanging ones are good for my needs.
Now, these might not look to great to the average eye, but any person who is looking at them who has a sense for basements, these look pretty damn good.
Also, I wanted to show you my two girder beams I put up over the summer. The primary function of these is to take out any flex that might be in the floor. They were installed under the parts of the house we intended to install tile, meaning the bathroom and the kitchen. The span from the foundation walls to the primary girder beam is about 15′, so these cut that in half. The girders are made from three 2″x10″s, sandwiched together fastened by screws. Glue and screws would’ve been ideal, but this will do. They are being held up by heavy duty 38,000lb temporary lally columns about every 7′ or 8′. The package didn’t say anything about them being temporary, but it’s common knowledge. They really aren’t temporary though and I would say that each one of them isn’t holding any more than a few hundred pounds. The footings are concrete poured into 8″ sonotubes a few feet deep. The main girder footings are 2′x2′x12″.
They work very well and do a great job of taking any flex out of the floor.
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Thursday, April 26th, 2007
Well, well, well. I think we’re going to do it. All that’s left with the house is to re-do the bathroom, kitchen and the back porch. Yeah, just the bathroom, kitchen and back porch….ya know, those cheap and easy projects.
We are going tackle the back porch first. The one we have is in pretty bad shape. It’s made with that Trex stuff…only, I don’t think it is Trex. It may be some knockoff, who knows. All I know is it’s gray and very washed out looking. Also, the porch may be a little crooked, which drives me absolutely mad. The railings are hanging on by a thread due to poor workmanship and the top of the porch collects water. The whole thing just looks really bad. Are those enough reason to get this thing done? (Oh yeah, the bugs out here are TERRIBLE! The current porch is pretty useless as is.)
As you may already know, I made our front porch. I am a pretty handy fella, but I just don’t want to do this one. The first reason is that this one will be screened in…meaning there will be a roof. I am really not in the mood to attempt to build that by myself. Also, I want it done quickly, so no messing around. It would take me about two years to get home all the lumber strapped to the top of my car again. I like to do projects little by little.
I am going to use a contractor that is a friend of my neighbor. He seems like he would do a good job of coming in a putting this thing up quickly. The porch will be 16′ out the back of the house and 20′ wide. There will be 6 sonotube footings, 12″ wide. There will be 2 main girders holding up 2×10″ joists. Everything will be pressure treated. For the floor, he will put down 6×1 5/8″ boards with a 4×4″ every 4′ to hold up the roof. The main beam holding up the roof will be a 4×6″. The roof will have to be built into the current roof, which is the tricky part…to me. I am sure it will take no time for these guys. Also, they are going to put in a set of 4′wide stairs about 4′ out from the house. Currently, the stairs are slapped right up against the house and very loose.
I asked that they don’t complete the railings and the screening. I want to do them. Those are things that I can take my time on. Also, I am going to tear down the current deck. My neighbor, Tim wants to burn it. I have to keep him away because it is pressure treated and I can use the wood for another project. Tim is disappointed, but still willing to help me.
I picked up the building permit from the buidling inspector yesterday morning and have to fill it in and drop it off so the contractor can draw his diagram.
Now, of course, you are going to see lots of pictures of this. I hope you are as excited as we are!
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Tuesday, September 5th, 2006
One of the first things I noticed while looking at this house when we were “In the market” was the lousy shape of the basement. I heard that there was a little moisture on the floor (of which I will discuss the remedy to later), was informed by the home inspector that the insulation fitted in between the floor (upstairs) joists was installed up side down (which I already fixed) and some of the mortar joints needed to be finished. But one thing that really stood out to me was noticed when I was upstairs. In the living room and along the hallway that runs the length of the house, there seemed to be a slight dip. Now, this really annoys me, not because I am a little on the anal side when it comes to this stuff, but because when I was renting an apartment a few years back, I actually had to use a rope tied from my rolling chair to the corner leg of my desk to stop the chair from rolling to the center of the room when I was sitting on it. That is how crooked the floor was. After a year of that, you can understand why I was so angered by this little dip. I had to find out what was causing this.
I went downstairs and inspected the entire foundation. No cracks. It looked fine. I went to Home Depot and bought one of those laser line tools. I mounted the laser light on one side of the girder beam and ran it down the entire length…AH HA! The center of the beam towards the middle of the house was about an inch lower than the ends at the foundation. Looks like the original lally columns and footings settled a bit over time. Well, looks like I found my first project.
I was also a little concerned about the cement block column (all the way to the left of the picture above). It was installed on a tilt. So that, along with two settled lally column footings, gave me a sense of urgency. I was in the mood for a challenge anyway. I decided to put in three additional footings and columns, this time to maximum code compliance. I would put one column in between each of the existing columns.
I dug the first hole closest to the foundation wall. I dug it about one and a half feet deep. Then, I constructed a form from cut 2″x10″s so it would create a footing of two feet wide by one foot high. Then, I hung a plum line from the girder beam just to make sure the form was exactly centered under the beam. I measured this about 10 times. I also made sure the form was perfectly level.
Once again, I measured the actual form to make sure I cut everything correctly. I kept thinking that one day the building inspector was going to show up with a micrometer and inspect everything I did. I actually called the building department and they told me that this did not need to be inspected since I was adding in between the existing footings, and they met compliance back when the house was built.
Building code calls for the footing to be one foot deep by two feet wide. Since I made a form from 2″x10″s, I needed to keep it about 2-3 inches off the ground. I accomplished this by propping the form up on some rocks that I dug up. Then, I measured to make sure I was perfect (again). You really need to do this a lot, it keeps shifting.
When everything was absolutely perfect, I mixed a few bags of Quikrete Concrete Mix in my wheelbarrow. The form took a total of 7 bags. I smoothed it out real nice.
I waited a day for it to set and then popped off the form.
Now that is what I call footing. Let that sucker try to settle. One thing that I forgot to mention was that I sprayed water from my hose into the empty hole before I put the form in, then I let it dry. That let made sure the dirt was nice and compact. I also put in a few pieces of rebar for added strength. You don’t need to do that for a footing this small, but I didn’t want to take any chances.
The cement calls for a cure time of 7 days for a 2500psi compressive strength and a 28 cure time for the full 4000psi compressive strength. I have heard that concrete never stops curing. You also need to make sure the concrete stays moist to cure correctly. I am sure we all have seen a sidewalk that hasn’t cured properly…chipping and flaking to expose the gravel. To follow the instructions, I filled in around the footing, wet the top of it and layed some plastic over it. I wet the top every day for 7 days.
I followed these same exact steps for the next two footings. The following photo is of the final completed footing.
For the last column, I decided to try my hand at building a cement block wall. There was room and how else is a new homeowner supposed to get experience? Those temporary columns on the right came out of there after I was done…they stayed on hold for a future project.
Believe it or not, this wall is perfectly level in every direction. I filled the last two blocks in solid because that is where I put the weight of the girder beam.
After all the concrete in the footings was cured properly, I went to a local lumberyard, purchased three lally columns and had them cut to my measurements. These are the familiar maroon ones filled with concrete. I am not sure of the weight each one can support, but I have a feeling it is more than enough. I then purchased a 20 ton bottle jack and jacked up the area next to each existing column. When there was enough clearance from the plate on the top of the each column and the bottom of the girder beam, I slid in a quarter inch thick 6″x6″ square steel plate. I did this for each existing column as a spacer. I read somewhere that you should only jack up a house one eighth of an inch per day so the sheetrock upstairs won’t crack. I did a quarter inch per day because I was going to tackle the upstairs sheetrock later anyway. After about a week, and enough spacers to make the girder beam perfectly straight, as indicated by my laser, I jacked up the girder beam and put in each new lally column on each new footing. Each one had a great tight fit.
If you are planning a project like this, I really suggest you have a professional do it. You can get quite freaked out by all the squeaking that the wood does when it is jacked up.
In the photo below, you can see all of the lally columns in a row…the originals and the new ones. What a project! No more dip in the floor upstairs…nice and level. Just wait until I am done digging out the entire basement. Almost there…
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Monday, September 4th, 2006
I am not a huge fan of properties that look too perfect. I really like to keep the natural look of the area mixed in with whatever I am doing.
We live right at the bottom of the Shawangunk Ridge. We can see the cliffs if we walk to the end of our driveway and look to the right. The native stone for the area is Shale. It is a pretty good looking stone…blueish grayish.
As you can see from this photo, we were in dire need of a cleaned up front walkway. I had considered putting in pavers, but thought the style might stick out too much. They were also expensive and it would be a sin to throw out all of the existing blue slate that already made up the sidewalk.
I decided to go with what was already in place, but cleaned up quite a bit. The driveway was already made from Crushed Shale, so I ordered 10 yards to be delivered from a local guy. People love to use crushed shale around here because it packs down really nice and is perfect for driveways.
I took up all the existing slate from the walkway and stacked it in piles on the front lawn. I made sure not to keep it there for very long because I didn’t want to kill the grass. I got my hoe out and dug out all the weeds that had made a nice home for themselves over the years. Then, I layed down Landscaping Fabric to block any future weeds and grass. I saw that there was already a thick gravel base, so I didn’t need to add too much to that. I put a thin layer of crushed shale on top of the landscaping cloth and then put the slate back on that. Then, I filled in between all the slate with more crushed shale. Over the weeks, it will pack down from the rain and hold the slate nice and tight.
I made sure that the slate and gravel was high enough towards the steps to cover up the footings at the bottom of the steps.
I also spread most of the gravel out to put a nice new layer on the driveway. I needed to raise the end of the driveway up about a foot from a different project I will talk about later.
I needed to made a side walkway to go to the basement door around the side of the house, but I had run out of landscaping fabric. The benefit of using landscaping fabric is that there are very small holes in it that lets the water run through when it rains. If you are covering large areas, this is important so you don’t create run-off. In this case, since the side walkway was only going to be about a foot and a half wide, I picked up some heavy black plastic from the hardware store and cut it to size. I layed that down and put a thin layer of gravel on it and then placed the slate on the gravel. Just like the front walk, I filled in between the slate with more gravel.
Now, it looks like a nice, semi-natural walkway around the house. Nothing too obtrusive.
And there you have it, a nice new front walkway, side walkway and driveway, all for less than $300.
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Sunday, September 3rd, 2006
Please take a look at this front porch. It’s the one that came with our house. Tell me if you see anything wrong with it.
For months, I didn’t give it a second thought, but soon enough, in the mornings, as I pulled out of the driveway and started to drive down the road, I would look it at and get crazier and crazier every time. Forget the fact that the paint is chipping off of it and the fake, plastic lattice has green fungus all over it, doesn’t it look like it is bowed down in the middle? Also, what is with the 3.5 foot wide stairs? You have all that room on both sides.
One day this spring (2006) I was working on another project, which you will hear all about in another post, and I just happened to glance at the porch. I said to myself, “That really looks horrible.” I guess this is what a front porch looks like when it is built incorrectly and not taken care of. I walked over to it and began to wiggle and pull on things. Next thing I know, I looked at my watch and it was an hour later. I looked at the porch and the whole thing was torn down. Uh oh, what was Laura going to think when she got home? Oh well, she’ll LOVE it I told myself very proudly. What woman doesn’t love a man who knows how to tear down a porch with absolutely no idea how to put it back up?
Laura got home and didn’t really care. She had faith. So that night and for many nights after that, I was on the internet gathering ideas and tips. I made many trips to Home Depot and brought back supplies strapped to my new Thule roof rack I had purchased just for this type of work. I started putting things back together, but this time I did them the way I wanted.
I put a center footing in, jacked up the center of the porch and put a nice 6″x6″ post there. The problem was that there was no center support for an 11′ span. Of course it was going to bow downward. I also put new 6″x6″ corner posts in below the porch to the existing footings as well as above the porch to the overhang. I used the existing footings because they were the correct depth and width. I know this because I tried to dig one of them out and gave up after an hour. I really wanted a WHOLE new porch, but with something this secure already installed (and inspected by the building inspector), I’ll take it. I used one inch high galvanized spacers in between the bottoms of the posts and the footings as to avoid wood rot. I screwed a 2″x6″ to the front of the porch as a lip for the top stair which would come later. I also put corner pieces in for nothing more than aesthetics. I found that idea on the internet.
If you noticed on the first photo, the bottom of the stairs were rested on a cement slab. I hate cement slabs. I broke that one up with a sledge hammer and got rid of it. I dug three more holes and put in footers for the bottom of the stairs. I used 5 stringers (3 of which I reused from the old stairs, they were in great shape) for the stairs. The horozontal part of the steps were 6 foot 2″x12″s and for the vertical part I reused the 2″x6″ pieces from the top of the porch. I reused a lot of lumber because it was in great shape and I didn’t want to waste wood as well as throw money out the window.
The stairs went up smoothly and I was ready to move on. I took my…ummm…40th trip to Home Depot and picked up all the supplies for the handrails. Before I stared the handrails, I screwed an 8′ 2″x6″ to either side of the top of the deck. This gave me a perfectly straight running surface for my circular saw to cut off the uneven ends of wood. For the handrails, I used a pretty good system of sandwiching 1″x1″ pieces in between 2 of what they call “Lattice Moulding” 4 inches apart. Code calls for each of the 1″x1″ to be no further than 4″ apart. Then, I placed this new “unit” on top of a vertical 2″x6″ and tucked under the actual handrail piece. This hides all the screw heads for the 1″x1″s. The reason I used the vertical 2″x6″s is because I didn’t want to see any sagging of the rail after 2 months (like I am sure we have all seen). This was a lot of fun and gave me the feeling of really getting somewhere. I cut holes in the floor for the vertical posts and screwed and bolted them to the inside of the joists underneath. I did this because I didn’t want to see the outside of these posts just screwed to the side of the porch. I wanted them hidden. This takes longer but looks much better.
I finished up the stair portion of the railings by using a vertical 2″x4″ instead of the 2″x6″ because when the wood is cut on an angle, the 2″x6″ was just too high and didn’t meet the next piece correctly. Also, please note that I used “screws” for all of this construction. I never understood why people used nails when building things like this. How many times have you stubbed your tow or worse on a nail popping up from someone’s porch? Also, all the wood was pressure treated. These days, you always need to use pressure treated lumber when building anything outside.
After a few weeks I picked up two gallons of Thompson’s Water Seal and gave it a nice coating with a brush. I used only 3/4 of a gallon, so I guess I have enough for next time. The back of the can said that it will last for two years before it needs to be reapplied. When it comes time to reapply, I will use a sprayer. Also, the can said to wait 30 days before applying any protectant, so if you have ever heard the myth about waiting a year before applying anything, that’s wrong. Your porch or deck will be gray by that point. I waited about 3 weeks and figured that the wood has probably been sitting for a while, so I was safe.
Now, when I pull out of the driveway in the morning, I see a nice straight and level porch!
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