Posts Tagged porch

Upcoming Projects

Here’s a list of smaller projects we’re contemplating for the near future. No particular order.

  • Finish work on hallway
  • Clean and organize basement
  • Build pergola roof
  • Seal up south shed windows and doors, run electricity to it, set it up as workshop
  • Wall in north shed rotted-out garage doors, replace rotted-out and falling-off person door
  • Run temporary lights and sockets to basement
  • Waterproof leaky parts of basement
  • Till and seed south raised area

Larger projects:

  • Replace the roof (we already have a contractor and estimate, just need to pull the trigger on it)
  • Build porch and re-route front entrance to existing closet (turning it back into a foyer/mudroom again)
  • Turn addition into master suite (this can be done in stages with the bathroom coming last)
  • Bump out back wall and enclose basement stairs into building envelope
  • Smart wire the house and create tech hub
  • Gut and refinish the library and living room
  • Retile the fireplace

“Someday” projects:

  • Finish basement, create laundry/plumbing room
  • Redo all the supply plumbing with PEX and a manifold system
  • Knock down the existing sheds, extend the foundations, and rebuild as garage & cottage
  • Replace forced air heating with radiant
  • Add a second story to the addition
  • Build a better patio
  • Redo the kitchen

Not that I’m going to be starting any of these right away, except maybe cleaning and organizing the basement. I really need a break.

Jen adds Yard Projects:

  • Clean out top bed and ready it for arborvitae planting
  • Continue building up the raised beds
  • Set the initial plans and start building my perennial garden
  • WEED! Oh goodness I need to weed. My beds are horrifically overgrown
  • Cut down strange bush/tree covering the library window

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What the Underwriters Want, the Underwriters Get

The sellers moved out on Monday, and we got access yesterday and today to do the work the underwriters called for. We had Bob the Handyman for the professional guidance and lead on the work, but Jen and I put in a whole lot of physical labor ourselves.

Here’s what we got done:

Jen went up on the roof of the kitchen porch to scrape and paint the bargeboards where apparently the previous owners ran out of aluminum flashing to cover them after covering all the other ones. The electrician has already removed the knob & tube wiring extending from that gable peak over to a hanging receptacle box in the pergola.

Jen on the roof

Jen on the roof painting the bargeboards

Here's the bargeboards all painted

Here's the bargeboards all painted

We decided that merely replacing the rotted floor of the kitchen porch was the path of least resistance, as opposed to demoing the porch back to the original roof projection (that Jen is on above) and concrete steps. Bob the Handyman knocked out the rotted supports and replaced the base plates with pressure treated 2x6s. He cut the plywood and I screwed it in — I’ve never had a drill that could actually countersink a screw; even my corded drill doesn’t have that kind of power.

Frame and plywood floor to replace rotted ones.

Frame and plywood floor to replace rotted ones.

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The underside of the kitchen porch showing the new frame.

I built this railing at home on Sunday, and happily I measured everything correctly and it screwed right into the jamb. As it turns out, that door is not nailed shut and only has a little pushbutton lock like you’d find on a bathroom door. Great!

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Jen cleaned off all the green gunge from this wall that had come down from the missing downspout. Along the way, she cleaned all the moss and dirt (it was like potting soil) from all the gutters around the house.

No green gunge!

No green gunge!

No gunge on this wall either!

No gunge on this wall either!

Jen and Bob demoed the entire patio deck. The supporting frame was okay, but some of the planks were falling in. Bob suggested just patching the falling-down part, but we wanted the thing gone anyway. I was off doing something else, so I don’t have any photos of the demo.

Apparently it’s very difficult to find vinyl siding in less than whole-house lots, so getting some to patch where the deck was wasn’t possible. Instead, we installed aluminum flashing, which you can see behind the steps in the photo below. We flashed the back corner under the hanging door as well. I called our mortgage broker to confirm with the underwriter that flashing in lieu of patched siding was okay, and not only the underwriter but her manager as well approved the plan, so we’re good on that item.

It turned out that the staircases off the deck were still pretty solid, so we salvaged one of them and put it directly against the house off the back door with a couple of bags of gravel to level the ground. I took this photo late in the afternoon when the first stick of the handrail was in place, but Jen and I were too tired to continue at that point so we went home.

Salvaged stairs

Salvaged stairs

We needed to replace the basement stair handrail. I found a handrail the basement, but it turned out not to be long enough, so Bob and I went to Home Depot to get a new one (along with the rest of the supplies for all the other projects. This recounting isn’t strictly chronological). Before we got to install it, I had to run to McLendon’s Hardware for some lag bolts for the porch stairs, and while I was gone Jen found the original hiding in the little channel between the stairs and the wall. (Why that channel is there instead of the stairs butting up against the wall is a mystery.)

We also fixed the stairs themselves. What we had thought was a loose tread turned out to be the left-hand stringer split all the way across. (Why the previous owners thought that was okay not to fix I don’t know.) Bob cut a couple of 2×6 braces to push the stairs up and close the crack and a patch to bridge across the split and bond the upper and lower pieces together. The space was too cramped for me so Jen got her hammer on and nailed it all up but good. We’ll still want to replace and/or move the stairs later, but for now they’re way safer than they were.

Basement stair handrail

Basement stair handrail

At that point, we’d been working from 8:00am to 5:00pm with a short break for lunch, so we quit for the day. Both of us were very sore, but luckily we had already scheduled massages for both of us that evening.

Bryan is full of ow

Bryan is full of ow

Jen too

Jen too

Jen went back to work today, but I took another day off and went back to the house at 8:00am again. Bob built the handrail to the patio stairs while I held the level, but I got to use the nail gun for the last few bits.

Completed handrail on the patio stairs

Completed handrail on the patio stairs

Bob and I put up the new downspout and angled it so it wouldn’t drain into the basement stairs.

New downspout

New downspout

Bob checked the plywood roof of the kitchen porch extension and discovered that although the edge was rotting and looked bad, the rest of the sheet was perfectly sound and quite well attached. He then screwed clips in where Jen had noticed that the gutter was loose.

At that point, we’d run out of jobs that we needed his help on, so he went off the clock, but was perfectly happy to gab for an hour about our plans for various parts of the house and all the systems, about which he had lots of very helpful suggestions. We may very well be re-hiring him to get the upstairs bathroom done as quickly as possible after I do all the demo.

Bob took off and I went and got lunch. I decided that next I’d pull up the plywood cover over the access stairs. I figured the plywood was at most maybe anchored into the concrete in few places. Nope. I went to pull it up and about fifty pounds of stuff came with it for a couple of inches before I dropped it. I cleaned it off and took a closer look and discovered a nail head about every four inches all around the outside and across the middle in a few places.

I set to pulling them all, which involved basically chiseling out the top layer of the plywood to get at them with the wrecker bar. An hour and a half later, I finally had the plywood up. This is what was underneath it.

Under the "unsafe soft" plywood

Under the "unsafe soft" plywood

So basically, the only soft edge was where the 8-foot sheet butted up against the 2-foot sheet between the closest two braces. The rest of it was probably good for another five years or more. But, we were planning on opening up those stairs anyway, so it wasn’t a waste in the grand scheme — I just wish I’d been able to put it off and not have to rush through it.

Then I thought that if the green gunge on the back walls was a problem, then the green gunge on the side wall might also be one even though the appraiser didn’t mention or didn’t notice it. Turns out it just needed brushing and rinsing; no cleaner was required. Tony the neighbor was very accommodating about letting us cut back his holly tree so it didn’t touch our house.

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The last task on the schedule was dealing with the crawl space under the addition. Bob had already cleared out all the insulation from the access window in the basement and strapped up the duct running through it so it wasn’t in the way.

I put on the tyvek coveralls and the respirator mask and got to work.

Before crawling in the filth

Before crawling in the dirt

First, I pulled out all the existing plastic and loose insulation. The plastic wasn’t thick enough and I was afraid because there were rodent droppings on the part next to the access hatch there might be more on top of the plastic further in. Turns out that I was wrong — the droppings were only at the front, probably because rats had at one time nested in the loose fiberglass insulation around the opening.

I had to crawl in and go all the way to the back to get all the plastic, loose insulation, and assorted wood scraps left over from insulating out of the whole thing. That was bad enough, but nothing compared to what was to come.

Along the way I found absolutely no rot in any of the joists, beams, or posts. The wood looked like it came from the lumberyard yesterday. There was a little bit of a ditch around the outside next to the footings, and the insulation wasn’t just stapled up but strapped with furring strips, so I suspect that quite some time after the addition was built a previous owner had professionals come in to insulate the floors. (It’s a pity they didn’t have professionals do the rest of the work too.)

Next I filled up five big garbage bags with the cleanup. I kept the respirator mask on for this since I didn’t want to breathe in any of that dust at all. Then a break for drinking a whole lot of water, since those coveralls theoretically breathe but I was already very hot and tired.

Instead of pre-cutting the new vapor barrier sheets, I decided it would be easier just to roll the plastic out as I went along and then unfold it. I may have been wrong.

Two hours later, I was done. There’s no photo since black plastic in a dark crawlspace would just look like a whole lot of dark.

That was a job that I’ll be very happy if I never have to do again as long as I live. It’s very difficult to do hard physical labor when you have to lay on your belly and can’t even get up on your hands and knees. About every fifteen minutes I would have to take a break and basically just lay there and hyperventilate to get enough oxygen to keep going. By the time two full sheets were down (out of three) I was exhausted and ready to stop, but just had to power through and finish.

Bryan after crawling in the filth

Bryan after crawling in the dirt

The respirator and coveralls were entirely worth the money and then some. I was soaked in sweat but hardly dirty at all, and my lungs are fine instead of being filled with dirt, dust, and fiberglass.

At 6:00pm I was all loaded out and finally able to head home. Four ibuprofen, two bowls of chili, and one of Jen’s Flexerils later, I’m feeling a lot less stiff and sore, but I make no guarantees about how I’ll feel in the morning.

Tomorrow, the appraiser goes back to sign off on all the items on the underwriter’s list. Saturday we meet with an escrow officer and sign documents and give her a cashier’s check. Hopefully the underwriters will expedite approval so the loan will fund Tuesday, and then we can close Wednesday after the escrow records the transaction with the county.

Then our realtor hands us the keys and the house is ours!

(Apparently the big meeting where everyone sits around and signs stuff and at the end the keys are handed over only happens on TV, or at least not in this state.)

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Contractor Wrangling

So we kinda sorta got that straight answer we were looking for. I talked to the appraiser, who was very helpful in telling me exactly what he wanted to see to address the problems he outlined:

  • The door that opens out into space needs to have a railing built across it
  • The porches can certainly be demolished and stairs built for the one without concrete steps
  • The knob & tube wiring hanging from the roof peak over to the pergola needs to go away
  • There needs to be a hatch cut into the floor of the bedroom in the addition to gain access to the crawlspace, and there needs to be vapor barrier and any necessary repairs done in there
  • The roof couldn’t be certified for more than two years of life remaining, so it has to get partially reroofed and partially repaired (which is going to be the biggest-ticket item)

And, of course, we get to be the ones to pay for it all. It’s not as big a hit as we were afraid it would be, but it’s still a really good thing that we had a big buffer in our savings account. If all we’d had was down payment and closing costs, we’d have been screwed.

The big problem for us isn’t the appraiser per se — he’s being quite reasonable — it’s the underwriters at Wells Fargo. They keep pulling things out of their ass for us to fix, all of which are cosmetic issues. For instance, they’re insisting on the missing vinyl siding being replaced, and after looking at a photograph they’re insisting on some of the fascia boards being scraped and repainted (an issue that neither inspector nor appraiser noted as a problem spot), and a green stain on the siding beneath a hole in the gutters being cleaned off (ditto).

Ruby, our mortgage broker, explained that they’re practicing CYA — fixer-upper houses aren’t supposed to be candidates for ordinary FHA loans, and houses have to be in pretty good condition to qualify. So they’re just looking at the problem bits and getting scared and wanting us to make it look pretty (on top of “safe” and “structurally sound”) just to make themselves feel comfortable.

In retrospect, we should have gotten an FHA rehab loan, but we originally intended to get a small house that didn’t need huge amounts of work, and also Ruby advised us that rehab loans were huge amounts of extra hassle and paperwork.

As for the fascia boards, they haven’t told us exactly which ones they mean, but I suspect that it’s the ones on the kitchen porch … that we’re demolishing anyway, so it might not be a problem after all.

So after a great many phone calls, we’ve arranged an electrician, a roofer, and a handyman, all of whom will be converging on the property next Wednesday at 8:00am. Jen and I are both taking the day off to assist as much as possible, run to Home Depot for supplies, fetch and carry, and so forth.

While out shopping today at the Habitat for Humanity ReStore and Second Use, we went by the house today where I measured the width of the hanging door from jamb to jamb. On my to-do list for tomorrow is to assemble the railing so that Wednesday we can just hold it up and screw it in, instead of paying someone $65 an hour to build it from scratch on site.

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