Saturday, September 13, 2008

Laundry room complete

We finished up the Laundry room the other day. Here's an old before shot:
Here are the finished shots:




I'll be replacing this back door with one similar to the Breakfast room back door.

I still need to paint the door on the left.


We painted the floor black, we'll see how well it holds up over time.

Thursday, September 04, 2008

Breakfast Room repaint

We've repainted the Breakfast Room. The yellow color we used just wasn't doing it for us. We ended up going with the same color we will be using in the Master Bedroom at the Woodbury House. Here are some pictures of the room:






You may remember that the 2 doors on either side of the wood burning stove had it's original finish on them when I first uncovered them (They were boarded over and then had cabinets hung over them some time in the 40's or 50's).


Instead of just painting over it I reversed both doors. This ended up working out much better for the layout of the Laundry room and the Bathroom anyways.

We FINALLY have a room that is almost completely finished. The only things left to do are a few trim pieces, outlet and light switch coverplates, and refinish the floor.

Friday, August 15, 2008

Porch roof complete

I've finally finished the porch roof project:




I'll paint the railings in my next project, which is to finish painting the house.

Tuesday, August 12, 2008

Building the second floor deck

I didnt get as much done over the weekend as I'd hoped but progress was still made. Saturday morning I got back to work. First I installed flashing in the deck area:
Once that was secure I installed the beaded wood siding to the porch roof. I still need to add some flashing to the top, I'll cover it with trim:

Next I sealed the tin floor with an aluminum and tar mix that I found in the roofing section of Lowes:

And then installed the 1x6 decking:

The next day I got to work on designing a railing. I had a newel post from the stairs of the old Anderson house, plus the cap to a second newel post. I was able to dig up enough wood and matching trim to build a second post just like the first:


The one on the right is the original, the one on the left is the one I built.

I sanded and primered them and installed them on the deck. I also installed the railing. I have about a dozen spindles left over from the railing I built for the first floor but it wont be enough, I'll have to get some more.




Friday, August 08, 2008

Porch roof progress and Fence pics

Here are a few pics of the completed privacy fence:

This first one gives you an idea of the area I had to work with, not much room between the chain link fence and the tree line:

In the next pic, the neighbors house is on the right, you can see how close to the line their house is:
This last pic was taken from the neighbors yard:

The front porch roof is coming along. I shortened the deck by 2' on either side, I'm really glad I did because it looks a lot better.



In the above two shots I had the framing done but hadn't put the sheathing on the shortened area.

I finished the sheathing then felted it and then put up aluminium flashing in the areas that needed it. Next I started the shingles, the next 2 pics show how far I got yesterday before I ran out of nails and shingles:



Here's how it looks from the street:



Much better than it was.

This afternoon I'll be finishing off the shingling then taking the old wood that I tore off to the dump. Then hopefully I can install the decking and the railing.

Tuesday, August 05, 2008

Rebuilding the 2nd floor porch

Well it's been another month since I last posted again... Things have been quite busy. Since the last post I've finished up the Airstream and then sold it, and then bought a boat.

That doesn't mean that there hasn't been any work done on the house though. I finally finished up the privacy fence in the back yard but I forgot to upload the pictures to my server so I cant get to them here at work. I'll post a few pictures in my next post. This last area (about 175') was the hardest to do because there are a lot of large old trees right along the property line and of course a 6' chain-link fence right up against where I put the privacy fence.

I know I was supposed to make some follow-up posts on all the other work done but I wasn't happy with the pictures and still haven't gotten around to taking more.

The other big project I've been working on is the second floor porch. This has been an eyesore since day one. We ripped the roof off last month and that helped but the deck was in really bad shape not to mention that it wasn't centered on the house and altered the pitch of the porch roof in front of it.

So this weekend I got to work. First I tore off the old plywood decking. This was pretty tough since they used about 5000 nails to hold it all down. Once the plywood was up there was of course another floor underneath it. this floor was old tongue & groove board:

I pulled up all the board and found another layer underneath. Under all the rotted leaves and dirt is a layer of tin followed by 1x6 boards.

I measured back to the point where I wanted the new deck to end then cut the tin off at that point:

Then I pulled off all the 1x6 boards in the same area:

I then removed the tin, 1x6's and joists from the left side of where the new deck will be:

The next morning I removed the siding from the front of the house and installed the roof trusses:

In the above picture you'll notice the 2x6 floor joists in front of where the deck is, these joists are holding up the deck but they need to be removed to restore the original pitch of the roof. What I did was to run pressure treated 2x6's alongside the old 2x4 ceiling joists then nailed 2x4 support braces between the 2x6 floor joists and the 2x6 pressure treated joists. I was then able to cut down the 2x6's to the length of the deck:

Then I ran the roof trusses in front of the deck:

Then I installed 3/4 plywood sheathing:


Yesterday afternoon I laid the felt down:


We've decided that the new deck is too wide so this afternoon I'm going to shorten it by 2 feet on either side. This shouldn't take too long to do then I can start laying the shingles. I also need to add beadboard to the exposed sides of the roof and of course add aluminum flashing to everything. Once all that is done I need to put down some type of weatherproofing for the deck then install 1x6 decking over it. Then I can install the railing.

Wednesday, July 02, 2008

Removal of the 2nd floor porch roof

Wow, a month since I posted last! That doesn't mean that there hasnt been any work going on here though. Just the opposite, I've been so busy working on the house that I havent had time to post. I'm going to have to break it all up into a few posts.

We FINALLY tackled the long awaited the 2nd floor porch roof demo! Here are a few pics of the work from a few weeks ago:








The last picture is as of yesterday, as you can see it makes a HUGE difference. The next task for the porch is ripping the second floor deck off completely and rebuilding a smaller one that will match the porch below.

I refinished our porch swing using a red chestnut stain and 2 coats of poly. We picked it up at a thrift store last year for $20:


We got some new furniture for the living room. Sorry for the blurry pictures, it's time for a new camera:



It's all jammed against the wall for now because of the pool table. We're selling the table though so hopefully it should be gone soon.

That's all I have time to post for now. I'll try to make another post some some of the other work that's been accomplished in the morning.