BrambleStitches

I hope you’re all enjoying your Halloween. Gavin barely fits into the zebra costume I made for Olga two years ago, but since I was too lazy tired to make new ones this year, he’s wearing it anyway. Olga opted for Magical Angelina Ballerina Fairy Girl, thankfully pulled together out of things we had. Next year, there will be something new. I promise.

And this year, after many failures, I actually looked up directions for roasting pumpkin seeds, rather than winging it, and I’m happy to report that they turned out delicious.

This dream of mine

I know I harped on about painting the fence in my last post, but you really can’t appreciate just how long it takes to paint pickets until you’ve done it. I think painting probably took twice as long as everything else combined, including digging and setting new fence posts, hassling the lumber yard, and hanging the gate (although we all agree, we’d rather paint another fence than hang that gate again).

The weather has been a little touch-and-go here, so some days we blew off work to paint. (Of course we always make up for it… )

We used a taught string as a guide for the tops of the pickets (you can barely see it in the photo above to the left of my head) and a 2×4 scrap as a spacer between pickets. I held up a spirit level every few pickets and made adjustments when needed. We’re using special screws that are “dactrotized” and apparently won’t rust or corrode in our marine environment.

We’re not quite finished putting up pickets, but many of my neighbors have already stopped to say how much they like the fence. I love it.

This dream of mine

Way back in July we started working on beefing up the existing fence in front of the house. I wanted an enclosed yard so the kids could play out there. The boundary fence on the north side of the house was also not in the right spot, so we moved it and reclaimed about 500 square feet of our yard.

This has really been my dad’s project, but I’ve helped as much as I can.

In order to get the kind of pickets I wanted, we had to make them. We ordered 1×6 and 1×8 8-foot premium cedar fence boards. We ended up hand picking through them, because a lot of them came in warped, cracked, etc. Also any boards with large knots down the center were put aside. First we cut the boards to get two 3.5-foot-long boards. (The extra cedar we put aside as scrap wood.) We ripped all the 8-inch wide boards in half, and 1/3 of the 6-inch wide boards in half. We ended up with an equal number of 6-inch-wide and 3-inch-wide pickets, and twice as many 4-inch-wide pickets. I wanted to alternate pickets – narrow – medium – wide – medium – narrow – medium – wide – medium – …

To get nice rounded tops on three different sized pickets, I hunted down three suitable templates. For the wide pickets, an empty paint can worked. For the mediums, a large can of tuna, and for the smallest pickets, a can of peaches was right. I traced the template onto the best end of each picket, and Dad cut most of them out.

Then we painted. And painted. And painted–that tedious and never-ending job. Cedar that is going to be painted has to be sealed. It’s something about the sap staining through the paint, or whatnot. Anyway, I didn’t want to worry about it, so we primed all the pickets with oil-based exterior primer. That stuff stinks and takes forever to dry. I finally got the last of it out of my hair this morning, and I haven’t used it in about a month. Also, it transfers to couches quite easily. We used up an entire 5-gallon bucket and had to buy more. These boards just soaked it up.

But once everything was primed, the top coat went on pretty quick. Gavin got to help with this part. He really got into it, although Grandpa made him the scapegoat for most of the grass that ended up painted to the boards. I know he looks very paint-free in that picture, but I assure you it is entirely a trick of the lens. He managed to paint his overalls to his boot at one point. Luckily, he’s about to outgrow those clothes anyway.

Part 2 tomorrow when I get around to it…

This dream of mine

…the newest member of the Tuttle family, currently known as Baby Dango, due to join us in June of 2010.

This dream of mine

Tony Jakacky fits the first wide windowsill for my approval.

All the trim work on the windows is done now, and after living with them for a few weeks, I know these extra wide windowsills were a good choice. The windows have become furniture in the house. I can set down my coffee and lean on the sill to see what’s going on outside,  Gavin has turned his into a racetrack for matchbox cars, and Olga can gallop her ponies around the room.

The windowsills are made from 1x8s, and we used one of my Baba’s pot lids to make the corner radius. If she knew, I’m sure she’d say something like, “See, I told you not to throw that away. Look how useful it turned out to be.”

Jim VanCamp cuts the back hedge as Gavin plays in the windowsill in Olga's room.

We’re really enjoying the new windows. They let in so much light that the whole house seems more cheerful. I’ve noticed a definite reduction in drafts, too. And having windows that lock has certainly helped me to feel more at home.

I haven’t finished painting all of the window trim yet, but I’ve put two coats of semi-gloss on the windows in the master bedroom and in Olga’s bedroom. I’ll try to get most of the painting done this week, but I may not have much time since deadline is creeping up on me again.

All the windowsills will have two coats of semi-gloss paint.

While Tony was trimming the insides of the windows, Mike was working on the outside, carefully trimming and nailing in little wedges to make the trim look like it was original to the house, without damaging any of the aluminum siding. You really can’t tell now that the windows are recent additions. They look like they’ve always been here.

Mike Neil finishes the exterior window trim.

This dream of mine

I don’t know if it really counts as part of the renovation, but since cutting down a large tree is a major change to anyone’s yard, I figure this is fair game.

Damaged tree

This poor pine’s fate was sealed when it was planted almost directly under the power line. Over the years the power company has hacked it back, topped it, pruned it, and otherwise mangled it beyond all hope of beauty. The kindest thing to do was put the tree out of its misery.

Alan Metcalf cuts down my tree.

It was pretty cool. My dad has one of those chainsaws on a long boom, so he limbed quite a few branches from the ground before Alan Metcalf finished it off and bucked it into firewood lengths for me. I know pine isn’t the best for heating with, but we’ve got it, and Erik has expressed an interest in splitting it. And really, you just don’t argue with a man who wants to chop wood.

This dream of mine

While Mike and Tony were installing the windows, the lumberyard delivered the drywall for the ceiling, so as soon as they were finished, Tony started wiring in some new lights for me, and Mike got his super nifty drywall hoist ready.

Tony Jakacky cuts a hole in the ceiling above the sink for a new light.

I’ve never seen such precariously long sheets of drywall, and it was almost comical to watch Mike and Tony wrangle them into my little house. They did it, somehow. And more impressively, the did it without breaking any drywall.

The first sheet of drywall goes up in the living room.

That drywall hoist was terrifying. It make a falling-apart sort of clanking noise as Mike cranked it up, and I was sure it would fall and the drywall would kill us all. Well, not me, because I wasn’t stupid enough to get under it. I was terrified it would fall and kill Mike and Tony, and then who the heck would finish my ceiling?

Tony muds the screw heads and seams.

But, thankfully, they both lived to finish the ceiling themselves. That pretty much wrapped up the first week of renovations. There was some other stuff going on outside, but I’ll tell you about that later.

This dream of mine

If you’ve ever lived with small children, then you know they can make large messes. The same goes for pets. But let me tell you nothing, but nothing makes as big a mess as a builder. So when you take two children, two dogs, two cats, and two builders, and cram them all into 1200 square feet… well, you better just throw in the towel and learn to live with it while it lasts.

And so the story of our renovation begins…

We knew when we bought this house in May that we’d replace the windows right away since they were were single-paned, small, and didn’t lock. And why make a bunch of small messes when you can just make one big one, so we decided that while we replace the windows, we’ll also replace the acoustic tile ceiling with sheetrock and lay a new floor, with the goal that we’ll be all finished by September.

I did as much work as I could myself, and my brothers helped me take down the old ceiling. I pried off all the old window casing, baseboard, and cove molding to be reused later. Deadline came and went, and finally construction started on July 20 when Mike Neil and Tony Jakacky came to install the new windows.

Tony Jakacky cuts through the old window frame.

Both of these guys have worked on my dad’s house, and we’ve featured them in the magazine. Tony writes a building column for us now, and his next article will be on how to install windows, so you might see some of these pictures again in BHM. I really love these guys because they’re very skilled, they’re very fast, and they do things the way I want them done (and I have very high standards).

Tony (left) and Mike remove part of the wall to make room for the larger windows.

Enlarging window openings is complicated enough, but I also have powder-coated aluminum siding on my house, so that added to the challenge. In order to not damage it, the guys had to be a bit creative. We replaced seven windows in all, and it took only a couple days to get them all nailed in. Next they moved onto sheetrock and wiring, but that’s for another post…

The new bedroom windows are installed.

This dream of mine