Wrap Up
Wow, the last post seems so long ago. Things have been moving along here, but not at the same pace, that’s for sure. With the carpet down, and most of the angst about it out of my life, I could relax a bit and get to a few other things, which was quite the laundry list of niggling little details waiting their turn for attention, with each one of them taking your full resources and time until they were finished.
So, lemme see… First among them was a cover for the electrical panel. This one had me rooting through all the scraps I had leftover, saved, or tucked away not knowing what I want them for, and I actually ended up using a piece of 1/4 inch particle board that came as packaging for the dishwasher as a backer for it.
The facing is reclaimed T&G cedar from a bathroom renovation, turned over to the backside which is rough and unfinished, and matches other parts of the basement, (I have a theme, you see… ), and I milled down some door casing for the edging.
The result was a nice looking door that matches the rest of what’s going on in the basement. It’s hinged on the side for easy access. Much better looking than the open hole. I have to hang a few things on it so it doesn’t look so… bold, such as my “Silence!!! Genius at work.” placard I’ve had forever.
Next came this annoying piece of corner trim which had me boggled for months and months. You wouldn’t know it to look at it, so I won’t bother to explain, but this was cured with the help of my neighbors donations. Once again, I milled down some old door molding, and after a few coats of Verathane, voila! It actually looks like it belongs there instead of a patch up, make-do, improvisation.
With that out of the way, I could then install the baseboard in the kitchen area, and tick that off the list.
From there, it was into the attic… What you’re looking at there is the snake running from the attic, down the vent stack of the main bathroom, and coming out in the basement where it was used to pull up the cable from the TV.
There’s an awful lot packed into that little area of the ceiling, and bonking my head was the theme for the day.
I refuse to pay for cable, so I made a few antennae years ago to catch the ghetto vision channels that are free. They come in HD, there are 6 of them here, and this way I can still get the “news” if I want (if you can call “cat in a tree” stories news while Europe burns — buy gold). Anyways, without getting political here, these antennae are ugly looking things, are now both mounted in the attic at different orientations, and the reception is fine — just fine.
Next were the eaves of the house. Last year, I installed two new roof vents in an effort to cool off the house on those hot summer days. What I found, was that when I cut the hole in the roof, no hot air rushed out, which isn’t as it should be. I went ahead with it anyways, because it couldn’t be worse than prior, but concluded that there was no venting from the eaves, and put it on the back burner until now.
So began a process of removing the tin soffit Elliot !@!!! had installed to beautify the joint years ago without cutting bigger vent holes to get with the times. Sure enough, this is what I discovered… tiny little vents.
On a side note, the dismantled landing provided the lumber needed to make a walking platform, and my headless gas line guardian kept me safe while I patiently removed each staple with tack remover and pliers. So, that’s what I found, and
this is what I did. The second vent is cut, just not removed yet.
Let me tell you what fun it is to cut plywood over your head. I used an old bed sheet draped over my head, held it in place with a hat, and looked like Alibaba with a skill saw. A camel tied to the tree out front would have completed the picture…
Other challenges included what to do with the eaves-trough. This last one you can see I removed altogether, but the one in the back was 35 ft long. I won’t bother with the details, just that it was a challenge, and to be honest, at the end of the day, I really do enjoy the head-scratchers…
The front side of the house was higher, so I had a slightly different vantage point from my perch, and there I spied part of the problem.
Where modern homes have cardboard vents stapled in place which provide a 1″ air gap at the roof line, this is what they did back in ’68 when this house was built. A 2×4 on edge provides a 1/2 ” gap, and it was similar the entire way.
All I was willing to do at that point was shake my head and know that I hadn’t made it worse… I ran a piece of doweling through the gap to be sure insulation hadn’t plugged it up on the inside, and with that, there wasn’t much more I could do.
The final corner of the house was completely rotted out. Shingles were removed, roof boards had to be replaced, tar paper put down, and about 1/2 a tube of Black Jack got it right again. I wasn’t even going to check that corner, but I’m glad that I did. Sorry, no pics. With a hole in the roof and rain in the forecast, I wasn’t stopping.
What else… oh.. lights!!!
Lighting in the basement had been sitting on my cranium for a loooong time. I know I wanted LED’s down there, but I’m just not going to pay the green premium. The first LED light bulb I ever saw was $99 at Crappy Tire. Now how much are they?
I instead found the old standard 3″ pot lights for a decent price, and began thinking it through. The hanging strings were a fantastic visual aide, and with so much going on in the ceiling, it was limiting enough to come up with a solution.
This took a few days to get into place, but I was sooooo happy to get rid of the — not a nice word to say here — lighting, it was well worth the effort.
I had to fetch the last two remaining spare tiles I had up in the garage attic to finish the ceiling, then space them around a bit because the colour change was noticeable when two of them were side by side, but now it’s all together, looks good if you ask me, and I upgraded the entire basement for the price of ONE LED light. BTW, they make LED lights that replace the halogen “button” style now, so there’s that.
The landing area got the same treatment, and had its own challenges, but again, leftover material from the kitchen renovation saved the day. As you can see, I still need one more piece of T-bar to complete the look. It has a “retro” feel to it but, for a difficult area, this was a wonderful solution and won’t be looked at much as it’s right at the bottom of the stairs where you’re looking down most of the time anyways.
That concludes this report from the front. There were oil changes, brake jobs, garden netting (damn birds), and time to get after that other pile of chores that had been displaced while all this was going on, and I feel weird now that I can look around me and say that I’m right close to being “caught up”.
I’ve actually got some miles put on the bike now!