Lee has been after me to figure out how we are going to use the rooms in our house. Not just use them, but where furniture and closets are going to go. This has been frustrating for me because I am not good at figuring things out spatially. I like to wave my hand and say, “Sure it will all fit”. But we really did need to get it all sorted out, because room layout affects the placement of electric outlets, lights, and switches among other things. To make matters harder, two of the rooms are oddly shaped and were not straight forward to plan. You would think that working from a mostly blank slate with a few restrictions would make it easy, but it wasn’t.

I will admit that I had some draft paper that I was working with. That was okay and I did get a few small things accomplished. Where I started making my leaps and bounds in figuring out the room layout was when I found a program on the La Z Boy furniture web site. I now have the master bedroom, office, living room, and multiple-use room all figured out.

Lee and I still are not quite all the way certain on the living room layout. It’s an odd shape with some things that you can’t change and have to work around. I am most pleased with how my craft/sewing/TV room turned out. That one took a while, as it needed bookcases (for Lee’s compulsive how-to book collection), a place to work with all my crafts and future sewing projects, and then a place to relax and read or watch TV. We don’t actually own a TV (haven’t for a year and a half) right now but I really want one again so I can play my Wii Fit.

I can hardly wait until I have walls to paint, lights to pick out, and furniture to look for. Lee on the other hand is probably DREADING it as he expressly hates those above mentioned evils. I know he wants to build some of our furniture (Art’s and Craft style) but I’m not letting him do it all. He will be busy enough finishing up other multitudes of house stuff.

Insulating the attic angled portions of our second floor ceiling is the first step in a very elaborate insulation plan we have for our old house. Our long term plan is a superinsulated house — a house that stays warm in the winter with only small fast fires and cool in the summer by trapping the low temperatures of evening. Going from empty stud bays, riddled full of telephone and cable holes, to such a final product is obviously a long road. I’ll talk more about the process and the benefits in a later post, but for now our task at hand is the attic bypasses.

They’re call bypasses because air entering the attic spaces over the first floor need a bypass to reach the attic spaces over the second floor and leave via the ridge vent. (See illustration on the right.) A small portion of our second floor ceiling is sloped. It starts at about 6′ at the top of the knee wall, and ranges up to the ceiling at a little over 8′. Our first step in insulating this area is to cut 8′ long strips of 2″ thick pink polystyrene insulation that fit directly into these bays. This will leave a 1.5″ air space against the roof surface for ventilation, and the spacing will be maintained by wood spacer blocks (which also provide an attachment surface). The 8′ strips extend 3′ vertically into the attic to prevent blown-in insulation (to be added much later) from blocking these ventilation pathways. The process went as follows:

Piles of wood spacers were prepped for nailing into the stud bays. These are made by ripping 2×4 stock into three strips, roughly 1.1″ x 1.5″ each. The 1.5″ defines the bypass spacing. The strips are then chopped into one foot pieces, and two nails are pre-driven into each for rafter attachment.

The wood spacers were then nailed at intervals into the rafters, 6 per stud bay.

A 4′x8′ sheet of foam insulation was then ripped to width for the stud bay, and measured for the cut-out for the rafter tie that forms an obstruction in each stud bay.

An angled marking tool was set to the rafter-to-tie angle, and used to define the cut angle for the rafter tie notch.

The width of the notch was sized using a scrap piece of 2×4.

The rafter tie notch was cut out with a drywall jab saw.

View of a completed notch.

The panel was fitted into place. Sometimes it had to be motivated to fit.

3″ cap nails were used to hold the strips of foam insulation in place. 1″ versions of these nails are used to hold down tar paper on roofs. The 3″ versions are for this sort of thing. These like to bend, and are obnoxious to drive upwards at the roof angle. The rafters were pre-marked so the cap nails would hit the wood furrow strips.

View of some of the completed stud bays. We are a little over one third done, and hope to finish the remaining bays in the next couple nights.

During the reroofing project, we had something new installed that would not have been seen on a 1930’s house. We had a Solatube installed. Originally we saw a booth for one at the Good Earth Home, Garden & Living Show a year ago. We are planning a new half bathroom upstairs, inside one of the bedrooms. Since the new bathroom would be inside a somewhat dark room to begin with, Lee wanted to bring in natural light.

Tubular skylights work by catching direct and ambient sunlight, bouncing it down a highly reflective tube (through the attic), and then diffusing it into a room through a ceiling mounted lens that looks much like a light fixture. Heat and UV are blocked, but a broad spectrum natural light comes through. There were two brands that we looked at but we ended up choosing the Solatube brand. It is the only one offering an Energy Star rated insulated diffuser glass at this time. The tax rebate is also a bonus.

Since the bathroom isn’t built yet, only the dome on the roof is presently installed. I am really impressed with how much light comes in regardless. With only two windows, both of the upstairs rooms are pretty dark. I almost wish that we had a second one installed the other room.

When we were having our roof redone we decided to redo the back porch roof line as well. This is what the original porch roof line looked like in the below picture. It’s not a very good picture of it but it was the only one I could find back in my photo records. (You sure can tell it was awhile ago by all the formers tenants stuff about.) It was tacked on like an after thought. Whenever Lee walked out onto the porch he always felt like he was going to whack his head on the supporting beam that went across.

So then we came to our back porch dilemma. How do you build a back porch roof line that doesn’t look completely plain while keeping it small? We had some constraints as we couldn’t make it too wide as it would cover the windows on either side of it. We also couldn’t make it too deep as then it would crowd the wood shack. We couldn’t just tack it on like the last one as Lee wanted to be able to walk out comfortably on it.

We ended up making the new porch roof line start farther up on the roof. That way we could get a slightly bigger porch roof and it saved Lee’s head. The final dimensions of it came to 12′ wide by 8′ deep. The rafter tails are trimmed flush with the fascia and it has a beam that goes across it with a decorative overhang. AC Plywood was used, finish side down, on the under roof so we will have a nice smooth surface to paint.

Lee and I are pretty pleased with how it turned out. Right now the porch roof just has two pressure treated 4×4’s holding it up on top of concrete pads that were also newly put in. When we get around to rebuilding the porch we will put in tapered pillars that will somewhat match the pillars that we plan on putting on the front porch. At least that is our current plan. We always seem to change our minds a lot. That will be a ways down the road though as we have so much to do inside the house still. I had to prime the supporting beam to keep the wood from cracking. I need to get around to primming the rest of it.

While the roof was getting replaced the existing corbels all got destroyed in the process. Lee decided that he wanted fancier corbels then the originals so he made up his own. To get started, he built three for the dormer (one was just for practice). Most of the corbel dimensions were already decided for us. The overhang of the roof was two feet so that was one length. The window placement made it so the part of the corbel that came down the wall was sixteen inches. (The other 13 corbels on the house are 26″ long.) The width of the wood is two and a half inches.

Lee made his cuts. He did an open mortise and tenon joint to connect the right angle. Then the joint was glued and clamped.

He drilled a hole through the open mortise and tenon joint and then chiseled it square for a wooden peg.

The wooden peg through the joint makes the corbel stronger and adds a nicer look. The peg was left out a half an inch through both sides. The diagonal brace was then screwed into place.

The diagonal brace is a half inch smaller then the other elements in the corbel. The corners of the diagonal brace and the bottom of the vertical are chamfered. The horizontal will be fit tightly against the varge rafter as we may later add faux caps so it looks like the supports pierce the face of the eaves. In a way, these corbels are the beginning of our planned architectural update for the house: from rough depression-era craftsman to a more refined arts and crafts styling.

Lee and I had a lot of discussions on how to make the corbels look. I hated anything that looked too ornate. He hated how plain the originals were and liked ones that emphasized the joinery. Finally I told him to knock himself out and just do whatever he preferred. I like them quite a lot and am very happy with how they turned out. I do feel bad for him in that I think they would have looked a bit different if he hadn’t of spent the last three weeks pointing out corbels I hated on other people’s houses.

Of course with Lee being Lee he couldn’t help himself and had to add some more details. These ones are just faux pegs. He drilled a quarter inch deep hole with a forstner bit (this leaves a flat bottom). Then he chiseled the corners out square. The pegs themselves are three quarters inch cubes which were glued into place.

We got our first new window for the house. We will be doing a few windows at a time as we work on particular rooms. The next two windows we order will probably be for the two rooms upstairs and that will make the second floor complete. Then it will be all the windows on the first floor. All eleven of them. Oh joy of joys.

But I digress… We are replacing the windows with Marvin Ultimate double hung. The windows right now are very leaky and need replaced. We really wanted to keep the look of the old ones as the windows are a big part of the charm of our old house. Slapping some big vinyl picture windows in just wouldn’t cut it. We looked at a lot of windows online and then culled it down to Pella, Kolbe, and Marvin. We ended up picking Marvin over Kolbe as the price was similar but the Marvin seemed better built. The floor model of Marvin had more detailed wood work and higher quality gaskets.

This particular window is aluminum clad on the outside and pine on the inside. It has interior and exterior muntins (bars that separate the window panes), and spacer bars between the glass for a more accurate divided light appearance. The sash lock is an oil-rubbed bronze spoon lock which keeps the old look. It has a U factor of .31 which is an R value of 3.22. This is important to us as we continue in our quest for a very insulated energy efficient house. Lee wanted to go with a straight grain Douglass Fir interior which would have been more in keeping with our house, but that added another two hundred dollars to the price so we decided we could live without it.

Lee plans on building a window seat by this window. Then we will stain the wood to match all the other woodwork in the window seat. But that will be a ways down the road, so right now I just admire it.

I don’t have an outside picture of this window at the moment, but the exterior trim has been replaced to maintain the current trim style. We like the window trim a lot, and it seems to be an uncommon design even in older homes. Of course, our new window doesn’t have an integrated angled sill like the old wood windows, but we went with a false sill with a angled top cut to approximate the look. An article in Fine Home Building (our reference for everything) gave us the idea.

Lee started laying down the underlayment flooring in one of the upstairs bedrooms. We are using 1/2″ CDX plywood. We plan on having wood floors so we needed to use plywood instead of OSB because of its superior nail holding capability. Putting down the underlayment also is going to make the upstairs floor stiffer. We are using glue and screws to help prevent squeaks.

We originally were going to use a product called DAP Subfloor 7000 (because it had low VOC emissions) under the CDX. We must have gotten a bad batch of it at the store because it was rubbery and non adhering. So we brought it back to the store and ended up going with PL Premium. Its a polyurethane adhesive which is basically not suppose to off gas. It seems to have better performance in every way compared to the other product. It also had less warnings (like brain damage) on it compared to the DAP. So far Lee seems pretty pleased with it.

We picked up a vanity for the future upstairs bathroom. Since the new bathroom is going to have space constraints we were looking for something that was small. We almost went with a pedestal sink so the room would look more spacious but then we found this vanity. It was the smallest one we found with it being 17 inches deep and 25 inches wide. Plus a little bit of storage which was a bonus. Lee wants to change the doors later on but I say don’t mess with it until the rest of the house is done.

The new roof has been finished for over a week but we had trouble finding the camera charger after moving back. We found it now, and will hopefully start posting more frequently again.

We re-roofed because the existing roof was starting to look pretty rough and would likely be leaking in the next few years. No sense remodeling the inside of a house if the outside is failing.

We originally wanted to go with a metal roof, but costs and other considerations pushed this off the table. I talked about that in the comments of this post. Ultimately we went with Owens Corning Duration Premium Shingles with “lifetime” warranty in the Driftwood color. They are a very heavy shingle, lots of raised character, and not likely to end up in the landfill any time soon. The original house had a wood shake roof, so we wanted something that would keep the look. The next photo is a close up of the new roof. Although your computer monitor may show it differently, the shingles are a gray-brown color. They get darker and more shake-like when it rains.

If the roof portion of this project had been a simple tear-off and nail-on it would have been quite a bit cheaper. Unfortunately, the original shake roof was still there under the composite, along with the original skip sheathing. That had to get torn off. Also, quite a few of the rafter tails were rotted, the varge rafters (wooden overhang in the gable ends) were failing, and the whole roof had some serious dips and rises. Translation: our new roof was basically an all new roof. The original rafters were still good, but everything else was replaced. We went with A/C plywood in the eaves for appearance. If we run out of things to spend money on some day, we might come back and add bead board to the front gable to restore the tongue & grove overhang appearance. All the gables have a neat new trim detail on the varge rafter face, and we added fascia boards since we’ll be adding rain gutters pretty soon. Exposed rafter tails would be truer to the craftsman roots of this house, but aren’t practical in an area with 51 inches of rain a year.

From that last photo you can see we went with ridge vents to keep the back of the roof cleaner. Also, the corbels (decorative angle brackets) were destroyed when the overhangs came off. We’ll be building new ones to restore the look.

We are very happy with how this project turned out. Our contractor was very detail oriented and honest. Robin now speaks in glowing tones of the joy of hiring out home improvement. Yes, yes, as soon as we win the lottery. I hear your chances of winning are slightly better if you actually play.

Last year we moved into the house on Sept 22nd. One year later (roughly) we’ve moved back in after the remodeling is complete (roughly). It all feels very … familiar. It’s still bare studs (although significantly stronger). It’s still cold (even less insulation). It’s still a mess (more so).

However, I’m feeling considerably more optimistic about the next 6 months. Last year we moved in after weeks and weeks of cleanup and gutting. We were cold, we barely got the wood stove in before the freezing weather hit, and we spent the winter fighting for sufficient wood supply. Despite having a few indoor electric outlets and hot water, it was impossible to make real progress on any remodeling task because something was holding up everything.

Fast forward a year, and things are similar, but very different. We have 5 cords of split oak, 2 cords of fir, 4 cords of chopped 2by and plank material, and two mountains of cedar shakes. I don’t think we’ll run out of wood. We also don’t have any significant gutting or structural work to left to do. The hated plank room is bare. The plywood ceilings are gone (and actively venting heat). The mouse infested insulation on the second floor is sitting outside in a 30 yard dumpster. The sagging floors have been jacked up as much as can be expected. The house is a blank slate ready for insulation, electric wiring, new water systems, etc.

So, what’s next? Short term our priorities are:

• Add 1/2″ CDX plywood underlayment to the floor of the second floor south bedroom
• Build the 2×4 wall for our planned three-quarters bathroom in the second floor south bedroom
• Restore first floor plumbing vents by routing through this newly built second floor wall
• Install foam baffles into rafter bays of the second floor
• Add OSB sheathing to the outside of the second floor knee walls (sheer & to protect batt insulation)
• Install 5/8″ drywall ceilings on the second floor and under the eave portions of the first floor

The first three items are a race to replace our plumbing vents. The original vent stacks cut through too many framing members and had to go. Our plan is to bring new ones down the joist bays and then up through a new wall into the attic. Yes, it’s probably a bad idea to be venting our plumbing into the house .. but with the breezes blowing through we’re probably fine.

The remaining items deal with sealing up the largest holes in the building envelop as quickly as possible to retain heat. My current insulation plan will actually allow us to make a big push for insulation before worrying about other building services. This is a good thing. I wasn’t looking forward to another winter of cold.