Into the Light

Other than sanding and mudding, and mudding and sanding, and sanding and mudding... we installed one of the Solatubes last Sunday. Since we had already installed the ceiling portion of the Solatube, all we had to do was connect the new roof portion of the Solatube to it.

The second picture above was taken at 6:30AM. The Solatube brings A LOT of light into the room. It has this unearthly glow early in the morning and late at night. During the day, it's just bright. We think we like it and will be installing the other two Solatubes (especially the 10" one in the kitchen).

About the install... pretty easy. It would have been easier if we had not choosen where each hole in the ceiling and in the roof was going to be and then tried to connect them. Better to let the Solatube tubing dictate where the holes go. We thought the tubing was a little more forgiving. Not.

New Roof!

We meant to post about the new roof sooner, but we've been sanding and mudding and just couldn't quite find the time. So, without further ado...

The first thing we had to do to prepare for the new roof was mark the locations for the new bathroom fan vents and the Solatubes. I went into the attic space and marked each location by driving a screw up through the roof to the outside. This would have made me nervous if it were any other season but summer. Then I went up onto the roof and attached duct tape to the screws indicating what the locations were for (14" Solatube, 10" Solatube, 4" fan vent). Here are some photos of me on the roof.

The roofing materials (shingles, etc.) were delivered the week prior to the work being done. The dumpster was delivered the morning that the work began. I stayed home that morning to make sure everything was okay and to answer any questions. Good thing, too, since the dumpster guy wanted to put the dumpster right against the house. The kitchen sink has a drain field on the north side of the house, so I didn't want the dumpster too close. I directed the dumpster to be placed about 9 feet from the house and felt comfortable about the drain feild.

The roofers took a little longer than I anticipated. I had thought that the job would take a day. They had thought it would take a little over a day. It took 2 full days. Plus, they had to come back on the third day to clean up. Still, the new roof looks great! They took out the individual roof vents and replaced them with a single vent that stretches the ridge of the roof.

My spouse and I also had the roofers plumb cut the rafters on the east side of the house. This will allow us to install the gutter in a horizontal manner and not the canted way that it was before.

All of the Solatubes are in the roof now and all that needs to be done is for them to be connected to the ceiling below. We are very happy with our new roof! We are gauranteed for 20 years against leaks and should be nice and dry (at least when it come to rain).

Slow Mudding

We thought we'd share some photos of our drywall mudding progress. As you can see in the photos, We've got all of our seams taped and mudded. The screw holes are all mudded, too. All of the tapered seams between the drywall boards were very easy to mud, but the flat seams are requiring a bit more artistry. We have to feather the mud out much further to hide the slight hump that results from the tape and mud.

We've been sanding with the vacuum attachment and that has made cleanup less of a pain. The ceiling has been the hardest part by far. We think we should be able to finish mudding and sanding by the end of this weekend or early next week.

By the way, our new roof is on! More on that in the next post.

Weak-end

I'm freaking tired today. My arms and back feel a bit like jelly. This is good, because it means I worked hard this weekened. But it's bad because it means that I'm weak and out of good digging shape. Hmmm.

One of the reasons I'm so tired today is because we ignored one of the first rules of remodeling/house projects: put it where you want it the first time.

As you may have read before, my spouse and I moved a couple of tons of rocks from a messy pile to nice stacks under our trees not so long ago. If we had put them in the right spot the first time, we would have saved ourselves a lot of time and effort.

Well, this weekend I knocked down the big pile of dirt that was sitting in front of our house, gathering weeds and spiders. I dug and dug and shoveled and hoed,and now the pile is gone, and the sunken spots from when the electrical was run are now filled. Hence the weakness. But, if we had put the pile of dirt someplace else when we were first determining where to put what, I wouldn't have had to spend all day in the sun flattening it out.

Oh well. If I keep it up, I'll get nice and strong. In our defense, when the dirt pile was first created, we had no idea what we were doing or where we wanted things. Plus the contractor put it in the wrong spot. I'm being a bit hard on us.

The motivation for moving the pile was the dumpster that was delivered this morning for the roofers. Hooray, new roof!! Today they took off the old roof and started to put on the new; they'll finish up tomorrow. They're also going to install the top portion of our Solatubes, where the flange comes up through the shingles. AND they're going to cut some of the joists that are at the edge of the roof so that they're perpendicular to the ground instead of slanted. We're very happy and excited. Anyway, the pile was right where it'd be good to put the dumpster, and so in the interest of cleanliness, the pile was flattened. And sure enough, that's where they put the dumpster. I'd feel good if I wasn't so stiff. Time for more Pilates...

Actually, it's been fine. Now that our strawberry crop has petered out, the raspberries are coming into their own. I'm getting about a cup of fresh raspberries a day. Yum!

We actually had a pretty good weekend. We put the final coat of joint compound on the drywall screws, and many seams were sanded and had another layer of mud put on. We'll put pictures up of all this later in the week. We're going to try to have it all finished up so we can start putting on primer this weekend or early next week. We have to move on this room; our permit ends in September and we'd like to have the den insulated before it gets cold. Whew!

Cherry Stain

We think that we've settled on the way we're going to finish the wood we're using for the built-in book shelf. As stated before, we're using a cherry veneer plywood. While visiting the Environmental Home Center (EcoHaus) in Seattle, we found a very nice bee's wax and linseed oil sealer. After applying a coat on the plywood, we decided that we wanted a little more "cherry" than what we were seeing. Since the linseed oil and wax finish is not a petroleum product, we wanted to find a stain that was water based. After some research, we found a brand that was exactly what we were looking for. Saman offers water based stains in a variety of colors. The one we chose is a little on the pink side when unfinished, but gets nice and red (in a wood sort of way) when the wax & linseed sealer is applied. You can see the final color in the photo below (as well as the steps leading up to it).

1. Untreated cherry veneer
2. Bee's wax & linseed oil
3. Saman's water base stain (chamois)
4. Stain with wax sealer

We thought we'd try to finish our shelf using non-petroleum products and feel pretty successful in this regard. The wax finish will require a little maintenance over the years but not much. Now we just have to build the shelf!

Berry Bounty

It's been a good couple of weeks for strawberries. The strawberries we planted last year spread like crazy, and now our hedge is full of them. Here's the haul for one day:



Over the space of two days, we nearly filled a colander.



Tasty treats. The slugs haven't attacked too many berries - the resident crows have taken more. There are four of them, all of them very young-looking, and so I suspect they're an easy snack while they're learning to fend for themselves. They don't take too many, so we don't mind too terribly much. They always seem to take the best ones, though. Oh well. It's not like we're lacking for good strawberries.

Other than eating from our garden (our red leaf lettuce has gone crazy, and we might have more than we can manage to eat this summer), we've been slowly chugging away on the drywall. We finished taping this weekend, and next is the round of sanding, then the final finish layer of mud. So close! Still, I don't think we'll be done with the drywall until the end of the month. After that it should be short work to paint and put the clay up, and the trim should be up by the end of August. That's much more slowly than we wanted (we wanted to have the den torn out and the insulation up by then), but that's life. Still, we are making progress, and the hedge keeps us happy.