Snowball Syndrome; Bob Vila would bail on me

[MrSurly]

Originally Posted by Bluetoys

Maybe it's just me, but that don't look right.

Well, there's a whole lot that's wrong with what I found...

Which part catches your eye, Matt?

I'm open for questions and suggestions

[vafatboy]

Originally Posted by MrSurly

Well, there's a whole lot that's wrong with what I found...

Which part catches your eye, Matt?

I'm open for questions and suggestions

I would only suggest that you consider carefully where you use pressure treated lumber. Haven't worked residential in a long time, but I think the code now restricts its use in framing to a couple feet above first floor elevation, could even be restricted to plates.

The reason is toxic fumes in case if fire. When pressure treated lumber is placed in a dry environment I have seen it twist,bow and cup itself into a pretzel.

Yellow pine isn't a stable wood to start with. Add saturation under pressure and it can move more as it dries. Everybody has seen that piece if lumber at the yard that got loose from the stack and dried out.

[MrSurly]

We made some real progress on this, Thank goodness for my Kids! Allie has worked her tail off on this since we started. Jason (sil) joined in Sat afternoon and by Sunday evening eighteen joists are "sistered", 24' of sill and Joist plate is in, the new piers installed and everything jacked an leveled.


Next is pulling the rest of the siding to change the termite damaged studs and add insulation to these old empty walls. I'm also replacing the French door due to water damage. Then scraping and scraping to paint. It's this "while yer in there" mission creep that really adds to the cost.
I got some grandkid help as well.

Some notable changes around the house...some cabinets and shelves are no longer skewed; some more recently installed stuff is newly skewed; an area of counter top now drains spills toward the sink, instead of toward the corner; broken/cracked mouldings and drywall are numerous. Oh well, right?
My recently completed black granite shower was not damaged (yay!)

The biggest issue has been the oppressive heat! it's been 100+ each day; drought conditions, burn ban, parched. I had one of those "evaporative cooling" vests for riding and used it for this work. I went by the HD shop and got one for Allie as well. They did help, with a fan blowing, but I must say that they work much better when riding! Saturday afternoon we got rain(! Finally). Normally, I'd complain about rain during this sort of project, but I'm NOT whining about the rain!
It rained for a couple of hours but caused no issues as we had already tarped the job for shade. It was a very welcome respite from the heat. We were glad that the piers had been completed just before the rain, as we did have some water running under foot. The rain brought lower temps and we were enjoying the low temp so much that we worked until 2AM Sunday morning! Today (Sunday) I didnt get moving til 7:30 and it was sticky outside. Temp went right back to near 100 but with the bonus of humidity.
Progress made, starting to get a handle on this.

[MrSurly]

Of course, pulling the French doors revealed even more subfloor issues and a bug eaten header.
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My daughter has now coined a Motto for our remodel efforts and it IS rather fitting.

" All Shovels, No Ladders"

As in: no matter our efforts, we seem to be only capable of digging a deeper hole, not building a way out.

[Xkvator]

Originally Posted by YankeeBob

What others have said!

BTW, That 8x8x16 cinder block under the jack is sideways. The structural strength of a cinder block is when it is upright. I hope you don't have too much weight on it.

Good Point...!

I didn't see those pics at first...had to scroll sideways...

[Big Cheese]

Nice work Rick. Damn shame you have to do it though. You'll feel better after when it's put together gooder.

[MrSurly]

New French door is in along with about 20sq ft of new oak flooring. Allie is caulking the door frame right now. Im heading back out to run a couple of new outlet and lamp boxes before starting on the insulation.

Hey Mike, you'll recall that I had bragged about the oscillating tool. I have just about worn it out on all of this old work repair stuff. I was able to slice out pieces of oak flooring and replace them by cut ting th e tongue off all the way around. There have been so many applications for it I can't count them all.
I think of it as an electric chisel. Because it has such an awkward name (oscillating tool) I've taken to calling it Oscar.
We've made lots of use of Oscar.

[MrSurly]

To update a bit; this 'replace a little curled up board' project has now morphed through several snowball phases. I've removed every last piece of siding (pattern 105, 1x8) from the West side of the house.

This wall is the back of the house and it is 9' tall and 72' long.
We've added insulation throughout, added wiring and boxes for four sets of lamps and four receptacle locations.

We then covered the whole wall with Tyvek house wrap.
This old wood siding is showing its sixty years; many of the lower boards are warped/cupped, etc.
We set up a planer to run all the boards through to salvage as many boards as possible and to remove many layers of old paint. I was surprised how many boards were just not good enough. I'll need to replace roughly half of them.
As always, Alexa has been the doer of all things. Lately she runs the planer. The process involves running each board through usually three times, and then we have to scrape the curved portion that the planer can't get and then sand and sand...
I have the task of sharpening the planer knives... Often. And of course, scraping, sanding and scraping and sanding...

BTW: planing this old wood means making certain the nails are removed. We fired up a remnant from yet another forgotten hobby, the metal detector! It made easy to be sure there were no surprises. In two cases it found completely hidden nails that would have caused damage to the planer.
In better times (financially) I would just replace all of the siding with new boards (since they were removed already) but this snowball has me in the poorhouse from repairing my poor house.
Progress is being made a weekend at a time. We FINALLY are starting to put siding back ON.

Another ~oh by the way~ The new 105 siding is a different size than the old 105 siding.
Different sizes means you can't mix old and new on a given row.
I'll add some pics to this post in a bit

[MrSurly]

Originally Posted by YankeeBob

What others have said!

BTW, That 8x8x16 cinder block under the jack is sideways. The structural strength of a cinder block is when it is upright. I hope you don't have too much weight on it.

Yeah, no worries. The setup in that pic was a 'placeholder' just keeping the timber up while jacking pad was being built. All of the actual jacking was done using solid blocks.

[ms_tapestry]

Mad skillz Mr. Goat Herd. . . glad to see it's finally coming back together!

[Backroad Mike]

Looking good Ricky. Lots of work.

[Jackwagon]

Damn Ricky, that turned out to be a MAJOR project. But you'll be glad ya did it in the long run.

[J.A.F.O.]

Snowball Syndrome; Bob Vila would bail on me


Especially if you called him a Mexican.

[MrSurly]

I took a day off work to try to get ahead of the forecast. Lord knows we need the rain, but please let me get all the siding on and primed!
Alexa (Allie) is the workhorse as always and the other kids have jumped in, too.
I'll try to get more pics in.
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[Backroad Mike]

Ricky.

Have to ask.. That last picture. Your butting up two pieces of siding. Are you sealing the joint with anything ?????

Can I suggest 45 degree bevel cuts on the ends and overlap the bevels.
These boards will likely shrink when it gets cold and a gap may form. The bevel would still provide some coverage. A good caulk could also do the same thing. A quality paint over would be recommended.

JMHO.