Category Archives: House

House remodel…

Working on two different projects these days. Refinishing all the wood work on the front porch (photos some other time) and pouring the concrete slab in the basement.
No humidity to be worried about but I’ve decided to lay an inch of gravel before pouring the concrete. So far so good. The laser level is very useful.

Ended up hurting my back last Saturday carrying the stupid bags so I’ll be quiet this week and get back to it next weekend hopefully.

Yard Fence and door

The super old wood fence and door on the side of my house collapsed during the winter so I built a new one and set it up.
The most difficult part was breaking down the old concrete underground before setting the new posts in place.

I need to buy some hardware for the door and it’s all done. Only six hundred other projects on the list now…

House remodel

Part of the basement remodel involves digging down to get more ceiling height. After cutting the concrete slab with a concrete saw I rented a jackhammer and broke down the entire slab. Now I just have to get rid of all that concrete and start digging…

 

Summer vacations 2018

Summer vacations went pretty well.  I worked on fixing small things in the house.

Pruned all the trees and got rid of all the branches. Pressure washed the fence and re-stained it. Pressure washed the flagstones along the sidewalk. Refinished a window that was in fairly bad state. Built a window screen from scratch. Cleaned up my front porch adding some furniture. Fixed a few concrete cracks around the house and repainted. Also completely refinished the air intake grid on the floor of the main entrance (it was disgusting really). Refinished the door step. Fixed some electrical, updated the street number and a few other small things…

 
The paint looked awful and the wood was in bad shape
Rotten Wood Frame
Building a new window screen in oak

After stripping the paint, using wood petrifier & wood epoxy, repainting the window inside and out and finally reattaching the new window screen.

View from inside

After trimming the trees I made little bundles (like 20 of them) to make it easier to get rid of them.
I ended up renting a roll off dumpster with the neighbors to trash everything.

Power washing the flagstones. It took forever but the difference is clearly visible.

Power washing the fence + re-nailing some planks + new oil stain

New street number using the color of the house

 


Removed the wood grid (picture below) which was disgusting, scrubbed & cleanup the air intake and painted it in black (because you know...)

A century worth of "I don't even want to know what that is" sticky dirt. Actually had to use a dremel tool + hand filing the whole thing

 


After cleanup. Staining with a tiny brush...

 


Door step. Wood plank was in poor shape and the paint on the flag stone was just wrong. Who paint such a nice stone anyway???

Three coats of stain later + 2 days of scrubbing the stone with everything I could find including muriatic acid.


Adding some furniture + carpet on the patio. Now I can enjoy the rest of my vacations...oh wait, it's all gone! :)

Home – Basement

– June 2, 2018
Sometime, working in basement is depressing. I try to remind myself that the house is older than any human alive. That it was built around 1894 and it has seen things…

Second room ceiling is all cleaned up.

Doing some experiment digging along the walls in a corner to check out the foundation. Looking good up to two feet at least.
I might dig out a foot and redo the concrete slab. Work work work…

House update

Basement refinishing.
Cleaned up one brick wall and one wood panel. Also started cleaning up the joist and ceiling (wood floor really). It’s messy, it takes forever but the result is pretty good (see before / after photos below.)

Considering the wood is 120+ years old I’m happy with the result. Will probably be done with the entire cleanup in two months. Then I can start building on it…

Remodel – Update

Before / After

Started removing the plaster from the brick wall. I started by hand using a hammer and a stiff wall scrapper but that wasn’t ideal. Ended up buying a oscillating multi tool and it works much better. Still an absolute pain but I’m getting there. I still need to clean up a few more bricks here and there, replace a few others and do the repointing.

Basement – ‘Before’ photo

January 7th, 2018

I love my house (most of it is perfectly livable) but there’s no way around it; the basement is a complete disaster (see photos…). Since I’m not big on sitting around during vacation I thought I’d get started on that. I tore down the shelves, removed the concrete & plaster from the brick walls, got rid of crumbling ceiling and remove all the junk that’s been lying around for decades. Pretty much filling up a 15 yard dumpster roll-off with 4 tons of crap. I also clean up my backyard. Most importantly I have a plan and I’ve completed all the research. I know everything there is to know about code. I might even use some of it as “guideline”. Just kidding.