Primer and Paint

CMV stayed an extra day and decided to apply the first coat of primer to the new floor in the porch. The wood that we used (pine) is really going to soak up the paint, so a good layer of primer is essential.

We are taking a week off from going to the cottage, so we will apply the second coat the following week. We should be able to start painting on Sunday before we leave. We would be able to actually paint on Saturday, but by waiting an extra day, we give it the week to dry with no one walking in and out of the house.

We returned and painted the floor a dark green. The color was originally intended to be our accent color for the exterior of the house, but I am not sure we are feeling the same way at this point. We have decided to hold off on replacing the siding, so we might not change much. The painted floor is going to show the evidence of wear and tear along with normal foot traffic. It may force us to give it a touch up every so often.

Building and Installing the Floor

I had a basic idea of what we wanted to do for a floor in the porch. I drove up to the cottage on Friday and stopped at Home Depot on the way up. I wanted to buy the pine planks for the floor. We had decided to use 1x3 boards and run the the narrow length of the porch.

We also decided to keep this as a floating floor. We think that we might need to pull up the floor from time to time. If we attached it, we run the risk of cracking the concrete floor, and eliminate the ability to clean under the wood.




I started out by laying runners and then cutting the planks to the proper length. After a dry fit, the planks were screwed into the runners from the underside. The finished section was then turned over and lowered into place. The first section is five feet in length.





The second section was prepared in the same manner. The last plank of the first section was set so the runners of the second section lock into place by sliding underneath the first section. The second section measures slightly less than five feet.




The third section is slightly longer then three feet. It simply sits on top of the second section. I do not have a way to lock this section into place without driving some screws into the runners of the second section. I hesitate to use screws, as these would be visible. If we feel that it is necessary to secure this section into place, I will go back and screw it down.



I built caps at the front door and at the doorway the leads to the hallway. This has helped with the movement of the last section. These two caps are not part of the section; they are individual pieces that fit under and against the section.

The next step in this project is to paint the floor. We will need to prime it first and then cover it with a tough finish.

Painting the Porch

We have a guest this weekend. CMV's sister BLH is here to visit and help us. The three girls painted the porch. We chose a green that will go nicely with the siding that we picked. CMV went to Lowes to get the paint and found 2 gallons in the clearance section. Someone had mixed 3 gallons of the color, only to have the customer change their mind. We saved quite a bit of money on this paint.




Thanks for the Help BLH!

Cleaning out the Porch

We need to clean out the front porch for a number of reasons. It is getting late in the season, and we do not want our paint and supplies to freeze over winter, we are at the point that we can start to take some tools and materials home, and we are anticipating guests over the Labor Day Holiday. We are planning on setting up the futon in the porch as soon as it is complete.

Once the items are removed from the area, CMV and AMV are going to paint the walls and ceiling. Our plan is to install a wooden floor that can be removed in sections if the need arises. I am unsure how dry the area stays in the winter. It has been a bare concrete floor for so long, that I don't know how the elements will treat the wood. We are going to use a pine plank and then paint it to resemble an old porch floor.



The only picture I have is of the porch almost cleaned out. You can see the futon frame and some trim against the wall.

On the Level

We have some problems with the floors. The problem comes to light when we try to lay the tile floor. The kitchen floor has several spots where the tiles pop up, or the grout cracks out as someone walks on the floor. The hallway is giving us the same fits.

There is not a spot in this house that is level. The tiles do not lay flat, and this is the main cause of them popping up. I bought 3 50 pound bags of self-leveling floor cement. It was our hope that we could pour the mixture and end up with a floor that could be tiled.

The floor had a high spot close to the middle, and it ran higher on the left side. We poured two bags of the cement and got the floor to about the highest point that we could. We did not want to get to the point of stepping down into the bedrooms.



The floor is a lot closer to level, but not quite there. We will attempt to lay the tile soon.

Mother Nature Finally Cooperates

The dumpster was scheduled for pick-up on Friday, July 4, 2008. We even called to check on the Holiday, and they said that they would get it Friday. We left last weekend with 75 percent of the roof torn off, and quite a lot of that was in the dumpster. If they were going to pick up the container on Friday, we were going to get up there and finish the tear off and get everything in the dumpster.

CMV had the week off, so she drove up on Tuesday. AMV and I would drive up on Thursday after work. We had no idea of when they would arrive to get the dumpster, so we felt the need to be ready as early as possible. CMV was able to get most of the remaining shingles off of the house, so when I got there I helped her drag them over to the container. We also took the opportunity to load up all of the bagged shingles from the first weekend. It was late on Thursday, so we called it a night.

Friday morning and no early truck, so we decided to get up on the roof and remove the very last small section of old shingle. I spent time removing the old staples and nails and checking the decking for bad/ weak spots. This section of the roof was in pretty decent shape. I nailed a few loose spots and started to lay out the roofing felt. CMV finished the tear-off, and we loaded the last of the trash into the dumpster. Four o'clock in the afternoon, and we still have the dumpster in the driveway. If we had planned to load it later in the day, they would have arrived first thing in the morning to haul it away. They ended up arriving Saturday morning.

Once the roofing felt was applied, we nailed in the drip edge and laid down the starter strip. We covered the roof with the tarp and called it a night. It was after all, the 4th of July and we were going out on a friends boat to watch the fireworks over the lake.

Saturday morning and once again, we are up on the roof. I am guessing by now, you are tired of reading how we are on the roof, and I assure you, I am tired of writing it in this journal, but neither compares to how tired we were of actually climbing up the ladder for another day. If we could have done the job in consecutive days, I think it would not have been as bad. Only working on the weekends made the job stretch out over weeks, so it seemed to drag on and on.

We started applying the shingles to the northern section, and made decent time. It was clear that we were not going to have enough shingles to complete the job. When I was calculating the number of bundles we needed, I did not add in enough for the ridge caps. We were also short one piece of drip edge for the gable. CMV would drive up to Goshen in the morning and pick up the last of the materials.

We cut two holes in the roof in the locations we chose for the new roof vents. The old roof did not have any vents. The house only had two gable vents, so we felt that we needed to add some additional airflow. As we cut the holes, it was amazing how much heat came out of the attic. We attached the vents and shingled around them and stopped at the ridge.

Sunday morning, July 6, 2008. We have one last section the shingle, and the ridge caps. I got started on the ridge caps while CMV drove to the store. She arrived with the materials and we nailed in the last piece of drip edge, we shingled the last section of roof, and we finished the last row of shingles along the ridge on the main section of the house. CMV and AMV had pre-cut quite a few ridge pieces, so I was able to finish off the ridge as CMV cut away the excess shingle out of the valleys. We finished fairly late in the day, but we finished.

Next week I will go up and apply some roof cement to some of the shingles around the vents and near the chimney. I will also apply the cement to the outer edge of the shingles on the roof line, to give them some additional holding power against the prevailing wind off of the lake. I may touch up the paint on the chimney, as it still shows some light spots, especially as the sun hits it.

Closing Out The Weekend

Friday the 13th was two weeks ago, but it chose Sunday the 29th to show itself. Nothing was going right today. We had four solid rain delays and lost quite a bit of time waiting. I was able to paint the chimney and get it ready to re-install, but most of the morning was spent removing, rearranging, and adjusting the tarps.

To add additional issues, we plugged in the air compressor, and could not get it to hold pressure. It would build to almost 20 pounds, and not move from there. There was no chance that the Coil nailer would work with that low pressure, so all of the shingles would be attached the old fashioned way, a hammer and nails.

We did get a decent block of dry time at the end of the day. During this break in the rain, CMV made decent progress tearing off shingles from the back of the house, and I nearly finished applying shingles to the front gable.

I placed the chimney down and attached it to the roof. We used the ice and water shield as added protection around the flashing. Looking at the paint job out in the sunlight shows that I need to do some touch up work on the next calm day. We were able to run the shingles up to just short of the roof line. I need to clear out more of the ridge so I can apply one run of felt across the top of the ridge and fold it over to the other side.




I am not happy using this as the end of the weekend shot, because of a couple of items. One, there is a piece of plywood nailed as a spacer where the fascia board will eventually attach. There are a few shingles that hang over the edge of the roof, that should have been trimmed. Lastly, the extra shingle should have been cut out of the metal valley.

We did a lot of work in a short amount of time today, and pushed it until the very end. I really should have put the hammer and nails away 15 minutes earlier than I did, because the rain almost caught us unprepared. We had the tarps on the house, but I had been pulling shingles out of the "weight" packs to use to finish the gable, so when the wind started blowing, the tarps didn't have enough to hold them down properly. I had to bring up another 5 bundles of shingles to use as weight. I should use that as a life lesson, because those bundles seem much heavier at the end of the weekend than they do at the start of the weekend.

Roof (Weekend #3)

By all plans, we anticipated that this project would be complete at the end of this weekend. That is the great thing about plans, sometimes they work out, and other times they fail. I will not blame the weather, but just between the two of us, it was the weather that prevented us from finishing this week.

I drove up on Friday morning and got started around noon. My list of priorities was to remove the shingles on the south side of the house, install the drip edge, lay out the roofing felt, apply the starter strip and start laying shingles if time allowed. I folded back the tarp and started removing the three layers of old roof. I was able to work for 2 1/2 hours and then had to cover up for a rain storm. I lost about 2 1/2 hours because of the rain.

After the storm, I was able to climb back up and fold back the tarp and work another 2 1/2 hours. In my 5 hours of working, I was able to get down to the roofing deck, and install the drip edge. I applied the starter strip and covered up for the evening. As I was standing in the livingroom, I realized that I applied the starter strip before I put on the roofing felt. I would need to pull up the strip and apply the felt first thing in the morning.


Saturday, June 28, 2008

It rained quite a bit over night. CMV arrived to find overcast skies and the threat of rain. After a brief shower, we were able to get up on the roof and get started. I removed the starter strip and applied the roofing felt. I the re-applied the starter strip, and attached drip edge on the rake edge. We were ready to shingle.






With the aid of the air compressor and coil nailer, we managed to work our way up the roof close to the top. We attached shingles upto the chimney cutout and stopped for the day. We did not have any more rain, but we had several scares. We have learned to keep the tarps at the ready.

The Roof (second weekend)

CMV was able to locate a company that can bring a 6 yard dumpster to the cottage. They are located in the lakes area, and have small trucks that drop-off and pick-up the dumpsters. No more bagging. The total charge for the dumpster is $230.00, so when you add the landfill charges and the gas to get there, we are probably saving money.





We drove up to the cottage (CMV, AMV & JMV) Friday night. We wanted to be there to get an early start on Saturday morning. Those of you who know me know that I am definitely a morning person, so you can understand that I was really motivated to get up on the roof first thing. I am not sure of the time when we actually got started, and CMV has not started editing my posts, so it was early.

The weather was not very cooperative this weekend. We had two different rain delays on Saturday and another two on Sunday.

We continued by removing the shingles from the front gable down to the valley. We then cleared the first four feet above the gutters, so I could replace some additional boards on the roof.




With the shingles cleared, we had enough room to prepare the valley for new shingles. We decided to lay down an ice and water shield in the valley and the attach some aluminum flashing. We applied the felt paper to the gable, and will do the same to the adjoining roof next week when all of the shingles are removed.

Roof (First Weekend)

I have been working on the roof of the carport for my three days of vacation. CMV and AMV drove up Friday night to help out during the weekend. I was able to get the carport tear off/ rebuild finished on Friday, so it is on to the actual roof of the house.

The plan was to tear off the balance of the eastern facing roof and replace the bad wood. The bad wood runs the entire length of the house from front to back. It is the area where the carport attaches to the house. I would guess that someone walked on the valley and cracked the shingles, which allowed water to reach the planking.



The rotten wood was all on the carport side of the roof, which was a very good thing. When I say that, I mean that any water that leaked through the damaged area would drip to the floor of the carport. The only exception was the storage shed.

With the damaged area removed and replaced, it was time to start the tearing-off the shingles on the house. It went rather well, considering the temperature and the fact that we had a few rain scares.



We had been planning to load the trash into the back of the truck and drive to the landfill for disposal. The charge for roofing scrap is $54.95 a truckload. One charge for as much or as little as you care to load. CMV bought some construction trash bags, and started loading up the bags. We soon learned how much trash we were going to have to haul. We estimated that we would need to take four trips to the landfill @ $54.95 and that does not include the gas for the trips. CMV decided to check the availability of a small dumpster. We were not sure if they would be able to maneuver anything down the lane due to the large trees and the narrow lane.

I want to post that CMV did a fantastic job of bagging all of the roof scrap. Nice job!!

We are not too busy, why not tackle the roof 6/11-6/13

One of the problems that we noticed when we say the house for the first time, was a section of rotten wood in the carport where it meets the house. We decided to use our economic stimulis money and replace the roof.

We had a couple of companies come out and give an estimate. Two estimates of $3,000-3,500 later, coupled with the fact that I hate to pay for labor, we decided to do the job ourselves (come on, you did see that coming right?).

We purchased the materials, and I scheduled some vacation time. I took Wednesday, Thursday and Friday, June 11-13, off and planned to get quite a bit accomplished. The first task was to tear off the roof over the carport. Since I was at the cottage by myself, I knew that I could only removed as much roof as I could cover in case of bad weather.

I got started around noon on Wednesday and after a couple of hours, I had most of the old shingles off of the carport. I was finally able to see the extent of the rotten wood. It was slightly worse than I had anticipated, but still manageable. I started to remove the roofing nails and the staples when the planks started to crack lenghtwise.



I decided to replace the boards with plywood sheets to reinforce the carport. We want a nice roof that will last a long time, and I wasn't willing to risk the carport cracking apart.



I drove to Goshen, IN and purchased the plywwod sheets and some additional nails. I tore out the planks roof and replaced them with the plywood. I am actually comfortable walking on the surface, now that it is solid.

Trim

One of the projects that should have been completed long ago is re-hanging the trim around the windows and doors. It will probably not surprise you to learn that this simple task has been plagued with problems.

When we tore out all of the walls, we also removed a 3/4 inch layer of fiberboard insulation. We added the roll insulation, and hung the drywall without giving it a second thought. That was our first mistake (thank you for not going back through all of the posts and totalling the actual number of mistakes). When replaced, the trim floats 3/4 of an inch off the wall.

We tried to come up with a solution that would maintain the same look throughout the house. We figured we could add a piece of wood behind the trim, but I didn't like the thought of 1 1/2 inch trim on every window.

We quickly dismissed the idea of hanging the trim on the outside of the window frame, due to the fact that the angles and lengths would not match up.

We thought about routing out a channel in the back of the trim, but the original trim is 3/4 inch. We would have to route almost the entire thickness of the board, leaving a very thin piece of trim.

We thought about using an electric planer on the window frames and removing the extra material, but the aged wood started to split in the corners.

We ended up using a chisel and cutting out the corners of the window frame. Once the corners were ready, we used the router to remove the excess material. The only modification we will need to make is on a small piece of inner window trim. Previously, it attached to the window frame, but now it will attach to the edge of the trim.

We still need to final sand and polyurithane the trim, but it is very close to completion. We seem to have quite a few projects that are close to completion. We need to get them finished and off the to-do list.

Checking up during winter

We made a day trip up to check on the cottage today. It is a pretty nice day, but has been very cold the last few days. The lake is still frozen, and there were several ice fishermen out. If the ice is considered safe today, it will not be tomorrow.

The place is fine. The only surprise was that the propane tank vanished. I thought that someone had taken it for their own use. It turns out that the free tank is only free if you fill it at least once a year. We have had the place for almost a year and a half, and we are still using the propane the previous owners purchased. The gas company had come by the place and picked up the tank and kindly refunded the previous owners for the gas.

We have been discussing different options for heating, as neither of us like the propane. I guess this is a sign that we need to make a decision.

I have not updated as often as I would like, so I will catch you up on our progress that we made to this point.


The drywall is finished and painted. We will need to do some touch up painting once we install the baseboards and the ceiling trim.

The flooring is complete in the living room, and both bedrooms. We need to lay the tile in the kitchen and hallway. This will be one of the first projects this spring or early summer when the weather warms up.

We need to install a new source of heat. We are leaning towards baseboards, but have not made a final decision.