Thursday, October 1, 2015

Pantry Project: Part 2

So today marked another full day of working on the pantry project - today's efforts included cutting and installing the studs (my brother cut the toe board for me yesterday) and the installation of the insulation and the vapour barrier.

Things I learned today:
1)    Construction is physically demanding work - perhaps even more so than demolition.
2)    Measure once, cut twice is NOT how the saying goes.
3)    Trying to hammer in nails sideways in between 16" studs where there isn't REALLY 16" to work with is difficult.
4)    Trying to hammer in nails when you have shoulder issues (bursitis?) is not only difficult, it is painful and can cause significant numbness.
5)    Using a drill and screwing the joists together is MUCH easier
6)    Insulation is easy to cut and easy to place in the wall cavities.
7)    Vapour Barrier (plastic sheeting) is NOT easy to install.  It is slippery, it moves around when you are trying to do stuff with it.

All in all, today was another successful day – but I have to admit, my shoulders are sore enough that I have booked myself a massage for tomorrow morning – before I go hunting for whatever it is I am going to install as wall and ceiling material.

Here are some pictures of today’s efforts:
 
Getting started

First things first

Studs all in

A little improvisation at the end

Holy smokes, this stuff sure puffs up

Not perfect, but great for the first try!

Fully insulated space now!

Next up? some sort of wall covering - not drywall.  Options must be explored!


With love across the waters…

Monday, September 28, 2015

Pantry Project Part 1

I am on vacation now until October 7th (back to work day) and decided that this vacation’s major efforts would be around getting my pantry tricked out and finished. This is not without its own special set of concerns.  The pantry was (when I moved in) a closed off “porch” with a glass door that was somewhat less than secure. White vinyl siding on all four sides AND along the slope of the ceiling and a small sheet of vinyl flooring (long gone) to finish out the space and make it look pretty… well, how about pretty-ish?

Anyhow, the space became a catch all for junk and a storage space for tools, recycling and so forth… Lead up to this past spring.  I knew that I wanted to convert it into a good old old-fashioned pantry/cold storage room, but before that could happen the door would need to be filled in and the outside wall sided in order to make certain it was an actual room – and one that could be insulated and somehow sided. 

Before the kitchen windows were replaced I removed the glass door (and sent it to the dump) and Mum and Dad came up in the spring to help me fill the doorway in, and to put real cedar siding in place.

For a reference point, today is Monday… Saturday I emptied out the room and took some before shots.





Yesterday I got started on pulling off the vinyl siding.  I watched a YouTube video – which was somewhat useful in showing me what, in a perfect world, pulling off vinyl siding would be like. In my world it was dirty, coal-dusty, spider-web filled and time consuming. The good news is that I did not injure myself anywhere! How cool is that!

The first panels I pulled off were around the small door-space that Dad and I had built and insulated.  Ok, really, my Dad did most of the work and I was more like a helper (thank you Daddy!) but anyhow, this is what the first space looked like.  Not bad!


Wait… the next wall I tackled was the one up against the kitchen – an inside wall. I started to pull off the siding… and what?




Wait, what??

OK – so what I found was vinyl siding on top of asphalt siding.  I called my Mum and between us we determined it would be OK for me to remove the asphalt siding – it wouldn’t send any airborne catastrophes into my home.

Cool.

So then I pull off THAT layer to find a layer of tar paper.  Hm.  I’m having flashbacks to wall paper now.  Under the tar paper is the ORIGINAL siding… but what? What was this?



I’m still not certain if it is live – there is some sort of tester thing that could be used but my contacts at Slegg tell me that those thingies are really expensive… I took a picture and emailed it to them and they think it may be old telephone cable, but are really not certain.  The thing is that it comes up out of my crawl space and goes through a little hole in the wall into… space BEHIND a kitchen cupboard.  And, unless I want to pull out that cupboard, I’m not going to know where it goes. I’m not prepared to gut and refinish my kitchen at this point.

So… on with the siding removal.  I got the vinyl off all walls and, in the process, had to flip the breaker, pull off and unscrew the light fixture in there and then put it back onto the boards… and I found another thing that is perhaps not quite to code.  Can any of you tell me what is wrong with THIS picture?


I bought murettes today and will be replacing that monstrosity of incompetence with an up to code status in the next couple of hours.

Oh – and then there is this:



Yes, there is a wall, with actual plywood (not particle board, which I think is useless) but the studs are sideways.  When I looked, I see that the reason they are sitting sideways is that they are actually sitting on a footer that is, instead of being a 2x4, it looks more like 2x2… so the reality here is that I will need to build a wall inside this wall in order to ensure it is actually offering enough (and the right kind of) support to the roof line.  Oh – but something else to be aware of is that that “wall” doesn’t actually touch the house – nope, it sits roughly 2 inches out from the house, You can see light. You can see vinyl siding. It’s all very interesting.

At this point I actually COULD cut through and install a window (or a port-hole?) because I’m going to have to rebuild the wall properly anyhow, but I’m going to have to really think that through. I have a week.

That was where I left things last night. 


Today I had a doctor’s appointment and some running around to get done, so all I wanted to really accomplish today was getting the rest of the crud off the final wall.  I have managed to get that done and since it is almost 4PM now, I’m thinking I will call it a day for the most part. 


Now let me tell you about today’s interesting finds.

Today, while I was pulling nails from the wall where the light is I also pulled one of the original nails in the house – it had popped and wasn’t flush and with some effort (like some of the other nails) came out – I was quite surprised when I examined it.  It is rectangular, not round.  It isn’t pointed – I don’t know if that is because they couldn’t put a point on nails way back when, or if maybe the point rusted out, but I suspect the former – which means that whomever was hammering in those puppies had a HELL of a job!



The other thing I found was some crumpled up news-paper that was used to block a draft - October 23, 1954, Vancouver Sun: A couple of the adverts I saw: 50 pound bags of potatoes were $2.19 and 20 pound boxes of McIntosh apples were $1.29.  There are also some real estate ads – 4 bedroom home, full Pembroke plumbing (I don’t know what that is) an automatic oil furnace, hardwood flooring though out and an attached garage: $1,000 down, total purchase price $6,300. That was in Whalley. For reference, the AVERAGE price of a detached home in Whalley BC today is almost $400,000.

Ok – I need to think about dinner and how I am going to proceed now than I know what my project needs next…

With love across the waters…