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By kilax, August 12, 2016 8:18 am

We moved the house project party to the basement on Wednesday and Thursday so we could replace one of the joists we had been jacking up. Why take a break from all the attic work, when we are on such a deadline, to do this (note: we asked our contractor to move his ceiling install date back another week – no way we’d have all the work done by August 15)? Because we’re concerned if we replace the joist later, it will crack the new ceilings that will be installed on our second floor. Jacking up this joist has been affecting the second floor, so no reason to risk cracking something that is brand new.

It was a nice change to go work in the air conditioned basement, and not have to wear a face mask the entire time! And to have space to move around without stepping on plastic. Woo hoo!

The first thing we did was move as much out of the way on the floor as possible, since we knew we’d have to somehow get a long (16′!) joist in to the basement.

Part of the workout area before

And after. Good thing I did my indoor ride during lunch break on Wednesday!

We also moved weight off the joist from the floor above in the kitchen (sigh, now, basically every room in our house is a disaster zone):

Moving the fridge and stove away from the joist

Doing that exposed the opening to the kitchen floor, and Helper Cat checked in to see how things were going:

We started removing things around the joists that would be in the way when we tried to install the new one.

Steven put me in charge of using the angle grinder to cut off nails. SCARY! (Since we’re going to put two joists where there was one, we had to remove these nails to get the second joist in.)

There were quite a few things we couldn’t move, and would have to work around. Eek!

Then we built a support to push up the two joists on either side of the one we’re replacing to make space to get the new one in. That didn’t work, so we switched to plan B, and used the jacks (we thought the other method would be quicker – nope!).

And after that, we tried to get the joist out. HA! It had about a zillion nails in it. So we only got a bit of it out Wednesday night.

We resorted to cutting it, after the prybar and hammer wasn’t doing too much!

We had been prying against the sub floor so much I was convinced our office floor tile was going to be all smashed when we went upstairs. Surprisingly, it wasn’t! We put up a temporary support, and called it a night.

On Thursday evening, we got back to work. Steven started cutting apart the joist and taking it down,

while I set up to use the angle grinder to cut off the nails from under that joist… only to find the angle grinder wouldn’t turn on. Some wires had disconnected! While Steven worked on fixing that, I scrubbed down the subfloor where the joist was attached – it had some mold (the entire basement flooded at some point in the past few years, which probably caused it) – ew.

Luckily, our friend Troy arrived right as the angle grinder was fixed. Yay – he got tasked with cutting off the nails. Steven and Troy like using that thing, but there is something about sparks flying in my face that I just don’t enjoy!

Steven and I then set up in the garage to cut the new joist. As we were going downstairs to check the measurement one more time, Troy was finished, so he helped Steven cut the two new joists and I took on the important task of ordering dinner. As I was about to leave to get dinner, I saw them walking around outside with the joists so I went in the basement to bring them in – yay for basement egress windows – getting the joists in was really easy!

Is that a joist or are you happy to see me?

While I was out getting dinner, they got the joist almost in place (after bringing the saw inside and cutting it a bit shorter lengthwise), but couldn’t get it to stand up – the joist we were replacing was squished to 8-7/8″ and the new one was 9-1/4″. They tried everything, but it was a no go – and all the pounding cracked the new joist. Oops.

So after dinner, they cut a notch in the sill plate, and cut a new joist.

The joists rest on the sill plate on the east side of the basement, and hang on a joist hanger on the west side

The first joist went right in! Well, after some finagling above all the conduits/wires/ducts/etc.

After they checked that the first one would stand up (it did!), they laid it flat to get the other one in. This is when I was really grateful Troy was there to help – he is really strong (and patient!), and that is what this job needed. I was the gofer and documentarian, and could have done this part of the work, but, let’s be honest, I was happy not to be. Ha! The more hands, the better (we’ve been very lucky to have friends and family help us during this past week)!

Once they were both in, they stood the first joist up to glue it to the second,

then start nailing them together.

One board was warped, so they had to be really careful as they put it together that they didn’t make it permanently curved. That involved manipulating it as much as possible by hand (and with hammers, etc.), and also, letting the jacks down on the other side of the wall, and bringing them over to support the new joists from below while using the baby jack to push the joist upright. This also involved using a laser upstairs to see how level it was becoming.

It worked!

After that, Steven hung the other side on a joist hanger, nailed it in place, removed the jacks, and it was finished!

East side of new joists

West side of new joists

West is on the left in this photo, east is on the right

East is on the left in this photo, west is on the right. Don’t mind the mess – my stuff is spread out a bit since we can’t use the second floor!

Hooray! The floor on that side of the house is more level now, and the basement door shuts again!!! And surprisingly, no floor tiles cracked during all the jacking.

The only thing left to do is cover a hole under the stove (where Data was peering through) and one that goes outside. Oh, and we have to replace the joist on west side of the house at some point (that will be part ii!), which has even more stuff in the way. Hopefully Troy can help again!

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By kilax, August 11, 2016 6:57 am

• I love magnets, especially photo ones. I was asking my snister on Tuesday if she had seen any Shutterfly coupons so I could order some. She found a small coupon, and I was going to use it Tuesday night, but was up past midnight helping Steven paint (see more below) and didn’t get to. That turned out to be a good thing – she sent me this coupon for ten free magnets on Wednesday!!!! SCORE!!! I still had to pay shipping of course, but it saved me over $60.

• All the attic Kilz painting is done. Yay! Steven did all the painting, and I was “ground support” – getting things, moving the equipment, making sure we didn’t paint the carpets/walls, etc. It was SUCH a hard job for Steven. He painted the undersides of the joists Sunday and Monday, then did the tops Tuesday night, which involved crawling around in the attic.

• I also helped clean the equipment after using it. Our friends let us borrow their air paint sprayer and there are so many parts and pieces! I channeled my inner Rey and scrubbed, scrubbed, scrubbed, ha ha.

• I am bummed these major house projects are taking place during the Summer Olympics. Even though we don’t have antenna or cable, I’d still have liked to find a way to sit on my bum and watch a lot of sports! Instead, I am just reading highlights and watching the small clips I find and texting friends about it. My favorite memories of the last two games (winter and summer) are “watching” it with Gina and texting each other our reactions and commentary! At least I can wear my Olympic shirt and show support in spirit (only, not really, because the stuff we’re doing in the house will ruin it!).

Link to Random Thoughts Thursday 104

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By kilax, August 10, 2016 6:59 am

RAGRBAI stands for the Register’s Annual Great Bicycle Ride Across Iowa. It started in 1973 when two feature writers for the Des Moines Register decided to bike across Iowa, and invited readers to join them. The ride has grown ever since and is now in its forty-fourth year. The route always starts on the Missouri River on the west side of Iowa, ends on the Mississippi River on the east side of Iowa, and takes the last full week of July to do – but the course changes every year! You can register for the whole week, or for a single day, which is what I’ve done the last three years (2014 – Day 7, 2015 – Day 4 and 5, 2016 – Day 7). 

RAGBRAI was a bit more logistically challenging for us this year than in year’s past, but that did not stop us from having a bigger crew than ever before! Dad, Will (my snister’s husband) and Julie (Will’s sister) returned from last year, and we had two riders new to RAGBRAI – Gina (my bestie who lives in Texas) and Ashleigh (Julie’s daughter)!

Dad, Will, Me, Gina, Julie, Ashleigh – we’ll totes get matching jerseys next year! I think Fake Meats should sponsor us. Ha!

RAGBRAI was logistically trickier for us because the course went farther south, away from where we have places to stay for free, and ended in Muscatine, where no one lived nearby and could pick us up. And, we had four cars to figure out what to do with, and only two drivers! But we made it work – we got two hotel rooms (for four of the riders) in Coralville, which is thirty-five miles from the start in Washington, and took two cars to the finish the night before the ride, so we wouldn’t have cars stranded in Washington (HUGE thanks to the Muscatine RAGBRAI group for helping us with parking!). My dad and Will (Will had driven up the night before from Kansas City) stayed in the town my Dad lives in (seventy-five miles from the hotel), then drove to the hotel the morning of the ride, and we took two cars to the Washington. Then Steven and Steve took both cars to the finish, left one there, and consolidated to one car to come back and “spectate.” Phew. That’s a lot of work! (And after we finished, we all had two+ hour drives to our final destinations!) So. Much. Coordination. But it all worked out!

I just realized my dad skipped the group selfie (or did I cut him off?!)

The Day 7 Ride, you guessed it, started in Washington and ended in Muscatine. It was one of the shortest courses of the week at 49.7 miles, and had the least amount of climb, at 1,314 feet. This ride felt easy to me, especially compared to the days I rode the last two years of RAGBRAI. And an easy ride is fine by me!!!

Map from here

One of the awesome things about doing RAGBRAI is that it’s not a race, and you can start whenever you want! We got to Washington a bit after 8:00, got our bikes prepped, and hit the road at 8:41 am.
Continue reading 'RAGBRAI Day 7 2016 – Ride Report'»

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By kilax, August 9, 2016 6:15 am

Gosh, I am getting used to having the bedroom ceilings open! And they’re painted such a nice white! Should we keep it this way?!

Ha ha. No.

So the original plan was to try to be done with ALL attic work (removal, cleaning, damaged wood replacement, electrical, ductwork, lights, and so on) by yesterday so the drywall ceiling could be installed. But that didn’t happen. Things took longer and we ran in to a lot of extra damage – like this entire piece of drywall above our master bedroom sliding glass door that had to be removed because it was so stinky and soiled:

partially removed

fully removed and grumpy to find another gross spot, ha

We spent A LOT of extra time removing damaged wood we didn’t know would need to be replaced – a few joists, a few studs, etc. We’re happy we found the damage. We’d rather replace things that are so badly damaged than cover them with Kilz paint – which blocks seals and odors.

New studs

So back to the original plan. The construction workers were going to install the ceiling, then they were gonna spray Kilz all over the joists. But the more we thought about it, we decided we’d get better paint coverage if we painted with the ceiling down, and it would be nice to not have newly installed lights covered in Kilz. So we’re doing the painting. And hopefully we can get the lights and ductwork up by next Monday so they can install the ceiling then, but we’re not so sure we’ll get it all done. We may have to delay again.

People keep asking me if we had an inspection, or why wasn’t this caught during inspection, and did we know about this when we bought the house? We did know there were animals in the attic – we could see the holes in to the attic from outside. We did NOT know how bad the damage was until we had the attic insulation removed after we moved in and saw how soiled the drywall ceiling was from the top. There were stains on the bottom too, but they were faint. We suspect the bank had them covered up.

We’re not super mad. We’re happy to get it fixed now, and do it right. Doing it right just takes a loooong time. And we actually have a bit of a deadline, since the contracted work is FHA 203k funded. So, work work work work work.

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By kilax, August 8, 2016 1:03 pm

Our pond is still disappearing! Everything that is muddy in this photo used to be covered in water (so, really, the entire photo)!

Soon, it will be gone, and the ducks won’t visit anymore. Sadness.

See the ducks in the photo?! When you compare this photo to the ones in this post, you can see how much the pond has gone down.

And, I won’t get to play with my remote controlled boat on it! Sigh, I had big plans for that. Ha.

For my birthday (July 31) I asked for a remote controlled boat for the pond. Steven gave it to me when we were at the Mississippi River and it was so much fun to play with up there.

Teaching Luca how to drive the boat.

I hope we get some rain so I can play with it here. And so we don’t have a giant mud pit in our yard.

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By kilax, August 7, 2016 9:17 pm

Highlight of the Week: Running with Gina and Dad!

Monday | August 1, 2016: rest
Tuesday | August 2, 2016: 4 m run (w/Gina and Dad (on bike))
Loc: Guttenberg, Temp: 71°/74°, Time: 38:21, Pace: 9:35 avg, Difficulty: easy, Felt: good
Wednesday | August 3, 2016: 5 m run (incl. 12×1:00) + 10 m ride + 10 mins strength
Loc: hood, Temp: 84°/84°, Time: 49:49, Pace: 9:58 avg, Difficulty: medium, Felt: hot and heavy
Indoor Ride Time: 42:01, Pace: 14.3 mph avg, Difficulty: easy, Felt: good
Thursday | August 4, 2016: rest (ceiling demolition work)
Friday | August 5, 2016: teaching strength class + 800 m swim (25m breastroke/25m freestyle x16, w/Anne) + attic work
Strength: plates and cards, Difficulty: medium, Felt: okay
Loc: Grayslake Pool, Time: 22:04, Pace: 2:29 min/100m, Difficulty: easy, Felt: good
Saturday | August 6, 2016: rest (ceiling work)
Sunday | August 7, 2016: rest (ceiling work)

Notes:

• For a second I was excited to be in August and one month closer to September (and AUTUMN!) until I remembered that we have nasty humid days in to October sometimes. Ha. Hopefully some nice cooler days are peppered in with those.
• Ugh, this week. I did house work for four days straight and did NOT have time to work out! I hope I have more free time next week.

Link to Training Week 354

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By kilax, August 6, 2016 9:37 pm

Even when I find a space (three, actually) between rafters full of squirrel nests, I still don’t get mad at the animals. What is wrong with me?

I found those yesterday. We’ve been finding LOTS of interesting damage, which (among other things) is setting us back with our timeline. Like this pipe, that was cut, but left open to the outside, and let water run down our master bedroom wall. Also, carpenter ants did some work on that beam:

Steven and friends cut out more of the wall and replaced the header and studs today. We’re also replacing a bit of wood in the attic that was damaged by animals.

Those rascals.

It’s good we’ve taken the ceiling out to take care of this now. I’d rather get it taken care of, than have it get worse down the road!

We also removed a damaged part of our dining room ceiling, which I forgot was on our scope of work until Steven reminded me. There’s so much going on to keep track of!

Ceiling removed behind plastic. Excuse the mess on the table!

Poor Data. He keeps trying to run through the dining room (we have a full path through all our rooms on the first floor) and getting trapped in the plastic! Er… just a few more weeks like this Data, then we’ll have our house back…

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By kilax, August 5, 2016 6:58 am

Man! My arms were sore at strength class this morning! Ha!

We demolished almost all of the second floor ceiling yesterday, and got a ton out of the ceiling (can lights, etc.)… and this was all after a morning of moving the furniture out and putting up plastic to protect the carpet and walls.

Master bedroom

Guest bedroom

Hallway

I had to work a half day, and do today too, but luckily, we have help – because there is no way Steven and I could get this done on our own.

Oh, sorry, Steven, Data and me. Data is very helpful.

Not surprisingly, we’re discovering more (than planned) damaged things that need to be replaced. I demolished the entire linen closet (including the walls, not just the ceiling) because it was in bad shape. Check out the ceiling, ew:

And also not surprising, we’ve found some interesting things, like the linen closet walls being full of pieces of drywall. Okay, that’s one way to do backing…

Hopefully we get a lot done today and don’t get much further off schedule! We need to try to have everything done by Sunday night so the contractors can put the new ceiling in on Monday!

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By kilax, August 4, 2016 6:15 am

But just down to our first floor/basement. Demolishing the second floor ceiling requires removing EVERYTHING from the second floor, hence, why our basement looks like a consignment shop:

Thank goodness we have a basement at all, to put all this stuff in!

So here’s the (condensed, I left some things off) plan:

Thursday
move furniture off second floor
remove ceiling fans, can light trim kits
remove ceiling
remove can lights, ducts & vents, insulation
vacuum attic, clean soiled spots
remove screws/nails/glue from bottom of joists

Friday
repair electrical wiring
install 3-way switch for master bedroom fan (it’s never worked)
install new ducts, vents & duct insulation

Saturday
install new can lights
install new joist in basement

Sunday
all the stuff that didn’t get done and a few other extra projects

That’s a lot to do – wish us luck! We will have some extra hands on and off throughout the project, thankfully!

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By kilax, August 3, 2016 12:48 pm

I seriously didn’t realize how bad my racerback tan lines were until I saw this photo my mom took on Monday:

Eek!

It may be time to look in to a strapless running stop and bra… because I know sunscreen/running in the dark aren’t going to happen. Oh, or maybe just a racerback swimming suit?! Derrr…

And we won’t even talk about the horrible tan lines on my legs. Because booty running shorts are not for me.