Year: 2012

Getting a Footing

April 9, 2012 / / 3 Comments

Rotary Hammer

Between the basement, the patio in the back yard, and potentially even the garage pad, we have a lot of concrete that we may dig up at some point. Enter my newest toy: a rotary hammer. This thing drills through concrete the way a normal drill goes through wood. I also got a chisel bit for it (see the photo), which works like a miniature jack hammer.

Corner in the Basement

The first task for this new kit was to find out how deep our footings are. I’ve been meaning to do this for a few months and it will answer the pressing question of how high our basement ceiling would be if we excavated the floor. I picked the Southeast corner, mostly because our convoluted, multi-phase plan to live in the house while we renovate it will lower this section of the basement first because it will become the utility room. That complicates other initiatives like moving the washer and dryer to the basement, but we’re taking some things a step at a time.

Perimeter holes

With minimal fuss I drilled enough holes through the floor to start chipping away the hunk of concrete. I’ve since gotten a good circular saw and a masonry blade so that this can be done more cleanly, but this way works too. The one advantage this method enjoys over using a saw is that there was very little airborne dust. Instead I got neat little piles like ant hills.

Chiseled Edge

The next step was to use the chisel bit on the hammer-only setting to connect the dots and separate the section from the rest of the floor. As soon as that was one done I reached for my trusty sledgehammer. Wait, I don’t have a sledgehammer. Ok, so I went to the hardware store and bought a sledgehammer, along with the previously mentioned circular saw and blade (just in case). A few good whacks and some prybar work freed the hunk of concrete and the result was dirt.

Hole. Also pictured: trusty sledgehammer

Then the fun of digging out the dirt began. Fortunately, Sarah offered to take this task and quickly excavated the footings all the way to their base. When she was done I went down and used a tape measure to see what we had.

Checking Depth

The result? An unsurprising 12″ of footings under 2″ of concrete floor. That’s a total of 14″ we can dig down, but then we need to fill back up 2″ of gravel and then 4″ of new concrete. That means we’d gain 8″ of height for a total of 7’4″ ceilings. Unfortunately, we need 7’6″ by Chicago code to consider it finished space.

That gives us three options: don’t finish the basement (at least on paper), underpin the foundation (massively expensive), or just skip the 2″ of gravel. My inclination is the third option, though the first might save on property taxes. On the other hand, the gravel may be superfluous given the age of the house and where the water table is. We’ll bring back our foundation guys to give us a quote and discuss the options with them.

Wall Dis-assembly

April 5, 2012 / / 6 Comments

The Before

We decided the best way to find out whether we needed to replace the exterior sheathing was to take down a wall and have a look. Back when we were getting rid of the cockroaches, I went through the first floor and hammered holes in the walls so the exterminator could spray into the wall cavities. We’ve been using the first floor living room to store empty boxes in various states of being broken down, along with the packing material that was in them. The first step was to clear all that stuff out.

Picked Up

Wouldn’t it be nice if it was as easy to pick up as just looking at the next picture in a series? But I digress. After things were picked up I put down heavy plastic so that cleaning up the ensuing mess would be easier. Our friend Mike gave us two huge rolls of leftover plastic and we’ve been using it for a variety of things, including temporary window shades, floor runners over the sticky floor (we pulled up the peel and stick tiles on the first floor), and now clean-up tarps. Who knows, we may actually use it for its intended purpose as a vapor barrier!

Plastic Sheeting

Now it was time to get to the meat of it: removing the wall. Almost immediately I discovered this was one of the walls that had been drywalled over. I tried to pull everything down at once, but quickly decided it was better to take it down in layers, if for no other reason then to take photos along the way.

Drywall Removed

It became clear that the reason for the drywall was a huge section of missing plaster in the center of the wall. In fact, the plaster across the whole middle area was incredibly brittle and fell off with the slightest touch. Toward the sides it was a bit more solid and required some prying and pounding with the crowbar. However, that’s only necessary if you’re taking it off in layers. Subsequent walls will use the 2×4 lever method that I used to remove the lath. The plaster is yellow because it has a couple layers of old wallpaper on it. It wasn’t clear what the original pattern was since it was all fairly deteriorated.

De-Plastered

Removing the plaster left a giant cloud of dust in the room and I had to wait until morning to take the final picture with the lath removed. Taking down the lath started with me pulling off individual strips and trying to get them off in one piece. I quickly tired of this since it was slow and tedious. I remembered reading about a technique to remove plaster lath where you put a short 2×4 board into the wall behind the lath and then pry it forward, pulling all the lath free as you go. The spray of plaster bits and dust wasn’t the greatest, and I had to shampoo twice to get it all out of my hair, but it was effective at getting the lath off the wall.

Down to the Studs

The result of my work was a huge mess that I’ll have to clean up. I want to save the lath for burning in the fire pit, so I need to get the nails out of it. That will be fun. The drywall is already de-nailed and I just need to bag it up and throw it out as we did with the basement. I have plans in store for the plaster though. I’m going to fill a five gallon bucket and weigh it, then figure out how many five gallon buckets I have. Then I’ll use the size of this wall to extrapolate approximately how many tons of dumpster we’ll need.

Inside-Out or Outside-In

April 3, 2012 / / 0 Comments

We met with our architect yesterday and signed the paperwork so it’s official. We talked about the plans and started working some things out about how we’re going to renovate and live here at the same time. In an earlier post I mentioned that we’d decided to go with spray foam insulation instead of building a double wall so that we don’t lose square footage and still get a high R value. We’re also anticipating having to re-sheath the exterior, meaning we’d pull off all of the existing wood planks and put on new plywood, because they’re 115 years old and are probably water damaged and rotted. We don’t know this for certain, but we’re assuming the worst, given the condition of the rest of the house and the parts of the planks we can see, and we don’t want to assume it’s in good shape and then be surprised.

According to our architect, normally the exterior is done first.  We would replace all of the planks with plywood and then spray foam onto the new sheathing. It means everything seals nice and tight, plus we can install the new windows and flash them properly. However, it raises some problems. In order to re-sheath and re-side the exterior, some other things need to happen first. We’re planning to remove the second floor bump out, eliminate and move some windows on both floors, add sliding doors on both floors where the deck will eventually be, as well as remove the enclosed back porch and put on a front porch. We’d rather not make a mess of the second floor while we’re living in it, but even allowing for that we need to keep the back porch because it will have the only set of stairs once we’ve ripped out the front stairs, and we can’t replace the sheathing and siding while there’s a porch in the way.

That leads us to think it would be better to gut and finish the first floor first, followed by the second floor, and then redo the exterior. That’s been our intention all along since it gets us into the first floor sooner and pushes back the cost of re-siding for a few years. Unfortunately, if we spray foam first it will bond to the existing planks, making it impossible to remove them and re-sheath later. I spent a lot of time thinking about the logistics of trying to do the exterior first. Maybe we could replace the sheathing and siding one floor at a time? That doesn’t address the problem with the back porch. Finally I gave up and went back to the original plan.

When we demo the interior walls we’ll be able to inspect the planks and see what shape they’re in. If they don’t need to be replaced, then we don’t have anything to worry about and we can spray foam the interior. If they do need to be replaced,  we’ll put 1″ thick sheets of rigid foam insulation into the wall cavities against the planks, and then spray foam over them. That way the spray foam will bond to the rigid insulation instead of the planks, so we can still replace them later. It may not be a perfect solution, but it’s the best one we’ve come up with.

The Mulchening

April 1, 2012 / / 0 Comments

Newspaper

Today’s project was the front yard. Long term we plan to put in some nice shrubs, flowers, and native grasses, but we don’t want to do that while there’s still years of work to be done on the house that would doubtless result in many trampled plants. At the same time, we don’t really care for grass. We don’t currently own a lawn mower and since ultimately we won’t have any grass, buying one for our little patch seems like a bit of a waste.

Instead we’re putting down mulch as a low maintenance temporary solution. We may put in some inexpensive ground cover if we come across it, otherwise this is pretty much it. It’s not the most attractive option, but it’s better than out of control grass and it doesn’t cost very much.

In order to kill the grass and make sure it doesn’t just grow up through the mulch, we first put down a thick layer of newspaper. Sarah started couponing a while back, and as a result we’d accumulated quite the stack of papers to use. As it turns out we need a lot more, since I went through the whole thing just doing the front yard and I didn’t get to the easement in front of the sidewalk yet.

Mulch!

Sarah saw that Menards had a sale on Mulch this weekend so I enlisted Dean’s help to go get forty bags of the stuff since he’s got a pickup truck. Sarah and I continue to consider a more practical vehicle, but in the mean time we’ve been mooching off friends and family with trucks and trailers.

As I went I ripped up our bumper crop of dandelions, but I didn’t get all roots so I’m sure I’ll have to spend more time out there getting them out properly. I left a gap in the front along the fence that we can plant some flowers or something. That area at least will probably not be trampled too badly.

Mulched

You can see our weed  flower bed along the front, as well as the two shrub/tree things. Those probably aren’t long for this world, but I left them for now since I don’t have anything better to put there yet. So in a nutshell, not the best looking yard on the street, but at least now I don’t have to mow it.

Decision Time

March 29, 2012 / / 0 Comments

Model: Back of House

I’ve been dragging my feet, but we’re getting close to a decision about an architect. We’re waiting on a response to a question, and depending on the answer we’ll hopefully have it settled. The quotes were a lot more than we were expecting, but at this point it looks like we’ll be pursuing the Chicago Green Homes program. The price difference isn’t tremendous and it will likely pay for itself eventually. Also, we can’t go back and get it later, so if we’re going to do it now’s the time.

We haven’t spent a lot of time on the basement as of late. Last night I went through some more of our lumber pile, removing screws and nails so we can use it later for temporary supports, forms, and blocking. It’s really slow going and I’m questioning the value of it given the amount of time it’s taking. Even once we’ve got the boards cleaned up, nearly all of them will need to be cut down because one end is rotten, plus they’re mostly short, as in less than seven feet long.

This morning when I got up the house was about five degrees colder than the thermostat, which said the heat was “on”. I visited the boiler which was emphatically not on. The pilot was lit and everything looked normal. It occurred to me that yesterday I had flushed out the sediment, something the sharpie instructions  on the side of the boiler calls for “twice weekly” and I do more like “bi-weekly”. When you drain water (and sludge) the boiler refills from the cold water line. There’s a low water cutoff that had given us trouble before so I literally flicked the thing with my finger and the boiler kicked on. I honestly didn’t expect that to work, but I still got a bit of satisfaction and amusement from it. It was straight out of a movie.