Paul on a bike, except when I'm working on the new house...

Hey wow, that porch is lookin' mighty fine, today I took it easy and cut the new flooring(re-purposed from the old front room), and over this week I should start screwing it down. I think it looks amazing. Here's the progress over the weekend.  New pressure treated floor joists...  New bottom plate for that wall where the second door used to be.  Re-used the studs, and space them on top of the new joists.  Stringers, made from the old joists.  Oooh, lookie, they are plum and should make it easy to install the insulation.  New subfloor.  This is what was left of the stud in the old doorway, and yes it appears they used a hand chisel to cut away about half of the stud so they could put a 32" door where a 30" door was.  Very bad idea, next time peeps, move the stud.  Re-purposed the plywood from the old hallway that was used to level-ish, to install carpet.  Old studs out of the way. New Studs ready for the new door.

Demo on the porch, is done, and copper coating the new beam a thick re-purpose of one of the former joists that had some bug damage just like the bathroom. So the flooring in out and this morning I snagged four new pressure treated joists.   This is where I was friday night.    Saturday night, urg, so tiring pulling up old flooring.  Sunday...there's the new beam for the outside to drive joist hangers into.  Ready for new stuff.... This is one of the cut offs of the chunk of wood I'm using to hold the joists on the outside.  Look at those growth rings....

It's kind of hard to tell if the insulation is doing it's supposed to do when the weather warms back up, it was frosty mon/tues, and just moist grass this morning, so is the insulation doing it's job, I dunno. I fixed the symmetrical problem with the trim, and insulated yesterday, so today was a moving stuff around and clean off the porch so I can get to demo in there and replace the front door. Grrr, stupid google, I would like to use the computer myself, stop opening folders that I did not tell you to! Google in their infinite wisdom want to encourage me to upload to the cloud, so rather than do what I tell it to do, it keeps opening the folders while I am trying to upload to the blog, all interrupting the upload, stupid stupid stupid!  Symmetrical trim on top, looks so much better.  And yes that wall on the left is really crooked.  This is Little Man, he's nice, he came by because he was cold, strange he doesn't like the little coat they put on him.

Saturday was wet an rainy, but I managed to finish demo, install the door, and then sunday do some of the finish work around the door. So now I have to finish the insulation around the door, and I know it's a back door, but I want the corner boxes on the trim to match on both sides, and yes I was able to re-use the old trim, just had to add some pieces. The protecto wrap stuff is actually really easy to use in the winter time, after you get it where you want it, then take the heat gun and warm it up to get it to stick. As you can see I flipped the trim around, except for the top piece. And here are the two porch posts that were hidden in the wall, lots of nice character in them, and solid wood, which will be good for making the kitchen counter, just add 2x8s.

With the insulation in tape and seal the seams mode, it's time to get started on the doors. I was able to put the new front door on order at the store, should be here on thursday. I used the $10off coupon to get the new back door, a 36x80 solid door, no window for the back.  I figured that the sun shining through would just heat the house and might shine on the tv. I almost miss my 40" front door on my last house, but alas, I'll have to settle on 36". A large door opening is useful when trying to move furniture in an out, like the free chair I snagged a mission style chair like this one  The part that sticks out for the foot rest needs some work, but as a chair it's perfect.  This is after I took out the door, plus the jamb, so I could then get the chair through the doorway.  Found another newel post on the other side, so the work I was hoping to avoid in rebuilding the wall/doorway, should have known better. And here's the actual chair I got,

Yes, a different kind of Santa's workshop outside the Senior Center here....

Mostly what I got done was electrical, so if you can see that I didn't do it right...true there are some wires(not turned on) sticking out, but the good stuff is hidden in the attic. Not thrilled by the light I installed, so looks like I'll be buying a Sputnik in the future, but I'll wait a bit.

This weekend was fixing the structure on the kitchen wall, there were all these bug eaten boards that were somewhat of supports for some 2x6s that I think was a 'fix' for some roofing problems of long ago, and when the roofers did the roof they didn't take out the 'fixes' that had been put in place. So got that cleaned up, and even insulated the kitchen wall. And yes, Paul is tired now. Time for pics....  Here's the money side after I installed the moldings around the windows.  Here's Saturday morning, see those bug eaten boards, had to go.  This is around lunch time, funky wood gone.  And wah-lah, see that 2x4 going straight up, yup, it's plumb an level, can't have people walk into a space and see a crooked wall. And this is after sunday, wall insulated, and I'm dead tired and need more sleep. Big weekend coming up with the library closed for a four day weekend, I hope I survive...

Almost got as far as I wanted, but I still got close to half way though. I put the little bits onto the old roofing nails poking through so that when I push up the panels there will be a air gap so the roof can breath. This is as far as I've gotten, I did clean up today, and repaired/painted the old card table I snagged out of the dumpster, pics later.  It needed a bolt to keep the leg in place, remove the old vinyl and I painted the top, also used some grease on the rusty parts.

I have the Power..... Okay, I have power to light switches that the house probably hasn't had in 15 to 20 years according to the dust funk in the empty conduit boxes.  Chandelier for the tv area...  Pendant and bulb for the dining-ish area, which will be where the power rack goes....got to workout when I'm watching tv.  Found that bit of conduit in the house somewhere, and saved it to use here....this is also behind the front door, and I'll put some knobs in there to hang coats, cause I'm all crafty like that.  The left switch is for the bedroom to the left and the other is for the porch. This is a temp location for the living/dining room lights, after I insulate and re-install the wood, I'll put the box where it will be finally. And here's everybody with the power on after two trips to walmart since the first bulb was broken.... Now I have to remember when I can't see where I'm going I can turn on a light.

I insulated the outside wall, and installed the rafter supports, then today did the wall extension 2x4s so the wall will go straight up and there won't be a weird shelf up there. Also installed a 2x4 that goes from the floor to the peak of the roof, there's a beam right under there so it's a solid support, just seemed that it needed it since I took out so much of that wall. I'm thinking gutters this weekend, need to install the SIX inch gutters on the right side of the house, so next rainstorm the water will be directed away...

It's a rainy day today, hope it's dry tomorrow, I've got stuff to do.  This is the long "A" frame beam, I used some of the leftover joists that I had to cut parts out of them, and then replace.  Here's the short one, see that little blue box, that's going to get covered up and the lights will hang from the cross beams.  Here's the closet wall, that was some gas pipe that was under the house, I painted it and was able attach it on the ends, so it should hold the clothes, I'll put the chest o' drawers in the middle, and shelves on either side of that. Then put four more of those shelf hanger things, two on each side of the dresser, and a shelf to either side for my manly closet.  I've got more pipe to use, just need a dry moment to cut an paint.  See that lid open there, that's my solid bike box, and another bike is going to be put back together, not that I don't like riding the Bullhound, but I like my fixie too.