|
|
By Sylverstone, on July 20th, 2009 so yesterday i was heading over to the lacey house to put ac in the bus for riley the wonder dog and somadina, and what do i see in the distance…
heh. “some flights of fancy are performed exclusively on pirelli” indeed. >:)
thinking that i should get a closer look, i put the boots to the benz, and …
somadina wanted it for her birthday, but after he turned the corner, well, as fast as my ride is, i’m not touching a countach.
anyway, so today i was heading over to the lacey house to pick up the big top for seadog nights…
and i’m informed that the girl wants the old goat shed gone, but she’s not sure what to do about the possums…
hrm. so i go looking in it, and i don’t see anything…
so i start moving stuff out, and i pull out the feed trough, and lookie what i found…
looks like either a momma possum and a buncha babies, or one of them chernobyl kittys i been hearin’ bout…
she was funny.
blind as a bat in the daylight, and had a 10 second attention span.
literally.
i uncovered her, and she was mad as hell.
10 seconds later, she forgot i was there.
had to round up some stragglers…
and once i got them all together, well, it took a bit of doin’, but i finally got her and the little ones in a 5 gallon bucket…
and i moved them off to their new home (about 30 ft away, under a big pine tree…
piece of 12″ corrugated drain pipe about 3′ long, a wooden box (the old feed trough, upside down) and a chunk of siding from the house.. and poof, instant kitten shack…
home sweet home…
baby nuclear kittens are so ugly they’re adorable… 
-stone
By Sylverstone, on March 30th, 2009 alternate title: “stealth millwork for the win…”
heh
so today, while somadina was at work, i snuck over to her house and installed the custom ordered window for her bedroom…
inside view:
outside:
now i just need to finish the trim, build the shelf, and then reinstall the air conditioner
she should be home in about 2 hours
-stone
By Sylverstone, on December 8th, 2008 alternate title: “covering up a thousand sins…”
so this installment has nothing to do with the palace i am building in the garage…
i couldn’t stand the smoke stains on the walls and ceiling (from the previous owners lack of upkeep or lack of ability to properly use a fireplace i have no idea) so something had to be done about it.
i don’t have any before pictures, but trust me it was nasty. reminded me of smokers teeth.
jasper had removed the one remaining piece of tacky vertical striped wood paneling by the fireplace, and the walls were not coming clean (the texture was trying to come off first) so we painted over it.
3 hours of pulling nails and filling holes, and another couple hours masking and we were ready to go…
kilz has this really neat paint that goes on kinda pink, dries eggshell white, and covers ills like makeup on an old hooker.
it’s designed for this kind of work.
using a 3/4″ nap roller, (kinda like using a mop , we did 4 coats on the ceiling, 3 coats on all the walls… burned through almost 7 gallons of the stuff.
then comes the fun…
after an hour of messing with color choices, we settled on olympic’s mandarin orange and poppy orange:
 
yeah, that’s totally a lie. somadina picked it.
… and while i had my reservations on it, she’s got a very good eye for color, as you’ve seen if you have been to the house… (the pictures don’t do it justice at all)
we painted the entire living room with 2 coats of mandarin orange, then we used a faux stone paint roller to apply the poppy over the top of it for the living room.
then we did the kitchen in solid poppy.
the effect is very warm and quite awesome, but took a long time to apply…
pictures:
my cellphone camera really doesn’t do it justice.
still need to hand paint all the thermostat housings and wall plates to match the 1001 arabian knights theme we seem to be shooting for…
onwards and upwards.
-stone
By Sylverstone, on November 13th, 2008 alternate title: “i hate drywall”.
so things are coming along slowly, but they are indeed coming along. battery backup circuits are finished, and hot, so we have at least one circuit of power outlets that work.
(the other circuit has several outlets that need to be wired, but we can’t do them yet because of materials leaning against the walls blocking access, etc.)
the original wiring has been decommissioned and removed,
(i feel a lot better now that the wiring is done right)
and the mud and tape process is well underway:
the above image shows the bed loft finally taking shape… and this one:
gives y’all an idea of where the pocket door is going.
the right side wall is going to be drywalled over, and the attic access will be moved to the other side of the new wall.
if anyone has any suggestions on how to pretty up the chimney, i’m all ears. i have some ideas, but i’d like to see what all’y'all have to say. it is my intent to put a small potbellied woodstove in here using same said chimney.
onward and upwards,
-stone.
By Sylverstone, on October 17th, 2008 so things have been crazy lately, with real life, moving the warbasaur, getting my house ready for winter, lots of client activity, etc…
but i figured i had enough for another update, so here we go
all the roof rafter reinforcement and trimming is now finished:
the above is the rear corner above the pocket door (the big beam the extension cord is wrapped around is the pocket door header)
then came the electrical outlets.
2 double boxes upstairs, and 2 double boxes where the desk goes, and 5 single boxes placed in strategic locations around the room.
one of the double boxes in the loft, and one by the desk are on a separate circuit that runs into the garage. in the garage it plugs into the wall for now.
the plan is that one of my 1400va apc ups with a pair of deep cycle truck batteries will be going between the plug and the wall (in the garage), so 4 outlets in the loft, and 4 by the desk will have industrial grade surge suppression, and battery backup that will last, with the router, network switch, and the computer for something like 48 hours.
there’s also a box in the ceiling for a ceiling fan/light combination.
then comes the insulation fun:
and the sleeping loft is insulated (you can see the outlet boxes as well, the one on the right is the circuit on the battery backup):
and for those of you who wondered what that horizontal 2×4 on the wall under the air conditioner was for:
now you know
the window for that space is 8′ long and 2′ high. with a 4′ long panel dead center, and 2′ x 2′ panels on the ends that open by the bottom cranking outwards. this will allow the loft windows to be open all the time without the rain coming in (they’re up under the eaves as well, so there won’t be much anyway)
in the above image you can see we’ve made a huge amount of progress on the drywall (some of which is problematic, being 15′ off the floor)
in this picture you can see the ends of the trusses:
i’m going to use them, with some spiffy fittings, to hang a double row of hardback bookshelves above the doors and windows on that wall.
the orientation of the trusses and the design of them made these very hard to remove, so i’m retasking them to something useful
it’s coming along nicely
-stone
By Sylverstone, on September 21st, 2008 so today was all about the pocket door to the garage:
and reinforcing the rest of the roof:
and removing the trusses all the way to the back of the room:
the neighbors would have had serious issue with me using the angle grinder at 12:30 am, so the final trim will have to wait.
-stone
By Sylverstone, on September 7th, 2008 so today i was feelin’ a bit destructive…
today i pulled out the excess rafter pieces and finished putting the bed platform together…:
which opened up the space rather dramatically:
this is what you see standing in the french doors:
and what you see from above looking at the french doors:
part of the fun was cutting the truss plates with a 7″ angle grinder, so i could get in there with the skillsaw… these are the sleeping platform hangars on the garage side. there are 14 3 1/2″ deck screws in each one of those hangars, and there are a total of 8 on this side. this operation was a royal pain in the butt:
but not nearly as bad as the ones along the top of the trusses. you can see in this photo that i’m using most of the unused space above the garage door (the opener track is a couple inches from the platform hangars) for the sleeping area, and lofting the sleeping area frees up a huge amount of floorspace.
.. that and i’ve always liked tree houses
here’s another shot of the wall with the french doors in it, from on top of the sleeping platform:
and another:
as you can see, it really opened the place up.
here is a view of the sleeping platform from the top of the ladder on the garage side:
you can see where i had to cut the metal rafter plates to get the trussing out. using an angle grinder upside down and backwards at eye level sucks. :/
the air conditioner was the first thing i did on this project actually, but up until now you couldn’t see it terribly well. the horizontal 2×4 in this picture is actually the top of where the 8′ long 2′ high window is going, but i had to do some tricky skillsaw work to get it in there without weakening this wall while i did the rest of the room. the idea was the ac would keep the place cool while we were working on the rest of it, but it’s sweltering up there. it’s an 8,000 btu unit, with remote control even, but until the room is insulated it isn’t nearly big enough to do the job, so we left the tops of the walls open for ventilation until all the heavy cutting work is done.
the wire you see strung around is actually the fluorescent lights that were hanging from the rafters i removed. the previous owner hardwired them, and did a poor job at best (tripped a breaker earlier today when i bumped one of them) the wiring is all getting redone in the next couple days, along with the pocket door and finishing the divider wall.
-stone
By Sylverstone, on September 6th, 2008 so today was all about structure…
i put in the two “center of the room” vertical supports and the bed hangars and bed decking in.
this is one of the vertical support beams that captures the rafters. (the right side rafters are going to be removed later so i can vault the ceilings):
here’s a better picture of the top of it:
here is the other vertical support beam. (you can see the previous one to the right of it):
you can also see the first of the corner hangars.
here is a good top shot of that same beam, showing the roof beams that were added to support the bed cantilever:
here is a picture of both the vertical supports, and the side hangars for the bed:
here is the first three of the bed hangars:
when they are done it will allow me to remove all the center rafters over the bed.
here’s a different angle with five of them in:
here is all seven of them, looking up (i’m standing on the floor of the garage side) you can see that i’ve used most of the wasted space above the garage door for sleeping area in the design:
next, i’m going to put the siding back on the house, and cut out all the rafters.
-stone
By Sylverstone, on September 2nd, 2008 so this morning, i checked on the hornet nest of doom.
still appears to be dead. (good thing that)
then bryan and i had to redesign the battery box for the fleet jewelers castle, as the plan i had didn’t survive contact with the enemy…
(the batteries were too tall for the space we need to put them, so we had to change how they were mounted)
and then i finished up the left window, installed the right, and finished reinforcing the vertical wall supports:
this is actually a lot more complicated than it looks, as i’m squaring up and leveling the existing structure (the garage wasn’t square, plumb, or level when i started this) as i replace pieces, and this wall was a large portion of that process.
i tore apart and rebuilt the kitchen in the fleet jewelers castle today.
ikea awesomeness for the win
also tore out another wall:
moving all the construction materials back inside as it started to rain…
i also got to tear apart a filing cabinet for the fleet jewelers castle…
i had to shorten it about 8″ to make it fit in the space it needs to be, but it’s going to work great when it’s done
there’s something about using an angle grinder that makes me smile.
i also had the dubious pleasure of putting in additional roof beams before i cut the trusses out… (still a lot of junk up there, but i have nowhere to put it yet, so i have to work around it).
the vaulted ceilings are going to be a major pain in the butt, but they’ll really open the place up…
sorry for the quality of the pic, it’s dark up there, and my phone can only do so much:
then comes the big window…
this one was a serious pain due to the size. (it’s 8 feet long and 4 feet high)
to give you an idea (fun with lasers):
next up, finishing the “corner of major annoyance”, as this is where most of the errors in the original structure are being rectified. (raising one wall a bit, and lowering the other, and leveling the roof… oh joy:
more soon.
-stone
By Sylverstone, on August 18th, 2008 so today i finally got some time to get some work done…
we start with shanghai’ing some help to tow my trailer, loaded with doors and windows, home from the bonney lake lowes… (i didn’t have the van with me, having dropped Somadina off at the airport earlier in the day):
after a bit of 4 wheel drive adventure in the yard, i took the right side wall:
The right side wall and front corner:
and the front wall:
and had a bit of a discussion with them, about how i didn’t really care for their aesthetics…
yes, i used a big hammer:
(carol, argyle, and caris, all wondering what’s going to happen when somadina finds out what i’m doing to her house)
and of course, giant spiders to make things interesting:
and while i was at it, i took care of this:
which is about 18″ across, and looks like a nicely marbled boulder.
it’s not. trust me. it’s actually the top of a huge underground nest that contains a giant swarm of these:
all sorts of bad news, but my kung-foo is strong…
so, the slaughter of thousands upon thousands of airborne evil later, i built a couple vertical supports…:
to mount the new doors:
as it was getting dark, the left window went in.
*sleep*
|
|
Recent Comments