April 2008

As I mentioned, Jaime and his crew have been busy… and the work is amazing.

It's looking a bit bare presently, but it was so far overgrown (with years of bad pruning), that we needed to start over. It'll look lots better once the tree sprouts out a bit and we're able to re-plant a bit.

Below are a few before and after pictures… tree removal, landscaping and a massive amount of concrete removal… so, if you're in the market for some landscaping, drop him a line (jzcruz.com) and tell him we sent you. Seriously, he's good.

We’re doing lots of landscaping work this week… Actually, we’re not, but Jaime and his team are. While it’s a bit out of step schedule-wise, it’s something we wanted to get under way sooner than later. Big changes afoot.

This weekend found a major push in finishing off the siding replacement on the west-ish side of the house. We’re replacing windows at the same time, so it’s a multi-step process. We’ve discovered that — when possible, the siding is easier to remove by pounding on the reverse with a sledgehammer rather than prying from the front — who knew? Working from the bottom edges is working best for us.

When our siding was originally hung, they used 2in T-nails which are mainly used for flooring these days. the T-nail is nice as the head sits below the surface of the siding, but in our case, it seemed like they were getting paid by the nail… far too many in my opinion (about 2X too many).

As I mentioned, we’re also replacing the windows along the way which also gives a good opportunity to replace the sill and trim. We’re using redwood when/where possible, especially on the sills which is a pretty simple creation — 4 cuts on the table saw and a jigsaw cut at the edges. It actually takes less time and money to make new sills than to restore (sand/strip/fill) the old ones.

The previous owners cut a window in the garage as they converted it into to bedrooms (a very, very large family). We’ve converted it back into a garage/workshop, but we love the window. Since they cut it in while the house/siding were together, the structure wasn’t quite right for a proper window install (header, supports, etc.). Opening the wall gave us the opportunity to rebuild the structure and reinforce the sill-plate which was a bit loose on the foundation (hello, new hammer drill!).

Oddly enough, the beams in this area do not actually run the length of the house and in this area, there was no beam over the window area. Since all the other windows were installed beneath beams, we wanted to recreate the effect (and structural integrity). With two 2X6s sistered together for the structural part, we installed the reinforcement. When we lifted the beam in place, you could hear a bit of a creak, indicating that it was indeed taking a bit of load. On the face, however, we had to get a bit more creative with the "beam effect" to make it look like the others. We opted to face the area with some exterior/marine plywood the width of the original beams. These will eventually be painted the same color and I doubt you’d be able to tell the difference.

The project also allowed the insulation and drywalling of the garage. While a bit excessive, I’m spending quite a bit of time in there as of late and the insulation and clean walls will be nice later on.

Lighting was also an added element… a replacement fixture by the sliding door a new one by the garage window. While the switch for this new one will be adjacent to the inside garage window, it’ll be nice to simply have some light up there as it gets pretty dim — and with the wall open and lots of new electrical circuits in there (2 new 20amp circuits), the wiring was a snap. All fixtures from Progress lighting which we’ve installed around the house to replace the older, Early-American-style fixtures (and temporary $2 plastic ones).

Something that wasn’t as available 45 years ago was the variety of caulks, glues and insulation… The original windows were installed with almost no caulk or weatherproofing. We’re using a generous amount of the latest stuff and far too many cans of spray foam.

After seeing a post on Apartment Therapy (Casie is still giggling about that one), Michele wrote to ask some more specifics about the construction of the wall and how the paneling works with the shelf standards. Here goes:

When installing the wall, we created a flush surface by blocking out the wall (we ended up going all the way to the floor and ceiling in the end). We could have simply put a layer of plywood over the studs, but believe it or not, we couldn’t afford the extra 3/4in depth as we didn’t want the desk to hang out past the sliding door frame to it’s left. In most cases, 3/4in plywood could be mounted directly to the studs rather than inset — I’d be afraid 1/2in plywood would not be thick enough to prevent screw pull-out on the standards once weighted with shelves, books, etc.

Anyway, after creating a solid/sturdy mounting surface (which we needed as the shelf standards would not be mounted directly to studs because of spacing — and after 40 years the studs are not square anyway), we cut 21in strips of 3/8in sheetrock (avoiding the beveled side) and 1/4in paneling — the 21in measurement came from the length of the wall divided by the number of standards (we wanted even spacing along the wall).

The Rakks brackets have a 5/8in backspacing (for 5/8in drywall), so the doubled-up drywall and paneling was the perfect thickness (see image below). The brackets also have about 1/8in slop on either side, too… just in case. After some (very) careful measurements, we secured the drywall to the plywood blocking with screws as you normally would.

We inlaid the paneling on top of the drywall with only a few brad nails at the very top to allow for expansion then simply laid the shelf standards over the pre-measured gap and screwed them to the blocking that was revealed by the gap we allowed. The flanges of the standards holds the paneling to the drywall (you could also use a few dabs of construction adhesive to bond the paneling to the drywall — but for us, shifting is not a problem as the panels go floor to ceiling and wall to wall, so they’re tight).

All in all, a very easy project effort-wise, but a bit of a brain-twister to plan out. It was a bit tough to cut 10-foot stock (the height of the wall) — for which i had to make a cutting jig/template to floor-cut the straight cuts with my skillsaw (as I didn’t trust feeding such a long piece through the table-saw)… a true panel-saw would have been nice here. Hopefully these go-bys help folks. If you have more questions, please feel free to email.