Thinking over the next step of deconstruction

Friday, April 29: I spent a good hour or so this morning probing the wall above the window to figure out what sort of bracing I will need up at the top-plate – to keep the ceiling/roof-edge from sagging – while I am deconstructing everything below.



The 6" x 6" beam above the window is called a "header." It appears to be sagging ever-so-slightly, an event that most likely occurred gradually over the 20-year-life of the house.  Still, in my limited construction experience, I have never encountered such a flimsy header.  The header supports the studs above it.  The sheer weight from the roof/ceiling is transferred down through the studs onto the beam.

On close examination, the top-wall-plate is also sagging slightly.  I put a level under it and I'd estimate about 1/8" of sag across the 6-foot opening.  This makes sense:  If the beam is sagging, the wall-plate above it isn't supported adequately. Therefore, it too sags.

I figured it was ok to knock out all but the center two studs, which are taking the brunt of the weight.



Once I knocked out the studs with a hammer and crowbar, I decided to experiment with a car floor jack.  I wanted to see if I could jack the top plate back up slightly – because I desire to not only install a new window, but also to improve the framing above it.

I placed one end of the jack onto the header and the other onto a strong ladder.  I cut a scrap of lumber and put it between the jack and the top-wall-plate.

I was, indeed, able to jack the top-plate up slightly.  However, doing so further deflected downward the beam that the jack is resting on.



Based on these tests, I have decided that before I tear anything more out, I need to brace the upper wall plate. While there is absolutely no danger of the roof collapsing, I don't want any more sagging while I tear all the supports out and reframe the window opening.

My intention is to devise some sort of angular support – like the posts on a kid's swing set – that will support the top-wall-plate by temporarily transferring the shear weight down to the floor – and also perhaps to the sidewalk on the outside.  I need to build the braces in such a way that they don't interfere with my deconstruction/reconstruction.



Starting on the new window

Wednesday, April 27:
I began the second major phase of this project: preparing the wall for a new window.

This little cordless Makita 3.5" circular saw is perfect for cutting through drywall.

Just set the blade for the exact depth of the drywall. (I learned this lesson the hard way a few years ago at one of my rental properties. The blade was too deep and it nicked a high-pressure air-conditioning line that was jammed inside the wall. The AC repair and Freon cost me $500.)

First, I cut vertical lines through the drywall  –  all the way to the ceiling. Then, I put on a good dust mask and started ripping the sheetrock off, small pieces at a time, with my gloved hands. (When I was in my 20s I never bothered with dust masks, even when handling fiberglass insulation. These days, I don't feel so invincible.) 



With all of the sheetrock removed and carted down to the trash can, the next step was to remove these pink batts of R-19 fiberglass insulation. The outer walls of this house are framed with 2x6 studs, allowing for excellent, thick insulation.   Below:  I bagged up the insulation so I can reuse it when I have reframed the wall.





With all of the insulation removed, a layer of thin tar-paper is exposed on the far sides of the studs (above and below).  I took a knife and sliced into the paper and found (below) that there is no exterior plywood. Some parts of the house have a wrapping of such plywood beneath the stucco to provide extra rigidity for earthquakes.   The gray matter below is actually the back side of 1-inch-thick stucco.

I am quite happy there is no plywood to deal with.  This means that I can take a sledge hammer and bust most of this stucco off from the inside of the house.  That will be a lot easier than chipping it off on the outside –  and will be less wear and tear on my elbow and shoulder.

There are tiny stands of wires up against this tar-paper. The wire provided some reinforced backing to the paper so that the stucco guys – 20 years ago – could trowel the first coat of masonry against the paper without tearing it. Stucco goes on in 3 layers –  I will get to that step once the new window goes in and the inspector likes the way the framing looks.



As the room stands . . .



Easter Sunday - Chris tests the floor strength

Chris came over for Easter dinner and decided he would test the strength of the floor by doing some of his P90X workout routine.  Watching the lad jump up and down like a monkey wears me out!

Finished floor!

Saturday, April 23

With the back-right-corner sheet of plywood installed, I now officially have an extra 120 square feet of space in the house.

This photo shows the beads of glue I applied to the joists prior to attaching the plywood.

Anne photographed me showing off my new Skil drill-driver after I screwed down the last piece of plywood Saturday morning. She then ventured onto the floor for the first time.

My next steps will be to remove the drywall above the window, remove the insulation, and punch some holes through the wall to the outside to roughly mark where the new window will go.  Then I will build a scaffold outside and start tearing off stucco.

My drill-driver goes kaput with one sheet left to go

Friday, April 22:

I've been using a 15-year-old corded Black-and-Decker drill to drive 2 1/2" screws through the plywood sheets, but it finally gave up the ghost today – one small sheet short of a finished floor. This piece, cut to size and ready to go, will have to wait for the weekend. 

Above and below: Wider views of the almost-finished floor. I used my 18-volt Makita cordless drill to screw down the small piece in the back-left corner, but it doesn't have quite the power I need to really sink the screws down into the plywood – mainly because the batteries are getting old.





Anne got tired of hearing me grumble about the drill situation this morning, so she told me to drop everything and "I'll buy you breakfast – and we can go to Lowe's.  I'll even buy you a new drill."  I took her up on it, figuring Fridays are always good to head out earlier before I hit the freeways to work in L.A.  I found this nice 1/2" Skil hammer-drill that brings me into the 21st Century. MY NEW TOY  . . . With a stucco house, brick patios, and masonry yard walls, I don't think I'd ever buy a drill that didn't also function as a hammer-drill. This Skil is great value – way more than adequate for driving long screws into floor joists, and powerful enough to chew into masonry with it's hammer-drill function.

Looking upward from the dining room, this is the new ceiling. You can see the white Liquid Nails glue where the plywood laps over the joists. I will route most of the electrical wiring for the upstairs room through this floor structure – this will reduce the amount of existing drywall I have to cut open to get new outlets onto each wall.

The dance floor is almost ready

Thursday, April 21


I fastened the last large piece of plywood to the bridge this morning. Now I no longer need a protective railing to keep errant pedestrians from falling through.



Once the two small pieces are installed in the far corners, I'll have a temporary dance floor.

I'm pleased with the smooth transition between the bridge and the new floor. Although part of the plywood seam will be covered with a wall, there will be a 5-foot opening in the center of the wall for the French doors – and the new carpet should transition nicely from the bridge into the door opening.

Small progress

Monday, April 18:

I had been sidetracked with finishing the oven installation (a sidebar farther down this blog) and planting some spring vegetables, but I did manage to get back to this project for a few hours.

I am almost finished with the floor. I intend to have it completed by the end of this week. Then I can bring a ladder up here and start tearing off the sheetrock above the window.

Once I mark where the new window will go, I'll punch some holes through the wall and build a scaffold on the outside so I can start tearing off the stucco.

Back to the decking

Tuesday, April 12: While the wood-filler was drying on the kitchen oven project, it was back to work on the upstairs room.




Half-sheet of plywood installed. Once the piece to the left goes down, the bridge will effectively no longer be a bridge.



I'm not trying to do product placement. The point of this photo is that I got fed up with constantly reloading the normal-caulk-size tubes of glue, so I went and bought this huge contractor's caulk gun. One tube contains about three times the amount of a normal caulk tube  –  but at the cost of only about 2 small tubes.  Of course, with this big gun I'll probably overdo it and use more glue than I need.

The full sheet leaning against the wall will be the next to go down.

I cut a narrow little jigsaw piece to fill in a slight gap where the new plywood meets the old.

Time out for a quick kitchen project

Sunday April 10 and Monday April 11:

Chris helped me muscle the oven into the family room.
To actually install it, I am going to try using an engine-
hoist that I bought a few years ago to lift a fountain.

I took a break from the tea room to deal with this 320-pound behemoth that has been sitting in our family room for more than a week. It's a Bosch double-oven that will replace our 20-year-old Caloric.

Most ovens are 30" wide, but in our house nothing is quite standard.  The Caloric was 27," so we bought the 27" Bosch.

We knew this oven was taller, meaning we'd have to lose the bottom drawer as I built a taller opening.   What we didn't know is that this unit was 1/2" too wide to fit into the hole.

Therefore, double the work.

To make the opening wider, I had to rip out the cheap, particle-board interior sides of the cabinet. But it's kind of like IKEA furniture – once you start taking big pieces off, everything starts falling apart.  So I had to shore up the cabinet (and upper shelves) with wood as I progressed.



The new Bosch requires electrical connections at the top – so I had to cut into the sheetrock at the back of the cabinet and move the outlet box higher up the wall.  Then patch up the drywall.



Once the interior particle board was removed, I still needed to gain 1/2" of width across the front opening. I used my circular saw to take 1/4" off each side of the oak frame.

This is new, heavy framing to support the 320-pound Bosch. I ripped out the old particle-board shelf that supported the Caloric and built this wood frame for a new shelf that is about 4" lower. The new frame is supported all the way to the slab. 

Once a drawer, now a stationary face-plate.  I disassembled the drawer and cut about 3" off the bottom of the oak face. Once all the holes are filled and sanded, I will use a whitewash-oak stain to try to match everything up.



3/4" plywood topping forms new, strong platform.





Relocated electrical box for Bosch top-connection.



Once this is sanded, I will attempt to recreate the whitewash oil finish by blending white gloss enamel with a cherry stain. It will be trial-and-error to get a good match.

UPDATES:

Thursday, April 14:  I sanded off the wood filler and made a pink-looking whitewash rub out of 1 part cherry stain, 4 parts white gloss enamel.




I rubbed the mixture over the oak with a soft cotton cloth.  It came out slightly brighter than the existing cabinets, but after arguing about it for awhile with Anne, she assured me that it won't be long before we're replacing all these cabinets anyway.

More likely, we would re-face, not replace.  And/or . . . paint them all white and add new doors. It all depends on how long we keep this house.  I also am confident that the oils in this new stain will yellow over time and blend in with the existing cabinets.



This opening is now ready for the oven.

Sunday, April 17: I hauled a 2-ton engine hoist into the house. I bought this crane a few years ago when I was moving an 800-pound fountain to a new location in the backyard.

Because of the leg-extensions on the hoist, I could only get the oven this close to the cabinet opening. The solution was to jury-rig a wood platform to slide it onto.   It could then sit on the platform while I made the electrical connections in the back.



I wrapped several chains around the oven and lifted it. Here, I have lowered it onto the temporary platform. Then I just used muscle to get it close to the opening.



The makeshift platform consisted of some 2x4s propped onto the legs of the engine hoist. I screwed them together and then screwed some scraps of plywood onto the top.  At the far end, I propped them up with some 4x4 scraps.  With the oven sitting on this platform, I crawled back into the opening and connected the wires.

Once the wiring was done, I muscled the oven into the opening.

My makeshift installation platform.

Above and below: The finished installation, a project that involved carpentry, electrical, painting, sanding, drywall and a bit of cussing. I don't know what the labor would have cost, but I'm pleased with the way it came out.

However . . .  Anne is so pleased with it, that I am now told we must get a new, stainless steel "counter-depth" refrigerator.  The old white beater looks awful, just awful. The more compelling reason, though, is that it's about 12 years old and probably uses at least twice the energy that a new one would.

 

The first floorboard

Friday, April 8: I found an hour-and-a-half before work this morning to take down the temporary barrier and get to work on the floor.



The right edge of the 3/4" plywood laps over the edge of the existing bridge (where I have cut away part of the carpet). I say 3/4", but the actual dimensions these days are 23/32" – kind of like a one-pound can of coffee is now about 11 ozs.



Prior to fastening the sheet, I placed it onto the joists and used a chalk line to mark some slight cuts so that the far end would fall exactly over the center of a joist – and so that the long edge would fall over the center of the cross-blocking. I scooted the plywood into the center of the room and made the cuts with my circular saw.

  

To prevent any future creaking, particularly in a house like this that can be buffeted by Santa Ana winds, I put Liquid Nails subfloor adhesive over the joists prior to screwing down the plywood. (I covered the tile floor below in case any glue dripped down.)

My fasteners: 2 1/2" interior decking screws.  Halfway through, the battery started giving out on my Makita, so I switched to an electric drill to drive the remaining screws.



Once I got the floorboard down, I quickly rigged up another temporary barrier. Once all the plywood is screwed down next to the bridge, I won't bother with a barrier. But for now, Anne is still worried she might fall through at night.



I intend to stagger the sheets in a checkerboard pattern – a generally used concept in construction that makes everything stronger.  The next full piece will run in the same direction – but will start at the window.  Once I get the full sheets in, I will cut the smaller pieces.

It may only be one sheet on a Friday morning, but it's another place to throw my tools!