We used to have one of those crummy wooden folding stairs to get into the attic. They require a massive hole in the ceiling, and an equally massive amount of floor space when opened. With the new bathroom closed off with a wall, there is less space than there used to be, and the old stairs were just too big. In addition, the old ladder didn't support much weight - it was old and just felt flimsy. Time for an upgrade!

Enter the Werner AA10 Attic Ladder.

I knew that SOMEONE had to make these things, as I'd seen one in England, but it was actually somewhat tricky to find one here in the states! After doing extensive research online, we found the Werner brand attic ladders, and because our ceilings are a bit higher than modern homes, we had to get the AA10 instead of the basic AA8 model.

It wasn't cheap. We paid $262, but once it came, I found out why. This is a very high quality ladder, and NOTHING like the old wooden folding ladder we had before. The ladder is made of 10 sets of extruded aluminum rail sections that fit together beautifully and slide up into a compact unit. It's solidly built and will support up to 250 pounds. Once the ladder is retracted, it rotates up and out of the hole, allowing you to close the hatch below it. Looking at how well it is built, I can understand the price tag and actually think it's quite a good deal.

We don't even have drywall up, so we certainly don't have a hatch built to cover it yet, but the hatch will be insulated, and I'll also be building a box out of thick foam to cover it on the attic side.

The ladder we bought can be installed in a hole as small as 22x22 inches (though you'd have trouble fitting through a hole that size!) Our rough opening is 25 inches wide and will probably be around 42 inches long. The old ladder required a massive 54 inch long opening!

It was quite a snap to install as well - much easier than I had anticipated. All I needed was a small drill bit, a 7/16 inch socket driver, phillips screwdriver and two wrenches. The ladder is somewhat heavy to lift onto it's mount when installing, but I managed by myself OK.

It's good to see the solutions finally coming together on this long project - we've been working on this off and on (mostly off) for more than 2 years now, and we both want to see our new bathroom finished!

Until the next project...

Well, we were strolling through one of our local home centers last night and came across a faucet for the upstairs bathroom.

We had previously purchased an Ikea kitchen faucet for this purpose, but ended up using it (surprise) in the kitchen!

It's a Price Pfister 'Bernini'. It's rather square, with some gentle curves, and it seems like it will match our sink quite nicely!

Our sink/vanity will be the Magickwoods 'Sonata', and 40 inches wide so we can both brush our teeth at the same time, as we often do.

It's been a very long time since we last touched anything having to do with our upstairs bathroom.
Sometimes, the bathroom seems like a project that has stalled beyond all hope of recovery, but it's still up there, bare studs, plywood floor, open ceiling and all.

Once in a while, we tear ourselves away from the other, more exciting projects and bang a few nails in.

Today, I measured the washer in the basement, cut a piece of plywood to match, then went upstairs to figure out how we're going to cram the washer and dryer into the hallway outside our new bathroom.

I marked out some measurements on the floor and tried to figure out if the space between the finished walls will be wide enough, or if we'll have to knock down yet another wall... After measuring several times, the proposed minimum width of the hallway came out to around 28 inches, which happens to be the width of the new bathroom doorway! That should be just enough. If it were to get any smaller, I'd start to think about stealing a bit of space from the office.

Anyway, I sketched up the basic structure of 2x4s we'll need for the washer/dryer closet base. The machines will be elevated approximately 5 inches off the floor, in order to clear some ductwork, and I've made the 'joists' under the closet only about 8-10 inches on center to evenly support the load over the duct. Right now, it's pretty early in the construction of the closet so there's not much to look at, but I'd like to have the whole thing built this weekend if possible. (riiiggghhhht)

I just included the washer/dryer in our 'master plan' so we could see how it looks from an architectural standpoint. (see image)
Concerned about the lack of storage options in the area, I decided to add a little bumped out cabinet to the side of the closet - this will be built after the closet is up and will hold clothes washing supplies and maybe some extra bathroom goods.

More to come...

Update January 9th...
Well, I was skeptical that we could get the enclosure built in one weekend, but it turns out I was completely wrong.
IT IS DONE. Not only in a weekend, but in a SINGLE DAY.

It sure does feel good to make real progress on something. Now we just have to run electrical, supply and drain plumbing, and we can move the washing machine upstairs! It's a small step toward moving our bedroom back up there, and then of course completing our new bathroom!

After hooking up the 50 cent ceramic bulb holder in the back hallway, we soon were inspired to upgrade. A visit to two home centers found the light we were looking for.

The Westinghouse Churchville fit our image of 'modern victorian' quite well. The cylindrical brushed nickel shapes on this lamp closely resemble our living room chandelier light, and with two compact fluorescent bulbs, we can double the amount of available light in the back hall, which has always been a little dim for our tastes.

The Westinghouse light is a fairly good quality light. The metal parts leave a bit to be desired (especially in the upper end), but the glass shade is very thick and looks like it could take some mild abuse. Durability is fairly important in this area, because nearly everything that comes into or goes out of the house comes through this hallway. Construction lumber, bookcases, mattresses, and other large bulky items all move through here and could easily break a bulb if it's not properly protected.

There's no wallboard up yet, but the light still looks pretty nice against bare lath. *shrug*

As a fine musician once said...
"I'm downright amazed at what I can destroy with just a hammer."
Well, in my case I mostly used a breaker bar.

It's funny how a seemingly little project turns into a big project so very fast. The task list this morning included just a few items: rewire back hall light, install basement stair light, build base for upstairs washer/dryer.
I was sure I'd be onto the last item within a couple of hours, and maybe get all three done today. I ended up taking all day on the first item.

We had rewired the light at the top of the back stairs ages ago, but never got around to doing it's downstairs sibling because, well, we're bad at finishing projects, and it involved going back into the dark, cold, itchy attic.

I started the seemingly simple task by attaching the new wire (14/2 romex) to the old wire (100 year old cloth covered ungrounded cable), then I went into the attic and pulled on the old wire, hard. It pulled a few inches up, and then stopped.
I went back downstairs and scratched my head - it appears that it should have pulled, but something was stopping it. I resigned myself to the idea that I'd have to take all the plaster off the ceiling before I could see what was hanging it up. It was going to come down soon anyway, so why not now?

Now, if demolishing plaster sounds like a lot of work, it is, and it's messy too. It's not just plaster that comes down - it's bits of wood, it's insulation, it's dust, it's mouse poop. Basically, everything that could make it's way into the ceiling cavity in 100 years. I went upstairs for some heavy plastic and masking tape and taped up the doorway to the kitchen. No mouse poop in Z's kitchen! Not if I could help it.

I climbed the ladder and proceeded to swing the hammer in the direction of the plaster. I managed to get some down, but it was slow going. Now where did I put that glorious tool, the breaker bar? The breaker bar is a nearly 3 foot long chunk of steel and looks like a crowbar, but twice as thick. It's the perfect demolition tool. Things went a bit faster then. Soon, I had the whole ceiling demolished.
Heck, I had the room taped off and the perfect tool in hand, why not take down the walls too? Within the hour, I had the whole room stripped down to the lath, and a layer of rubble 4 inches thick on the floor.

From previous experience, I knew that taking the lath off too would mean lots of fiddly work with removing nails, and the drywall would then never come flush with the trim - our new technique is to remove the plaster, which is about as thick as 1/4 inch drywall, but leave the lath in place.
Because I didn't want plaster raining down on us before the ceiling drywall went up, I also removed every other lath board in the ceiling - this released the plaster 'keys', but still held the blown fiberglass insulation in place.

To get the plaster out of the house, I used a snow shovel and a 5 gallon bucket. It took 11 buckets (2 lath, 9 plaster), and our driveway now sports a stylish pile of rubble to show the neighbors how handy we are.

Finally, I was able to see why the wire wasn't fishing. I removed a bit of blown fiberglass, most of which rained down on me, reached up into the ceiling and discovered a whole new world! The space I had accessed is attic space, but it's hidden behind the knee wall of the 'bonus room' above the kitchen. I'd always known it was there, but never actually seen it. COOL. The original insulation is visible (newspaper), and I discovered a few things up there - two old metal table legs, an old cigarette tin, and an invitation to a lodge meeting from 1912! It's amazing what you find in old houses!

OK, on with the show, as they say. What was it that was stopping me from just pulling the new wire up to the attic? A single cable staple, not 6 inches from the light fixture. If I could have reached up there and released it, I could have been done with the whole job in a half hour. Well, at least I got to use the breaker bar. *rolls eyes*

Once the staple was removed, I fished the wire, installed a blue plastic electrical box, then a ceramic single bulb fixture to the ceiling and connected the other end of the wire to a junction box in the attic. In the basement, I flipped the circuit back on, and back upstairs revealed a problem. The downstairs light was on all the time - the switch didn't do anything! Alas, I wired it to the wrong box! Back in the attic following wires around lead me to the light at the top of the stairs, where I spliced the downstairs wire into the upstairs fixture.

Finally, the light works, the wall plaster is down and ready for drywall, the ceiling is better insulated and I even put up a vapor barrier.

Tomorrow, we will go light fixture hunting to replace the 50 cent ceramic jobber.

Next up on the short list - install a light fixture in the basement stairs.
Aw heck, maybe I'll just rip the wall down, open it up to the back hallway and make it into a mudroom.

For 3 years now, we've lived with a very mediocre electrical system in the basement.
It went a bit like this:

1 electrical box (2 outlets), used for water heater and washing machine (over a very long heavy duty extension cord)
3 single light bulbs - one switched, and two with pull chains.

That's not an adequate system to support 2 basement rooms. One half of each room was impossible to light without a supplementary floor lamp plugged into a very long extension cord. The basement has always looked dark and gloomy.

So today, I set out to change all this. I'm installing 6 single bulb light fixtures and 5 outlet boxes (10 additional outlets)

The switch at the top of the basement stairs will light 3 bulbs in the first basement room, and an additional switch in the doorway to the second room will light 3 more bulbs.

For outlets, I'll have a GFCI in each room, feeding another set of outlets. For the first time, the washing machine will have ITS' OWN outlet!

Almost all the existing wiring in the basement is affixed to the lower surface of the joists, and most of them run diagonally in a straight shot to where the power is needed. Running wires this way makes for a really ugly electrical system.

All of my new work is bored through the joists with small (1/4 inch) holes, and only at right angles. Wherever I could, I've run multiple lines in the same joist bay and usually on the side of the bay most visible when walking through the basement.

Once the wiring is complete and tested, I'll pull out our dryer circuit breaker (our old dryer hasn't worked for years). Tossing the 220V circuit will free up two slots for 110V circuits - a breaker each for lighting and outlets.

As a side benefit, I discovered why we had power running through the ORIGINAL fuse box. The only purpose for running power to the box was simply to connect the light switch to it's bulb. It was fed by ancient knob & tube wiring and the fuse was still installed but bypassed. I've disconnected the box entirely, which removes yet another legacy device from the system - eventually the house will be knob & tube free!

I got my early Christmas present a few weeks ago - a Delta table saw. I have my first REAL woodworking tool, so I went searching for some woodworking plans. What I found is a treasure-trove. http://woodgears.ca If you need a bed frame, a workbench, a kitchen table, or shelving, there are simple plans for it all, using inexpensive materials. It's an incredible resource (thanks Matthias - keep up the good work)

For 3 years, we haven't wanted to store anything in the basement, because it occasionally gets wet during heavy rains. It has only flooded a bit once, when the sewer drain backed up (YUCK), but usually it's just a bit of water that comes through the old foundation.

One particular shelving plan (http://woodgears.ca/shelves/garage.html) really impressed me, by it's simplicity. I already had most of the materials on hand, and it only took a couple of days to put together.

Three upright 2x4s are nailed into the joists at the ceiling and run to the floor. Some brackets are constructed from pieces of 2x4, cut with an angle at one end, and affixed to the uprights with some gussets of 3/4 inch plywood.
My shelves are a bit more primitive than the plans available on woodgears, but I really don't care that they look beautiful - just that they are functional.

The total cost of materials was less than $50. The most expensive part was the planking: $30 for 6, 10 foot 2x8s.

I also plan to build a workbench in the basement, and then maybe a foosball table, which is basically just a table with a game box on top.

UPDATE:
Finally swept up most of the dust, plaster, stone pieces, sawdust and insulation from the floor in the basement. That would be a drag if it went down the floor drain and backed up the sewer again.

Happy holidays to all, from our Never-ending Two Story.

Wisconsin was recently hit with a blizzard, which dumped up to 20 inches of snow on the ground in less than 36 hours. We ended up getting about 16-18 inches, and it was VERY heavy stuff. The temperature was just below freezing when it came down, so it ended up sticking to everything. It's great stuff for building snow forts and snowmen, but when you need to shovel it off your sidewalk or driveway, it's hard work. Thankfully, we bought a snowblower a couple of years ago, and it is serving us well. Many family's little 2-stroke snow throwers couldn't handle the amount we got, so I helped clear the sidewalk, nearly to the end of the block in 2 directions, then opened up three neighbor's driveways, before finally finishing our own.

All the snow on everything inspired me into the White Christmas spirit, so I surprised Z. with a real Christmas tree! We had earlier settled on putting up the plastic tree, which was somewhat of a disappointment. The last time we put up the fake tree was before we bought our house. There's nothing quite like the smell of a real tree in the house.

Happy Solstice, Hanukkah, Christmas, Kwanzaa, Squidmas, or any other winter celebration you're into.

Stay warm!

In a Previous Post, I wrote about our new french doors for between the living and dining rooms.
Last night, with my new table saw, I ripped about an inch and a half off of each of 3 edges on the two doors. I left the knob edge alone on one door because I didn't have the space to countersink the lockset. One door will have a very wide panel, but that's OK. It'll look a little weird, but that's alright.

Now that the doors fit the space horizontally, I'll need to plane them perfectly straight, chisel in 4 hinges, 2 sliding rod locks and a strike plate, then strip all the paint off of them, sand, and refinish with at least 6 coats of polyurethane.
I just hope they'll look decent after all that work. If they don't look nice in a natural finish, then they'll have to just stay white.

More photos upcoming...

Last winter, we discovered that the cabinets in the north-west corner of the kitchen were noticeably colder than the room. When we opened the turntable corner storage thingie or any of the drawers, a cold draft blew out at us, especially on windy days. By taking up the kitchen cabinets, I hoped to also take care of the draft once and for all.

The drafty spot is impossible to get to from the basement, because the gap between the first joist and the top of the foundation is only about an inch. This leaves an entire joist bay next to the mud sill and above the foundation completely inaccessible and uninsulated. Instead of breaking chunks out of the top of the foundation, I decided to go in from above, under the cabinets.

Once we ripped out the cabinets, it was relatively simple to cut a hole in the floor. I first drilled some 1/2 inch holes in the floor, and then connected them with a reciprocating saw until I had a hole big enough to stick my arm into, and a clear view of the top of the foundation. Once I had a chunk of flooring out, I realized just how big a problem we had. Not only was the floor 2 inches thick (4 layers of flooring), but the hole in the foundation was at least the size of two quarters and I could see sunlight.

There were many loose stones laying on top of the foundation, so my first task was to remove anything that came up easily, then vacuum up all the dust, sand, dead bugs, spiderwebs, and bits of wood that were down there. Once the shop vac was full of crap, I sprayed Dap expanding foam into all the nooks and crannies I could find. I prefer the Dap product to Dow's Great Stuff because it washes off with WATER. Even when wearing gloves, I manage to get the Great Stuff all over my hands and clothes. The only way to get it out of clothes is to immediately scrub it with acetone (nail polish remover). I'll stick with the water-based Dap, thanks. It doesn't expand as much as Great Stuff, but it does a plenty good job. Before the foam had completely set, I cut bits of pink styrofoam insulation and layed them on top, then sealed the pieces all around with more expanding foam.

When I figured the job was well enough complete, I wrote my name and the date on the foam, for future generations, and sealed the hole back up. As we replace the rest of the cabinets and the stove, I'll repeat the process a little further down the line, until we're sufficiently draft-proofed on this coldest end of the house.

There's also a similar situation happening, right under the back stairs. The floor will have to come up there as well. I need to research a pourable two-part expanding foam, or maybe a sprayable product for these hard to reach spaces that need to be sealed up completely. I would venture a guess that sealing behind the mud sills could prevent up to 15% of the house's heat loss, simply because of drafts.

Our basement stairs are hidden behind a door right off the very small back hallway. The small area behind the door is mostly useless in terms of storage - lots of vertical space, but no way to get to any of it because you have to stand on the stairs. To improve usable space in the back hallway, increase storage, improve insulation, and generally open things up a bit back there, I decided I would build a folding, insulated hatch to cover the stairway.

The other day at the ReStore, we picked up a few very heavy hinges. They appear to be "door closer" hinges, which have a spring inside to automatically close the door. They're MASSIVE and look like the three of them could easily support a 300 pound door. Maybe I can use them to help keep the hatch up when it's in the open position.

Last night, I spent a little while in the garage, cutting scrap 2x4s and screwing them to the plywood hatch. I snapped a couple of screw heads off while tightening them down, so I had to countersink each screw head. It's a good thing I was screwing into plywood underlayment because I made a MESS of the wood surrounding the screws.

This weekend, I should have the 3 hatch parts connected by hinges and ready to install over the basement stairs.
I'll take a few pictures of the hatch. Stay tuned in the next few months because we might just knock out the whole wall that separates the back hall from the stairwell!

A few months back, we bought a small propane-fired heater for the garage. I've read up on safety concerns with propane or kerosene heaters, so I plan to install a carbon monoxide alarm in my work area so I don't run the risk of asphyxiating myself. Most of the problems happen when people leave them on and go to sleep. Anyway, the heater should provide a warm spot in the garage for when I need to work out there on cold days, but heating the whole garage with a small heater like this would be impossible.

The other day, we bought 6, 4x8 foot sheets of OSB (oriented strand board) for $30 so I could enclose the back corner of our garage and heat just that part instead of the whole thing. Today, I constructed the "Man Cave".

The first part was easy - take a couple of sheets of OSB, stand them upright, and screw them to one of the rafters.
Next, I added the door. This was an interior door that we took from a demolished closet upstairs. To add the door, I had to reinforce the hinge points with 2x4 blocking. It's a hollow-core door, and pretty light.
The rafters are 4 feet on center, so to make the second wall, I had to cut notches in one top corner of each panel. I tied the OSB panels together with 2x4 and OSB scraps and all purpose screws.
The final two sheets of OSB went on top of the rafters, to make a 'roof'. This prevents the heat from escaping and provides for a lot of extra storage space above the cave.

I cut and nailed one 2x4 support between two rafters to help support the 'roof'. I plan on adding many more of these, probably every 16 inches, to adequately support any load I put up there (which may include myself, if I have to crawl around up there.

I finished it off a bit with some old license plates on the wall. Every good man cave has to have some license plates, right?

It really won't take that much to heat, because I plan on insulating it on all sides with fiberglass batts. We bought quite a bit of fiberglass last winter that we haven't used yet.

Hopefully, this will provide a warm space to take care of those messy winter projects we don't want in the house.

WOW, was it ever nice out today. High of 69 degrees after weeks of bitter cold with lows reaching the 20s!!

Winter hasn't even arrived and I'm already sick of coming home from work AFTER the sun goes down.

Anyway, with our beautiful sunny Saturday, we drove up to Madison with the 'ugly truckling', my beloved '86 toyota pickup, and bought 6 sheets of oriented strand board (OSB) for some garage workshop divider walls, and one very nice (and expensive) sheet of 3/4 inch plywood for my folding basement hatch project (upcoming).

On the way home, we decided to swing by the ReStore to see if they had any goodies. I was eyeing a full set of wrenches for $14.50 when Zoe called out for me to come look at something. I went to look, and discovered her by the doors. We've been looking for french doors to go in between the living and dining rooms ever since we moved in, but it's hard to find doors to fit the space. (It's very tall and relatively narrow, (83 by 56 inches)

Well, one look at them, and a quick size check and we knew we had to have them. These doors are too short and too wide (figures), but unlike all the other doors we've looked at, they CAN be modified to fit. There's enough meat on the stiles (the side bits) to allow us to cut about 3/4 inch off each side, and the rails (top and bottom bits) are flat and smooth enough to scab on a bit on both ends to make up the ~4 inch gap.

They have very solid, quality hardware, and nice old glass, with minor imperfections like bubbles and waves in them. Pristine, flat glass just wouldn't look 'right'.

Well, we're heading into our 3rd winter in the house, and the list of projects has grown to enormous proportions. I'll attempt to regurgitate as much of it as I can remember here.

Large Items

• Finish the new upstairs bathroom, including plumbing, electrical, walls, ceiling, radiant, bamboo flooring for the hallway, floor tile in the bathroom, shower tile, fixtures. Basically the whole kaboodle except demo and framing (which is done!)
• Finish the kitchen upgrade, including some lower cabinets, all upper cabinets, tear out box frames near ceiling, new flooring, new paint
• Replace all supply and drain plumbing in basement with new vent and main stack, and all pex supplies throughout
• Rewire garage to be more useful and have more light fixtures
• Replace electrical panel with 200 amp service, remove knob & tube, rewire entire upstairs, clean up existing romex circuits
• Install a sump pit/pump and finally seal up the sewer vent in the basement!
• Better support the huge wood beam that was cut to install a duct in the basement.
• Dig out some dirt from the crawlspace and install a RAT SLAB!!
• Rip out fiberglass insulation and wall framing in basement next to foundation, seal up the cracks and holes and insulate with something less disgusting.
• Sister floor joists in kitchen (they're pretty bouncy!)
• Build an English conservatory onto the south side
• Install another window in the kitchen
• Install a folding hatch over the basement stairs and build a tiny mudroom!
• Remove old, ugly deck from back of house and replace it with a brick patio
• Build a conservatory onto the south side
• Move the bathroom door and remodel the rest of the bathroom
• Tear up the carpet and refinish the wood floors downstairs
• Install radiant heat throughout the downstairs
• Upgrade furnace
• Insulate behind sill beams, which are drafty and cold throughout the house

Smaller Items

• Re-glaze attic windows (this was supposed to be my first task after buying the house)
• Install new french doors between living and dining rooms
• Paint living room and bathroom ceilings
• Remove wallpaper and paint the front (dining) room
• Carve out a workshop in the garage that I can heat this winter
• Reconnect back hall light
• Put matching porch light on back porch to replace the awful one that's out there now
• Fix garage door opener
• Restore beadboard ceiling on front porch, removing awful vinyl crud
• Build a drawer storage system under the stairs in the back hallway
• Wire ethernet to several key locations throughout the house
• Paint the office