Day 5 of Our Summer Week of Reno’s

I was left alone for Friday while Tom went to the cottage for emergency tree removal. After a tornado hit the area the previous weekend, a tree was resting on the corner of the cottage and the guys spent the day trying to remove it with a chain saw.

While he was out of my hair, I did a light sand and got a 2^nd coat of mud on the new drywall.

Then I moved to the freshly sanded stairs, wiping them with a tack cloth before applying 2 coats of varathane finish, an hour apart, to every second tread. This allowed us to still access the upstairs while allowing the varathane to not be walked on for 24hrs.

My final project of the day was to install new quarter round in the upstairs hallway where the carpet was removed.

I also caulked it and finally caulked around the new door that we installed when renovating the master bedrooms closets over a year ago

And now we know: not related to our renovation but boys do dangerous things when taking down trees. For example using a rope to pull on a huge tree while standing downhill from it…

Day 4 of Our Summer Week of Reno’s

Both Tom and I were tiered by this point in our reno (Thursday of the week) and doing manual labour in the heat with no air conditioning was really tough. We

made an executive decision to not continue with the attic insulation project, leaving in for sometime in September or October when the temperature cooled. This meant the crawl space would be empty of insulation for a couple of months, but we could see no harm in that. So we moved on to other jobs and with the half way point of our week off behind us, I finally got the first coat of mud up on the drywall.

We also got around to re-caulking around the bathtub. Tom removed the old stuff and we both stood in the tub while I applied the new stuff. Shower’s at my parents house were in order that night.

While Tom got the new pressure washer going and started on the siding, I returned to my plastic enclosed bubble and sanded the rest of the stairs. Unfortunately the lack of ventilation turned it into a sauna, making me sweaty and giving the sanding dust something to stick to. My husband ‘lovingly’ ordered me to hose off as soon as I emerged so as not to spread dust throughout the house.

And now we know: the pressure washer makes a big difference to the colour of the siding from ‘dirty white’ to ‘slightly dirty but much brighter white’

Day 3 of Our Summer Week of Reno’s

After a lot of discussion we decided that there were no major problems with the roof and we would fix the small stuff ourselves. Maybe this will backfire on us in the end, but small repairs combined with more vigilant snow removal from the roof are the only thing we can afford at the moment. If more water comes in this winter then at least I am turning in to a pro drywaller.

Off to the local Home Depot we went for supplies including lots new insulation and some spray foam gap blocking stuff.

One of the suggestions we were hearing over and over was to better insulate the attics so we decided to start with the one underneath the problem area. This attic runs along the back eave on the house between the master bedroom/bathroom and the attic of the addition. We got into our head to toe suits, goggles and masks and started shovelling out the old insulation.

Now we had picked a super hot day, over 30 degrees plus humidity and also my lovely husband is claustrophobic, the night before he woke up suddenly in a panic at just the thought of going into the tight dark space. So we spent a fun couple of hours in there emptying out the old insulation. Frequent breaks were needs for air and water. It was brutal in there; you overheated so quickly and were dripping in sweat after 5 minutes. We finished by mid-day and decided to install the next day as the afternoon was even hotter than the morning.

We did find a fun ‘artifact’ buried in the insulation: an unspent 45 bullet. I can only imagine the story behind how that go there…

In the afternoon, my husband busted out the spray foam and the caulking. We discovered that on the south side of the back room there was a gap where the wall met the roof that was a few inches wide. Thinking this was probably an entry point for squirrels, Tom filled it a huge chunk of spray foam. He also got up on the room and added foam to the joint where the two roofs meet.

While he was up on the roof (yet another job that was not great is the heat), I installed the new drywall on the walls and ceiling. Hopefully this is the last time I have to patch a ceiling in this house but I wouldn’t bet on it.

And now we know: this spray foam stuff is great, we bought chicken wire type stuff to plug the hole with, thinking the foam would not be enough, but the foam did a great job and expands a crazy amount

Day 2 of Our Summer Week of Reno’s

As ‘vacation’ days go, this was not a winner. Is there anything more stressful than having a leaking roof, getting a professional opinion, and them coming up with all sorts of expensive over the top solutions? Well maybe have a foundation leak is more stressful, but anyways this was not fun.

The roof leaked only at the point where the extension roof met the main house roof and only leaked when there was extreme ice build-up. Solutions ranged from ‘replace the entire roof with a steel one’ (what? The roof is only a few years only and in good shape) to ‘re-built all the eves around the house’ (do you think we are made of money? We just dug our foundation last year). Numbers like 10K and 15K were tossed out and the 2 of us got more and more stressed.

We discussed, we argued and asked our friends for their opinions. Overall, this was the most stressful and least productive day of our renovation. I decided to ignore the roof problems and took my frustrations out on the stairs with a belt sander.

And now we know: getting quotes is a minefield of random suggestions and super high numbers thrown out.

Day 1 of Our Summer Week of Reno’s

This summer we decided to take a week off work to…work on the house. First priority was fixing the water damaged drywall in the back room. I got out the drywall saw and started cutting it open.

Despite all the damage to the drywall, behind it showed little evidence of water. However we did find plenty of evidence of squirrels. There were a couple of nests, a lot of nuts and even a bunch of wasp nests. There was quite the party going on in that attic space.

We left the drywall open and started working upstairs. Tom started removing the bathroom fan in hopes of putting up the new one we bought over a year ago. Unfortunately he discovered that not only is the hole not the right dimensions for modern fans, but that the fan doesn't vent properly outdoors. No wonder all the snow melts from the roof with all that hot air going into the attic space!

While he was having fun with the fan, I started ripping up the hall carpet. It was nasty to begin with, stained and the seams coming apart, but we also made it worse by spilling grout on it when we did the bathroom.

And now we know: confirmation that something has been living in our ceiling…now how is it getting in?