Ramblings from the Marginalized

Last week (or so) I told you about how I was getting my bedroom ready for a new wood floor. The picture on the right is a series of planks from the first box of wood. As you can clearly see they are about three inches wide and of various lengths.

Each piece has a tongue on two sides and grooves on the opposing sides. This tongue and groove system ensures the planks fit together nicely and the finished floor remains level without and serious bumps or wood tips rising above the floor. This is especially nice since I found out that the new addition that was added about 15 years ago has settles somewhat. This resulted in the floor not being entirely level across the entirety of the room. If I had used a basic plank system I would have encountered serious trouble where the original construction meets the addition.

The wood flooring I used is a product made by Armstrong from their Bruce line of hardwood flooring. We went with the butterscotch coloring of Red Oak flooring. This particular flooring is ¾ inch thick and comes complete with a durable finish. Other than lining up the boards and nailing them down there is no extra sanding, staining or sealing work to be done.

We went together to pick out the wood to use. We thought briefly about using a laminate wood flooring but we knew that if we wanted to do the job we should do it right. I've seen too many laminate floors that just do not hold up as well as solid wood does. I put laminate wood in the same category as electric heat: It's cheap to install but will cost you more in the long run.

This is the single most important tool I used; the pneumatic floor nailer. Because I don't plan on installing hardwood floors a lot in the future I rented this one at a local rental shop for about $70. That price included enough nails to do 200 square feet of flooring.

The nailer also requires a compressor to work. The compressor I borrowed from a friend, as well as his brad nailer and a few hours of his time. I thought those few hours of time would be enough to complete the project but I was wrong, very wrong.

Because the carpeting covers a wood floor in the living room I decided to run the wood floor not just in the bedroom but also into the small hallway that leads to the living room. Eventually we will pull up that carpet and refinish the living room floor.

Running the flooring out in to the small hallway was fairly simple, the only complicated part was getting the flooring to match up with the old wood. A few measurements with a tape measure and a couple of cuts with a table saw and I had a short piece ready to fill in the gap.

For the most part we cut the bottom of the door jams off so as to better hide the cuts in the flooring we made to work around those areas. When we came to the bathroom the wood flooring was about one eighth of an inch higher than the tile but it was within tolerances for the door to close after nailing the old brass sweep back in place. Yes, I cleaned those black marks up before putting the sweep back!

After the second package of wood (seven more to go) almost eight hours had gone by and it was time for my friend to leave. My dream of having the room done in one afternoon were quickly shown to be just that; dreams! He agreed to leave the tools overnight and I got to work pounding out the rest of the job.

I took a few short breaks over the course of the evening but I did get the job done before the 9:00 AM cutoff time for getting the tool back to the rental shop. If I had kept the tool any longer I would have had to pay for another day of tool rental.

By the time morning rolled around I had completed the floor. I think I spent about 20 hours in total laying the floor. I spent another four hours doing the prep work. Was it worth it? You will have to judge that for yourself. Check the pictures below to see some more photographs of the process and the final results.

With it all done it took me a few days to recover from the all night work party. I did a lot of bending and kneeling getting those boards into alignment and I had aches and pains for days afterwards. Some people mentioned hiring someone to do the job but that would have tripled the price of the job. The one good thing is that I was able to waste very little wood and brought one box of wood back to the store for a refund. Which I then used to buy a new faucet for my bathroom sink...

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For those of you following along at home I recently purchased about 200 square feet of hardwood flooring to redo the floor in my master bedroom. Most of the rest of the house has hardwood flooring from when it was built in the 1950's but an addition was added on in the 1990's that did not include hardwood flooring.

The master bedroom is about 12 feet by 15 feet in size and one third of it was added on in the 1990's. The front five feet were added. The rest of the flooring is a very fake looking wood grained linoleum while the front five is just plywood.

The first part of the job is to remove the old carpeting and carpet pad. Because our house is so small moving everything out of the bedroom for a few hours was not a very big possibility. Couple this with me being the only strong person in the house and you begin to see my pain.

Removing the carpet itself was the easy part. All I needed was a carpet knife and something to tie the remnants up with. It was not that hard to slowly move furniture out of the way and cut the carpet out. Even cutting the carpet padding out was fairly simple. It was simple until I discovered the people who installed the carpet pad used a lot of small 'scrap' pieces and a staple gun on full auto!

Yes, the hardest part of the job was pulling all the staples out of the floor!

I started by using a pair of flats to pull them out but that caused me some serious hand pain. In the end I used the old standby of screwdriver + hammer and popped them out. For the few stubborn ones I used the pair of flats as well.

I spent a lot of time on my knees doing this work and my knees are not in the least bit happy about this. To say they are angry is an understatement. Along with the staples I also had to pull up the carpet tack strips. Those are those pieces of wood you tack down with sharp points sticking up to hold the carpet in place. Don't ask me the technical term because I don't know or care.

I still have the closet to do but it's a small closet. I also have to pull the floor trim off the walls because it sits a little bit to low for the flooring to be installed underneath it. Yeah, that's going to be fun!

Next weekend a friend will be joining me with some power tools to install the new flooring. This had better be worth it because currently my entire body is in pain and not the least bit happy about this.

These photographs were taken by my wife with her Cannon PowerShot G9.

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For some time now my wife and I have been planning on ripping the carpeting out of our house and refinishing the hardwood floors that lie beneath. Our bedroom is the one exception in that it does not have hardwood floors beneath the carpeting. It has a fake wood-grained vinyl flooring instead. Being the industrious man that I am I have put together a plan to install hardwood flooring in our bedroom.

The first step involved research. I looked online and I picked up a book on installing hardwood floors. I also investigated all of the different wood floor options out there.

I looked at the laminate floorings and was not impressed. I plan on having this house for a long time so the idea of having floors that last means a lot to me. I have seen some unlucky folks who have a gouge in their laminate flooring and it just sucks. You can cut the piece out and patch it but why? Solid hardwood flooring does cost more but it is well worth it in the long run.

The flooring I chose is an oak flooring that comes in random lengths. It has a light stain to it and comes prefinished (I'm not a masochist y'know). It is a tongue and groove form of hardwood so installation should be a snap.

I called around and acquired some helpers as well as friends who have the tools I need (compressor, nailgun, side-nailgun). I'm hoping to have all of the work done next weekend and I expect to have some pictures of the event to post on here.

Image from flickr user juhansonin used under Creative Commons License

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For the past two weeks I've been doing spring cleaning in the mornings before work. Six days ago we had a large dumpster dropped off in our yard to get rid of all sorts of junk and debris.

The junk consists of old wood, sinks, car parts, etc... This stuff as been hanging around in our yard for years and we finally decided it was time to get a dumpster and get rid of everything.

You might be wondering what this has to do with rakes.

In the course of cleaning up the yard I've also been cutting back vines and pricker bushes that run along the property line. A lot of this junk has been covered by this dense foliage so as I cut (and rake) I find more junk to throw in the dumpster.

I started using a red plastic rake from last year. This rake did not make it through the winter very well and the plastic was very brittle. Brittle to the point where the simple act of raking out a flower bed was causing the tines to break off of the rake. After about two days of use this rake looked more like a shovel as it had no more tines. So, I used it as a leaf shovel to move the leaves onto a big tarp that I then drag away to dump the organic debris into a special area for it to decompose.

Since I needed a new rake I went to the local Wal-Mart store and purchased one.

This rake was similar in appearance to the last one and that should have tipped me off. It didn't.

I thought I would get at least one season of use out of this $5 rake, I got five days.

On the fifth day the rake broke above the tines. A big 12" crack going from the left side to the middle.

On Sunday I planned to go out and spend extra to buy a rake that would last. Luck was not with me as the only hardware store open on Sunday near me was the Home Depot.

I was very careful this time. I knew what to look for and I found a rake in the Home Depot that has a very strong plastic part that was also very bendable. I thought for sure that this rake would last the whole season and it was under $10.

I brought it home and started raking. After four minutes of raking the shaft broke in half. Yes, the shaft broke.

I stood there dumbfounded for a few minutes (and laughing). I did find a rake with a higher quality plastic component but looking at where the wood broke it was very obvious that the manufacturer used old rotted wood to make their rakes.

I've worked with wood for a long time and it is easy to see if the wood was good or bad by looking at the break. This wood just looked bad. Good wood will splinter when it breaks, this wood did not splinter at all. It was almost a perfectly clean snap.

I took a moment to survey my three broken rakes. I thought to myself that if I took the plastic piece of the one I just purchased and used the shaft from one of my two other broken rakes I could have a good rake again.

I unscrewed the heads of the other two rakes but, no matter what I did, I could not get the old heads off! I tried all sorts of things to pull those broken heads off and not a single one budged.

So I'm off to the home Depot to trade in my rake for a new one.

• Cleaning House

I mentioned before on this blog how I am getting ready to put a major addition onto my home. I thought I should take a few moments to show all of you just how small my home currently is.

Here is a shot from the front of the house.

This shot is taken from the driveway.

This house is just about 800 square feet. The basement has a low ceiling and is not as big as the house above it. Parts of the foundation are filled in with dirt while other areas are accessible.

The yard is large but there is a slope that turns into an eight foot drop over ten feet about 25 feet behind the house. I'm hoping to take advantage of this by putting on a 25x25 foot addition with a walk-out basement.

Looking up from the base of the slope.

My wife and I have gone back and forth about the basement. She wants to just drop a slab in place to save money but I want a room I can use for a shop without bumping my head on the ceiling. I also feel that because of the drop in the back we can't just use a simple slab, we will need to have some sort of retaining wall built under the slab where the slope is.

A 25x25 foot expansion will go a few feet past the existing bulkhead. This will allow me to get rid of the water problem we have with the bulkhead. It's not the doors but the blocks themselves that have leaking problems. I've used Dry-Lock on them and it did meditate but not fully remedy the water problem.

This is a side view. The deck sticks out about 15 feet and will be replaced by the addition.

We will also put a small upstairs on with the addition. We will not raise the entire roof but the area above the addition and part of the existing roof will be raised. We may have to raise the chimney as well. After we get the pricing estimates (and add out assumed 15% to them) we may just raise the whole roof, it all depends on the cost.

Our main goals are:

We've been tossing a few ideas around for years now. Well it's time to sit down, draw up some plans and spend the money.

We live in a small two bedroom house. We've got about an acre of property covered in grass and our house is centered near the top of our property. We've got plenty of land to build out onto and we just completed a major septic system.

Our old septic system was nothing more than a cess pool. It was really just a concrete cylinder in the ground that was probably built back in the 50's using leftover building materials from the house.

About one year ago we began to smell, as well as see, some sewage bubbling up downhill from our cess pool. We knew the system was failing. We also knew the system had never been serviced.

You are probably wondering why the system was never serviced. It was never serviced because it is was a cess pool and not a septic system.

After we smelled it we tried digging over the top of it to find an opening. There was no opening. The top was solid concrete!

We had one of our contractor friends come by with a concrete saw and a drill. It turned out the top of the cess pool was ten inches thick! He had to cut and jack hammer out an opening so we could get it pumped.

Not wanting to pay a monthly fee keeping the thing pumped out we began calling around to get a new system engineered.

Several perk tests later we decided we would have to have our leeching fields uphill from the septic system. The other option was to pay a small fortune on septic sand and putting it downhill.

In all it costs us about $20K to put in the new system.

You can clearly see the the covers for the two buried tanks. The electrical box is for the pump. We still have some issues with small sink holes around the tanks.

We now have a system that uses two large plastic tanks and a pump to move the effluence uphill to our leeching mound.

It’s a bit of a pain to mow around this new mound but it works.

.

The front used to be flat, now there is a mound.

I’m still filling in the occasional sink hole around the two tanks as the ground settles around them but at least we now have easy access for getting the system worked on.

You are probably wondering why I bring all this up. Well, we have been planning on expanding our home for a few years now and we were slightly derailed by the expense of the septic system. It did work in our favor though as the old cess pool was directly behind out house and in the way of our renovation plans.

Our current plan is to come off of the back of our home and add a kitchen and laundry area on the main floor. We will likely not go up as it might make the house look weird as it is currently only a one story home.

Our existing basement has a low ceiling and tends to leak in heavy rains. My hope is that by adding on to the main floor we can also get some of the foundation issues fixed as well as adding a significantly sizable room to the basement with a high ceiling.

That room would become my workshop and allow me to do more around the house, as well as provide a retreat.

I know it’s not going to be cheap doing this renovation but we are going to do it and I’m going to try and catalog all the events that transpire here on the blog. It should be interesting reading.

I will be posting pics of the house soon as well as our plans for the addition

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This is a true story as related to me by a co-worker.

One day, my 25 year old son, who still lives at home, offered me a “gift.”

“Hey dad, I got a couple of extra recessed ceiling lights left over from a job, what if I install them in the basement rec-room for you?”

I should have said “no” when he offered, but he’s my kid and the room did need better lighting. “Sure,” I said, “do you need any money for parts?”

“Don’t worry about it dad, this isn’t going to cost you a thing,” he said.

He was partly right. The lights themselves did not cost me a thing. Having the lights installed cost me dearly!

It took him about week from announcing his gift to having them fully installed. I have to admit, he did a real good job installing those lights. He gave the room a whole new look… That is where the trouble started!

The day after he finished the job I ran into my wife in the rec-room.

“Hey honey, he did a great job on those lights didn’t he?”
“Yeah but…”
“Yeah but what?”
“Well, now that I can see this room better… It needs a fresh coat of paint.”
“What? It looks fine!”
“Put your glasses on, it looks terrible! I don’t think we’ve painted this room since the kids were born.”

That is when it hit me, “those lights were not free!”

“Well, I suppose you may have a point…”

About $125 and two weekends of work later…

“There, the walls and ceiling are painted just like you wanted.”
“Yeah but…”
“Yeah but what? They’re painted! Look, just like new!”
“Well, look at the carpet! It looks terrible! The way the freshly painted walls reflect the light around the room I can really see the stains in this rug. We need a new rug down here.”

Well, after a few phone calls and about $535 the new carpeting was installed. I thought that would be the end of it. So far these “free” lights had cost me over $600!

“There honey, you now have new lights, new paint on the walls and a new carpet. The room looks great!”
“Yeah but…”

AAHHHHHHHHH! Not those two words again! What next, did she want a new house to go with the recessed lights! Did she want me to re-carpet and paint the entire house? No, it was much worse then that. I could always hire someone else to come in and paint or lay the carpet. Nope, she was still focused on this one room.

“What is it honey?”
“Well, this old furniture is really… old. It doesn’t ‘fit’ with the new color scheme of the room.”
“I suppose we could move furniture from a different room in here…”
“No, we need new furniture.”

The scary thing was not what she said, but how she said it. She said it in the same way you might say, “this food needs more salt.”

Free recessed ceiling lights my butt! Those things were costing me a fortune! Not only that, but now I had to go furniture shopping with my wife!

Now, I love my wife dearly but I can’t stand shopping with her. When most guys go shopping they don’t care if the recliner is sage brush green or brushed sage green, green is green! Not so with a woman. It’s not enough for the color to be right, the fabrics also have to be in harmony. You can’t mix a suede chair with a leather topped table!

A little bit over $4,000 later she had her new furniture. She was happy and I was re-thinking my son’s wonderful ‘gift’ to me.

In the end, those 'free' ceiling lights cost me two weekends and $5,000.

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