Back with some pics!

It's been a while since I have reported anything, but armed with a new camera I intend to post some fun pictures of the progress on the house this week. Here is the first slew:

This is a picture of the bathroom baseboards, painted and ready to cut and install. To accomplish that goal, I needed to buy some tools.


So I am now the proud owner of an air compressor (known as a "pancake" compressor due to its small, flat tank), 3 different types of nail gun to run with it (the one that shoots the biggest nails, 2 inches long, is the one shown in the picture)...
... and something called a compound miter saw. This saw rotates on 2 axes, allowing me to create nice beveled cuts and fit the baseboards together with the proper 45 degree angle join.


I was in a hurry to get these boards down because Dave, a contractor who worked with Jack, offered to come help me with some of my plumbing challenges. I helped him with some computer work a while back, and I guess we have become a part of that "barter is on the rise in troubled economic times" statistic.

Dave was scheduled to come out on Sunday, leaving me Saturday, basically, to get the bathroom ready for the fixtures.

Here is a picture of the work in progress. The baseboards are really just a flat board with a piece of molding on top, caulked and painted to look like one piece. You may also note that I have painted the bathroom a nice springy green color, known as "Rice Paddy" in Sherwin-Williamese.


I was able to get all of the baseboards cut and installed, thanks to Becky taking off a little early from her job and assisting me Saturday afternoon. Sunday, Dave showed up at 9 am and we worked until late afternoon, 4 or 5, and I am really, really appreciative of his skill and ability to get things done. Here are a few pics of the plumbing work in progress:


Meanwhile, I was looking at the tub and realized I had forgotten to paint the outside! It had been in storage (and actually filled with other stuff in the back of the house) for so long that when we finally pulled it out I realized it needed some touching up. So, one full can of white semigloss spraypaint later, here it is:

I also touched up the feet with a "brushed nickel" color spraypaint:


After a good bit of effor we got the tub moved into the bathroom, and now there is plenty of room! I will get some better pictures of this tomorrow.

And, finally, after much cursing and leveraging of toggle-bolts to hold it in place, the corner pedestal sink is installed and fully functional! Thanks again Dave!

Pictures!

Owing to a number of circumstances, from a wonderful weekend trip with Dad to Natchitoches, several weeks/weekends of Mardi Gras oriented distractions, and then finally being out of the habit of putting anything up on the web, progress on the house was a bit, well, relaxed. And, frankly, that has kind of applied to the blog, too.

This weekend, however, saw the addition of sheetrock to the new wall, and I have to say I think it's going to look just fine. It's also gotten me back in the mood to share, so here is a nice photo catalogue of some my social activities of the past couple of months. I'll upload some pics of the progress on the house in another post.

From my trip to Natchitoches with Dad:

This was a great trip! We enjoyed wonderful weather, an awesome Bed and Breakfast about a block away from Natchitoches' historic Front Street, some delicious food, nature hiking, and even a round of golf on Northwestern's golf course. We also got to drive around the area and talk about a lot of family (mostly Dad's) history.

On the way up, we drove by Melrose Plantation, historic home of the painter Clementine Hunter. It wasn't open for tours, so I snapped a couple of pics with my phone and off we went.

After driving around Cloutierville, where we discovered to our absolute horror that the historic Kate Chopin house had burned to the ground, we made our way into town and enjoyed some poboys on Front Street. We played a round of golf, checked in at our B&B, cleaned up, and then ate dinner at a great seafood place called Antoon's, right on the river. The owner of Antoon's, who unfortunately we missed, is the son of the town barber (who my father remembers as one of the only other really avid fishermen on Cane River when he was growing up). We enjoyed delicious food and drank a couple of glasses of red while we watched the moon come up over the far bank. It was a really nice experience. We grabbed a movie and woke up early the next morning to have a steaming cup of coffee on the back porch of our Bed and Breakfast. Here is the porch:


And here are some shots from the porch that morning:






All of the guests of this B&B, the Jefferson House (which I recommend highly), had attended a Mardi Gras ball the night before, and we were the only guests stirring early in the morning. We took a little drive through the town, and when we returned, the proprietors Herman and Arleen Mayeux had breakfast ready. While we ate, we were subject to the cute begging of their two Dachshunds. After they realized that they were dealing with experienced dog-begging-resistors, they curled up in the corner for a nap:


After breakfast, we drove around all over the area, looking at different places Dad had spent time growing up. We ended up in Kisatchie National Forest, where we took a nature hike through land that Dad had camped out / hunted on in his youth. Here are a few pics from the nature hike we did at Longleaf Vista in Kisatchie:





Following our hike, we were a little worried about getting back to Lafayette (and for me, all the way from there to NO) at a decent time, but we couldn't resist heading to Clarence, LA to get a long-awaited taste of Grayson's Barbeque, some of the best barbeque in that part of the state. We arrived at the place in what appeared to be the post-church rush, but they handled our order very quickly and we even got an order of ribs to bring home to Mom. Here is a shot of me outside this mecca of meat:


Following that, we headed home with our bellies full and smiles on our faces.

From Valentine's Day weekend:

Becky and I had a wonderful Valentine's day weekend. There were some parades, but mostly we celebrated a day early by having a night out in the quarter. We began by meeting up at Monaghan's Irish Rose on Conti for a beer, then scooted over to EAT! on Dumaine St. The meal was pretty good, affordable and sans corkage fee for the bottle of wine we brought, but the service was a bit lacking. Fortunately, we were ready to have a good time so we did not let that faze us!

Then we walked over to the House of Blues to see the Old Crow Medicine Show, a great band playing a sort of bluegrass-y folk with a great energy. The show was sold out, but we had purchased tickets the week before and were good to go.



It was an incredible show, and the encore, which ran 4 songs, ended with covers of Neil Young's Tonight's the Night and David Bowie's Ziggy Stardust.

The following day saw some of a parade, but the weather was threatening and I had plans to cook Becky a steak dinner for Valentine's Day, so we walked the 2 blocks back to the apartment a little early. We were a little fatigued from our late night the evening prior and dinner at home was a very nice way to relax.

From various Mardi Gras happenings:

Becky Goes Bananas Mardi Gras day!

This Dragon costume was pretty sweet.

Becky and me, Mardi Gras Day

Proteus Float

Proteus

Nick and Allie's dog Spartacus, dressed as Elvis!

Becky, preparing some essentials for her ride in the Krewe of Mid-City

That's Becky and Dede, right in the center of this picture. Wait! or are they further right?!? Becky! Becky! Throw me something!!!

Here is Becky and Dede's float, #17!

This is a shot from my parade, Muses, when we stopped in front of Gallier Hall.

Kenny and Andrea and me hanging out before the Muses parade.

On Sunday before Mardi Gras, we went to see the Krewe of Barkus, which I think I am going to do every year from now on. Hundreds of costumed dogs, how could you lose? This year, the theme was Batmutt: The Bark Knight, but all I got was a picture of this hot dog somehow.

If you look closely, you will see that there is a Mardi Gras Tiger inside of this parked truck...

This dude, who we saw on Mardi Gras day outside of Molly's, was clearly living the High Life. Here's to you, sir.

What shall we use to fill the empty spaces?

This weekend Jack once again generously offered his time to help me (re)build the wall between the "Master" bathroom and bedroom. This wall had to be moved because it made the bathroom too narrow to house the clawfoot tub that had been installed prior to my purchase of the house. We started the project by determining that the existing antique bedroom baseboard was going to present a problem, both to the wall-building effort as well as the plaster repair / skimcoating yet to come. After we made that realization, it was a simple step to decide to remove it.





As you can see, it was pretty tall, and the horsehair plaster did not reach down behind it, so there is a pretty interesting view of the house sill, floor joists, and general construction of the place. Once the baseboards were removed and safely stowed, we began to lay out our footers.




This was really the first time the new wall started to feel like a reality for me. I could see how far it would extend into the bedroom, and how much room would be available in the new, larger bathroom. Me likey.

About this time, I got a call from my neighbor indicating that a delivery truck was outside of my house. My gas range had arrived! Many, many thanks to Mom and Dad for such an amazing piece of help!


After the footers were down, we used Jack's laser level (which shot laser lines on the floor, wall, and roof) to ensure that our first uprights and headers were all plumb and in proper alignment. At this time, we started to realize that the 2x4's we were using for this project were not the straightest ever cut (thanks, Lowe's), but we forged boldly onward using our framing nail gun and elbow grease to straighten and align them as necessary.


This technique worked very well for all of the single uprights and cross-members in our little addition, but when it came to the outside corner we had a real dilemma. The outside corner basically was built with a pillar of 3 2x4's nailed together, providing outside and inside faces appropriate for the (eventual) sheetrock installation. The twist in the boards, however, became more apparent as the top of this pillar was twisted almost 45 degrees clockwise from the bottom. It was a big setback, so we broke for lunch, making the Taco truck / Jefferson highway Lowe's run. BTW: I love that taco truck, on the lake side of Jeff hwy a few blocks on the downtown side of Lowe's. Don't be scared to try it! At a few fits and starts (and visits to a number of hardware stores besides that Lowe's) we got some clamps that, along with some cleverly cut blocks, allowed us to clamp the twist out of the pillar. Here's a view looking up from the floor at that whole operation:



At that point, it was time to call it a day. We returned to the project Sunday morning with the goal of getting all the way through installing the sheetrock, but even our first step was a little off as we remembered that Home Depot doesn't carry the paperless drywall I want to use in the bathroom, and we had to go to Lowe's, again. However, we picked up the sheetrock we needed along with some Stryp-eez in a spray can Becky wanted to try on the windows and a couple of other needed tools.

Jack and I started off by getting some firebreak pieces installed along with the final upright.


Once that stuff was installed, we ran the electrical outlets in this wall, one facing the bedroom and one facing the bathroom and protected by GFCI.


All in all, it was a very successful morning, so we turned our attention to this twisted pillar. As we removed the clamps, we saw that it wanted to return to its original twisted position. Frustrating, so we decided to shop around a little bit for a solution. After a nice lunch at Gott Gourmet (also recommended... don't be afraid to get the Chicago Dog, it's inexpensive and very good) and yet another trip to home Depot, we felt we had the proper tools to finish this project. Using levers, levels, clamps, elbow grease, and a lot of cursing, we finally got the top of the pillar in line and secured with hurricane braces (shown here). That took all afternoon, and around 5 we decided to call it a day.


I want to thank Jack again for his help. No way I could have done this without him. I hope to have pics of a completed wall in the next couple of weeks!

Always Use Protection

A lot of time this weekend was spent making an accurate representation of the available space on Visio. Saturday I decided I wanted to get enough tarp to properly cover the floors to protect them from the next phase of work, and as I began measuring the floor spaces I realized that I probably only wanted to do that once. So, I included measurements for doors and windows and countertops and such. What I ended up with is a document that I hope continues to be useful for materials estimates and furniture layout. See it below (really, and click on it to get a closeup!):


On Sunday, Becky and I purchased and laid out all of the necessary plastic sheeting, no mean accomlishment since we had to go to Lowe's to pick up the tarps and that place is like a black hole for time. We also purchased a number of sheets of Luan, a low grade light plywood useful for laying down over the plastic in an area where you might be working to protect the floor underneath from dropped tools and such.

While at the store, I ran into some old family friends, Homer Ed and Carolyn, and we spent a nice time catching up before returning to our shopping. On our way home, Becky and I grabbed lunch at the taco stand where I am now becoming a regular. We enjoyed our lunch-from-a-truck on the steps of the house with an orange Fanta, then laid down plastic over all the floors as seen below.





When we were finished laying plastic, we experimented with the idea of sanding and poly-ing the wainscotting, but after a couple of experimental sanding spots turned out a different color than we expected, we decided to drop the idea of sanding. I may still put a coat of poly on the wainscotting, but I am more interested in spending the coming weekend building the new bathroom wall and hanging sheetrock in there.

Right about the time we decided we weren't going to sand, Jack called and requested that I bring back his shop-vac and give him a hand cleaning the other side of his double. I hustled over there and spent the rest of the day sprucing the place up so he would feel good about moving in.

Anyway, we're nearing the point of sheetrock mud and paint, so if you're reading this and feel like getting a putty knife in hand, get in touch!