The Art of Speaking Too Soon

I think we've just about mastered it...

In yet another chapter of deconstruction, we've consulted with Green Hammer extensively on the pros and cons of salvaging the kitchen/bathroom wall vs. reframing it. This section of the house, which we are calling the North Annex, or just the Annex, used to be a covered porch. Sometime in the early 20th century, the then-owners decided to close it up so that they could expand the interior footprint of the first floor and add a kitchen and bathroom. This is quite common in Portland (and I imagine elsewhere), and was the case with our previous home over by Reed College, which is not far from here.

The problem we've run into is that the original framing is critically unstable, out of level and plumb, and was pieced together as if it was only going to be temporary. If my Dad saw this work he'd say a "half-job" did it (that was my nickname from about the age of 11 through 16). It's turned out to be some of the worst construction in the house, and its discovery comes at a particularly sensitive financial time given all the added and unplanned work that's already gone into this project.

So after intense consideration of the magnitude and value of rebuilding this part of the house, we've decided to pull the siding off, remove the windows we just installed, and then reframe the whole North and West walls (the East wall is in decent condition so we're leaving it alone). We're keeping the roof, which is now sound, thanks to some rafter retrofits GH did late last week.

If you don't have your bearings, this photo is taken from about where the island will be, looking North, through the once and future kitchen and bathroom.

• 4/17 :: Daniel adds : So I guess the question has to be asked, at this point would it have been cheaper to build an entirely new house?

• 4/17 :: We add: No comment.
  

West Side Update

This is what the West side of the house looks like right now. Not much has changed in the last month or so, but you can see that we've got windows and doors in. The basement window under the french doors (which will open onto the main deck) has been patched, reframed and reinstalled. The window at the top of the photo isn't warped or bent--the photo stitching process causes anomalies like that. (I created this montage from about a dozen photos.)

HVAC

Heating and ventilation ductwork, compared to the labor required to install it, is pennies on the dollar. The existing ductwork in the house was so badly beat up and bent that our HVAC (Heating, Ventilation and Air Conditioning) guy decided to rip out all the old stuff for recycling instead of fuss with it. He's begun putting in the new lines, some of which will be in the same places in the home as before, and some of which will be deleted, moved, and added.

The inset photo is a box of new elbow joints.

More Windows

The North side stair tower windows are in.

Stairwell Divider

We decided against a completely open stairwell with a railing wrapping up the center. Instead, we're putting in a solid wall up to the 1.5 landing, and then sloping that part of the wall up to the second floor. From the 1.5 landing to 2nd floor landing we'll use a handrail with spindles so that the South and West light coming in can reach farther down into the stairwell and ultimately into the kitchen on the opposite side of the house. As this comes together we'll post more photos and it'll probably make a lot more sense than it does right now.

Bathroom Wall

After many calculations, measurements, re-calculations and re-measurements, we've placed the wall that will separate the kitchen from the bathroom. Working in a confined space like this, trying to get the kitchen cabinets just right while not taking too much away from the bathroom has been a juggling act and we've had about a 1" margin of error to work with. We have so little space here, in fact, that we had to turn the 2x4 studs on edge to make a thinner wall.

The jog in the wall will allow us to recess the fridge so that the front of it is flush with the cabinet fronts.

Kitchen/Bath Underbelly

The kitchen and bathroom windows are in, but we've taken the skirting off to do some maintenance underneath. This part of the house was once a porch and pantry and sits outside the main foundation of the home. The stilts on which this part sits rest on concrete blocks and closer inspection suggests that we will probably need to do some shoring up of the structure--perhaps another post or two and some poured concrete to stabilize the base. It's been our intention from the start to remove the skirting and then panel, side, and insulate this crawl space because otherwise the winter drafts blowing through it would suck the heat right through our kitchen and bathroom floors.

The shot on the left is the Northwest corner of the house. The shot on the right is the Northeast.

Here's what it looked like before we took the skirting and side-access door off.

When Times are Tough...

...insulate your walls with used lunch bags. Yeah, no kidding, we really found this jammed in behind the bathroom window exterior trim. Hey, whatever slows the draft, I guess.

• 4/9 :: Jeremy adds : So what did the guy have for lunch. A peanut-butter sandwich??? That is crazy fun to find.

Earth Advantage Certification Part 1

A week or so ago, Rachael, Alex (project head), Stephen (Green Hammer owner) and Rebecca (helps navigate green certification processes) met with Glen Wear at Earth Advantage. Earth Advantage was once an energy-reduction program run through PGE and is now an independent (of PGE and Enron, thankfully!) non-profit that works with homeowners, developers and contractors. The primary focus of Earth Advantage remains energy management, but now extends to include indoor air quality, environmentally responsible building practices and resource efficiency.

We worked with Glen to identify the specific aspects of our remodel that are, and are not, green. The list was 19 pages long, and while we didn't have every box on every page checked, it was evident that we had made many intentional, sustainable choices. Some of those choices were ours--we knew we wanted: a house with a smaller footprint, to reuse as much as possible, to use FSC certified wood and low-VOC paints and primers, to create a drip irrigation system, and so on--but many others came from Green Hammer. Many of their "green" practices are inherent to the way the company runs. These include Non-required erosion control, recycling what can't be reused, reusing all that can be, participating in green building symposiums and buying locally.

We'll hear back from Glen in the next week or so with some suggestions for improvement as well as some cost estimates (non profit does not mean free!). Glen will need to test some air flow aspects to see how leaky our house is and how quickly air recycles. More on this when we get there!

Uncrumbled

We had to fix the rough opening of this basement window. The concrete around it was crumbling badly and the wood was beginning to show signs of deterioration and rot. Since this window will soon be obstructed by a deck, it's better to take care of it now rather than wait. We're keeping the window despite the deck because we'll still want to be able to ventilate the basement bedroom/office with a cross-breeze.

This window is in the Southwest corner of the basement. The view is facing Northwest, into the back yard.

Seismic Plates

These seismic plates are installed in nine or ten places around the basement. If the earth starts shaking, they'll help prevent the sill plates from walking off the foundation. The bolts along the bottom edges are epoxied into the concrete (yes, with city-approved epoxy!). This page at Seismic Safety has a good overview, with illustrations, on how you go about retrofitting your house for earthquake resistance.

Earthquake Insurance

Unlike the prescriptive hold-down anchors we used in the stair tower, this is a retrofit hold-down anchor. They look the same, but the difference is that these bolts are sunk into holes drilled into the 100-year-old concrete foundation underneath. They're held in place with epoxy instead of the poured concrete that would otherwise dry around the prescriptive type of anchor.

When you install a retrofit hold-down in Portland, you have to pay a certified testing and inspection company to stand there while your contractors epoxy them into place. This is the most we've ever paid anyone to stand and watch something happen. At least the engineer, Anthony, was a nice guy.

The upside (ha!) is now that we're officially on record as having used city-approved epoxy, we'll hopefully be able to get earthquake insurance. This is probably a good thing to have if you live on the Ring of Fire. We won't know for sure until we talk with our home insurer. We'll be sure to update you later on their verdict.

Kitchen Demo Close-Up

At the risk of sounding redundant, this is a very busy mess.

This is Our House on Drugs

Apparently, we can't get enough deconstruction. We'd really thought that was behind us. Are we addicts? The builders called us this afternoon to inform us that it would be far easier to solve some kitchen and bathroom plumbing, electrical and insulation problems by tearing down to the studs instead of fussing with fish tapes and jigsaws on and behind the existing finished surfaces.

The wooden ceiling boards over the kitchen came down first, which revealed ceiling support beams at 34" intervals. Compare to modern wall studs at 16" or ceiling joists at 12". This means that there's not a whole lot of support for the ceiling, especially if we're going to have roofers and painters up there in a couple of months. Green Hammer is going to add retrofitted interleaved supports so that we've got them every 17" or so.

This is a big mess, but in the long run it's going to save us a lot of headache and money because it'll make the systems jobs a lot easier. After this, there's not much left to deconstruct except for the side access basement door (in the plan, but not done yet) and the garage (not in the plan, but coming summer of '08 or '09).

Recycled Windows

These are the old kitchen windows. We are going to reuse the muntined sashes as interior windows in the first floor landing walls. The idea is to bring some of the West-side light that enters the stair tower into the kitchen. If this doesn't make sense right now, stay tuned... the windows will probably be installed in the next week or so.