With the completion of all-new electrical wiring for the dining room, it was time for some soundproofing.
Compared to thermal insulation, sound insulation is a breeze to install. It is rigid enough that there is no need to staple it into place; just cut it where there are interfering wires or joists, compress it a little, and push into place. It has held itself in place for a week so far, while I get mobilized to install some sheetrock.
Something we noticed a while after we moved in was this little wooden house mounted to the willow tree. I climbed up and discovered that it has a bat stenciled on the side! But there appeared to be no current residents. We have seen bats flying around on Main Street in Beacon, though, so we know they are around.
The willow tree is slated for removal, and for one reason or another it seems like the bats decided the old house was not up to their standards. Time to build them a new one!
There are plenty of websites out there about bats and their houses, and I settled on a design for what is called a “rocket” bat house. The rocket design features two living spaces for bats: an outer shell that is cooler and an inner shell where they can get cozy when it is cold. I decided to follow their plans pretty closely, since they take into consideration a lot about bats and their habits and living preferences.
Cutting the wood took most of an afternoon, and I used a lot of handheld power tools. The most trying part was making 1/16″ deep grooves in the boards for improved bat grip. I made a jig and started cutting with a circular saw. An hour and a half and some 500 cuts later, I had learned to saw left-handed and felt like I had just taken an advanced class of lifting free-weights.
The cedar that I purchased is rough on one side, which should have been a dead-giveaway that the boards weren’t nominal sizes. Turns out they are 7/8″ thick rather than 3/4″. When there are multiple shells that need to fit together like a glove, this is a serious problem. Fortunately, the corners still overlap somewhat, so I was able to complete the house without disassembling too much.
I also cut spacer blocks from the cedar as opposed to from a sheet of exterior-grade plywood, as directed in the instructions. I thought that I was being thrifty, but due to the thickness issue mentioned above I had to re-cut spacers of the correct thickness anyway! I actually made two houses, so the practice one is for me and the second version was a late Christmas gift (which will be complete when I help install it in the next few weeks!). I determined how much to trim from the inside boards to correct the dimensional issue so that all of the layers nested properly.
After some primer and exterior paint, the house sat in the laundry room for three months, mounted to the first 8-feet of pole. Then the ground thawed out and I bought an additional 12-foot pole. Together, they raise the top of the bat house to more than 18 feet!
Installing it by myself required multiple ladders, a truck, and many iterations. Tilting the house and pole into place wasn’t something I could achieve simply, since I discovered that the length of the pole and the limited height that I could reach from the ground meant that the assembly became too heavy for one person at about the midpoint of the pole. So I balanced the entire thing on two ladders and drove the truck underneath. I was able to tilt the pole far enough that the base jammed 1/3 of the way into the hole, keeping it from falling backwards. Then I moved the truck parallel to the inclined post and closer to the hole, and used the extra height to stand it up completely. That took about an hour, and at 10am on a Sunday, I am not sure I could have found help faster.
In this image you can see the splice between the cedar pole that connects directly to the bathouse and the pressure-treated pole that is concreted into the ground. I cut a lap splice into each pole, and used galvanized bolts to tightly affix them together. So the weak point in the notches wouldn’t split, I nailed on metal plates that are often used in trusses to add strength on each side. As a final step, I smacked cedar shims into the spaces to make certain that both posts are in full contact.
Diana steadied the post and made sure that it was plumb while I attached a few braces. Then I filled the hole with concrete! The braces will come down in a few days, and we will see how the house and pole perform in the next windstorm. The location I chose follows the guidelines I found online, keeping the house in full sun for a large part of the day, far enough from the trees to discourage predators but close enough that the bats would have a place to go if a squirrel or something came to investigate. I am wondering how I will get up there to do any minor maintenance…
Did you notice that all of the pictures of the closet-in-progress are a weird color? That is because neither closet had a light fixture inside, and all of my photos required me to put a shop light on the floor. Until now!
When I dismantled the old kitchen and subsequently rewired the new kitchen, I ended up severing almost all power to the dining room. Most of the first floor was on only one circuit, and I cut the lifeline to the dining room while fixing the situation. Oops.
My dad and I ran one extra line of new power to get the dining room light going, which I plan to expand for a whole new dining room lighting scheme. But we killed two outlets in the process, and the only juice in the dining room for the last six months has been the lone outlet installed in the 1980′s for the refrigerator.
That dedicated line actually uses contemporary wiring (no cloth-wrapped wires!), and I decided to use it as the starting point to restore power to the rest of the outlets in the dining room, plus get the closet lit.
It turned out that I had to demolish all of the original outlet boxes to do the work; I couldn’t get the original wires loose without blowing out the entire box. And sometimes part of the wall. But then I was able to fish new wire through the old pathways and above the dining room ceiling.
I used the new junction box for the closet fixture as the start point for the new power, bringing in the electricity from the old fridge line and then splitting from there. It took a solid afternoon, but I can now choose any outlet I want to vacuum up all of the dust I make.
While I was at it, I tackled the dining room lights. The exterior light was (and for the moment still is) wired in a flagrantly illegal way; the wire leaves the basement through an old plumbing or oil conduit, runs up the outside of the house without protections, comes briefly into the house to tap into a light switch, then carries on to the fixture, which is waterproofed with duct tape. I will be removing the whole mess shortly! I put a new switch at the main control station in the dining room, and have a wire run and ready to punch through the wall and right into a new, waterproof junction box.
Four more of my favorite recessed lights have been installed as well, to light either end of the dining room. And finally, the central light fixture now has both switches and 3-way operation, so we can control it from either end of the dining room. Now there is a lot of plaster to repair, specifically in the image above where an entire run of illegal wire had been cast right in to the plaster not 1/4″ from the back of the old kitchen counter. Yikes.
I must make an addendum to my sparkling post. Because I have so many gallons of joint compound around, I tend to use it to patch everything. But I was hesitant to use it on the brad nails at the kitchen toe kicks – it takes a long time to dry, isn’t very resilient, and soaks up the first coat of paint. I don’t really even want to touch-up the toe kicks! So the paint store guy recommended MH Ready Patch. This stuff is actually spackle! It doesn’t shrink, it dries in half an hour, and it sands beautifully. I only have a half pint of the stuff, and it will probably last me a few projects-worth of spackling, but I am looking forward to it. Did I mention that it smells great?
What better way to try out a brad nailer than on your new kitchen toe kicks?
Step one, cut all toe kicks. The cabinets came with four long pieces of toe kick painted to match, and I borrowed a rusty miter saw to make the precision cuts.
I have learned that the proper way to borrow tools is to return them slightly improved, so this one has a new blade on it for when it goes back to Albany! It already got a steel wool rub-down and some WD-40ing, and something must be done about the delaminating base… Anyway, it did the trick and I got all of the pieces cut, with only a surprising 5″ of material to spare.
I conducted a thorough nailing test, and mostly got a hang of setting the pressure to just merely overdrive the brads. A couple ended up a bit proud, but most of them are hidden up beneath the cabinet edge, so no big deal. Using a nail set to finish brad nails is way tougher than setting normal finishing nails.
The floor is not level at all, so I have some caulking in my future to close up the last little gap.
Around the end of the peninsula, I had shimmed the cabinets up almost a full inch because of the floor slope. In order to conceal that extra space, I decided to carry the toe kicks all of the way around.
In these spots, my nailing is more visible, and I has a few misfires! With a little touch-up paint, I think we will be in great shape. Or maybe I can get away with spackle alone…
I am eager to nail more and more things now, and can only imagine how much easier it would have been to reattach all of the basement baseboards with the pneumatic finish nailer I now have in my possession. Look out, upcoming projects – the nail guns are coming for you.
Today’s quiz!
a. How the wall looks after you fall off an improperly balanced ladder.
b. A new form of renovator’s art, in which you carve initials into your projects.
c. Investigation in progress to locate the cause of an unusual odor…
d. Tactful, minimal demolition to excise old wiring and rewire a junction box.
The answer, of course, is…
…not related to this photo of over-filled spray insulation. The answer is “d”, a carefully cut hole I used to sever the old armor-clad wire from a living room light switch and gain access to unscrew the original connection. Just enough access for a screwdriver at the correct angle, and a sawzall.
Spring is (almost) here, and wouldn’t it be great to get back the closet on our main floor? We used to have two closets – one for coats, appliances, and cleaning stuff, the other one for random storage. Since October, both have been out of commission!
Now that the kitchen is just about complete, I decided that this “small” project should get wrapped up ASAP. I first needed to complete the demo, since I had left the original studs in place that divided the two closets.
Cutting those out took an entire afternoon! Turns out that the ends of the wall had a weird return piece, which made them a nightmare to pry away without destroying the rest of the walls.
I salvaged most of the old studs, yanked out some monstrous 3 1/2 inch nails, and cut the studs to frame in the kitchen ductwork.
To make the enclosure as tight as possible to the bottom of the duct, I installed some of the pieces flat, which made for an interesting assembly.
I used my favorite screws instead of nails to build the enclosure. Future renovators may find it impossible to demolish my work without heavy artillery.
It isn’t going to budge! I plan to use some leftover sheetrock to box in the duct. I will spare you all of the details you’ve already heard about (scraping, spackling, and baseboards), and just post a finished photo upon completion!
Christmas has finally arrived for the cats, three months late. With the removal of the old dishwasher, a perfect spot for a cat door became available.
I had to chisel out some trim to make room, and there is still plenty of paint to scrape. With a drill and jigsaw and lots of banging, I made yet another hole in the dining room walls.
The door is called the “SureFlap Microchip Cat Flap”, which is just a weird enough name that I think it must be a result of translation from German.
The key feature is that the door only opens for certain animals; it reads the ID microchips in the cats’ necks and unlocks the door when the cats step into the tunnel. I bet you didn’t know that Sam and Gus are part robot. They got microchipped last year after many lost collars. They each have their own personal number.
The microchip reader prevents raccoons and squirrels and vagrant cats from visiting us, unless they follow Sam or Gus in a high-speed chase. From inside, our cats can theoretically push the door open and go on adventures as they please, which should be their definition of heaven. The humans in the house are equally excited since we won’t have to hear so many meows begging to go outside or to come back in every ten minutes. That is, once the duds figure out that the clear plastic is a door they can push open with their noses, not just a special cat-height window.
To ease the furballs into it, the microchip feature isn’t activated yet. After one week, Gus is getting the hang of it. He heads out each morning and comes back home for the night while I am cooking dinner. Sam, on the other hand, is an old cat who doesn’t really want to learn anything new. The door seems to make him apprehensive – he likes to just look out of it, and still meows for the personal concierge service he is used to. If we nudge the cat flap open, he might stick his nose in, but he needs a push to go all of the way through. Keep working on it, Sam!
The door also has a locking mechanism that can be set in various ways. For instance, it can let the guys in at night, but then not let them back out so they stay in when it gets dark. Or the opposite, they can go out but not come back in, for those nice spring days when Gus is sure to catch a vole and want to bring it home with him.
It is only a matter of time until the duds will come and go as they please. Let’s hear it for cat freedom! Has anyone else tried these newfangled pet doors?
The kitchen is painted! The color is cape may cobblestone (Benjamin Moore), very similar to the grays in the basement, except less blue. It goes very well with the grout. I have counted the cans of paint in the basement, and this is the twelfth one – who knew that so many colors could fit into one house?
It is just barely spring here. Bulbs have sent up shoots, but no sign of blooms yet. The forest remains brown and dormant. Toad friend is nowhere in sight. The forsythia had almost certainly bloomed by this time last year, but no action here. Saturday was almost warm and Brian and I set about some garden prep. He wanted to build some raised beds, and once the sun came out, I ventured outdoors to help, with Sam cat following cautiously.
Using some wood that formerly served as his Dad’s pergola, Brian fashioned two raised beds by early afternoon. They are for the south side of the garden, where my indigo happily grew last year. Where will the indigo grow this year? Good question. I didn’t see it on the garden plan. Seems Brian has evicted it from the vegetable garden, so maybe I’ll try it on the other side of the fence.
Anyway, in addition to building the raised beds, Brian also went to the transfer station and returned with a whole truckload of free compost. We filled the raised beds, then dispersed the remaining compost on the future vegetable rows, covering each with a layer of wood and leaf chips. I think this is lasagna gardening? We probably should mix up the compost with the real soil later, before planting the rows.
This week, early seeds will go into in the beds, namely spinach, carrots, parsnips and lacinato kale (my favorite). No CSA for us this year, so we are aiming for abundant and varied crops to make up for it. Now all we need is a nice sunny day to fire up the barbeque, and it will really be spring…