Well, I took quite a plunge just now. I hope I did the right thing. I've done a lot of research in the past few days and have decided to go green and healthy when it comes to the paint I use on and in my house and on my floors.
I just got the following from solventfreepaint.com:
Item Name: Boiled Linseed Oil 5 Liters
Item Number: 50345
Quantity: 2
Item Name: Linseed Wax Liter
Item Number: 50020
Quantity: 3
Item Name: Le Tonkinois Linseed Varnish NO 1 2.5 Liter;item_number=0100
Quantity: 2
Item Name: Linseed Glazing 3 Liter
Item Number: 50380
Quantity: 1
Item Name: Custard Linseed Paint
Item Number: 50008
Quantity: 12
Item Name: White Linseed Paint 3 Gallon
Item Number: 50247
Quantity: 1
Item Name: Pail and Hanger
Item Number: 63722500
Quantity: 1
Item Name: Double Wide Mixed Brush
Item Number: 377200
Quantity: 2
Item Name: Adjustable 4ft to 6ft ANZA Handle
Item Number: 620016
Quantity: 2
Item Name: Wood Oil Linseed Paint Mixed Brush
Item Number: 313120
Quantity: 2
Item Name: Natural Oil Brush 1in
Item Number: 201030
Quantity: 1
Item Name: Natural Oil Brush 2in
Item Number: 201050
Quantity: 1
Item Name: Natural Oil Brush 1 3/8in
Item Number: 201040
Quantity: 1
Item Name: Linseed Soap 5 Liter
Item Number: 50433
Quantity: 1
Item Name: Raw Linseed Oil 5 Liter
Item Number: 50347
Quantity: 4
With any real good luck, it will get here this weekend so that I can start. The company representative said that the wood would be protected as soon as I get a coat of raw linseed oil on it. It would also help to soften the pealing paint already on the house. I am also getting a silent paint remover. Yes, biting the bullet. That I don't need as quickly since I was making an IR paint remover as well. Plenty of work to do (miles to go before I sleep and all like that). No boredom here. And I'll have lots of time to contemplate the world and my place in it while I scrape paint.
ZEN.
I suspect that I'll also end up using the real milk paint on the interior of the house, too. It's a terrible thing to find out about the healthy alternatives that work better than their modern cheap counterparts - guilt works at me until it is deafening and I can't stand it. Sigh. No more Lowes "Opps" paint for me. But then, apparently, I won't be needing it as often anyway.
Tuesday, October 28, 2008
Monday, October 27, 2008
Progress, regress, sidesteps, back burners
Yes, yes that's it in a nutshell. And I owe you some pictures, too, I suppose. I'm very sorry I have none prepared, but some are coming and my lack of attention to this website does not mean that there has been a lack of attention to the houses.
It just seems that way.
You know how sometimes you get to a spot where you realize there is so much to do that nothing seems big enough to make a dent - to be worthwhile doing? I was there, but I worked through it.
I actually have two houses right now, you see. I am trying like hell to move into this little bungalow, but the fates are conspiring against me so far. Still, I worked past a few mental blocks the past few weeks.
In the current house, I have to finish a few things. There was a SAGA. An unexpected loss. A tragedy, really. I'll start with the back porch.
THE BACK PORCH
The back porch is a screen room with a flat roof and decked floor overlooking and acre of wooded property. It is quite nice, really. The rafters are exposed from the inside of the room. I have a previously freecycled patio set that I sanded and painted with hammered finish rustoleum paint and made cushions for. I have various candles and statuary and lanterns. I plan on moving these things to the front porch of the bungalow. A few months ago (I am a master procrastinator!) a peice of the aluminum trim fell off the side of the outside of the porch. I bought a ladder. I planned on climbing up there and addressing the small amount of wood rot I saw with some sort of boracare or timbor and hardener and maybe sistering the thing and tacking the trim back on. Months pass and I'm getting ready to rent the place out, right? I finally climb up there. Dan climbs up there, too. Oh, it is rotted. Not just a little. CaRpEnTeR AnTs and the realization that the flat roof is in terrible shape. I should have had it replaced with the rest of the roof 3.5 years ago - hindsight is 50/50. Disappointment. Fatigue. Dan digs out the rotten boards and he keeps digging. It's worse than originally thought. I go inside and look at the rafters at the ends. The gutters are holding on by a thread. The ends of the rafters are rotten and there are mushrooms growing on the rotten soffit wood. Woe and misery. Dan tacks the trim back on and I call the exterminator in the morning to treat for the carpenter ants. Combat Pest Control out of Knoxville, TN is always so nice and professional, by the way. So, they recommend some people and I also call the people who did my roof in the first place. So Westbrook comes out to do the estimate and they were really nice. The first part of the estimate was to get the wood repaired, and that part came in low, so I thought the whole bid would be low, so then Matthew Millsaps came in to look at the job and I told them that I had a hard budget top of XYZ. They were also nice. Interesting to note that both places bid the same fix and same materials. Anyway, long story short, the bid was won by Matthew Millsaps by over $700! I mean, that was totally blown out of the water. Amazing how the places can vary in price. They did the original roof, so they will also warrent the connection between the two roofs, so that is better as well. I cannot believe that the other place wanted almost 1/3 more for the job. Pays to shop around. They start on Wednesday. This was an unexpected expense, but the back porch will have an EPDM fully adhered rubber roof with drip edge and the rotten parts will be removed, the rafter will be sistered and the porch edge will be cut back and the gutters reworked and cleaned out and the wooden soffit removed and the vinyl left in place (but cut back of course) and my roof will not have to be messed with for the next 30 years. Literally. Good Karma for me since I will probably sell this house - I did not cover over a problem.
THE BATHROOM
The hall bathroom in the big house I want to move OUT of had a problem when my parents were visiting. We had discovered rain in the basement and a leak of some magnitude in the drain of the hall bathroom that ruined the wall, the floor, the vanity, etc. The bathroom basically had to be semi-gutted. Another unexpected and unintended expense and "improvement". Dad and I started it. We removed the floor, the walls behind the vanity, we remediated the mold by removing it and we scraped the studs. We also sprayed lime sulfer on anything left over (very little). Dad and I then installed plywood subflooring and cementboard over that. Dad and I installed drywall where the wall was taken out. I then leveled the floor with two bags of leveling cement. Then the door would not close, so I cut off the end of the door and reinforced the bottom because it is hollow. Then Dad laid the 3x3" tile (sandstone color). I then grouted the floor (also in sandstone color). Dan and I installed the same toilet three times until we got it not to leak. We love installing toilets, and find it a soothing zen-like activity. We delight in things like finding out the bolts are too short or the rings not wide enough. We live for this stuff. I personally like how the excess wax ring residue that squirts through the mounting holes moisturizes my skin. :( There the forlorn hall bath sat for weeks until this past weekend. I finally got around to chiseling out the grout on the wall tile and regrouting! This is an activity that is almost as fun as installing toilets, but not quite. Now, I know that this may seem horrible to the purists out there, but I tried two kinds of grout for regrouting. Bear in mind that I did chisel out at least 1/8" depth of grout. I tried regular unsanded grout and it would not stick and was messy. Then I tried adhesive premixed grout in bright white - a winner. Not as bright as the regular grout and it seems to be more of a latex product, but it is ok for use in wet locations (good because this is in the shower!) and it went on smoothly and stuck in the joints! It almost stuck too well - I dropped some on the sandstone colored grout ont he floor and it took a lot of elbow greese to remove it. The entire hall bathroom has been regrouted now. Then Vincent and I brought up and installed the New Vanity. It matches the Wall Unit. It is "Sandlewood" in color and it is beautiful. Instead if the knobs it came with, we went for a custom look with fish shaped pewter knobs we ordered many moons ago. I was one short, but I called my Mom who had one extra (we liked them so much we all got fish knobs!). In that bathroom, I still have to wash off the grout haze, clean the bathtub, figure out why it won't drain (probably because of grout and cement - I will remove the trap underneath), install the molding around the floor perimeter and the granite countertop and sink and plumbing for said sink. I will also install the air vent and then will be finished. I'm 90% there.
THE ASBESTOS DEBACLE
So, this past Monday, I was very sick. I had a sinus and ear infection. The doc gave me methylprednisalone and some antibiotic that sounded more like a charitable organization: Omnicef. On the way back from the doctor's office I stopped by the tiny bungalow to drop off the PEX-A plumbing stuff that had just arrived and I thought I'd measure the window (or, rather, gaping hole in the side of my house). I was measuring the hole and CRUNCH and I looked down and asbestos was crunching under my feet. I looked up and asbestos shingle pieces were falling out of the soffits! I had hired a LICENSED asbestos abatement company to remove the asbestos transite siding from my house, but they decided to break off the pieces at the soffit level because they "didn't know what my intentions were for the house" and thought I would want to keep my soffits. Nice. No, I did not, I told them. I want the asbestos gone, please, all of it. They said no problem and they would be back at no charge to finish up. At that time, they would also get the asbestos wrapped pipes I had in my basement. A few weeks passed and then we had a cold snap over night. But it is Tennessee and it got really cold - under freezing - and then warm (upwards of 70) during the day for two days in a row. I think this caused the soffits (wood) to expand with the rafters (wood) against the siding (wood) releasing the pinched in asbestos siding (not wood, not affixed). It's a guess. But I had asbestos all around my house, raining down around me. Nice. I stopped breathing immediately and ran away shaking my hair out (still not breathing) and then rinsed off in water (cold - not breathing) and drove home - sick, soaked and probably covered in asbestos. I took an immediate shower, bagged my clothing, mopped the floors where I walked and washed the clothes and called the asbestos abatement company. They said they would take care of it right away, but they would need $250 more for the interior asbestos. Okay - that was fine (previously discussed this - I was ok with this). But they needed me to drop off a key under the bathtub (on the front porch - I'm classy like that) right away. No rest for the weary! I had to go to lowes, get a key made and drive all the way back to tiny bungalow and put the key under the bathtub. When I got back home, I fell over. I never felt more sick. But maybe this was all a blessing in disguise? I'm hoping my snot protected my from harmful asbestos. I actually think I'm fine.
The company came and removed the rest of the asbestos. They also removed the large amount from inside the house - it looked like bandage-wrapped pipes - it was old duct work.
EXTERIOR WORK PROGRESSES BUT IS THWARTED BY VICIOUS DOG
Well, the HAZMAT team may have removed the rest of the asbestos, but they didn't put the house back together at all. That's ok, but they didn't put the plywood back over the gaping hole in the side of the house (the hole that needs a window). I guess I thought they would have put that one piece of plywood back. This hole has pink batting insulation in it and behind that is drywall into the living room. The asbestos hazmat team never called to tell me they finished the job, so I did not know the thing was open. It has rained for three days. So yesterday me and Vincent went over there after giving it a good sunny day to dry out. We took the big orange ladder and nails and hammer and thank goodness we did not find a giant pink fiberglass sponge. :) We pulled out the insulation in case it was damp (we use gloves, so can't really tell if it is damp). Meanwhile, the black and white dog that has been terrorizing us was back. We made no eye contact and we thought he would leave us alone (HE is obviously a HE - no questions). He did at first. But then a car had to stop in front of the house. I was on the ladder and the car honked. I looked. They yell "Is this your Dog??!" I yell "NO" - the dog bites the tire. they back up and beep. I don't know if it hurt the dog or not, but after that the dog was truly ticked off. We were pulling off the tar paper encasing our house and taking the tar paper to the trash bins at the street and the dog charged Vincent. Barking and snarling. Unprovoked. Not even looked at. I called animal control, but they said they could do nothing until someone had actually been bitten.
We have about 30% of the tar paper off the outside of the house, and in trash bins. The plan at this point is to stabilize the house so I can later strip it and repaint it. So I plan on repainting it OVER the current lead paint just to encapsulate it, then going back with an infrared heat stripper and doing a section at a time to repaint the same color. We are definately leaning toward the sunshiney apricot-ey yellow. It is a historic color. We will roll paint. I noticed that the rafters seem to be in OK shape. Someone nailed rotten wood TO them in order to, well, I'm not sure why - something to do with the ugly soffits maybe? But I think we are OK there. The plan is to get the rest of the tar paper off and start painting next weekend!
GARAGE SALES AND DONATIONS
There is an inventory reduction sale going on at Tallahassee Junk Emporium! This coincides with Walker Academy's First Annual Flea Market, Pancake Breakfast and Bake Sale! Nobody needs to bring anything else. I could pretty much provide everything they need to run a successful flea market. I am finding stuff I had no idea I had. It will be good to donate to the school.
The Sale is November 15th at Walker Academy on Lovell Rd. in Knoxville, TN. Come support the kids and Vincent's school! You know I have to get rid of half my things to fit into the tiny bungalow - some af them are really really truely great and fantastic wondrous things! Come One, Come All!
It just seems that way.
You know how sometimes you get to a spot where you realize there is so much to do that nothing seems big enough to make a dent - to be worthwhile doing? I was there, but I worked through it.
I actually have two houses right now, you see. I am trying like hell to move into this little bungalow, but the fates are conspiring against me so far. Still, I worked past a few mental blocks the past few weeks.
In the current house, I have to finish a few things. There was a SAGA. An unexpected loss. A tragedy, really. I'll start with the back porch.
THE BACK PORCH
The back porch is a screen room with a flat roof and decked floor overlooking and acre of wooded property. It is quite nice, really. The rafters are exposed from the inside of the room. I have a previously freecycled patio set that I sanded and painted with hammered finish rustoleum paint and made cushions for. I have various candles and statuary and lanterns. I plan on moving these things to the front porch of the bungalow. A few months ago (I am a master procrastinator!) a peice of the aluminum trim fell off the side of the outside of the porch. I bought a ladder. I planned on climbing up there and addressing the small amount of wood rot I saw with some sort of boracare or timbor and hardener and maybe sistering the thing and tacking the trim back on. Months pass and I'm getting ready to rent the place out, right? I finally climb up there. Dan climbs up there, too. Oh, it is rotted. Not just a little. CaRpEnTeR AnTs and the realization that the flat roof is in terrible shape. I should have had it replaced with the rest of the roof 3.5 years ago - hindsight is 50/50. Disappointment. Fatigue. Dan digs out the rotten boards and he keeps digging. It's worse than originally thought. I go inside and look at the rafters at the ends. The gutters are holding on by a thread. The ends of the rafters are rotten and there are mushrooms growing on the rotten soffit wood. Woe and misery. Dan tacks the trim back on and I call the exterminator in the morning to treat for the carpenter ants. Combat Pest Control out of Knoxville, TN is always so nice and professional, by the way. So, they recommend some people and I also call the people who did my roof in the first place. So Westbrook comes out to do the estimate and they were really nice. The first part of the estimate was to get the wood repaired, and that part came in low, so I thought the whole bid would be low, so then Matthew Millsaps came in to look at the job and I told them that I had a hard budget top of XYZ. They were also nice. Interesting to note that both places bid the same fix and same materials. Anyway, long story short, the bid was won by Matthew Millsaps by over $700! I mean, that was totally blown out of the water. Amazing how the places can vary in price. They did the original roof, so they will also warrent the connection between the two roofs, so that is better as well. I cannot believe that the other place wanted almost 1/3 more for the job. Pays to shop around. They start on Wednesday. This was an unexpected expense, but the back porch will have an EPDM fully adhered rubber roof with drip edge and the rotten parts will be removed, the rafter will be sistered and the porch edge will be cut back and the gutters reworked and cleaned out and the wooden soffit removed and the vinyl left in place (but cut back of course) and my roof will not have to be messed with for the next 30 years. Literally. Good Karma for me since I will probably sell this house - I did not cover over a problem.
THE BATHROOM
The hall bathroom in the big house I want to move OUT of had a problem when my parents were visiting. We had discovered rain in the basement and a leak of some magnitude in the drain of the hall bathroom that ruined the wall, the floor, the vanity, etc. The bathroom basically had to be semi-gutted. Another unexpected and unintended expense and "improvement". Dad and I started it. We removed the floor, the walls behind the vanity, we remediated the mold by removing it and we scraped the studs. We also sprayed lime sulfer on anything left over (very little). Dad and I then installed plywood subflooring and cementboard over that. Dad and I installed drywall where the wall was taken out. I then leveled the floor with two bags of leveling cement. Then the door would not close, so I cut off the end of the door and reinforced the bottom because it is hollow. Then Dad laid the 3x3" tile (sandstone color). I then grouted the floor (also in sandstone color). Dan and I installed the same toilet three times until we got it not to leak. We love installing toilets, and find it a soothing zen-like activity. We delight in things like finding out the bolts are too short or the rings not wide enough. We live for this stuff. I personally like how the excess wax ring residue that squirts through the mounting holes moisturizes my skin. :( There the forlorn hall bath sat for weeks until this past weekend. I finally got around to chiseling out the grout on the wall tile and regrouting! This is an activity that is almost as fun as installing toilets, but not quite. Now, I know that this may seem horrible to the purists out there, but I tried two kinds of grout for regrouting. Bear in mind that I did chisel out at least 1/8" depth of grout. I tried regular unsanded grout and it would not stick and was messy. Then I tried adhesive premixed grout in bright white - a winner. Not as bright as the regular grout and it seems to be more of a latex product, but it is ok for use in wet locations (good because this is in the shower!) and it went on smoothly and stuck in the joints! It almost stuck too well - I dropped some on the sandstone colored grout ont he floor and it took a lot of elbow greese to remove it. The entire hall bathroom has been regrouted now. Then Vincent and I brought up and installed the New Vanity. It matches the Wall Unit. It is "Sandlewood" in color and it is beautiful. Instead if the knobs it came with, we went for a custom look with fish shaped pewter knobs we ordered many moons ago. I was one short, but I called my Mom who had one extra (we liked them so much we all got fish knobs!). In that bathroom, I still have to wash off the grout haze, clean the bathtub, figure out why it won't drain (probably because of grout and cement - I will remove the trap underneath), install the molding around the floor perimeter and the granite countertop and sink and plumbing for said sink. I will also install the air vent and then will be finished. I'm 90% there.
THE ASBESTOS DEBACLE
So, this past Monday, I was very sick. I had a sinus and ear infection. The doc gave me methylprednisalone and some antibiotic that sounded more like a charitable organization: Omnicef. On the way back from the doctor's office I stopped by the tiny bungalow to drop off the PEX-A plumbing stuff that had just arrived and I thought I'd measure the window (or, rather, gaping hole in the side of my house). I was measuring the hole and CRUNCH and I looked down and asbestos was crunching under my feet. I looked up and asbestos shingle pieces were falling out of the soffits! I had hired a LICENSED asbestos abatement company to remove the asbestos transite siding from my house, but they decided to break off the pieces at the soffit level because they "didn't know what my intentions were for the house" and thought I would want to keep my soffits. Nice. No, I did not, I told them. I want the asbestos gone, please, all of it. They said no problem and they would be back at no charge to finish up. At that time, they would also get the asbestos wrapped pipes I had in my basement. A few weeks passed and then we had a cold snap over night. But it is Tennessee and it got really cold - under freezing - and then warm (upwards of 70) during the day for two days in a row. I think this caused the soffits (wood) to expand with the rafters (wood) against the siding (wood) releasing the pinched in asbestos siding (not wood, not affixed). It's a guess. But I had asbestos all around my house, raining down around me. Nice. I stopped breathing immediately and ran away shaking my hair out (still not breathing) and then rinsed off in water (cold - not breathing) and drove home - sick, soaked and probably covered in asbestos. I took an immediate shower, bagged my clothing, mopped the floors where I walked and washed the clothes and called the asbestos abatement company. They said they would take care of it right away, but they would need $250 more for the interior asbestos. Okay - that was fine (previously discussed this - I was ok with this). But they needed me to drop off a key under the bathtub (on the front porch - I'm classy like that) right away. No rest for the weary! I had to go to lowes, get a key made and drive all the way back to tiny bungalow and put the key under the bathtub. When I got back home, I fell over. I never felt more sick. But maybe this was all a blessing in disguise? I'm hoping my snot protected my from harmful asbestos. I actually think I'm fine.
The company came and removed the rest of the asbestos. They also removed the large amount from inside the house - it looked like bandage-wrapped pipes - it was old duct work.
EXTERIOR WORK PROGRESSES BUT IS THWARTED BY VICIOUS DOG
Well, the HAZMAT team may have removed the rest of the asbestos, but they didn't put the house back together at all. That's ok, but they didn't put the plywood back over the gaping hole in the side of the house (the hole that needs a window). I guess I thought they would have put that one piece of plywood back. This hole has pink batting insulation in it and behind that is drywall into the living room. The asbestos hazmat team never called to tell me they finished the job, so I did not know the thing was open. It has rained for three days. So yesterday me and Vincent went over there after giving it a good sunny day to dry out. We took the big orange ladder and nails and hammer and thank goodness we did not find a giant pink fiberglass sponge. :) We pulled out the insulation in case it was damp (we use gloves, so can't really tell if it is damp). Meanwhile, the black and white dog that has been terrorizing us was back. We made no eye contact and we thought he would leave us alone (HE is obviously a HE - no questions). He did at first. But then a car had to stop in front of the house. I was on the ladder and the car honked. I looked. They yell "Is this your Dog??!" I yell "NO" - the dog bites the tire. they back up and beep. I don't know if it hurt the dog or not, but after that the dog was truly ticked off. We were pulling off the tar paper encasing our house and taking the tar paper to the trash bins at the street and the dog charged Vincent. Barking and snarling. Unprovoked. Not even looked at. I called animal control, but they said they could do nothing until someone had actually been bitten.
We have about 30% of the tar paper off the outside of the house, and in trash bins. The plan at this point is to stabilize the house so I can later strip it and repaint it. So I plan on repainting it OVER the current lead paint just to encapsulate it, then going back with an infrared heat stripper and doing a section at a time to repaint the same color. We are definately leaning toward the sunshiney apricot-ey yellow. It is a historic color. We will roll paint. I noticed that the rafters seem to be in OK shape. Someone nailed rotten wood TO them in order to, well, I'm not sure why - something to do with the ugly soffits maybe? But I think we are OK there. The plan is to get the rest of the tar paper off and start painting next weekend!
GARAGE SALES AND DONATIONS
There is an inventory reduction sale going on at Tallahassee Junk Emporium! This coincides with Walker Academy's First Annual Flea Market, Pancake Breakfast and Bake Sale! Nobody needs to bring anything else. I could pretty much provide everything they need to run a successful flea market. I am finding stuff I had no idea I had. It will be good to donate to the school.
The Sale is November 15th at Walker Academy on Lovell Rd. in Knoxville, TN. Come support the kids and Vincent's school! You know I have to get rid of half my things to fit into the tiny bungalow - some af them are really really truely great and fantastic wondrous things! Come One, Come All!
Friday, October 3, 2008
Stop The Leaks!
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