Holy Cow! There's a Bobcat in My Driveway!

Many developments in these last weeks. Sanding, cleaning, priming, plating, excavating, concrete, water diversion. I can't believe how much
we've accomplished in so little time.

We finally finished the sanding, hallelujah! We were all tired, happy, and incredibly sore. So the next weekend, we rounded up wash buckets and rags and after vacuuming the entire upstairs - every blasted surface - walls, ceilings, woodwork, floors, radiators (amazing how much dirt those buggers can hold)... anyway, after that, we started wet-wiping everything. We used trisodium phosphate on the walls to remove as much of the gunk off of them as possible before putting the primer on. It was amazing how the walls brightened from just cleaning them. (Cleaning - what a concept!) It took the three of us (me, my mom and dad) two full days to clean the upstairs, but again, we got it done, and we were tired, happy and sore! (And the theme develops...)

The following weekend, we began urethaning the woodwork. I have never liked working with urethane - it was always thick and gloppy, and I could never really regulate the thickness of the coat I was applying. So, needless to say, I was not really looking forward to having to work with this stuff, although I was looking forward to getting some (fairly large) part of the upstairs to completion.

I don't know if they've changed formulas, or if maybe I just never used Minwax urethane before, but this stuff was really incredible. I could get a really nice, thin coat on the window sashes so that it didn't interfere with them opening and closing, and then I could slap a nice medium coat on the window frames and sills for good protection. It stayed workable long enough for me to catch drips and smooth it out nicely - this is not an endorsement, it's just the simple things that warm a girl's heart.

Working around all sorts of people who do all sorts of things has its benefits when you are renovating. I have a good rapport with a guy who does plating, so I gave him all the original hardware off the doors and windows to re-plate. He has to do each piece by hand - it's a long, tedious process - and each piece gets three layers of plating, finishing with brass and topped with lacquer.

The results are no less than stunning. The glass doorknobs sparkle against freshly plated brass escutcheons, and the hinges, which plated a more copper shade, just glow next to the honey gold pine woodwork. I can hardly wait to get all of the hardware back and put it all on.

Of course there's always that irritating thing that doesn't go quite as planned. I wanted a nice dark brown stain in the bathroom. I have a lot of color, texture, materials going on in there and it is important to keep it from getting too busy looking. So my plan was dark brown - like a walnut - stain. Fine. As a backup I also bought a quart of Polyshades in what I thought was also a dark brown. I knew that a couple pieces in that room might not absorb just stain and I would have to punt. Well if this were the NFL, it would be no goal.

I got too anxious to just get this stuff done. I didn't think it through, and I didn't test the Polyshade "stain" before applying it. Furthermore, I should have known better because I've used the Polyshade stuff before. I hated it then, and I hate it now. Except that I didn't throw it out the window this time! It is horrific. It dries too quickly, shows every single brush mark, and doesn't flow off the brush nicely. It's like translucent paint, if you can imagine. And on top of fussing with it to get just one coat on, the next day, after it had dried, I realized that it was not the color I wanted! ARGH!!

So now I really have to punt. I am not going to strip (or pay somebody to strip) what I painted with this junk. I have to find a way to make it work. I'm still not sold on it, but I'm working on it... The dark brown would just been so much prettier. And so it goes. A tough lesson. I should have taken my time and tested the stuff first. I should not have let my manic need to get the damn woodwork done this very minute get the best of me. It happens.

On day 2 of urethane weekend, we decided to install as much of the woodwork as we could. Much of it had been removed for various reasons, and since we had one coat of urethane on it, and it was blessedly warm and un-humid those two days, the first coat had cured enough for us to install it, and we will put the second coat on later. It was wonderful to see the drawers go back into the built-ins, and putting the trim around the bathroom window and door transformed it from an ugly box into a room with the potential for grace.

So by now, you're thinking, yeah, yeah, so what about the bobcat? Well. Monday morning I drove past my house as I always do on my way to work, and there was a bobcat in the driveway, and a dump truck out front. I had spoken with a friend of ours who does concrete about doing some outdoor work for me before snow flies. He had given me an estimate which I was happy with, but we hadn't talked about when he could start, so I was quite surprised when I saw him already busily ripping out my heaved sidewalks at 7:30 a.m.!

So Phil's project was two-fold: First, all the old maple trees that had been planted between the sidewalk and the curb had heaved the sidewalk, so snow-blowing was a dangerous, painful and frustrating process. Sometimes I'd hit a bump so hard I'd bite my tongue or jar my teeth. Other times, I'd just jam my snowblower into my gut. I swore that I would not deal with that for even one more winter.

Second, the basement under the house itself (not the storefront, which is completely poured concrete) is poured up maybe four feet, and then there are four courses of block on top of that. The joint between the poured concrete and the block had weakened and was letting water in. This is the last of the water issues I have in the house now. (If you recall, I have already repaired the flat roof where much water was flooding in, and I glass-blocked the basement windows - another source of entry.)

I asked Phil to dig about 18" wide and a couple feet deep to get the level of the dirt below the joint in the foundation. Then he put up tar and water barrier against the foundation itself, and backfilled the entire ditch with crusher run. I had asked him to top it with decorative stone, but he suggested possibly the coolest alternative I've heard of yet. He gets crushed Corian and uses it in place of decorative stone. It is beautiful, durable, and accomplishes the same thing without the price tag of decorative stone. Phil rocks!

In addition to all this excavating and re-routing the water flow around my house, Phil connected my downspouts on the back side of my house, including my "moose spout" that comes off the flat roof, put them all to a pipe that runs out to the street and connects to the storm drain.

Water is a tricky thing. While you can't 'get rid' of it, you can re-route it, which is exactly what we did. The reason I wanted that excavation around my foundation backfilled with crusher run, is that water will find the lowest point and run from there. Crusher run won't hold any significant amount of water, so the water will seek the soil. The level of the soil is now below the weak point in my foundation, so we have now, in effect, re-routed the water drainage to a position where it doesn't enter my basement or cause further damage.

They worked on my yard for 4 days, and they did a beautiful job. I have nice, smooth sidewalks now, so I don't have to worry about snowblowing injury (!!), and I have a dry basement. Finally! When I bought the house, it was dank, and nasty, water was pouring in from everywhere it seemed, and I didn't think I'd ever get it all straight, but I started with the worst problem first - the flat roof. Then I worked from there. This is the last piece of the puzzle.

It's funny. I had a 'basement guy' give me a quote on making that basement water-tight, and he came back at $20,000.00. I almost passed out. And that didn't even address the issues with the flat roof. I achieved the same results for a few thousand dollars at most.

This past weekend, we hoped to get the entire upstairs primed for paint. That didn't quite go as planned - the job was simply too big for dad and I to get done in two days. The first day, I cut in and he rolled. We got two bedrooms done, but it was a torturous day. The primer had so much solid in it for the small amount of liquid carrier that it would just glob the brush up and it felt like you were painting with a corn cob. I have never struggled so much with a paint. And a primer at that.

Since I was doing the detailed work - all the ogees around the window and door headers - I really needed the brush to stay flexible and workable. At lunchtime we had to wash our brushes out completely so that we could continue. The next day, we attacked it differently, with more success. We both cut in - I did the detailed work that dad hates doing, and he did the corners and wall-to-ceiling angles.

Knowing a bit more about this primer, we simply changed brushes whenever they got glopped up. I went through four brushes by lunchtime, we cleaned them all out, and I went through three more after lunch. By Sunday evening we had all the cut-in work done - all that was left was rolling the walls and ceilings. I told my dad to take Monday off, and I'm glad he did. He rested most of the day. But today, he went in and rolled all the walls and ceilings in about four hours' time. Priming? Check.

This weekend, we are going to tighten up loose ends. I still need to finish the Polyshades problem in the bathroom, there is still urethaning left to do, and we should have all the door and window hardware back, so we can re-install all of that. I bought samples of all the paint colors I have chosen for my rooms, so I will paint test swatches on the walls and see how the color interacts with the light coming in the room, and determine my final colors.

I've got a business trip to Nashville the following weekend, so when I return, we will put the color on the walls and ceilings. Finally! The next round of photos will start to actually be pretty!