New Interlock Roof

Obviously, I've fallen out of the habit of posting regularly. Our new Interlock roof install was finished about a week ago. We are quite happy with how it turned out. Conveniently the roofer sent before-after photos.

We had them install a drain between the two front dormers. In the rain, it tended to turn into a waterfall and it was ruining the wood brackets.

Garage Top View

Shed Top View

They installed new T&G under the rotted front eaves and repaired a rotted rafter tail.

The company advertises this as a lifetime roof. I really hope it is, this time.

Lots of New Projects

I really should be posting more frequently. We have been doing stuff. Or at least we have been hiring people to do stuff. LOL

Shortly after my last post, we discovered our roof has to be replaced. The shingles are fine, but they didn't install them correctly and there are areas with no plywood underlayment. It is VERY FRUSTRATING as I spent a long time trying to find a reputable roofer to do the installation. But since it has been more than 10 years since the installation we can't actually go after the roofer, in the unlikely event they are still in business. (Apparently, many of them set up a business, work for 10 years, then shut down the business so they don't have to deal with installation issues. Then they start up a new business with a new name. And repeat the pattern. It's really dishonest and I don't understand how they continue to get away with it.)  Rather than let it continue to rot out the roof framework we made the difficult decision to just replace the roof again.

Anyway, we decided to get an Interlock Metal Roof. The company has been in business for a really long time and I can't find bad reviews or evidence of dishonesty. With any luck, their claims that you never need another roof are true. We probably won't be here long enough to have to worry about it in any case. Unfortunately, it's late enough in the season that we may have to wait until spring before they'll be able to put it on. (They don't install roofs when it's raining.)

We also are buying LeafGuard Gutters. We had them long ago when we lived in Forest Grove and we really liked that we never had to clean them so we're getting them again. They'll be installed after the new roof is put on so we have to deal with the bad rain situation for another winter.

We also hired Conserva Irrigation to install drip irrigation for us. We've been wanting to put it in ourselves for the past several years, but it is clear we just are not motivated to do it. The new system will be installed to code and there will be a controller and we should be able to program it to run on a schedule, unlike the original plan to just attach it to hoses to make it work. They'll be starting that work in a couple of weeks.

Finally, I hope the last thing, we hired Pride and Joy Landscape, to help us get the yard back into shape.  They took away two trailers full of yard waste and everything is looking much tidier. But, I'll be honest, they did remove several plants I would have preferred they leave, but that is my fault for not marking them better, or doing a better job communicating which plants I wanted to save. After the irrigation is put in, they're going to come back out and help us spread mulch for the winter. And I'll probably move some plants around into better locations once we'll be able to water them more easily.

Before the clean up, it was hard to see but we could no longer find the path,
and many plants were growing over each other.

The columnar apple tree in front of the house had gotten a little out of control
and it was also full of wisteria vines.

I don't have a good before photo of this bed. Generally, the plants
reached the bottom branches of the apple tree and the apple tree
had many lower branches so this space is opened up quite a lot now.

So, yeah, that's a lot of upcoming work. We're spending way too much money on this house again. I haven't even added it all up and I'm sure I don't want to. But at least Jeff is working again so it won't all be coming out of savings.

Ready for Moving Day

Now that I can take photos of the other side of the basement, I thought it would be fun to continue my basement tour. 

I still need to finish staining the inside of the closet, the two new doors and the vestibule area at the basement door, but I am going to wait for some nicer weather so I can sand the doors outside. 

We also need to sand and put a top coat on the new stair treads. We had the contractor leave the masking on them because I didn't want them to get too dirty while I figure out what to finish them with. I had thought I bought the correct finish coat I needed, but I just read on the can that it cannot be used on floors so I need to find something else. I'm hoping to get the stairs finished in the next few weeks but I need to find a time when we can avoid walking on them for several days.

Tomorrow I will start calling around and see if I can find some movers to help us shuffle furniture around the house. We're going to move one of the bedrooms down here temporarily so we have a place to sleep when it gets so dang HOT this summer. We were miserable last summer.

Dungeon No More!

I still need to finish staining the doors and baseboard in the rest of the basement, but the family room/office is done!! I dug through my old photos because I thought it would be fun to compare how it looked when we bought the house. 

(Unfortunately, most of the built-ins that were in place when we bought the house had to be removed before we moved in for the basement repair; the foundation had some large cracks in it at the time and we had them repaired immediately.)

I'm pretty excited about how this turned out. Tim Austin did a wonderful job. It's actually nicer than I originally anticipated. I had not expected to have wainscoting in there, but I didn't want drywall all the way down to the floor and plywood worked out better with Tim's plan.

Garage Progress

So far this year I've been spending a lot of time sifting and getting rid of stuff, the garage is no exception. We had this old workbench that the prior owner left behind and it was piled high with junk; this is how it looked last September. We finally managed to clear it off and sold it on craigslist. 

Our goal was to make room for the table saw to fit in the garage. Once the workbench was gone, we rotated the rolling wood rack and pushed it against that back wall. 

As a reminder, this is how the garage looked in Aug 2019 when I originally posted about wanting to organize it.

This has been a bit of a slow-going project, but I am pleased overall with our progress. There is still some junk we need to deal with in front of the wall with the tubs, but the garage is much better and more useable now, especially since most of the tools in the photo are on mobile bases and can be rolled out of the way. 

I have some ideas for more woodworking projects I'd like to try this summer, but we are feeling strongly the pull to get in our car and go places, so we may not get much done this summer beyond keeping the plants watered.

Fall is Here!

It's not just a clever name. There are so many leaves in our yard right now. I hope we have another couple dry days so we can clean up the yard. As the outdoor season draws to a close, I thought it would be fun to look back at the progress we made in the yard this summer.

In May/June, Jeff planted the parking strip.

This is how it looked when initially planted

This is how it looks today. The plants that lived seem really happy.

Sewing Room Before and After

OK, it's not quite after because I still have some boxes to unpack, but it's pretty close. I hope I don't regret unpacking the fabric because our bathroom remodel is still in progress, but I'm trying to clear out the guest room so we can set up the bed again. We're going to have a friend stay with us while she looks for a house.

Anyway......here's how it looks at the end of the day today. (It's extra dark because it's pouring rain outside.)

Tragically, we had some damage in the plaster when the guys demo'd the bathroom (on the other side of the wall). We'll have to mask off the stencilling and patch that spot and repaint it.

Under the table is full of bathroom fixtures. Hopefully those will go away in spring.

Here is how the room looked when we moved in.

And when we looked at the house, before buying it.

Yeah, I know some folks prefer the bright painted wood, but I love the richness of the stained wood....and it's my house. LOL

New Dining Room Hinges

Since we were planning to have 12 people for lunch today, we finally found the motivation to finish a project that's been sitting unfinished for several weeks now. The dining room built-in has finally gotten its new brass hinges.

The old hinges are really skanky. The exposed portions were mostly black and the painters applying stain over them, certainly did not improve their appearance. And while it seems like it would have been more thrifty just to have these old hinges replated, it isn't. I looked into it, but it was more expensive to replate the old hinges than it was to buy new solid brass hinges.

I tried to buy identical hinges—I carefully measured and scoured the online websites for the same size—but I still failed. The new hinges are about 3/32" larger and, of course, the screw holes didn't line up. So, it was a bit of a slog to take off all the doors, re-mortise the frames and doors, and fill the screw holes. Jeff used a small dowel and wood glue to fill the original screw holes.

After the glue dried, he had to redrill all the screw holes and reinstall all the doors, but we finally have pretty, shiny hinges to go along with our pretty new leaded glass panels.

I've just got to look at it again. I'm so pleased this is finally done.

And for those, just dropping by for the first time, this is where we started in 2010.

And now.

(For more before and afters, visit our "Before and After" page.)