Plastered

The plastering is done. They did a great job on the dining room ceiling and a pretty good job on the guest room. Its a huge improvement over what was there. I don't look up and cringe every time I sit down to eat.

I was fairly certain we had overpaid the plasterers when they started the job, but once the ceiling of the guest room needed to be torn down and redone, I felt better. We got enough hours of work out of them to make the quote about right. In total, it cost us about $4 a square foot. That's a lot more than if I had done it, but I know what my plastering looks like. Oak bark looks smoother.

I also finally finished the screens I started eons ago. That project took entirely too long considering what was involved. Its good to have one more thing checked off.

We've had a lot of rain this July. Average rain fall in July is 3.31 inches. We've had 9.45 inches to date and they are forecasting more rain tonight and tomorrow. There's still one week left to July. The good news is that the basement is mostly dry. Some moisture is coming up through cracks in the slab, and hydrostatic pressure is causing dampness around the corners. The only way to fix that is to put in an interior drain field, and that's many years down the priority list.

I'm still waiting on a quote from our carpenter for the front entry. I think a little pressure is needed there. We also got back a quote for refinishing the front door. It looked really good, but now I have to figure out what to put in place of the front door while they are repairing the original. I don't think I'm keen on having no front door for a week or so.

Of course it might be an opportunity for some interesting stories for the blog.

Misery Loves Company

It's an old platitude, but so very true. Here are two examples. One is not related to the house, but bear with me.

In the IT world, there is one profession so hated, so heinous, so reviled, it will make friends between developers, administrators, and IT evangelists of all types; the auditor. The auditor has the impossible task of interpreting overly vague government laws or industry standards and then validating that current IT practices adhere to them. In addition to that, auditor knowledge of the IT world is often a silk thread's width more than zero. They make demands that can't be accomplished, or ask stupid questions, following the letter of the law, but ignoring the spirit. I've had auditors grill me on who had access to the database, but completely ignore who had access to the server or the data center.

One of the divisions in our parent company came under the scrutiny of these auditors not so long ago. Their IT staff howled and moaned. They came over to us day after day complaining about the idiocy of the auditors; the processes the auditors were forcing them to put in place, the productivity lost, the money and time wasted. But in the end, all of these things were put in place and the auditors left satisfied. (Auditors never leave happy.)

And now it's our turn. The auditors have turned their Eye of Sauron upon our division. We howled and moaned. We went over to our comrades who already suffered through this, expecting some empathy and mercy. What did we find? They were the first to put us to the sword; to show us the error of our ways and the righteous path that the auditors had set them on. And now that we are forced down this road, and they are content knowing that we too have to suffer, their response has been, "See? Aren't their requirements stupid?"

We struggle with a lot of things in the house. It seems like every time we try and improve something, it leads to further repairs, or the part is no longer available, or the repair is significantly more expensive and time consuming than we had first estimated.

We have blogged fairly extensively about calcimine paint and our experiences with it, especially the time consuming process of removing it. We've removed calcimine paint from five of the roughly thirteen rooms in the house, but we have only removed it from one ceiling. My mom, who has done most of the painting in the house, has dealt with it too. In the guest room, she painted the ceiling and was appalled to see a huge bubble form. The probable cause? The water in the latex paint reacted with the calcimine and it started to separate from the ceiling. She left, came back the next day and thankfully, the bubble had disappeared. We left well enough alone.

My wife mentioned calcimine paint to the plasterers when they started work, but they had never heard of it. Little did they know. When my wife called me yesterday to tell me that the ceiling plastering the guys started yesterday was bubbling up, I could only smile. They had to remove all of the previous day's work - the adhesive, the fiberglass mesh tape AND the first coat of plaster. And start over. It also removed a good portion of the old latex paint and calcimine paint, which will allow them to plaster to the original plaster.

Just re-reading this makes me smile. Misery loves company indeed.

Before and during the plastering of the guest room & dining room ceiling

Mr. Kluges taking down the original
lighting fixture in the dining room.
(Don't try this at home.)


These next 3 are from the guest room. See, I told you it looked awful!

(The chimney is the more white part of the wall
to the right in the above picture
and to the left in the one below.)

Close-up of our lovely lathe.

And here's what they looked like after the plaster guys left yesterday.

(Lovely shade of pink, isn't it?!)

(Pictures cross-posted to Musings & Mutterings.)

Catch Up

Ms. Huis mentioned recently about pulling the trigger here.

It always amazes me how fast things can move when you get professionals to do the work, especially when there are no dependencies between contractors. Up until noon yesterday, I had no idea when our guest room plaster was going to be prepared and ready for painting. Now it looks like it will be done by the end of the week. Getting the guest room done was always higher on Ms. Huis list of things to do than mine, but it definitely needs to be done before winter. Thin as it is, plaster and lathe does offer some insulation against the cold. Gaping one foot by three foot holes in the plaster would have made the guest room unpleasantly cold.

And as long as they are there, we're having them repair the dining room ceiling too. It will be nice to see some non-structural improvements in the house. We've been in the house almost three years now and I'm anxious to start seeing some cosmetic improvements in the house. New gutters, sewers and electrical are great, but they are the kinds of things you take for granted. I don't go into the basement and gaze admiringly at the new breaker box or stare in rapt adoration at the new plastic sewer pipe. But new paint or light fixtures or a refinished floor? Those are the things a person notices.

We're still waiting on a quote for the repairs to the front entry. Our contractor says we'll get it next week. We'll see. He's relying on other contractors for quotes (see my comment above about time lines and dependencies on other contractors). We're also waiting on the quote for the front door. Ironically, when I went back to the Woodcraft store to find router bits, who should I find working there but the furniture refinishing guy. Clearly I'm not giving him enough business. I expect his quote soon.

I've toyed around with making my own beadboard for awhile now. The old stuff is not the same dimensions as the new stuff that you can find around here. For a long time I didn't know how, what the cost was or how much work it would be. After poking around at Woodcraft, I see now that all I need is a router table and $75 in router bits. That just leaves the time involved. The irony of lack of time is never lost on me. If I didn't have to work, I'd have enough time to finish all of these projects. Of course if I didn't work, I wouldn't have any money for all of these projects.

We had a bat in the house again last week. This one was very obliging though. It flew (or fell) into a large tote of blocks in the kids' play room. Ms. Huis heard it and woke me up. I tried to go back to sleep, but her insistence finally got me out of bed. I picked up the tote of blocks, set it outside and went back to bed. She stayed and watched it crawl out and fly away. I never saw a thing. I bet she imagined the whole thing.

I've had mouse traps set out now for several months and caught nothing. Either we're over our mouse invasion, or we've used natural selection with our house mice to remove a predilection for peanut butter.

2009 Wrap Up

Two years, 123 days. There have been eight hundred, fifty four days that we have owned the House of 42 Doors. My blogging has become more sporadic and less passionate. We are settling into the house and the house is settling into us. What originally seemed strange and wondrous has become normal and mundane.

What we accomplished this year pales in comparison to what we accomplished in 2008, but for the record, here is the list:

• Finished up the kitchen ceiling (after the waste pipe replacement in 2008).
• Plugged crack after crack in the basement with Great Stuff foam. Last year's basement temperature was 48 degrees. This year's its 58. Progress!
• Stripped the calcimine from the bathroom and painted it.
• Replaced the tub/shower drain.
• Ripped up some of the attic floor and sealed some of the air leaks. More work needed here.
• Painted and patched the office.
• Distributed 90% of the huge compost pile to the garden.
• Planted a garden.
• Repaired, scraped and painted the beadboard soffit.
• Built a storm window holder.
• Put in 75 yews for a hedge.
• Took out several honeysuckles to make room for said hedge.
• Painted the dining room red (and interestingly, both Ms. Huis and I have gained weight this year).
• Removed all the calcimine paint from the guest room. Patching and painting to follow.
• Painted the back dormer.
• Repaired and painted the back porch gutters.
• Built an igloo (it only lasted a week - I'm no Eskimo).

Next year we'll be looking at repairing our last two roofs and maybe replacing the front entry gutters. When those are repaired that will be the end of the exterior repairs to the house.

Here's hoping you had a great 2009 and have a fantastic New Year's!

Summer Fun

Hot. Humid. Sticky.

Perfect weather for the beach, the air-conditioned mall, or peeling paint off the walls.



We've gone on at some length in the past about calcimine paint. What we've noticed is that when it is warm and humid, the latex paint on top of the calcimine becomes rubbery and releases easier from the wall. Scraping in the winter results in paint chips. Scraping paint on a hot and humid day can result in pieces of paint coming off that are a square foot in size.



We took the opportunity that the weather gave us and almost finished pulling the paint off of the wall in our guest room in just a few hours. The one wall left is the one by the chimney and it's clear that it has suffered some serious water damage followed by some very poor plaster patching. Getting it to a decent state is going to be difficult.

The room was originally pink, then blue, then the blindingly bright yellow in the pictures. Over that was two or three coats of white latex. Here you can see a patch of white latex, over the sunny, cheery yellow and the gray of a washed wall. Good Summer Fun!