Up on the roof

I took the plunge and started tearing up the gutters on our porch. I got quite a bit torn off the first day and a couple of the rotten lookouts replaced. The lookout is the part that holds the gutter. It has a deep V notch on the top to receive the metal liner. In our case, it also has an angled cut at the top to receive the crown moulding trim and a squared notch on the front to receive the fascia. It's a lot of notching, but it makes installation of all the trim boards much easier.





At any rate, that's just about all I've done on it in the past week. Despite a weather.com extended forecast of nothing but sunshine, it's rained just about every day since I started. I had to scramble the first day with a too-small tarp that ended up blowing off in the middle of the night. So I ordered a larger tarp to cover the entire roof and I'm waiting for clearer skies before working any more on it.

Fixing the foundation

We had another contractor come to look at our gaping crack in the basement wall, and again we were assured that it looked much worse than it actually is. He told us it would be absurdly expensive to hire him for such a small job (his company is located several hours away and he has to pay his employees just as much for travel time as for actual working time) but told us how to fix it ourselves.

I built a second wall out of concrete block in front of the brick knee wall and in the doorway, then filled the gap between the two walls with mortar. This basically makes the knee wall twice as thick and much stronger for resisting the lateral force of the dirt. Now if that brick wall wants to bow outward, it will push against about 1200 pounds of (reinforced) concrete. Access to the coal room through the doorway is restricted somewhat, but we can still get back there if we need to (which is very infrequently).

No, it's not a thing of beauty, but whaddaya gonna do?

I had an idea to mount a jack sideways in the doorway to push the bricks back to where they ought to be, but that unfortunately didn't work. Both contractors indicated that the wall was still OK to remain stepped like it was as long as it didn't get any worse, so this fix should be alright. Ideally I'd like to get a steel beam installed on each side of the brick wall (for other reasons, but that would also alleviate this issue somewhat), but I am content with this as a solution for the time being. It was only about $150 for the block and concrete mix plus a few days of work. I still need to fill in the crack with new mortar, but it's not really a pressing need.

I'm almost convinced that the root of the whole problem was the termite guy. He said he pumped an outrageous amount of solution into the ground (I don't remember exactly, but I want to say it was something like 1300 gallons), and that amount of fluid pressure behind the knee wall could have caused the damage. Thanks, Terminix!

While we're focused on the basement and fixing the stuff that nobody will ever see, we started talking about the gutters. Bowed walls and settlement issues in a house are almost always caused by water in one way or another, and our basement has (minor) water problems. The main culprit in our case are the gutters. They're old fashioned box gutters, which are built into the eaves of the house and are invisible from the street. They're typically lined with metal, but poor maintenance often leads to their failure. Unless they're copper, the metal has to be painted every few years.

As you might have guessed, this maintenance was not done on our gutters for many years, and the attempts to patch and repair them have not done them any favors. As a result, we've ended up with rotted eaves and water in the basement. We decided to tackle the porch gutters ourselves and see if we're up for doing the work on the rest of the house before we invest in scaffolds and other equipment.

Yesterday I removed all the fascia boards and soffits to see the extent of the damage and formulate a plan for repair. Luckily, most of the water damage is on the trim boards and not on the structure itself. Two of the lookouts (the boards that support the gutters) will have to be replaced, as well as all of the gutters. But the porch rafters and beams look fine, so rebuilding ought to be simple.

Just for kicks, here's a picture of some of the previous "repairs" to the metal gutter liner. In case you were wondering, roofing tar is not an acceptable long-term solution for this kind of work!

Oh boy. I recently ventured down into the basement and noticed a gaping crack in the brick wall running down the center of the house. It has always had a settlement crack, but I don't ever remember being alarmed by it. This time I was, and (I think) rightfully so.

In construction lingo, it's what they call "not good." I know it's difficult to tell from a picture if you've never been in my basement, so I'll do my best to describe what is going on. Through the doorway and on the right half of the picture is a standard full-height basement with a concrete floor. On the left side of the picture is a crawlspace. It's just dirt held back by a short retaining wall that is two bricks thick. The knee wall is integrated into the full-height brick wall. The knee wall is bulging out a little bit around the doorway, and the brick above (that forms the left side of the doorway) is going with it, widening that settlement crack.

We met with one contractor today and will talk with two more before we make a decision on how to fix this. In the meantime, we've placed a jack under the door lintel to catch the weight in case the wall takes a dive.

A stinky investigation

With my in-laws' anniversary party on the forefront of my mind, not a lot of house stuff got done in the past couple of months, not even regular housekeeping tasks. It took me almost a week, but things are now back to their normal state of disarray. I've been able to get a couple of little things done here and there. When I was installing the crown moulding in the back bedroom, I had to take down the attic hatch access door. 

When the door was off, I noticed a sewer gas smell coming from the attic. There was always a small odor around the bathroom, but I figured it was just because there was no water in the traps to prevent sewer gas from coming up. But this was a very strong smell, so I climbed up to investigate. This is what I found: 

Sorry about the terrible picture. I was trying to balance on the joists and not fall through the ceiling while snapping this shot. In case it's hard to see, the elbow is not attached to the (stinky) pipe at all, so sewer gas was just getting dumped into the attic instead of through the roof. I did a dry fit to see if I could just push the elbow down back onto the pipe, but that wouldn't work. The vertical portion of pipe was cut badly on an angle, and the elbow that connected to it was rotated out slightly. The result was that the pipe was never seated in the elbow very well. Even when it was seated as far as it would go, there was still a gap between the pipe and the elbow because of the angled cut. Our plumber extraordinaire strikes again. I simply cut off the elbow, straightened the cut on the vertical pipe, and glued in another elbow. Miraculously, an elbow with a longer sweep angle fit perfectly. Only a half an hour from start to finish, and most importantly, no more smell! 

Before I enlisted Tom's help to re-hang the attic access door, I primed and painted it flat ceiling white. Now it's back up and finishing the 1x2 frame around the door is the next project. Well, it's another project, not necessarily the next one.  

I probably should have painted the edges too, but the trim will cover those. This picture also shows the finished crown moulding, still in need of a coat of paint. 

Item #17

I finally finished the crown moulding in the back bedroom. It's primed, caulked, wood-filled, sanded, and ready for a coat or two of glossy paint. Not only that, but I got a good start on the crown in the bathroom, too. I am also in the process of cutting the last batch of wall tiles. Anything to avoid plumbing.

I never really quit working on the bathroom after the ill-fated one-room challenge, but I got another kick in the pants to get it done. Tom's parents are celebrating their 50th wedding anniversary and we're throwing a party in their honor. The party won't be in our house, thank goodness, but we'd at least like to offer a bedroom and a bathroom if anyone needs it. The spare room and hall bathroom are looking worse than ever, but I can see the progress even if no one else can.

Plumbing is the worst.