It was a race

 From the very beginning, it was a race. And, we knew it.

The house was taking damage every time it rained. For the past few years, sitting abandoned, it grew worse and worse.

When we took over the place, we knew our first priority was to stop further damage. In order to do that, we had to make the place waterproof.

I don't know if you've heard, but it rains quite a bit up here in western Washington.

We knew that nature was going to put a hard deadline on our efforts to improve the outside of the house, but we didn't know when that would be.  Last year, around mid-October, it started raining and didn't stop for three months.

We finished putting the final part of the first coat of paint on the house about three hours before the rain started.

Had to get paint deep in the crevice

The little things often take much longer than the big ones.

One, thin coat

I'm going to call that a draw.  Photo finish.

We were pretty happy to get even that done.

This gave us the occasion to look back at what we have accomplished.

Day one.  No RV.

The arrival of the roof.

All that tall grass?  Gone

RV? gone

Jet skis?  Yep, gone.

The first day of exterior demolition.

Cutlass?  See ya!

Mega-Spider! Gone, but his many, many cousins remain.

Progress

Ninja house

Little helpers

Starting to look like a home.

Getting there.

Almost there.

Of course, we also have to take a look forward at what is still left to do. And there is a lot.

It's a long winter that will be filled with indoor projects.  Like the bathroom.

 And the kitchen.

But even now, as the rain starts in earnest, work goes on.

R.I.P. Big Stinky 1994-2016

Meet Sunny!

A milestone

It's nice to check off a big accomplishment.  I need to congratulate myself from time to time. It helps keep me motivated.

And there is so much left to do that motivation is important. 

The last blog post left with me fixing a previous mistake.  I had put the siding on wrong on the back side of the house so I pulled it off and re-hung it.

Well, I had to go back to the regular job and didn't have much time to finish.

The first thing that had to happen was furring strips.

 There wasn't enough time for pictures. Before my regular shift, I only have two or three hours to get stuff done.  So, instead of taking pictures, I got stuff done.

At the end of the day, I nearly finished.

There were just these little corners left.

Soooooo close.

And yeah, the lines don't match up. 

I didn't care.  It was raining on me most of the day so I had to take the siding panels inside to measure and cut. My time was very limited. Sacrifices were made.

But the next day....

All the siding on! 

We ripped off all the old siding, tore out wall studs, windows, floor joists and everything. Having sheathing, house wrap and siding on before the rain starts in earnest is huge.

Now we just have to paint it.  Oh yeah, and trim. Don't forget skirting of some sort before it really gets cold.

Yeah, there's plenty to do, but I am going to let this one feel good for a minute. Heck, we even took most of one day off.

Then, it was back to work.

With so much done, we are changing the name of the house

From Big Stinky, to Daisy.

Famous from the election ad of the same name.

So, we passed a milestone. It's awesome.

There is still a ton of work to do, but I think this is proof that we are at least mostly up to the challenge.

Checking off a few things

It's been a big few days.  Some of this will reflect in pictures, some won't.

The house is improving.  I do believe that if someone saw this house now, as opposed to when we bought it, they wouldn't have trouble seeing the value.  When we got here, seeing value required imagination.

Until we let them inside, that still requires some imagination.

I know that it seems like I know what I'm doing.  I don't really, but I am pretty good at making things up.  Sometimes that backfires on me. 

Take the back of the house. 

I started putting up siding and furring strips there first so no one would see the inevitable mistakes. 

Can you see the mistake(s)?

Here, let me help you.

Yeah, those look a little off.

That's going to require a large trim piece to hide.

Yeah. 

By the time I got around two other sides, I was feeling pretty good about my siding skills. I could probably be the junior guy on a real crew!  So, I decided to fix the mistake. 

Of course that meant taking all the siding down without ruining it. 

So, I did.  Mostly.  The two pieces that framed the window weren't salvageable.

It went back up better.

We were still waiting on two windows to come into our supplier before we finished the front of the house. 

Still a ninja house.

Something not right with those windows

That's better.  I'll save the window tutorial until someone asks for it.

That cleared the way to finish the band of siding all the way around the house.

Which we did... today. 

But, it was too dark to take pictures when we finished.  Have to wait, sorry.

And, the burn ban was lifted yesterday, so we burned two of our debris piles.  Gone.

Again, no pictures. We worked until just after the sun went down.

Oh yeah, and I finished the latest rewrite of The Adventure Nickel book.  I sent it off to an editor.

Yeah, how about that! 

All these things finishing up, what will I do with all my time?

Oh yeah.

So much work

It's a race.

Any day now, the weather is going to change. It could easily get bad enough that work would have to stop. Putting up siding in 40 degree, rainy weather just doesn't sound appealing. 

I suppose I would keep it up if I had to, but it would make painting very hard.

So work has been progressing at a furious pace. Furious for a husband and wife team. An actual, professional work crew could have knocked this out in a day, but I wanted to do it myself.

Where were we? 

Oh yeah, a barely clothed ninja house.

Not too shabby, too much junk in the yard though.

We have progressed.

Unfortunately, I haven't been stopping much for pictures. 

Shall we?

Holy Crap! That almost looks like a real house!

That was after day one. Not a bad day of work. 

I was still getting the hang of how to do all this siding stuff. Rounding the corner, to the side most people will see up close, I started to understand how it all should be.

Aside from the flashing tape, and house wrap, is aluminum z-flashing.

Gotta keep the rain out. I made the band of siding all the way around to the front of the house, sorry no picture.

But, I couldn't put siding over the two windows we still don't have.  So, I stopped.

Luckily, there was another area that needed attention. There always is.

The gables.  The peaked areas on either of the short sides of the house, needed another course of siding on top of the first band.  That meant more furring strips, more flashing, the works.

The prep work took most of the time.  Get the strips up and the flashing ready.

The metal strip prevents water from getting in behind the siding at the horizontal seam.

It has been a few long days in a row.

The inside of the house is still a shambles.

Dinner with sawdust.

The back end of the house may need all the siding pulled off and redone. I made some early mistakes I only caught as I learned. Maybe.

But, as I figured it out, I think I started doing some quality work.

Heck, I might even be a reasonable apprentice to someone if I keep this up.

Doesn't look half bad, if I do say so myself.

Playing catch up

We have been at the new house just less than three months. Around eleven or twelve weeks.

We have had visitors for ten of those weeks.

Now, don't get me wrong, I enjoyed and appreciated every one of those visitors and they each are invited back to spend as long as they want starting as soon as they arrive. Heck, come live here.

But it has kept the blog post total down a bit.  There are only so many hours.

So, let's play catch up with some pictures and see if I can get a routine started. 

Ha! Routine.  I crack myself up.

When last we left, the front of the house looked like this:

Torn apart and mid rebuild.

 Fast forward a day or so and it looked like this:

Ninja house. You only see it when it's too late.

The two windows under all that tar paper were broken. We went to our normal supplier to get replacements and they were out of that size. The next shipment was two weeks out.

Two weeks.  Yikes. 

We are at that time of year here in western Washington where it could start raining one day and not stop for a few months. Two weeks is risky.  Oh well, can't be helped.

As previously noted in this space, Sarah and I had been sleeping in the house, lovingly named Big Stinky, since her parents came up to visit. Well, her Dad had a birthday and it was decided we needed to hook up our new Craigslist oven to bake the cake. And, since we had an oven, we should buy a table and have a meal or two. 

It was kind of cramped in the RV.  So, this happened.

Just don't look down. Or at the wall. 

Did I mention rain?

I did.  Well, we had a sudden rainstorm. The forecast read sunny for days until it changed to rain tomorrow. We expected a casual shower, but no, it rained all day. It rained pretty hard too.

Now worries, the house is pretty water resistant. Of course, that night, during the heaviest rains so far, we found a leak. In the RV.

Yeah.

Water was pouring in from the back corner in the bedroom. I climbed up to the roof with a headlamp and found the problem. I tried flashing tape and putty tape and anything else I could think of, but I couldn't get anything to stay in the quarter inch of running water going right across the broken seam.  Luckily, we have the blue tarps. So I tarped the roof and it stopped the leak for the night.

The next day, I got up topside to see how bad it was.

It was pretty bad.

Right where the roof meets the end-cap on the back of the RV.

I knew I needed to redo the sealant, but I didn't know it was that bad.

There were other places too.

I had been planning to fix those spots when the moment came, but I got busy and didn't get to it.

I guess the moment came and got me.

I already had the stuff, so I spent the next morning on the roof of the RV repairing the leaky areas.  Had to be done.

With the threat of rain, and honestly, just to see some of it done, we decided to hang some siding.

Yeah, we need more practice. 

With the siding up, Sarah went to the paint store and bought some paint to test. They kept telling her the color she like would fade. Of course, they told her all the colors she liked would fade.

I think the only color they had that wouldn't fade was one that started out as the color of faded paint. 

We decided to go with the color she liked and just let it get to that faded color naturally.

Our spider problem just keeps chugging along no matter how many we get rid of. I just imagine a huge spider arising from one of the many holes in the floor to find this huge area where other spiders should be. Finding none, he declares himself King Spider of this new...hey, is that a ShopVac?

Michael, the animal lover, doesn't like us killing anything we don't have to. So, he rescues the poor little guys when he can. 

Better him than me.

Several generations of my family shuddered seeing this picture.

Michael, "Awww, he's just a cute little guy." 

Yeah, no.

Whatever suits you kid. I'll use the ShopVac.

Sarah and I kept working.

Don't laugh, the trim will hide most of the irregularities.

The trim may have to be a foot wide or so.

It's going to look good, I think.

Eventually.

Of course, it rained again. So, we had to leave it at that for the day. Luckily, there were other projects.

Sarah wanted the sink moved to directly under the window. Now is the time for that stuff.  So, I moved the drain and feed lines. 

To mark this occasion, I have composed a poem.

Ode to Blue Hawk Push to Connect Fittings

By Eric Gaden

Blue Hawk Push to Connect Fittings

You are awesome.

I freaking love you.

The End.

Moving the drain line meant glue and cure times and mess.

Push to connect turns this...

To this in minutes allowing me to look like I know what I'm doing.

Awesome.

So, Sarah's parents left. Sarah and I were going to move back into the RV until we had one of the kids bedrooms ready and maybe their bathroom too.  But, the kids had other ideas. They wanted to move into the house with us.  So, we cleared out the study I had been using for lumber storage and had this.

Stephen King story time.

It is weird having the RV and not sleeping in it. So much of our lives is still in there. So much always will be. 

Until next time.