Fireplace Remodel Day Twenty Nine

Day #4 of isolation at home. Apart from putting out the trash and unloading the car, I haven't set foot out of the door since I came home from work on Monday evening. The days are starting to mesh together such that I had to keep reminding myself it was a Friday today.

I spent the majority of the day painting the walls in the living room. All the walls got two (2) coats of Benjamin Moore Natural Cream flat with a mixture of my roller and my inch an-arth brush. It really did take all day. Tomorrow I'll be shunting the furniture around again and moving back to the hardwood floor. Til next time, be careful with those sithers.

Fireplace Remodel Day Twenty Eight

It's Thursday March 19, 2020, day #3 of Alameda County's Shelter-In-Place order. We're all well, and we're all inside. Amy Sheep is doing the telimedicine thing, and the bin lids are learning online....so let's get painting!

I started with the big windows - all the woodwork got two (2) coats of Benjamin Moore White Dove semi-gloss:

Then the small window - fortunately most of this one is u-PVC...

All the baseboards were next...

And I finished up with the last bits of the shoe rack.

Moved on to the hallway - the ceiling was done a while back, so all I had left was the upper sections of the walls, the new wall, and touch-up of all the minor damage we made while we we putting in the skylight. The walls were painted with two (2) coats of Benjamin Moore Natural Cream flat:

All done before sundown...tomorrow it's the living room walls!

Fireplace Remodel Day Twenty Seven

Shelter-In-Place day #2 of 21 we are told, but of course it could and probably will be longer....so I may as well get on with the living room! The photo below doesn't really show how much fine dust has been clinging to the ceiling since we started this project, but it was a lot.

This one, after I started the cleanup, shows it better:

Removing the dust was a two-stage process: I got the worst of it off with my new shop vac (see below), and then I wiped down the entire ceiling with a wet sponge.  This photo was taken closer to the end:

Most of the cleanup was done from halfway up a ladder, and I had to move the furniture around more than once so I could get to all of the ceiling. This is what I found under the couches! The majority of this dust originates from grinding concrete or mortar with the diamond-encrusted screaming wheel of death.

It came out very clean, but all in all, this took almost an entire day to accomplish. The rest of the day was spent de-dusting all the tools and so on that we are finished with and returning them to the workshop.

I ended up with all the furniture in the middle of a very clean room...tomorrow I'll be painting!

So....I could not have got the living room clean in less than a month o' sundays without my new Shop Vac. I have a very large collection of tools and things to make DIY easier, so it is very unusual for me to buy a new piece of equipment and wonder how I ever managed without it. But that is certainly the case on this occasion - finally a vacuum cleaner that sucks...well it doesn't, but it does, if you see what I mean.

Fireplace Remodel Day Twenty Six

It's Tuesday March 17, 2020, otherwise known as day #26. It's also day #1 of a Shelter-In-Place order in the East Bay. My business, and pretty much every other one in the East Bay is closed, the schools are out and you can hear a pin drop in the street outside. Well, you could until I fired up my belt sander!

This time I started with a brand new 120 grit belt, and I used that to grind off all the excess wood filler I applied at the weekend. I then went over everything with the random orbital sander, first at 120, and then 220 grit.

Tea break time !

This is how it came out; I will sand again to 400 grit right before I apply the varnish...watch this space!

The other bit came out very similar:

After that I installed the new baseboards and taped around the edge of the floor so it's all ready for paint. While all this was going on Amy Sheep was conducting telimedicine appointments from the next room so I had to be quiet as a mouse most of the time.

A new layer of paper went down over all the new flooring....watch this space....!

Fireplace Remodel Day Twenty Five

In real time it's been a bit more than a fortnight since Day #24, but this blog is about DIY time, which makes it the next day....sort of. The weekend before last I was at the drag racing with my buddies, but in my absence Amy Sheep did a magnificent job grouting all the tile.  It came out cushty! And she did it all without using tut sithers.

I don't usually do much DIY when the bread snappers are nipping at my heels, but this weekend we were all lying low, so on Saturday afternoon I saddled up my knee pads (!) and nailed down all the hardwood flooring I put down on day #24 (or yesterday in blog speak). I used heat-treated nails this time too, which don't bend like regular 18 gauge finish nails. The heads were sunk with a special punch I custom made last time around.

After that, I broke out the belt sander and some extra coarse 36 grit belts - the floor has been re-finished once in the past, so I had to bring the new hardwood down to the level of the rest of the floor. I took off something approaching a sixteenth of an inch, so it took a while, even at 36 grit.

Same again where the old outlet used to be...

The hardwood was pretty rough afterwards, but I decided not to do any more sanding at this point - instead I filled all the nail holes and tiny gaps between boards with ye olde red oakenshield hued filler, and then I went back to playing monopoly with the fam.

March Meet

If you're not familiar, the legendary March Meet is an independent drag race which has been held at Famoso Raceway, a dragstrip located approximately ten miles north of Bakersfield, California, since 1959. This years event, which took place March 6 through 8 (or 1 WB4CL* as it's now known), was a real belter.  Unfortunately I didn't take many pictures - I was too busy enjoying the event!

*(1 WB4CL = 1 weekend before covid lockdown)

Fireplace Remodel Day Twenty Four

It's been another busy weekend in the Sheep household, but in between all that there were a still a few hours fort crackin' on wit front room - most specifically repairing the hardwood flooring around the new tiled hearth.

Instead of makin' good, I actually started off by ripping out some more of the existing flooring. The previous owner was fond of boring ½ inch diameter holes in hardwood, and I wanted to take the opportunity to get rid of three of them. I forgot to take a "before" picture, so this is actually the view of the subfloor - but you can still see the holes.

I put down a layer of tar paper, and then I trimmed the original board, and slipped it back into place.

The first few boards went down pretty easily. I've had plenty of practice at repairing hardwood floors in this house by now, and the cuts were all 90 degrees. I also managed to salvage several pieces of the original flooring which I removed some weeks ago when we were building the supporting structure below the hearth.

I actually moved on to the other side before I fashioned the first "L-shaped" section

A few more straight cuts, and a second "L-shaped" section, and I was one piece away from being done.

The final piece of hardwood took a couple of attempts to make and a lot of back and forth with the block plane.

Then it was over to the other side of the room where a rancid brass-plated floor outlet has been installed at some point, probably in the 1980's.  I disconnected the power to the outlet over a year ago, so it was a simple matter of digging it out of the floor....

...which left a five inch diameter hole.

I pulled up the damaged boards...

...and installed some pieces of 2" x 4" timber below the subfloor.

The hole in the plywood subfloor was patched...

....and several pieces of hardwood were laid over the repaired subfloor - these sections were salvaged from elsewhere in the house, so this area will hopefully only need minimal refinishing.

So there you have it - the hardwood has been patched all through the living room, but it still needs nailing down and sanding....watch this space!