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Introduction
November 24, 2004
November 30, 2004
December 5, 2004
December 17, 2004
January 11, 2005
February 7, 2005
February 27, 2005
March 7, 2005
March 30, 2005
April 8, 2005
April 11, 2005
April 18, 2005
May 2, 2005
June 12, 2005
July 15, 2005
Summer '05
October '05
Winter '05
Spring '06
blue-bottle home
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Handyman Special
Renovating that old house on Market Street
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October '05: How one small project gets big
real fast.
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the antechamber begins. That's the name Cybele
has given to the room off the back of the kitchen, leading into the
barn. This will become the mud room (crucial to northeast living) and
also where the clothes dryer will live.
The floor in this room was basically a ramp that led
from the kitchen door into the barn. The rest of the floor, like where
I'm squatting and flashing plumber butt in the picture, was dirt. |
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This northwest corner
of this room had rotted and sunk down pulling the entire section off
the back of house with it. The rotted sill beam can be seen in the foreground.
I jacked it up a full 15 inches and installed a new
sill beam. |
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But jacking
it up presented a problem. The back section of the barn was constructed
after the antechamber had sunk down. Its roof was built over the antechamber
roof. I couldn't jack up the antechamber until I cut away part of the
barn roof.
Note the roof flashing pushed up as a result of the
lifting. Also notice the new metal chimney for the wood stove in the
background. |
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Having destroyed the
existing roofs, and how they tied together, I had to get creative.
The valley where the roofs joined would not be straight,
but I was more concerned about keeping the pitches as steep as possible
and getting the job done before the rains came. |
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I got the roof finished
just before the rains came (and are still here two weeks later
for that matter). Now I could concentrate on the interior.
I used loose cinder block for a foundation and lined
the crawl space with a vapor barrier. I tacked rigid foam insulation
to the floor. The antechamber won't be heated but another break against
the weather can't hurt.
I'm getting to be a regular old house spelunker with
all the time I'm spending in crawlspaces. The antechamber crawlspace
is about 18" high. Just enough room to get stuck in. |
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Farmer
framing was put into action to extend the floor and stud the
walls. The original walls were framed with 2x4's lay flat against the
siding. They were rotted on the bottom so I sistered new studs to them
and added some more for blocking-in the window. I ignored the 16"
on center rule and framed as needed. With the cost of materials starting
to get prohibitive, an overbuilt antechamber seemed frivolous.
The wiring was pulled through the crawlspace under
the kitchen (see the April 18th entry for
a visual). This should have been a two person job but ended up being
an exhausting one man battle. |
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Got the
wiring in, though, and now I've got electrical service in the
barn, four circuits: two separate receptacle circuits, a dedicated 220V
circuit for the dryer and another dedicated for lighting.
More to come on the expanding antechamber renovation...
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