New Toy Shelf

I finally built the toy shelf (twice) we got from Craigslist back in June. Yes, I built it twice -- as I usually end up doing with everything from IKEA.

We decided to get rid of the picture board that we hadn't had any pictures on since we put the new floor in:


I was concerned that it would be a little in the way in this spot, but it turned out pretty nicely:


Leia will have a blast pulling herself up to standing on this. I fastened it to the wall really well -- it won't budge. I think if I put some candy on top, Kate will climb all the way up it.

Floor Completed

We finished the floor before lunch today. After lunch we started on the moulding, and got most of the way done. The base moulding actually took only about 30 minutes. The time-consuming part was doing it around the doors and hand-rails.

Here's a snapshot at lunchtime of the finished floor. Take note of the brown moulding above the hand-rail in this picture:


Now check out the view after we replaced it with new white moulding. This is just primered moudling -- it will be painted with real white later. Thanks to Andrew's skillful use of a hacksaw, chisel, and razor knife, this turned out awesome despite nothing in this house being square or plumb.


Now snapshots of the state of the project at the end of day two. We still have the window sills to do.


We also still have one more time-consuming rail to do as seen in the upper-left corner of this photo:


Kate loves the new floor. It makes a great track for running laps. She also loves having a big open room with no furniture, in which she annouces "Kate go circle crazy" and then proceeds to run in circles until she gets so dizzy she falls down. And then she does it again and again and laughs histerically.

Tomorrow a few more mouldings and window sills to put up, then on to fillng nail holes and seams, and caulking. We'll be done before the day is out, woohoo!

More Floor

We ended up taking a 5-hour break in the middle of the day, so we didn't get quite as far as we had hoped (we hoped to finish all the flooring in one day), but we got close. We worked from the kitchen over to the entryway, to get the other transition taken care of, leaving mostly easy parts remaining. The only flooring left that requires anything more than just snapping it in and cutting to length is some cutting around the door and the vents, plus ripping boards to fit the last inches at either end. We're gonna start early tomorrow and finish it off and move on to the moudling.

First Floor Progress Report

We started with the trickiest part: the transition between the kitchen and the dining room. We had to slide out a few boards from the kitchen and replace them with new full-length boards. It took some crafty chiseling by Andrew, but it turned out awesome. This was probably the most time consuming part. The transition to the entry way will be similar, but won't involve any crazy cuts, so the rest of the day should result in lots of progress.

Photos of our progress on starting to lay the new floor before taking a lunch break on our first day:

The Point of No Return

Today I started the project to replace the carpet in the living/dining room with the same laminate flooring as the rest of the downstairs.

I forgot to take a photo before I started, but here's a snapshot before tearing up the carpet, but after I had moved most of the furniture out and torn off all the moulding:


No turning back now...started tearing out the carpet. Kate and Willow were so fascinated with what I was doing that I had to put the baby gates back up to keep them from stepping on staples and those nasty tack strips -- those things are SHARP! They watched from the gate and the outside the window for a while. I cut the carpet and pad out in 4-foot strips to make them nice and easy to carry.


Calling it a night. Got all the moudling, nails, carpet, pad, tack strips, and staples removed and swept the whole area. It was really quite disgusting to see all the dirt underneath the carpet. My friend Andrew came up from Eugene, OR for a few days and we're gonna start laying floor bright and early tomorrow morning. The only hard part we anticipate is trying to make it seamless to the kitchen and entryway without needing a transition. That will probably be time-consuming, but other than that, it's pretty much just a rectangle and should go quickly. Hopefully we'll get the whole floor done tomorrow...

Table Fail, Part Deux

I finally finished refinishing the leaves of the table this week.

The leaves actually didn't need to be refinished, but after doing the main part of the table, the leaves were a lighter color than the rest of the table and were a lot glossier. I tried just sanding the leaves down with 400 grit sandpaper and adding one coat of stain to them, hoping that would make them look the same as the rest. That didn't work out so well, so I ended up sanding them all the way down and refinishing them from scratch using the same process I did for the rest of the table.

The problem is, I realized all my mistakes from the first pass and corrected them when doing the leaves, so the leaves actually look better than the rest of the table. The stain is much more even, there aren't the same kinds of glossy splotches, and they are still much glossier than the rest of the table. But at least they're the same color now.

I think the first time, I didn't use enough "elbow grease" wiping up the excess stain as my dad suggested, and I also don't think I waited long enough for the wax to harden to a haze before buffing it. I corrected those problems on the leaves and they turned out much better. I suppose I can-rewax the table and maybe get some of the gloss up to snuff.

I guess the lesson is, when you're new at this, do the leaves first, learn from your mistakes, and then do the main table.

Here's the final picture with the leaves in:


Oh well...we only use the leaves one a year anyway., and the table is usually covered with turkeys and such, so I doubt anyone will notice...

Table Fail

I put the dining room table back in the house, but there are so many things wrong with the way it turned out that I don't like. I did a do-over on the leaves, so they are not featured in the pictures below...they are still drying their first (re-)coat of teak oil.

I don't have any good before pictures of the table. The one thing that did turn out nicely is that all the scratches, marks, and water rings are gone. Maybe I am just being too much of a perfectionist on the finished product though. Since I don't have good before pictures, it's hard to tell if my complaints now were always problems. I should probably just assume they were and just be happy that its better than it was before refinishing it.

From afar, or at a glance when sitting at the table, it looks pretty nice. It turned out a little darker than it was originally, but I like the color. Here is a picture of the table:


One of my complaints about the way it turned out is that it appears that there are alternating light and dark streaks that look like I did a crappy job sanding. The leaves had the same effect after sanding them all the way down today, and I tried very hard to sand out the darker streaks but they would not go away. So, perhaps its just the pattern of the wood. Here is a top-view of the table where you can see the streaks I am talking about (click the picture for a larger version).


Another problem is that the table didn't turn out nearly as glossy as it was before. I am not sure this is absolutely necessary, but I was convinced I should have been able to achieve the same level of gloss. The picture below doesn't quite show the lack of gloss as well as I had hoped - plus I don't have a before picture to compare it to. But what you can see in this picture (at least in the larger version) is that it looks like there are splotches that turned out glossier than others. This kinda makes the table look like it is dirty or has sticky spill spots on it. This is probably the most irritating of the flaws I see. My guess is that I didn't get the excess teak oil wiped up very well. Here is a closer angled shot of the table top trying to show the varying gloss on the surface:


All in all I suppose it's not so bad considering that all the blemishes removed nicely and water beads up nicely on it now. Plus, it's better than the card table we had in it's place during the last two month while the table was in the garage. Laurie is just happy to have the table back.

If you're interested, here are the steps that were involved in refinishing the table:

• Sand off all finish on table top with 220 grit with random orbit sander.
• Apply teak oil, let it soak for 15 min, sand with 400 grit while still wet, wipe off excess.
• Wait 24 hours, repeat stain.
• Wait 2 months, repeat stain (this time without 400 grit sanding hoping for more gloss)
• Wait 24 hours.
• Apply Johnson Paste Wax. Wait 30 min to harden to a "haze" (whatever that means).
• Buff with terry cloth.
• Wait a few hours. Call it done.
• Skip staining anything other than the table top.
• Delegate cleaning the dust off the legs to Laurie.
  

The (almost) Completed Play Area

The play area was completed enough to play in on Kate's birthday, just moments before her bedtime...so I think technically that means I made the deadline. Here's the before/after pics:

BEFORE (from inside pit, facing deck)

BEFORE (from deck, facing pit)

AFTER (from deck)

Work Items:

• [X] Remove gate between deck and pit.


• [X] Build step down from deck to pit.


• [X] Replace fence between deck and pit with handrail (and stain it).


• [X] Clear and level out ground with gravel.


• [X] Put down weed-killer and weed-blocking paper.


• [X] Build perimeter box out of 4x6 landscape timbers.


• [X] Fill box 6" deep with play cedar chips.


• [X] Install climbing toys.


• [X] Install flooring (astroturf-covered plywood) underneath play toys to avoid slivers.


• [ ] Install lattice under deck rail to prevent toys and kids from going under the deck.

Ok...so I didn't quite finish everything just yet...but it was definitely playable for Kate's big party on Saturday. All the kids had a blast. They even got to use the extra scraps of astroturf as toboggans for improved sliding viscosity. Laurie will probably post some pics/vids of the party soon.

In other news, Michelle came home to visit from Germany. She informed me that I was working on refinishing the dining room table the last time she visited. I guess I should get on finishing that table now...

The first "step" of the play area.

Today completes the first step of converting the dog area we never use into a play area for the kids: adding a step. Here is a pic of the area before work began:

BEFORE

For the first step, I removed the gate, and built a step down into the play area. The drop was 18 inches, and a standard step is supposed to be 7 inches, so I cheated a little bit. I dug a few inches deep in the landing and packed it in with gravel to raise the ground a little, and level it to reduce the drop to 16 inches. Then I build a box with Trex on the surface for the step and installed it in the doorway such that each step down is 8 inches. Close enough.

AFTER STEP ONE

I'll probably put some lattice behind the new step, just for cosmetics. I haven't decided on the next step...I'll either start prepping the rest of the ground, or deal with the fence between the play area and the deck. For that we are going to remove the fence boards and cut the posts down to a height more consistent with a hand rail and then either build railing out of it or affix lattice. Either way, the point is to make it so we can see the kids playing it from the deck while we are drinking beer.

Hoping to get this all done before Kate's birthday party...

The Sunken Porch Is Finally Fixed!

Today we had a visit from Superior Slabjacking. I know, it sounds like the title of an adult film, but it's not...its a local company that raises sunken concrete, porches, etc. via a technique called slabjacking, which is a process of drilling holes in the sunken concrete and pumping in a slurry solution made up of non-organic soil, fine sand, water, and Portland Cement that weighs approx. half the weight of concrete and "is ideal for replacing the soil that has settled or washed away under the slab."

Our front porch has sunk about 3 inches over the years. In just under 4 hours they lifted our porch back into its original location, and within 30 minutes, it was ready to use again. The process was quite amazing to watch -- Kate was facinated with watching a crew of strange men making all kinds of noise and mess in our front yard. She curiously watched most of the time they were here from the front window and gave the workers an occasional wave.

After they were done lifting it, they filled the holes so nicely I can barely even tell where the holes were. Here are some before/after closeups where you can see how much the porch sank. Notice the area under the door and the paint lines on the siding.

BEFORE

AFTER

One of the major concerns with this sinkage was that a good portion of the roof is supported by a post that is supported by the sunken porch. This was causing a major load-bearing beam to warp and crack. You can see in the pictures below some of the obvious places where things had gone crooked (pointed out with red arrows - click the images to see larger images with more detail).

My big question was whether or not this slabjacking technique would work given the extra weight of the house that was on the porch. These guys handled it with ease. The dug some holes under the porch and placed some jacks to help lighten the load, and the porch came up no problem. Then the filled in those holes with more of their slurry solution and replaced all the bark and everything.

BEFORE

AFTER

When we first embarked on this mission to repair/replace the sunken porch, we were certain we in for a huge bill -- expecting at least $5,000 to jack up the beam, replace the post, or even knock out and replace the porch itself. Boy were we happy to find Superior Slabjacking. The whole process cost $1,500 and there were no worries about replacing the concrete and having color mismatch, etc. A perfect, quick solution that got everything back in order in under 4 hours!

They also fixed a few other sinking areas of the walkway and driveway as an added bonus to make everything line up nice. If you live in the greater Seattle area and have sunken porches, driveways, or walkways, I highly recommend these guys. They were prompt, efficient, professional, and inexpensive -- they get my thumbs up.

The only problem is that I am so used to stepping down 3 inches out of our front door that I almost tripped stepping out onto a porch that is actually in the correct location.

Phase One of the Summer Home Improvement Project is complete...stay tuned for Phase Two...