And now for the walls: Now that the old ceiling has been totally removed and the old oak joists exposed, it was time to remove the old plaster & lath walls. In 2 previous rooms I had done, I left all 4 plastered walls intact and faced them with 1/4″ drywall. In this room I […]
Getting started
First order of business in beginning this project is to: Get room cleared out of all the stuff that had accumulated in it over the years. Since the room was basically unusable as an occupied space, it became very useful as a dumping ground. We called this room the “junk room” and it has fulfilled […]
Reason for bowed ceiling
There are a couple reasons for the bowed ceiling. As I previously mentioned, both the floor and the ceiling sagged like a saucer. The sag was about 4″ in the center of the room. Sag reason #1. The old 2×8″ oak joists (roughly 16″ on center) spanned almost 16′. This is undersized for this span […]
Gutter Guards
About 5 years ago I had my son Nathan dig a trench for a drain line that would take the gutter discharge out to the ditch. I might mention that Nathan’s work standard was “excellence”, and he did an exceptional job on this! Anyway, this drain line was intended to not only handle sending the […]
Sump Pump Update
The sump pump is working well. It is discharging the laundry wash as hoped for. What I am patiently waiting for is a couple days of driving rains to determine whether the sump pump/pit will deal with the basement floor seepage. Although we finally got about a 1/4″ of rain in the last 24 hours, […]
Sump Pump installation (Part 4)
Well, the concrete has cured. I bought a 12″ diameter circular paver to place in the bottom of my sump barrel for the sump pump to sit on. Then I installed the 1-1/2″ threaded-solvent weld PVC adaptor on the pump. Then I solvent welded about a 4′ section of PVC to that. At that point […]
