Oh the choices!!

I'm leaning towards the ones on the far right.  Thoughts, everyone?

The beat goes on....updates on V's room

Apologies for the long delay in posting - we've been so busy wrapping up the academic year, traveling,  packing, and renovating, it's been tough to fit in blog posting! 

But, things are progressing.  More to come soon, but for now, here's a few updates on the work we've done so far upstairs. 

Say hello to the 650 sq feet of beautiful four-inch-wide American Cherry (natural) that we have acquired for the upstairs bedrooms, helpfully sorted and stacked by Moi and our good friend, PJLR: 

And, I'm super happy to say that we've FINISHED stripping and sanding the trim in V's room.  A few minor touches on the windows to go, and we'll be set.  So, we took out the foot on the trim and vacuumed the room and trim thoroughly to prepare for staining.  Here's what we're looking at now:

Doesn't look like much, right?  But we are optimistic that with our combination of stain, new floors, and, oh, you know, some fresh paint, this will be a super cute little boy room. 

We also tested the stain out, and are excited with the preliminary results.  Caution - these photos were taken immediately after the stain, and after two weeks, it's mellowed quite a bit.  But I think you can see the possibilities in these pictures....

A Casual Approach to Renovation:

Emergency gutter trepannation

Today I'd planned (inter alia) to take some pictures of the various work that needs doing on the southeast corner of the house. There's water damage, and we were aware of this—we're just making a plan for what needs doing and how.

In particular, I was aiming to find out where the water was coming in, what damage the water had done, how to stop the water coming in, and what needed to be done to repair the done damage.

The window is just as much of a mess as we'd thought. The top of the window frame is shot; there were two pieces of wood making up the exterior casing: one sitting horizontally and projecting 2 inches, providing what's nowadays done with an aluminum drip edge. Below that was the flat (relative to the wall) trim, maybe 5 inches wide. Half the drip edge is gone; half of that casing piece is split away, too, and—as you can see in the photo—the split angles back toward the house, funneling rainwater into the window and wall. Oy. Stay tuned for updates on all this, I'm just getting to today's adventure.

As I was up on the ladder, it started to rain. Hey, a great opportunity to see where the water's

going, check out the guttering. I went inside and upstairs to look out the window, to take a picture from above. Here's what I saw:

Holy moley. The picture doesn't show it terribly well, but there's a huge spray of water directly against the house. With great vigor. Clogged drain. Clogged drain + water + cold=ice, expanding and splitting the gutter; split gutter plus [still-]clogged drain plus 1" per hour of rain times, oh, 450 sq feet for the half of the roof this is draining, works out to about 18 cubic inches of water per second. Oof.

It's not the leak at the top of the window, but it's certainly not doing anything good for the wall. And it's doing certain not good quickly.

Time to get back on the ladder, with the shears and the dead blow hammer, and relieve the pressure in a direction other than directly against the wall.

Snip, snip, bash, bam. Oh, with that 1"per hour rainstorm on my head.

Seamless gutters, anyone? And a big ol' clearing-out of the drainage.

List of compatible metals

Fight galvanic corrosion! Don't use dissimilar metals in an electrolytic solution! What's an electrolytic solution? Well, in the long enough term, water or even damp air (particularly if you're dealing with pipes that remain cool and encourage condensation). What's a dissimilar metal? The good people at Jamestown Distributors have provided a list. If the metals are close by in the list, they're okay together, if not, don't use (or insulate. Or there's the option of provided a sacrificial chunk of metal but I don't know the technicalities.). For the homeowner? This is important when you're dealing with water pipes, window frames, gutters, flashing and exhausts, anytime you've got metal outside the house.

Mercury Monel Nickel Bronze (silicon) Copper Brass (red) Bronze (phosphor) Tin Lead Steel (stainless) Iron Steel (mild) Aluminum Cadmium Galvanized (iron and steel) Zinc Magnesium

Just hauled upstairs

1800 pounds of floor. (Laid it down by the walls. Load-bearing walls.)

FYI, when a permit is needed in the City of Chicago

There's a list.