Living/Dining Room Renov.- Tasks 1 &2 , Done!

Well, despite my efforts to sabotage the project,we managed to get the structural repairs completed over the holiday weekend. Thanks mainly to Handywoman's mad skills with the circular saw. She wields that thing like a ice sculpture artist with a chainsaw. More power to her. I'm still scared of that thing.

Mr. LL and I spent a miserable couple hours stuffing rock wool insulation up between the ceiling joists in hot sticky weather; but the feeling of accomplishment and momentum was certainly worth it.

Not to mention future money saved on heat, and sound dampening of upstairs footsteps (more on that next time). Here's some photos of the results so far:

In the overview photo above you can see the new rock wool ceiling insulation and the beginnings of our new dropped ceiling frame on the left.


Our insulation gets the Leo seal of approval for coziness:


Although he's not too happy now that his Fortress of Solitude has disappeared and he is reduced to hanging out on the floor with Chip and the dogs.






Here are some photos of the structural repairs... The Plumbers Special:


The south wall support (the one I measured 10 inches short at first):


And the other North wall support. This one is opposite the support shown above. Together these supports sort of frame the "newer" portion of the house that was added on.

These new supports will bump out into the room, which is sort of weird. But we've decided to embrace them as a restoration of one of the house's "original details". Um, that being..you know, structural support..

Carpentry for Dummies...

You know the saying- "measure twice (or thrice), cut once". Hell, I know the saying. But knowing and doing are two different things. Yeah, I screwed up. Pretty big..well not in the sense of -cut a hole in a gas line- big, but my screw up was a three-parter. Triple play, -set us back half a day-, big.

Just dumb. Here goes:

Part 1- Before we went to buy lumber, I had the job of measuring how long our 4x4 structural supports needed to be. Yes, 8 ft finished length, but we'd need 10'ers to cut down to extend to the joists and the sill. Realized this AFTER getting home with our 3 new 8 ft 4x4s.

Part 2- Headed out to a real lumberyard to remedy Part 1 and buy 3 x 10'ers. Tried my best to sight the wood and pick out straight pieces without major defects. Apparently I was distracted by the young man chatting with me at the lumberyard. Upon arriving home and laying them out on the floor, noticed one of them was as bowed as cowboys legs. Just un-usable. Strike two.

Part 3- Here's the best part. I had the job of measuring the maximum length of the support so we could cut down the 4x4 and notch it. My brain and motor skills were apparently so busy making sure to measure to the nearest 16th along a perfect plumb line, that I neglected to stick the tape down into the subfloor to the sill and instead measured to the finished floor. Handywoman (who now double checks all my measurements) then meticulously notched both top and bottom of the post to make it fit like a glove. When at last we triumphantly lowered the post into the floor.. Yep, about 10 inches short.

How pathetic am I?? We all laughed pretty hard but I wanted to crawl down into that hole in the subfloor and die.