starting to renovate the third floor

30 SEPTEMBER 2012

To put it flatly, I’ve been slacking.  My new role as a father and the tidal schedule of a mother and child, for starters.  The soaring days of the summer, a spiraling distraction, are now coming to an end.  Mommy and Willy the Squid are spending the beginning of the fall season visiting our Polish family in W-w (Wroclaw abbr.)  Bonding with Babcia Grazia, and messing around with Olek's electronics.   It seems like a perfect chance to reinvigorate the trip our little house is taking into the twenty-first century.  Kicking and screaming. 

To go from mask-and-dust phase, to nail and lumber phase in a single day (9/28) was pretty unexpected.  Then again, you can’t find two helpers like dad and Andrew just lurking in the Home Depot parking lot… 

As you know blog, there is a now a third little person in our midst, and someday, he’ll probably want to strike out on his own, or at least on his own floor.  That day, I’d like to have a little bedroom ready to go.  This means that the formerly 70s-era panel and fiberglass “bonus room” – a drafty and also moldy 12’ x 15’ room up a flight of stairs from the kitchen and which connects to the open attic on the northwest end of the house – will be undergoing some improvement.  That is to say: demolition.  Yesssss.

But demolition is a fickle and short-lived mistress.  I now follow the one day of demo work with  a couple hours of bio-remediation.   Eyes stinging, I scrub the underside of the roof with bleach solution, killing any little fungi's that have been bathing in the transfer of moisture and air up out of the house and through the roof.  By 3:00 AM on Friday, the job was done and done, and I was staring at beautiful black rafter bays and wide plank roof boards, free of any "bio-fuzz."

Build on!   We're framing the ceiling, kneewalls, and diagonals out to 6” using offset studs and strapping where possible, and fastening backing material, in order to catch the spray-foam insulation I'm planning on having put in.

The 70's wood paneling gets something of a second-life now, as we've used it to form the backing-- photos on this detail coming soon.

Of course having some leftovers in the fridge and a brother and father within a ½ day’s drive doesn't hurt either.   Dad seems to take pleasure in a good “ger-er-done!” project over a couple days.   Andrew is an expert nail puller and fine demolisher. 

The 2"-thick fiberglass batt that dad is taking out here has about an R-8.   That is... IF it is perfectly in tact.  I can say that these ones were not really in tact.  On the current project we're aiming for an R-30 or more.

Re-wiring the room to code, lighting, and making the new layout are the next steps in the process.  These are difficult things to get right… maybe Google Sketch-up will make all the tough calls from here on out.  The grunt labor is so much more relaxing.    

Good to see you again blog.