Those I got. Sort of a sign of the times that the brake fluid, brake cleaner, wheel-bearing grease, and hand-cleaner needed for this job cost as much as the parts…but there ya go.

Nothing complex…other than there are two wheel cylinders on each wheel.

Installed the parts:

Installed the hub (the Big. Honkin. Heavy. Hub.):

And bolted the tire back on.

A quick brake bleed…well, not so quick actually…as apparently, with the twin wheel cylinders it seems to prevent me from using the mighty-vac to vacuum bleed them from the bottom…so a conventional bleed was necessary.

Thanks to my Dad for the help there. Pump-spew. Pump-spew. Pump-bubble-bubble-bubble-spew! (Ah HA!).

So…now that I could actually stop this 15,000 pound beast…it was time to get her started.

And started she needed to be. There was Fargle-Snorking to be done! (next post)

CUAgain,
Daniel Meyer

So…not much happened at the Old Vic last weekend. This weekend is more scraping and such. Oh, and some maintenance items. Mowing. Weedeating. Fixing the brakes on the Left-handed Fargle-snorker. Seems like it’s important for a 14,000 pound truck to have brakes. This has netted me the biggest durn 4-way lug wrench you ever saw and promises some aches, pains, destruction, and new swear words to come…but…well…all that’s another story.

Also…I’m tinkering on the web site structure…shifting all the content to the blog engine and eventually swapping it to the full site. That should get you more frequent and better organized posts and pictures.

But as in all things “remodel”…there will be dust and it will get worse before it gets better. Heh…and I’ll probably start over when I get 80% done (remodeling joke).

CUAgain,
Daniel Meyer

I’ve done roofs. I don’t like it. Under the best conditions…and even if you are in the best shape, it is hard, brutal, knee and back bruising work.

When we looked at the house, I could easily see the roof needed work, but expected we could get by a few years. We then budgeted for a complete new roof 5 years down the line.

But alas…best laid plans and such.

Mostly, the roof doesn’t leak…but there was one place it did, it was almost inevitable the way it was done at this location…and that was leaking into our utility/mud room, which is our current project.

We couldn’t insulate the mudroom and button up the walls with this leak…and we are not ready for a complete new roof yet…so I had to fix it.

Y’all might recall this picture from when we were installing the French doors. Note the blown out eave above them? This was one symptom of the roof problem. Almost all the water on that break of the roof was entering that eave.

Whatever water didn’t get into the eave was leaking down the wall inside the house. It wasn’t so much a problem before, as this was screened in porch. But now it’s going to be our mudroom.

I figure it’s pretty much always been leaking.

The eave was complete rotten and had to be fixed first.

After some dissassembly, all the bad wood is removed and I can start putting the eave back together again.

What a mess!

After a few hours work, the eave is reconstructed.

Looks pretty good, yes? Now it’s safe to actually get on the roof from this location.

And that was the easy part.

They say a good friend will come and bail you out of jail.
They say a great friend will be sitting there beside you saying, “That was fun! Who do you know that can come and bail us out?”

What do you say about a friend that will come help you do roofing? Especially when he knew roofing was on the agenda?

Anyway, my friend Mike came up to help with the roofing part. I needed the assistance to build the new break/valley and the rest of the miserable (back and knee bruising work) just to get this small segment done.

About 11 layers of shingles were crammed down there. We even hit those hexogonal composite shingles popular about 40 years ago. Those were over a layer of cedar shake.

The bottom layer or so…we bagged it all up in contractor grade bags and will spend the next several weeks filling up our trashcan. This is about 10% of the mess we actually pulled off…but the wife was bagging in the meantime to save us work later.

It can be somewhat disconcerting to see bright daylight coming out of the attic hatch inside your house…and you know this is exactly the minute the radio predicted rain!

You can see the problem…with this break hitting right up against the kitchen wall. I figure they’ve been fighting a leak here for the last 50 years or so (since this addition was put on).

So…first thing we did was frame up a new break to the roof…directing the water away from the wall and into a new valley.

We then put new decking down. Here you can see the new break/valley decked:

That’s me on the ladder in the pic above. Ignore that big level sitting on the roof…a level has limited use in a house like this…anything that actually reads level is probably broken.

We flashed the new valley and all the edges properly and reshingled. That part goes pretty fast once you start and we neglected to get any pictures of the flashing or the completed roof…I’ll have to take one of the finished project later just to have one to post.

We finished this up on Thursday. Saturday we had 3 inches of rain and Sunday we had snow! Not a drop dripped. Success!

Thanks Mike!

CUAgain,
Daniel Meyer

My good friend Larry helped immensly as my “saw man”…we set up the saws on the second floor and he could make all the cuts I needed…and as mentioned above…LOTS of cuts in that section.

There was a large bolt/wire hanger through the center of the bottom section…it no longer had any wires attached and any future wires I would not attach to the tower anyway…so I took it out. Everything was so siezed up I had to grind the nut off (split it) and whack it off with a hammer before we could remove the big bolt and bracket.

The tower looks SO much better without gaping holes in it!

On to the top section next time!

Oh…and as usual…it’s not really “done”. There are a couple pieces of trim to install just below the sills…I just haven’t purchased them yet.

CUAgain,
Daniel Meyer

That’s me, 35 feet up there…removing about 40 pounds of wood trim that was no longer firmly attached. It was about to fall off and I *really* don’t want to kill random pedestrians with pieces of my building. Over half of it was missing.

I had to pull square nails to remove the rest of it.

I then added new trim to seal a gap between the roof and the wall of the tower. It’s the “shiny” in the pic below…

That’s my friend Mike down there…helping me out by watching the truck and being my second boom operator if needed…he is also my saw man for the siding underlay repair and shingle replacement.

We started on the siding underlay repair and siding replacement as well…

That is a jigsaw puzzle there…only one row of those doesn’t require some kind of cut. Add in the 110 year old “square” factor (as in, nothing is square after 100 years…unless it’s broken and needs replaced) and there were dozens of cuts involved here. The top will go faster.

There’s enough here to see the pattern anyway…we ran out of time and the weather came down on us the next day (45 degree temperature drop, 7 inches of snow). The upper tower will have several rows of fishscale, several straight, and three rows with the round/arrow combo that gives the illusion of the circles.

Can’t wait to see it all together!

CUAgain,
Daniel Meyer

12 cartons…96 shingles/carton. 3 different patterns (fancy-ing this up just a bit).

I’m pretty sure they are a thin cedar veneer over a solid gold substrate (based on cost).

Shipped in from Canada.

So, I’ve got the tools…

The Left Handed Fargle Snorker is ready to work

…and will shortly have the material.

That about does in my spring budget…

(sigh)

CUAgain,
Daniel Meyer

Painting? Uh, no. Not only do I not want to be outside, but the paint would be somewhat solidified. We may have lost some paint anyway…since some of it was stored in parts of the house that no-doubtably froze. (durnit)

Plumbing? Nope. Too cold to crawl around under the house.

Wiring? Attics are cold too.

Insulating? Well, maybe. Lord knows it needs to get done. But no. Too durn cold.

Roofing? Oh hell no.

Aside from that, I put in some “hours” this week, and needed some extra sleep.

Heh…yeah, I didn’t stir out of my bed until 11am Saturday. The warm, willing wife lying there with me was some incentive I expect.

Guy’s gotta have a day off every now and again.

This week the UPS fairy brought me a full-body harness and some orange traffic cones. Along with the pads and chocks I made last weekend, those will go in the toolbins on the left-handed fargle-snorker to be used as needed. Or perhaps never to be seen again, but at least I have them.

Of course, as much as I like to play with tools…there is no way in HELL I’m breaking out the left-handed fargle-snorker in temperatures in the teens and twenties…I mean….elevating onesself 40 feet in the air…the twenty degree and 30mph air…seems somewhat masochistic…even for me.

In the mean time though, I thought it prudent to test out the traffic cones.

Yes, the traffic cones.

As most of you know, they are used for marking hazards.

Let me introduce you to…

The most dangerous couch. Ever.

We’re supposed to have milder temperatures next week…so maybe we’ll get some work done then.

Until that time, y’all take care!

CUAgain,
Daniel Meyer

So, I jumped in the left-handed fargle-snorker and trucked on up to Clarksville on Saturday.

The trip itself is kind of a big deal. It’s an old rig, yet brand new to me, so I’d no experience as to its reliability etc. The gas gauge doesn’t work, and I didn’t even know what kind of mileage to expect. Then there’s the matter of the dealer’s tags and faxed insurance paperwork…all perfectly okay of course, but the kind of thing State Troopers like to hassle you about.

Of course, it’s only 120 mile trip, and I tend to believe I can build a shopping mall with a q-tip (that line is courtesy of Six Days, Seven Nights) so I was sure that anything short of a gear-shattering explosion I could deal with. I mean, no, I didn’t have any q-tips on me but I was carrying some duct-tape and a pair of nail-clippers and I really didn’t need a shopping mall anyway.

120 miles. No problem at all. There’s some quirks. Mentioned above, the gas guage doesn’t work. Neither does the speedometer. The rear end is two-speed, but doesn’t currently shift. That’s electrical in nature I’m sure and is probably an easy fix. For the speedo…I just snagged the wife’s GPS.

She burns no oil. Gets about 10mpg. Started up fine in the 20 degree morning weather. Brakes work fine. She’s a heavy beast. Fun to drive…in that manly testosterone-pumping, tooth-rattling, kidney bouncing sort of way.

(grunt/snort)

I’ll tinker. I like things to work…but none of the “quirks” are going to effect the job I need to do first, so they can wait.

What I DID need however, are some little accessories required when whipping equipment about in a working environment. The truck was pretty well cleaned out when I bought it…not even a stray block of wood or an oily rag remained.

So, off to the spare lumber pile. I made some chocks (two sets). The parking brake works fine, but on this rig, the hydraulics are powered by a PTO on the transmission, so when using the boom the engine needs to be running and the tranny in neutral. If I end up on any sort of incline, I’ll feel better chocking the wheels instead of just depending on the parking brake and outriggers to keep her from rolling away.

I also made a set of two pads for the outriggers to rest on. They are about 2 feet square, and since they are made with three layers of 2×6 lumber, they are something like 5″ thick. I figure they could support a small crane.

These increase the surface area of the outrigger feet and are needed to keep the outriggers from sinking when operating the machine on softer ground. Also, and more to my needs, the wood pads will protect the soft(ish) brick on the historic square from getting scarred up by the steel outrigger feet.

A pair of wheel chocks on the left, and a outrigger pad (2′ x 2′ x 5″ thick).
I made two of each of these.

A handful of traffic cones would be handy too…but that’s easily fixed. The magic UPS fairy is gonna deliver me some this week.

The holidays and all the family stuff that goes along with them have really cut into my projects…so, next weekend…I’m starting on the mudroom roof (can’t insulate until I fix the roof leak), and then for one day I’ll take the left-handed fargle-snorker up to the square and get a closer look at the damage on the tower. I need to know what materials to get before serious work begins.

CUAgain,
Daniel Meyer

Heh…and THAT’S just for the stuff I need to finish this year!

You also may recall I’m an author.

Want to help me help support the booming home improvement business all while finishing up your last minute Christmas shopping?

Life Is a Road books make an excellent Christmas present for the adventurer in your life. Especially autographed sets!

Get that last minute shopping done now! And hey, they’re made, written, and printed in the USA!

You can order the books anywhere (Amazon.com/Lulu/etc) but the autographed ones you can only get from me.

If you want them by Christmas, with standard shipping you must order before noon on Monday, December 14. If you upgrade to Priority mail you can order as late as noon, Wednesday, December 16.

Later than that will not ship till Monday the 21st and those will not reach you by Christmas.

You can order directly from me at this link.

I hope y’all have a Happy and safe (or at least fun!) Christmas.

CUAgain,
Daniel Meyer

*shudder* On second thought…stike that mental image…I do NOT want to know what orifice that three-stranded copper, PVC sheathed “web” comes out of.

There’s more than a thousand feet of wire in this house now. Scary, since I’m only about 1/4 of the way done. (thinks about the upstairs)…If that.

BTW…wire has gone WAY up in price again. 12/2 w/ground NM was $36/roll (250 feet) this summer. It’s now nearly $70. Yikes! Maybe I *DO* want to know what orafice…

Anyway, I thought I’d show a minor detail of construction that illustrates why these houses last so long. I won’t say they don’t fall down…we all know that anything man builds starts falling down before he’s even done with it…but these houses fall down *very* slowly.

Did they have some magical construction secrets long lost to the ages? Did the Egyptians come help after they finished the pyramids?

Nah. They had a wonderful lack of finnesse and modern design standards.

Say that they wanted to hold up a porch? Did they do an environmental impact study, load calculation, soil strata study, computer simulation, hire 4 city engineers, commission an architect, call a couple building inspectors, and rent a small dog and two tennis balls from the orient?

Nope. What they did is look “over there”, point at a big honkin’ chunk of wood, and say, “That looks like it’ll hold. Use 4 of ‘em.” Then they added a couple more just for symmetry or visual interest.

So. What was I talking about again?

Oh, yeah. Wiring and why these houses fall down very slowly.

It’s like this. I had to cut a 4″ hole in the side of my house so I could install the wiring box for the porch light. *One* of the porch lights anyway. There seem to be rather a lot of them.

There were two tell-tale holes in the spot I selected where, once-upon-a-time, a knob and tube light (long gone) had lived.

I got out my trusty 4″ hole saw and started cutting. And cut. And cut. And kept cutting. And some more. And deeper still. I’m out of “hole drilling” mode and into “core sample” territory by now. The torque on the *big-honkin’-drill* is starting to cause me to strain a bit. The city is bringing auxillary power plants on-line to make up for the load on the grid from the big yellow Dewalt drill.

Shortly, I’m wondering if I’m drilling some sort of space-time-wormhole doo-dad that’s gonna come out somewhere in Barcelo.

Man. Won’t they be surprised when I run a wire through Barcelo for my porchlight…

*POP*

Oooo! Finally! A hole! The standard kind…I think…a bit deeper than I expected but no wormhole or speed-of-light calculations involved.

All that work, just to get through the sheathing on this house. Not all the way through the wall mind you…just through the exterior sheathing and into the cavity between the studs.

Solid wood. Two inches thick!

The exterior siding is cypress…ONE inch thick cypress! Even where it’s thinnest (it has a profile) it is nearly 3/4″ thick.

Under that is 1×12″ tongue-and-grove (western red cedar) mounted diagonally. Another full 1″ of wood.

Here’s the plug.

Solid defined.

Inside the house is another 1″ thick layer of the 1×12″ western red cedar (layed horizontally this time) under whatever wall covering they selected (typically wallpaper).

So, that’s three solid inches of wood and a 4″ wall cavity between the inside and the outside.

I find it very amusing to contrast this to the sheathing on my modern house. Well, it has a brick veneer…but the brick is attached to the wall to hold the brick up. Sigh. Where it’s not brick it has 1/4″ thick wafer-ee-bordy stuff. Oh, and some plastic. I’ve already had to replace much of it. Weeee!

The Old Vic has been standing for well over 100 years. The surburban “blah* has been standing for about 25 years.

I wonder which one will fall down first?

CUAgain,
Daniel Meyer