Sweeps!

 In my continued effort to keep warm air in and cold air out, I managed to find unobtrusive door sweeps for both the kitchen door and the door going upstairs. I hated drilling into my freshly refinished doors, but it's a little better now, and I don't have to jam towels under the door except on the most bitter nights.

Kitchen Door - It looks like it belongs on there. I had to put it on the outside because that's where the nice straight threshold will touch.

No light coming through, which means no air coming through! (Or at least less.)

Sweep on the stairs door.

Well... it's... better. A smaller gap, anyway.

Next up in the air containment projects is extending the weird door trim for the stairs door. I've cut the piece to fit, complete with notched angle. I'm just waiting on the paint to dry.

The door closes against this. Why doesn't it go all the way up?

This is the gap at the top of the door when it's closed. I don't get why they didn't just run it up to the ceiling. It must have served some purpose at some point to have that gap there. It appears intentional.

The other thing I'm considering is changing out the hardware on the stairs door. When it was cover in 6 coats of paint, friction and gravity held it closed. The hinges were balanced such that after the half-way point it would swing close on it's own. While I managed to balance the hinges when I replaced them (GO ME!), not there's nothing keeping it closed. If the cat was more ambitious, she could flip it own with a paw. 

Decision time!

Do I want to keep the cute, inexpensive knob because it's pretty?

It's a glazed blue ceramic cabinet knob. Sorry about the bad picture.

Or do I want to install a new old-style latch, which I already own?

It would look sort of like this, as you head up the stairs. Because of how the door is put together, the thumb-latch part would have to go on the other side.

That time of year

Things have gotten a little crazy, what with holidays and work. If I'm posting once a month, I figure that's a good thing!
I have a 3 week vacation coming up over Xmass, so I'm hopeful to get a ton of things done. (Which should result in a ton of pictures!)
Of course, I'll be happy if I can even get 1/2 of that ton actually done.

It's the pie time of year.

 

Let's see - what have I been up to? Stripping paint. Endless miles of trim. Last I left you, I'd ripped out most of the carpet in the living room, (pull the last out from under the TV stand last night), and started ripping out the baseboard. The intent was to take out all the baseboard and just replace it with new rather than trying to strip it, in an attempt to do something easier. After yanking out that bug damaged one, I decided that given all the rusty square nails holding them to the wall it would actually be easier to "just" strip it in place.

If you've missed previous updates, nothing about stripping paint is easy, FYI. Chemical strippers are messy and corrosive; heat stripping is dusty and slow. I can do about 5' of 6" wide trim in about 2 hours with the heat gun, more if they are loose pieces down on my workbench.

I pulled up the shoe molding from around the bottom of the baseboard and discovered there's really no insulation back there. These are the cavities that they would have shot full of expanding foam if I had opted for the "rim joist" insulation when MassSave did their thing. The issue with expanding foam insulation is that it essentially encases your wood timbers in plastic and nothing can breathe, so it just rots. This old house needs to be able to breathe, at least a little.
Finding the balance between it breathing and me freezing is the key.
I took the shoe molding down stairs and sanded it. (It had only been shellaced). I'll give it another light sand, maybe stain and re-shellac it. It's not in terrific condition, but it's salvageable without having to paint over it.
In terms of insulation, I'm investigating rock wool and wool-wool insulation, because I figure it's "pokeable" into the small gaps and holes without having to open up the whole walls. I REALLY don't want to have to open up these walls. It's just more work than I want right now. Spray foam would be easiest, but for the reasons I mentioned is right out.
My goal is to having the living room realtor-acceptable-grade by the end of my winter vacation, on 1/9. That doesn't sound difficult, but I have 20' of trim left to strip, the main door and the closet door to strip, the walls to fix, then every thing to sand, wash, prime and paint. I'm not even entertaining refinishing the floors right now. That might not be something I ever do. Maybe it will be my parting gift to the house when I move out some day, (floors are MUCH easier to do when you don't already live somewhere). We'll see.

In other news the Bathroom Guy, already so delayed this year due to supply and crew issues, has Covid. He sounds miserable. He's had to sit down the whole crew for a while, and was honest in that he's not sure what this is going to do to his schedule. Upon finding this out, and with the temps going down to below freezing at night I went to Lowes, burned some gift cards and got some tiny sheets of board insulation and a roll of mylar bubble insulation. I've covered the holes as best I can. I'm not keen on the idea of them pulling the roof (and re-shingling) the bathroom in winter in New England. I'm equally not as keen on exposing the one room with the majority of freezable pipes to the elements of winter in New England. Burst pipes are the last thing I need. So... Stay tuned. This does give me a little more time to think about tiles and things. Current plan is for him to still do the foundation work and the windows, and wait on the major bathroom gut until the weather turns better in the spring. Fingers crossed.

The bug-eaten baseboard is out!

The bug-eaten stud is not compromised! That damage is superficial.
And the sill area under this that was damaged has now been mostly fixed by Ian and Windy. There was a confluence of moisture and sap wood that allowed for bugs to get in, but both of those things have now been dealt with, (and a liberal amount of TimBor applied so it should never happen again.)

One of the mouse holes in the corner. Has now been stuffed full of copper mesh.

A wind brace hiding in the corner, along with snaked electrical that goes Lord Only Knows where.

It got cold, and the window trim in the living room had been doing a remarkable amount of insulating. Since the trim is going to go right back up over these areas, I taped the plastic to the wall and shrunk it on. The tape will pull the finish right off, but it will be covered up in this case. I'm warmer, for now.

Insulation Made-do. The silver does brighten the area up, even if I feel like I'm showering in some weird redneck space station.

This hole was big enough to require more structure, thus the board insulation.

 

This is the pattern. I tell myself that you eat an elephant one bite at a time. I'm trying to intersperse the long-haul projects with littler ones so that I have some quick wins to celebrate.
The furry roommate would like the take a moment to celebrate her new heated bed. Since I took out the carpet, the floors are quite cold, so I figured this was the least I could do for her.

Heated beds are the BEST.

(I'm going to live in blissful ignorance of my electric bill until it comes in. Hopefully with the dehumidifier running less, I won't notice it.)