[Mid] OT: Home Improvement, or Tim Taylor meets This Old House :-)

OT: delete if you aren't interested.

This past Saturday, we installed a set of French doors into our
back pantry. We had to rip out a single-wide existing door, its
accompanying storm door, and also a small window with bars in the
framework (I live in kind of a rough neighborhood). The former
owners also had mounted brackets on either side of the back door,
and we had a 2 x 4 that we put across the door in the brackets, to
"lock the back door". :-)

During the previous week, we'd removed the asbestos shingles and
the cedar clapboard siding, exposing the structural struts that were
honest-to-god -real- 2 x 4's. Not cut to size and then baked/shrunk.
Ah, the neat stuff you find in a 90+ year old house.

Saturday we knocked out the drywall, removed the existing doors and
barred window, set in the new framework and set in the door. With
professional assistance from a friend of ours who builds new homes
in Middlebury, Indiana. (Thank you Tracy/Oengus, you are the God of
Construction). Yours truly also took hammer in hand and removed old
nails and helped whonk the upper support board in place. :-)

During this task, we took up the flooring in the pantry. Under the
butt-ugly carpet (with attached pad, what a MESS), we found two
layers of linoleum (-real- linoleum, the stuff made from linseed
oil) and another bonus: more 3/4" thick oak hardwood floor, just
like what we found in our front room a year ago. Unfortunately we
have to cover this up, the floor is terribly slanted and to make it
plumb we have to build it up in some areas. Well, we don't spend a
lot of time looking at this floor, so covering it up doesn't bother
me too much.

We finished up on Sunday, putting in OSB to cover the struts we
bared, putting in insulation where none had been before, putting in
a moisture barrier, and installing window blinds on the new French
doors. Trimming and replacing the asbestos shingles comes during
this blissfully sunny and warm week.

Our cat Tansey was a bit spooked with all the noise and then the
incredible amount of light that now shines in through those new
doors. WOOHOO! She has a much better view of Kitty Tv(tm), the five
bird feeders I have on the deck. :-) We also put in a sliding
screen. I feel absolutely decadent.

The hardest part of the entire thing turned out to be trying to put
in the stupid screws for the mini-blinds. Cursing and swearing
filled the autumn air...stage one of the Great Kitchen Refinishing
Project is almost complete. This was the part that -had- to get done
before the snow flies. Everything else from here is all indoor
destruction and reconstruction.

Siobhan (empowered Home Improver)
From: "Judith Kirk" <judith.a.kirk@wmich.edu>
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Received on Mon Oct 6 08:36:13 2003