Raincharm’s Weblog

It has been too long, but it has been busy.
Getting home late for one reason or another, and unable to face sitting at the keyboard longer than necessary to download pictures.

So here is the last week of house renovation.
Followed by a few days where I took a picture so I could remember what I was doing – that was not renovation.

Here is some of my renovation work. Asbestos removal. I am getting way too familiar with this stuff. The top part of this vent was completely removed, and asbestos tape scraped from the lower portion.

6-22-2013 Evil Asbestos covered vent

6-22-2013 Evil vanquished

Note the wet around the vent. Keep the fibers from moving into the air with lots of water.

Moving upstairs, the attic floor has been removed so they could work on strengthening the floor.

6-22-2013 Museum (aka attic) floor gone

Back down in the kitchen, they are working on making access through something other than our front door possible.

6-22-2013 Temporary door on the floor

Two days later – mission accomplished.

6-24-2013 Temporary door installed

Cool peek hole for apt 309

Closing the south end of the kitchen is moving along.

6-24-2013 Scaffolding up

6-24-2013 The bluest skies are in Seattle

I believe these are the rafters.

Down in the basement, there are signs of the earthquake nailing.

6-24-2013 Earthquake Retrofit begins

6-24-2013 Rods are ready

Which leaves the backyard. I use this as a measure of how much work is going on inside.

6-24-2013 View of the backyard piles

Two days later … I noticed the word “Demo” written on a wall. The problem was that we had removed the removal of this wall from the scope of work. Not enough funding to change the upstairs bathroom entrance.

Demo? NOT

Walls that have been removed are getting more and more closed in.

6-26-2013 Kitchen eaves with venting

6-26-2013 Rafters covered

No more blue sky. With the rain not coming in any longer, electrical is starting.

6-26-2013 Electrical box locations (blue)

Earthquake work has moved to the garage – pulling plaster off of the walls to expose the foundation.

6-26-2013 Garage wall plaster removed – for earthquake retrofit

In the attic

The biggest level I have ever seen – in the attic

Two days later the reason the level was in the attic was explained by the contractor.
They found that the floor was not level, having a sag in the middle.
The method chosen to improve the strength was to add sister 2 x 6 boards to the stacked 2 x 4’s in place. If you look closely you can see that the lighter board (near the flat board) is flush with the 2×4 at the end, but noticeably higher in the middle.

6-28-2013 Sisters in place

Kitchen work is somewhat quiet, ready for the next step. Rafters closed in, door in place (temp), and electrical rough locations chosen.

6-28-2013 Kitchen ready for the next step

More evil asbestos is showing, but this vent stays. Apparently I will be wrapping this with Gorilla Tape (Duct tape on steroids). Perhaps tomorrow.

More asbestos – this vent stays.

Then it was upstairs for a view of the backyard piles.

6-28-2013 Backyard Piles

I noted some long posts (to the left of the picture) that I recognized as the deck supports.! And I looked down. – No Deck.

6-28-2013 – It’s a big first step

No deck from the kitchen door.

6-28-2013 Deck no more from the back door

Now we have a doorway to nowhere. (That will become a window.)

6-28-2013 Door to nowhere

In other news – RASPBERRIES

raspberry crop coming in

And there were a few other things going on.
On the 22nd I was walking home from vanquishing the asbestos, and came across this scene.

Pho Viet Anh opening

Carl had called because they had startled him when they started playing their music and bells. And blowing off fireworks. All to celebrate the opening of a new restaurant – directly across from our apartment.

Pho Viet Anh – celebration

And this was followed by a Mariner’s game that evening.

pitchers sunning themselves

Followed by a morning game for Carl. I did not take many pictures at his game – sorry. But we did go over to a teammates house following the game. They had this wonderful sculpture next to his driveway. This was a tree that grew in this spot. Until it didn’t.

Eagle and salmon

And, since we are who we are, we went to the afternoon Mariner’s game.
We did not have our tickets for this game. We had provided them to our Eugene friend who had placed them in a school auction. A man and his son were attending the game from Eugene. Lucky for them, they got to sit next to our friend Mark. He is a trove of knowledge, and fun to talk with about baseball. [We were sitting across the field from our usual seats. Really nice seats – 5th row, with a great view of our  normal seats.]

Mark texted us early in the game to ask if we had a ball in our possession that we could share with the lad from Eugene.
As it turns out, we had actually taken 3 balls out of the backpack before we walked from the car to the ballpark. So Carl got up and left the game for a few innings to retrieve a ball or two. I could see him joining Mark and the Eugeneites for a few innings. His good deed for the day. Karma.

He made it back to our seats away from home for the last few innings.
So we both had a great view of a home run hit by Kendrys Morales in the bottom of the 9th inning – right to Mark.

6-23-2013 Mark snags a walk-off home run – sweet

And, two days later, Mark caught another home run, this time by Ibanez. The announcers even recognized that it was the same fan.

And because I just can’t get enough of renovation, we are doing some at work.
Right outside of my office.

Renovation at Work – no escape

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