Sunday, January 9, 2011

Where to Start?

The kitchen ceiling is down and only a small pile of debris is left to discard. We still have not done a really good cleaning. I will wait until all the debris is gone before I haul out the shop vac and suck up all the little debris that is caught under the base board.

Today we took a close look at the ceiling rafters and second story exposed floor joists . We decided that as long as the floor joists are currently visible we would use this time to install joist hangers on the portion that has a second story above it. There are also some areas where the ceiling rafters connect to a header that may get some added support from some hangers.

We also looked at the knob and tube that is still there and checked to make sure it was not currently live and as suspected it was dead. Also on the list to remove is some second generation wiring that was installed on the kitchen addition and is no longer in use. I cannot understand why when they upgraded to the new electrical in the 90's that they did not remove the old wiring.

Since we decided that our next step was the joist hangers we did a quick count and drove to Home Depot before they closed. Once at Home Depot we found the hangers we needed but two were of heavy duty design and when we asked for more, the sales clerk said they were not Home Depot hangers and were accidentally taken back for a refund. But we bought the two odds ones anyway.

The storm door I stripped is back together again. I didn't glue it together because I may need to pull apart the side pieces when I fix the bottom. But all in all the door looks to be in far better condition than when it was covered in peeling chipped paint.

I reassembled the door by starting on one side and assembling across the door. The center triangular pieces are not glued in place but float so that they can expand and contract with the humidity.
These are two of the new dowel pins that I needed to make to replace the rotted dowel pins that I removed. You can also see the broken piece that I need to glue back in place underneath the dowels.
Here is the completely reassembled door. Notice the bottom of the door and where the repairs need to be made. This door was given to me by a carpenter who removed it from a 1940's era house in Flint.
The door also came with the screen insert and a glass insert. Both with the traditional scalloped border around the edges. It is rare to find both inserts when you find an old wood storm door.

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