Jack's House - Karen's Wall

The neighbor on one side of Jack's house is Karen, so I call this first wall Karen's wall.

First we pulled some material off the wall to assess what would need doing.  Here's some very rotten siding peeled off the base of the wall.  With the tar paper lifted, we can see what we are looking at there.  The sill plate is very soft.  The underlying insulation has been affected by insects and the sill plate shows some damage from insects as well.

All the siding will be replaced, so no use delaying.  Here is the wall with siding removed below the double top plate.  The sliding glass door has also been removed, and the broken window will be taken out shortly.

toward the front of the house, the corner window is out, and all the insulation has been removed.  The siding you see here is simply a temporary measure to close up the house at the end of each work day.

Closeup shots of the studs at the left and right of the sliding glass door.  Note the rot is so bad, the studs don't actually go to the concrete.  the sill plate is essentially missing here.

From a little further away, this shows the termite trails running up the studs on the right side of the doorway.

More of the same.

No way to do all this in one day, so here we are at the end of a workday, with the temporary siding applied to the wall.  This is the cheap hardy siding that comes in 4x8 sheets.  I think it was around $11.00 a sheet or something like that, but has really helped.

From the inside of the house.  Jack has started removing sheetrock in the front corner, as we will need to replace the sill plate, and reframe that window to fix damage.

Heading to the back of the wall, where one of the bedrooms is located, the broken window is gone, all the sheetrock and insulation is out.  There's a picture missing of the studs below this window.  I will need to find it.

Here, the new sill plate is going in.  We used a pair of 4x4s to drive up the double top plate about 1/4 inch, allowing the sill plate to be cut out without removing the wall studs.  In this first photo, the old sill plate is actually gone, the replacement treated 2x4 is still loose on the foundation ready to go in.

Here, the sill plate installed.

4" molly bolts hold the sill plate to the concrete.  

Hitting a sill plate with a sledgehammer to remove it, while the old mollys are still attached, is a bad idea :-)  Here some concrete was patched up.

On this wall, both windows and the door opening will all need to be reframed to fix damaged wood.  The house inspector suggested we paint the studs at the door opening, to give them a little extra protection should moisture make it behind the door frame.

The window opening, reframed, at the front of the wall.

The door opening reframed.

And, a shot of the whole wall.  All the bright wood is new.  The orange-ish wood is original.  On this wall, there were no real problems with the double top plate, and only a couple of studs other than windows and doors were damaged.  Not too bad, really.

After reframing, we applied an R4 Exterior Sheating by Owens Corning, called Foamular.  Its a moisture and  air barrier, but will also provide a little insulation, and improve the noise rejection properties of the house as well.  Once the wall is sheathed, tape all seams, and cut out openings for doors and windows. (and attic gable vents, which we will do later)

A shot from inside, showing the back side of the foamular.  

Once the foamular is on, apply tyvec house wrap.  Its sort of a belt-and-suspenders thing, but we really do not want moisture to come into the house.

Rinse and repeat for 3 other walls!

Jack's House - Water Heater Failure

At Jack's house, the first project to tackle was the hot water heater and enclosure.  In this house, the hot water heater is in a closet of sorts, in the garage.  The existing hot water heater leaked quite severely, and had been leaking for some time, it appeared.  We tackled this first so we could have the city turn on the water.

Here's the old hot water heater, removed from the enclosure and awaiting disposal.

And some debris from the enclosure, now removed.  Those are termite trails on that wood on the driveway!

This is what the wall looked like behind the enclosure.  Much of this will need to be removed.  It looks like the termites may have followed the water from the leak up through the hole in the foundation where this old drain line runs out.  That line will be removed, and the drain line will be routed through the front wall of the house.

Jack may have more photos showing progress, but after removing all studs, sheetrock, and other lumber with damage, the enclosure is rebuilt, inspected (and passed!).  A plumber was used to install the hot water heater in the new enclosure, along with an expansion tank (required for code).  The inspector did have the plumber return and install a different gas cutoff arrangement.

We need a picture of the inside of the enclosure.  I'll add one to this post later.

About Jack's new house

So, Jack bought a 1980 2-bedroom 1 bathroom, 1 car garage house, around 980 square feet, sitting on a half-acre of land at the back of a culdesac.  From the front, it looks a little aged, but really doesn't look too bad.  That of course is where someone covered up all the problems to improve street appeal :-)

We have a couple of friends who live on this street, they report that at one point, at night, one could see light coming through the walls around this front window, if lights were on in the house, from damage to the siding and trim around the window.  Evidently the roof was replaced around 2 years ago, so that is good.  Jack did hire a structural engineer to look at the foundation, as several cracks are present.  The engineer assured us the house is fine, no remediation is required.  The total shift in horizontal elevation from diagonal corners across the foundation is around 1 inch, well within tolerances.

The house came with a pretty nice shed, it too has some problems but they are minor.

And, the house sits on a half acre

Now for the down side:

House maintenance has been severely neglected, so paint is very bad, and the underlying trim, siding, and soffets are all pretty rotten.

This side of the house shows the worst damage.  This window is particularly bad (in addition to being broken, I mean :-)  One can see a repair attempt to siding was made at some point, where the beige siding is showing.

Some longer views of the wall that contain the broken window, this one shows the front half of that wall, and the front window.  Also shown is the sliding glass door, which happens to be open.  that is not a hole, that is an open door :-)

Going inside the house, the front door opens onto the livingroom:

The classic 2-bedroom tunnel kitchen.  From a distance it doesnt look so bad.  up close, several cabinets are missing trim on the doors, and the cabinet bases are somewhat rotten.  But, it does have a nice stainless steel sink.  The refrigerator is gross, but works.  The stove is gas and leaks like a sieve, so it has to go.  The dishwasher probably needs replacing as well.

There is a utility area behind the kitchen.  Thats an odd arrangement, but the house is not deep enough to put the utilities elsewhere.  A pantry would have made more sense here if there were room for washer/dryer elsewhere. Maybe a stackable on the washer side, and a pantry where the dryer is now, would make sense. The washer and dryer don't work.

 Dryer

Washer

Growth marks from children, with dates.  This made me sad.  Someone may have been happy here once, but it does not show in the care taken of the house itself.  I wonder what happened to everyone.

Two bedrooms, each with a window.  In this first bedroom, it is pretty obvious where the bed was.

This second bedroom stinks very badly.  The carpet probably was holding moisture from water leaks.  It doesn't smell like cigarette particularly.

The bathroom... Filthy tub, and the sink does not fit into the vanity.  but the toilet flushes which is convenient. Note the classic vice-grip faucet handles :-)

So that is where we begin with a remodel of Jack's new house.

Introducing Jack

I am Guest Author Jack

Karl Marx

I accidentally started reading the Viking Portable edition of Works of Karl Marx.  Here in the United States, Marx gets short shrift for various reasons, but in other places in the world he enjoys a somewhat higher repute, as one of the founding philosophic originators of Communism/Socialism/Marxism.

So far I've read the introduction by Eugene Kamenka (Institute of Advanced Studies, Australian National University, Canberra), from which I feel I learned quite a bit about Marx and the times and people around him.

In the introduction, a quote from Saint-Simonian Amand Bazard reads in part:

"...by giving to a certain class of men the chance to live on the labour of others and in complete idleness, it preserves the exploitation of one part of the population, the most useful one, that which works and produces, in favor of those who only destroy."

That passage leaped off the page for me, as sounding very similar to Veblen's notion of the Leisure Class in the quasi-peaceful stage, and was written sometime around 1828, long before Veblen.

What Bazard is espousing is the abolishment of private property (meaning private control of the means of production) in favor of social ownership of the means of production.  Veblen also discusses the creation of and maintenance of private property, as being a necessary precursor to establishing a leisure class, a leisure class which is supported by labor of others, and which itself does not produce but consumes.  If we substitute "conspicuously consume" for "destroy" in the quote above, we come very very close to Veblen, at least in that one (admittedly out of context) passage.  With this insight, I'll be more aware of any tendencies toward socialism in Veblen,  though I have not recognized anything overtly socialist in the first several chapters.

In Das Kapital and other writings, Marx lays out his thinking on scientific socialism, in a framework he intended to be devoid of moral and ethical adornments.  His scientific socialism model was not supposed to describe what the proletariat should do, but rather what the proletariat would be forced to do as the natural consequence of advancement in the science and technology of production.  Marx did read Darwin, and commented in correspondence with Engels about applications of "evolution" to his theories of economic, political and social order.

I had never considered what lifestyle Marx must have led.  Evidently he lived in poverty and relied on financial assistance from Engels and others for much of his adult life.  He had varying levels of contact and exchange with numerous now famous intellectuals of the time from different spheres, which I thought was really interesting.  I found it quite interesting that he studied languages, mathematics, economics, plant and human physiology (physiology??) and presumably a host of other subjects after he left the university, to support his continued thinking and philosophical writing.

He studied Russian (the language) in order to read N. Flerovski (pseudonym of sociologist and economist Vasilii Vasil’evich Bervi) "Position of the Working Class in Russia". I try to imagine self-studying a foreign language, and achieving sufficient mastery, so I could read and understand a treatise written in that language.  The mind boggles, though apparently Marx did have Latin, Greek, German, French and English under his belt by then, so maybe the task was more approachable for a multi-lingual european than it would be for me.

For what it's worth, it took me quite a while on Google to find an english search result on Bervi or his book(s).  Google Books had the first english reference to Bervi I came across, a reference in "A History of Russian Thought" by William J. Leatherbarrow and Derek Offord.

I gather from some of Marx's letters in the Portable Marx, that he was unpleasant and antagonistic to those who did not agree with him, and generally may not have been a very happy or pleasant person.  When I was younger I didn't think being happy amounted to much. Now I'm less sure of myself in nearly all respects, and certainly in respect to the merits of happiness.

Comments are welcome, though moderated.

Thorstein Veblen

Nominally in the vein of self improvement, I sometimes make reading selections from the "Lifetime Reading Plan" by Clifton Fadiman/John Majors, or from the Peter Boxall "1001 Books you Must Read Before You Die" list.

There is an app available for iTouch/iPad that assists in tracking one's reading history for the 1001 Books list, which is neat.  LibraryThing, at which I am a lifetime member, has several groups that read and discuss various lists of books including both of these lists.

Recently, though, I started reading Thorstein Veblen's "The Theory of the Leisure Class" which is not on either of these lists.  Published in 1899, it is well out of copyright and is available free in eBook format from Amazon for those of us who read on Kindles or Kindle apps, or from Project Gutenberg for pretty much everyone else. (I'm pretty certain the Kindle eBook is derived from the Gutenberg eBook anyway).

I've been encouraging everyone to read it. I think it is quite interesting and has some relevance to today's economic times, but mostly it encourages me to introspect on what I should do with and about all my crap.  A couple chapters in, I was feeling guilty about "conspicuous consumption". That term as Veblen meant it had the connotation of useless waste about it.  I don't feel my crap falls into the useless waste category (yet, who does?), and it certainly is not for show or to impress anyone.  I'm pretty sure there's nearly no one that has any interest in, or is impressed by, the contents of some of the piles around here.

Let me be clear:  These are not piles under which one day I will be found dead, pinned under a pile of something that fell over on me.  Some people, who watch too much reality TV, think I'm a hoarder in the sense portrayed on television:  dangerous to themselves and others, 500 poorly cared for cats, disgusting filthy piles of mess everywhere.  That's not me. For one thing, I only have one cat.

Veblen's discussion of leisure class though, does leave me feeling guilty about a couple things, and questioning why exactly I have so much crap. There is no possibility in my remaining lifetime, that I could read all the books I have, yet I am compelled to continue buying them because, well, I love books.  I have several hobbies, and the piles of crap that go with each hobby, yet I'm interested in each hobby, and pursue them all, with differing degrees of diligence perhaps, but pursue them nonetheless.  These are not "luxury" hobbies either, though they probably satisfy Veblen's notion of leisure class pursuits as they require special training and time commitments and don't really result in anything useful being created.  For the most part, they are solitary pursuits, not the kinds of things one needs a club, associates, or an audience to participate in.

I was explaining to someone close to me that most of the piles around here are books, and that I just need a good way to store them, as the bookcases are all full.  They evidently don't believe me, but it is fundamentally true.  There is disorganization and clutter that is not book related, but those non-book items, hobby gear, etc. don't actually occupy that much space.

Reading Veblen is making me speculate on motivation, though. How much of what I do is actually about influencing what someone else thinks, not about what I myself actually want to do?  Veblen talks about manners and other social mores as behaviors whose utility is essentially distinguishing a leisure lifestyle from a menial lifestyle, and I can see that argument as valid, but I also think we in society owe each other a certain cultural civility, don't we?

I'm somewhere near the end of chapter 4, and around 20% through the book (thanks, Kindle!) as I write this, so maybe an epiphany is soon forthcoming.

Anyway, read Veblen.  Comments are welcome, though moderated.