Porch Projects for Summer: A New & Improved Back Porch, now with Screens!

Adding the second bathroom is not the only improvement we've made to the Ear during this summer that just ended.  Over the course of a few months, by spending an afternoon here or a weekend there, we upgraded our back porch.  Now, instead of a dumping ground for empty boxes, recycling, and miscellaneous junk, it's now a nice place to sit.  We are really looking forward to evenings out there in a few weeks.

We began back in the spring, when we ripped up the nasty, deteriorated vinyl tile flooring to expose the original wooden porch floor (which, it turned out, was in pretty good shape).  This process was much, much, much, harder than anticipated due to a well-installed subfloor.  Someone really knew what they were doing there (unlike with so many of the other "improvements" that we have corrected).  I do not have photographic evidence.  Take my word for it that it was awful.  Once the stuff was gone, we put several coats of floor paint (same used in basement) on the old floorboards.

Next, I spent several weeks trying to repair the jalousie windows.  We have nine of these, each operated by a set of two crank mechanisms.  Fewer than half of these crank mechanisms were working when we bought the Ear.  I resolved to get as many functioning as possible.  Below, a properly working mechanism.  Note that all its hinges are connected with either screws or rivets.

On the non-working mechanisms, the screws or rivets were missing.  A commonly-not-there screw was the one my finger is pointing to in the picture below, that attaches the crank to the hinges that move the glass louvers.  It's a strange one to be missing, because you can only detach it if you removed the entire mechanism from the window.  Nevertheless, we lacked most of these.  I guess previous denizens of the Ear did not appreciate air flow? 

Slowly but surely, through sacrificing/cannibalizing a few mechanisms and multiple trips to hardware stores and salvage yards to dig through bins of old screws, I got all but four (of 18 total!) mechanisms working.  Now, only the windows on the sides of the porch don't work, and they wouldn't catch a breeze anyway.  To finish up this aspect of the porch, I gave every joint in each jalousie a good squirt of silicone lubricant.

Our next order of business in our quest for a nice porch was to buy and install screens to keep out the mosquitoes. Because of the presence of many old screen clips attached to the windows' metal frames, we knew there were previously screens on all the windows (you can see an old clip in the first photo).  After carefully measuring twice, we ordered nine new screens from Frager's Hardware, a Capitol Hill institution.  (Let me stop here and appreciate Frager's for a minute.  About two hours after these screens were delivered, Frager's went up in flames.  It was a huge, multi-engine fire that raged all night and totally gutted the building.  Our community has felt the loss ever since, as it's now much harder to find parts to fix our weird old houses ((and knowledgable people to help us find said parts)).  Frager's has a garden pop-up at Eastern Market and is continually adding back products it can offer while plans are made for rebuilding.  So if you are in the neighborhood, please shop there!)

Back to the screens.  These were somewhat difficult to install, as old, bent, non-working clips had to be removed, and new holes drilled for new clips.  And since each window is slightly different in size, etc., each screen required a slightly different installation strategy.  We got this done over a couple of weekends.  Here's Mr. MJ in action with the drill on the ladder:

Behind him you can see the new screens in place all around the porch.  We worked at night when the sun wasn't beaming directly into the space.  Also notice the blue porch ceiling, a quickie paint job I did with a quart of paint left over from another project.  I touched up a lot of the wood out here too.

After this point, our porch project was put on hold for about a month while the new bathroom in the basement was created.  The porch became a holding area for tools and other items that had to temporarily move out of the basement.

But after last weekend, we've finally got our porch back!  And maybe for the first time in a long time, it is an orderly, pleasant space.  I decorated it with furniture we already had, a yard sale table cloth, and a large sisal rug I got for free from the neighborhood listserv.

I first posted about this space back in May of 2010.  At that time, I deemed the back porch a longer-term project.  I had no idea that "longer term" would mean three years and change.  However, I think we can now call this one more-or-less done!

From a Basement on the Hill: Demolition, Day 6

 Today we finished freeing the basement stairs from their plywood box.  Quite a mess of scraps and ramshackle supports awaited us under the first layer of plywood.

A few hours later, the whole thing was uncovered to reveal the Ear's original open basement stairs.

We also finished taking down the ceiling and did some general cleaning-up-after-ourselves.

Trash bag count is at either 25 or 26.  Most of them are camped out in the back yard under plastic sheeting.  Beautiful, isn't it?

From a Basement on a Hill: Demolition, Day 5

Yesterday was such a whirlwind day of work that I failed to write a post!  So here is a round up of Day 5, late.

We started work tearing down the wall blocking the windows in the front of the house.

Though ugly, it was a well built wall, with plenty of framing support and sharp corners created with the metal trim (which is really hard to rip off).

We got one window uncovered, only to discover that it had been painted over.  Oh well, more work to do later.  

We scraped off a little view hole.  Here is a peek at my future view.

We also discovered some more old, loose radiator pipes in the ceiling.  These things are heavy!

By the end of the day, we had totally uncovered the front brick wall of the house.  Trash bag count is at 20.  Tomorrow we open up the space under the stairs and clean up odds & ends.

From a Basement on the Hill: Demolition, Day 4

My demolition project paused for a weekend of other homemaking activities (ironing, cooking, weeding the front yard, etc.).  But today, the cavalry (also known as my mother) came to town, and we got one whole wall dismantled!

We continued our work on the wall dividing the space in two, and continued our efforts onto the wall under the stairs.  At times we resorted to knocking holes in the drywall with a hammer (see my hammer holes in a row below), then pulling it apart.

The real hard part was disassembling the wood framing, which we did by any means available (hammers, mallets, pry bars, hard headedness).

But by the end of the day, what had once been two spaces were united as one.  (It may be a little hard to see in these pictures, but the bright rectangle in the middle is the open back door (!), the plastic area to the left of the door is the laundry, and the large gray patch is a second wall (?) blocking off the area under the stairs.  The silver tube hanging down is the HVAC duct.)

Tomorrow we'll get started on the wall blocking up the front windows.  Our trash bag count is 18+.

From a Basement on the Hill: Demolition, Day 3

Yesterday I felt that I got to a good stopping point on the ceiling, so today I decided to take a swing (literally) at the walls.  I started on the wall that divides the space in two (the one painted orangey-hot pink).  It was very slow work, and harder than I expected.

This dividing wall was built between two other walls, which are not aligned with the brick wall of the house in the same way (the basement's back room has drywall right up against the brick; the front room's walls are 8-10" out from the brick.  Weird.)  Here you can kind of see the gap.

I was mostly using my hands, feet, and occasional hammer blows to push, pull, and kick the drywall apart.  

After three hours of work, I accomplished....not much.  But it's a start!

From a Basement on the Hill: Demolition, Day 2

Today I continued pulling down the ceiling. It's a bit hard to see in these photos (taking pictures of the ceiling is harder than I imagined), but I've got about 3/4 of it off. I've also got 12 contractor bags full of broken up drywall.

I am going to stop here on the ceiling for now, since what is left is over the "clean" laundry area. Tomorrow I will move on to other aspects of the project.

From a Basement on the Hill: Demolition, Day 1

Today I began working on making my basement studio better, starting with tearing down the ceiling, like so:

Before beginning the demolition, I covered all unmovable objects and doorways with plastic to keep as much dust as possible out of the rest of the house.

I even encased our laundry area in plastic, so we can have a clean place to wash clothes for at least a bit longer. (This reminds me of the scenes in E.T. where the scientists cover the house in plastic to create a sterile lab environment. I'm not sure anyone would learn much from our laundry though.) I used two layers of plastic to create a flap-like entry into the laundry area. In this picture, look for the L-shaped line of tape on the right of the plastic sheet: that's the door. I did this for the stairs up to the kitchen too. It's a trick I learned from my time working in museums.

By the time I quit working today, I had pulled down most of the old drywall ceiling in the front room of the basement (roughly a 20'x15' room). What I've learned: this is fairly easy, though very dirty, work. Some kind of dust mask and eye protection are absolutely necessary (despite the videos of fools doing demo work on Youtube). A head covering would be a wise addition to one's work attire as well. You need to have a couple different sizes of pry bars and a good solid hammer to work with. I have filled up 7 large contractor trash bags with old drywall so far.

Bonus find: Washington Post from September 22, 1960. It was too crumpled and dry to read much, but I did learn that a site in Virginia was chosen for a Nixon rally, and a used 1955 Buick was not hard to come by. Makes me wonder more about former denizens of the Ear.

Late Spring/Early Summer Farm Report

Hello faithful readers! It has been a quiet spring around The Ear as we have traveled, hosted, and watched our garden grow. Since I last posted almost 2 months ago (wha?), we've made two raised beds in the backyard (full of tomatoes!) and gotten lots of salad greens going in containers. Enjoy these snaps, and have a happy Memorial Day!

(Thanks to Mr. MJ's mom for the last one.)

Kitchen Conundrum: Over the Weekend

We worked hard on the kitchen over the weekend, but what we did (sanding, caulking, priming) doesn't make too much visual impact. Here it is anyway:



Today we were graced by some white stuff outside too:


The Professionals are back tomorrow for what we all hope is one last go-round. Then we can finish up with the painting, cleaning, and moving back in!

(Lesson learned: if you have the opportunity to paint your kitchen BEFORE the cabinets go up, do it. All that cutting in gets old fast.)

Kitchen Conundrum: End of Day 5, Almost!

The Professionals showed up early, stayed late, and didn't take a lunch break (hence no lunchtime post). They worked really hard and came really close to finishing. Even though they didn't quite make it, the results are amazing!



Check out the wood countertops!





Pantry area, now with its own outlet:



Lovely salvaged sink with $$ lovely faucet (plus matching white filtered water faucet):





The Professionals got creative with the long piece of baseboard they removed, chopping it up to fill in the blanks. I think they did a great job fitting these bits and pieces together:



Hardwired under cabinet lights!



Beautiful view:



Next up: prime'n'paint.