Rebuilding the Computer Room Closet

 To allow the wood floors to be refinished, I removed the storage unit that was in the closet of the Computer Room.  This left an empty closet, with some rails and brackets for shelves down the left side.

We wanted to do the same sort of storage unit in the middle, but with just shelves -- no drawers.  And also put shelves down the right to match the ones on the left.  So we bought a ClosetMaid 25 inch Wide Tower for the middle (Home Depot, $167.98).

This came as a flat pack of shelves and sides and had to be put together, like from IKEA.  I modified the two side supports to allow for our baseboards and slid it into place.

Next we took out the old wood shelves from when the house was built that were hidden on the right side of the closet.  They were supported by 1x2 pieces nailed onto the walls.

We then had to patch the sheetrock and paint the walls to match the wall color.   Then we bought and installed new shelf rails, to match the ones on the left side.

We also bought 6 new white wood shelves and twelve brackets to support them.  Home Depot, $196.81)

We put the brackets on the rails, and then the shelves on the brackets.

The closet is about 8 feet wide.  So a 3 foot shelf, the 24 inch storage unit, and another 3 foot shelf fits in pretty well.  There is about 1/2 inch of space left.  We jammed 1/2 and 3/8 square dowels between the shelves and the storage unit on the right, to fill the gap and hold everything rigidly in place.

 To finish things off, we added a third vertical rail in the corner on the right, so that the shwlves were stable.

On the left, there are no studs to put a third rail on, so we drilled holes in the side of the storage unit and put pegs in them to support the edge of the shelves.

We also raised the lowest shelf in the storage unit to allow our rolling cart to fit in the bottom of the storage unit.

 

Widening the Shelves in the Master Bedroom Closet

 When we were putting things back into the Master Bedroom Closet, after having the floors refinished, I remembered that the shelves over the clothes always seemed to be not quite deep enough.  Pillows and blankets and quilts always seemed to want to flow over the front edge.  But the supports for the shelves would have allowed them to be deeper.

So I thought, why not add a 1x3 to the length of the shelf, bringing it another 3 inches out?  The shelves have a routed edge on the front, so we probably want to add the space to the back end, effectively moving the existing shelf out 3 inches and filling in the space created in the back.

We bought 2 pieces of 1x3 7 feet long.  The current shelves are pine, stained to look like oak, but such a long span, unsupported except at the ends suggests we would do better with a hardwood.  Home Depot only had two hardwoods -- white oak and poplar.  We picked poplar (much less expensive) for $26.16 and then stained it to be closer in color to the existing shelf.

While we were at it, we took the two shelves, sanded them down and put a coat of polyurethane on the top side.  We also put a coat of polyurethane on the 1x3's.

Leaving that to dry overnight, the next day we were able to reinstall the shelves plus their extensions in the closet.

Along the way, we realized that there is another similar set of shelves on the other side of the closet with the same problem, asking for a similar solution.  And maybe we should check all the other closets.

 Update:  After a couple weeks, I noticed that the two boards -- the larger one and the new 1x3 -- were bowing in different ways, creating a definite disjointed nature at the joint where they abut.  It seemed the easiest way to fix this was to tie them together, and the simplest way to do that would be with a mending plate.  So I bought a pack of 4 bronze colored mending plates and screws from Home Depot and put two on each of the two shelves.  They divide the length of the shelf (7 feet) into three 28-inch  sections.

Refinishing the Hardwood Floors

 Both with the bathroom remodeling and the interior painting, the workers put down material to protect the wood floors and kept it in place with masking tape.  But each time, when the work was done, and the floor protection was removed, the masking tape took off part of the polyurethane coating on the floors.  While I went back and patched the problems, it was clear that the floors needed to be refinished.  They have had no professional work done in the 40 years since the house was built.

Refinishing the floors involves sanding off the current finish and then applying a new finish.  We want to do all the floors at the same time, so all the furniture on the wood floors needs to be moved off of the floors.  The best way to do that is to call some movers to move out all the furniture, store it for a couple of weeks, and then move it back.  The only rooms we are not emptying are the utility room, kitchen, and the 3 bathrooms -- they all have tile floors.  But the dining room, living room, library, bedrooms, closets -- all of those rooms need to be emptied. Which means we have no beds, and no place to sleep.  

Luckily, our (adult) children live in town and had planned a joint two week trip to New Zealand in the middle of October.  So we arranged (a) to stay in our temporarily empty kids' places, (b) to have a moving company take everything away, store it, and bring it back two weeks later, during which (c) the floors are sanded, stained, and refinished

We found a long list of companies in town that would refinish our floors.  We tried to contact Boatright, since they put the floor in when the house was built, but we just could not get them to respond.  We had three other companies come out and quote the job, and decided to go with ATX Wood Flooring with an estimate of $10,950.  They were able to schedule the work for October 11 to October 25.

Next we contracted with Square Cow Movers to move all our furniture out on October 10, and bring it all back on October 26.  Their cost was based on time and distance, so the total cost would depend on how long it took for them to load up the truck (actually two trucks), plus the space in the warehouse to store everything for two weeks.  It ended up costing $2500 to move out, $240 to store everything, and $2000 to move back in.  Things went so well with the refinishing, we were able to reschedule the move back in to October 25.

Knowing that we needed to move everything out on October 10, we spent the weeks before that packing up.  Books, CDs, DVDs, all had to be put in boxes. Furniture needed to be disassembled for moving.  Clothes, bedding, pillows needed boxes.  We got boxes from Lowes, Home Depot, and 1/2 Price Boxes. $169.55 for boxes.  Mostly small book boxes, but also 5 wardrobe boxes for the hanging clothes from the closet and a few large boxes for pillows and other bedding.

Finally, on October 10, the movers showed up and took all the boxes and furniture away.

With the house empty

Dylan moved his equipment in and started sanding the floors.

 

After sanding, the floors would stained and sealed, and then two coats of finish put on them.  The finish is Bona Traffic GO Waterborne Wood Floor Finish.

After all the work was done, the floor needed to cure for 3 days.  

On October 25, the movers brought everything back and in a little over a week later, we had things mostly back in place.

As a side effect of having the floors refinished, we cleaned everything we could think of -- dust, vacuum, ... -- including changing all the filters for the air cleaners and A/C system.

Masonry work for the new fence

 When the fence was replaced, we changed the design somewhat.  Zone 8, around the base of the General, had a retaining wall built and filled in.  That meant that the fence went from 6 feet tall down to about 4 feet where the retaining wall was, since the fence was put at the old ground level, not the filled in higher level.  The neighbor on the other side of the fence had asked if it could be 6 feet, at least, for all of it.  

That meant that the fence runs along the top of the retaining wall, at 6 feet, and then suddenly drops two feet when we hit the retaining wall between zone 8 and zone 7. to avoid the sudden drop, we switch to an 8 foot fence and then slowly decrease the height, so that it gets back to 6 feet when we reach the corner of the back yard.

However, the fence people kept the fence going level well after the drop-off from zone 8 to zone 7.  Since the ground level continued to drop, that meant that their 8 foot fence pickets did not reach the ground, and it left a gap under part of the fence.   Particularly when the stone work under the fence dropped again at the low end of the Blue Rock Pool.

As a temporary measure, we put two fence pickets horizontally at this point to cover the gap.  But this was meant as just a temporary fix.

In addition there was another uncomfortable gap in the low end of the Bamboo Grove, where the stone work apparently is not level.

And I had noticed when I was clearing the Bamboo Grove for the fence work, that the bamboo was trying to send roots over the stone work, to escape it's confinement to the Bamboo Grove.

So my solution was to raise the stone work to (a) meet the new bottom of the fence, and (b) prevent the bamboo from putting roots over the stone work.

Since the base stone work is there, this just requires applying another course of stones along the outer two sides of the Bamboo Grove.  It took two trips to Whittlsey to get the stones (320 pounds the first time and 260 pounds the second). We cleaned off the old stone work, and laid out the new stones.

Then we mixed up some mortar and mortared the new stones in place.

The new work is two additional courses of stone next to the Blue Rock Pool, 

 

reducing to one additional course from there to the corner.

In the corner itself, we used a small 6x6 block which happened to fit the remaining space.

At this point, we needed more mortar and more stones, so after a couple days, we were able to again clean off the existing stones, and lay out new ones.

and then mortar them in place.

As expected, we had to cut the last one to fit the space available.

A Restored Lattice on the New Fence

 The old fence had a wooden lattice for Linda's vines to grow on.

But when the fence was replaced, that was removed, so we needed a new one.

The first step is to attach a couple of 2x4 sections to the fence, to hold the lattice work out from the fence a bit.

Then we can attach the new lattice work to these supports.  We used 5 inch lag screws to attach the 2x4s and then 1.5 inch lag screws to attach the lattice to the 2x4s.  

The lattice itself -- 4 feet by 8 feet -- plus the new lag screws was $55.91 from Home Depot.

Cleaning the solar panels

The new solar system comes with a monitoring system that tells us how much power is being generated over time.  Now that we have had the system for 16 months, we have comparative generation for 4 months.

Notice that last year we generated more energy each month during the summer. 

Now we know that the weather varies, and it is possible this is simply because we had more sunshine last summer than this year, but that seems unlikely. 

We also know that solar panels decrease in efficiency over time, but a more than 10% drop in just a year seems extreme.

So we thought maybe the panels have gotten dirty and need cleaning.  Looking at the panels from down on the porch, that does seem a possibility.

We can't see the surface of the panels very well, but from this angle it certainly looks like they are covered with a yellowish dust -- maybe pollen from the oak and elm trees.

So we decided to wash them off.  We used an external faucet and hose, and Windex Outdoor Concentrated Cleaner, which we have previously used to wash the outside of our windows (and screens).  Searching on the web, it seems the main concern in cleaning solar panels is not to use an Ammonia based cleaner, and Windex Outdoor is Ammonia-Free.

We first sprayed the panels with just water, to wet them down and soften any dirt.  Then we sprayed them with the Windex Outdoor solution.  Checking with a clean rag, there was still a lot of grey dust on the panels, so we used a sheepskin applicator on the end of a long pole to gently wash the panels off.  Then we rinsed everything off with enough water that there was no more suds or dirt, just water rolling off the panels. This took about 200 gallons of water for the 14 panels.  And then just to be paranoid about the possible hard water deposits of tap water, we poured a gallon of distilled water on the top of the panels, letting it flow down and rinse everything off.

The result is panels that look much cleaner.

 We will have to wait until the end of October to see if we generate as much energy this year as we did in October last year.

Repairing a towel rod in the Master Bathroom

 When we had the bathrooms remodeled, we wanted to install grab bars to help as we get older.  In addition, we choose sturdy metal towel rods, not as a grab bar, but realizing they may end up being used as one in an accident.

And sure enough, Linda tried to use the towel rod to keep her from following, but instead of helping, it gave way.  The towel rod is anchored at both ends, with a metal rod between them, but one of the ends gave way, allowing the metal rod to fall off.

The metal ends are attached to a post on the wall with a small set screw on the bottom.

Taking the ends off, we expose the two metal posts.

The posts are attached to the wall with two screws.  Of course this is a marble tile wall, so there are holes drilled into it and an insert plugged into the hole; the screw goes into the insert.

The end which failed seems to be missing the insert, which means one of the two screws was not secured into the wall.  (It's possible the insert was shoved back into the hole and dropped down behind the tile wall.  In fact it appears that the tile wall is a false wall attached to 1x2 wood strips on top of the previous wall.)

So we have a couple of possibilities.  We could replace the towel rod with a full-blown official grab bar, or we can re-install the existing towel rod.  Using an official grab bar would seem better, but since the wall is a false wall, with just the tile and it's cement backing, we would need to use the same sort of insert as the towel rod used (or was supposed to use).  So while it might be a slightly larger screw/bolt and insert, it would still be attached to the same wall, in the same way. (As opposed to attaching the bar by bolting it into a 2x4 or other solid structure inside/behind the wall.)

So we decided to just install an appropriate insert in the missing hole, and put the towel rod back up.

Repairing a Leak in Zone 7

 As part of replacing the fence, we tested the sprinkler system to make sure it all worked.  Two problems showed up.

One was a problem with Zone 6.  The lowest head, down by the fence, seemed to just dribble water constantly, whether zone 6 was on or not.  This suggested that the valve was failing to close completely.  So we found the valve for zone 6, buried in the lawn close to the rock retaining wall, dug it up, and cleaned it off.  Now it seems to be working, so we just left it alone, for now.

The other problem was a leak in Zone 7.  One of the heads was just gushing water out of the ground around it.  When we dug it up, we found that a root had grown right across the sprinkler line at the head and pushed the head to the side while breaking the irrigation line at both ends of the pipe that the head was screwed into.

We sawed off the root. and removed the broken pieces of pipe.

Without the root in the way, we can use the same design as before.  But since we need to cut back a little on both ends, we will need a short extension piece added to make up the distance.

Then we can attach the part that the head screws into.

and attach that to the original pipe.

Putting the sprinkler head back in place, we finish it off.

When we tested it, water still gushed all over.  Closer examination showed that the sprinkler head itself had been pushed to the side so that it cracked the body of the head.  We replaced the sprinkler head with a spare and everything worked.