100 Percent Converted

In March I completed the goal of converting three appliances over to gas.  The first was converting the oil furnace over to gas.  I have been planning on do this since I first moved in October 15, 2004.  That fall I had the gas company bring a line up to the house.  I waited until the spring of 2008 to replace my oil furnace with a new efficient gas furnace because I did not want to go in debit paying for it.  I informed the company installing the furnace that I would in the future install a gas stove and water heater, and to plan on that when installing the gas pipe.

I spent over a year looking for a gas stove on Craig’s List before finding a GE Profile gas stove in the fall of 2010.  Again I reminded the guy installing the gas line to the stove that there was still a hot water heater in my future.

Since the first day I moved into this house I have been arguing with myself about when to replace the electric hot water heater.  The reason why it took me so long was I could not decide to go tankless or not.  The installation and tankless heater was around $3000 in 2004 compared to a tank water heater, it was about 1.5 to 2 times more expense.  There were other reasons why I put it off, the water in southwest Wisconsin is heavy with lime and I questioned just how long the pumping would plug up.  Just look how close the limestone is to the surface; the picture shows an excavation for a nursing home expansion just north of my house.  If you lived here the water must be softened, the lime just builds up to quickly.  I discussed the tankless option with the pumper before deciding and he did not suggest tankless heater.  His reason was Wisconsin cold winters can cause a large different in temperatures with the water coming into the house and the tank ability to raise the temperature hot enough.  The frost does go deep into the ground, -20 is common here in January.  He also stated the tankless heater needs to be serviced twice a year.

The research I did before I talked to the plumber and I had been leaning toward the tank water heater.  I had them install a 40 gallon tank with power exhaust on March 21.  I do have a chimney but I never allowed the furnace or the water heater exhaust through it because I keep having a CO₂ monitor going off in the middle of the night with the oil furnace.  I also had many headaches in the winter and I believe there is a crack in the chimney.  When the roof needs to be done, the chimney is being pulled down.  I know it is part of the original design to my Sear’s house but it is unsafe and useless now.  I did mention the CO₂ monitor going off to my ex-furnace man but his remark was the monitors are just too sensitive what little I knew then.

Now I can check off converting over to gas. √

PS: On Saturday, I sealed the remaining wall with hydraulic cement.  This coming Saturday I can start painting the wall.

Still Working on the Basement

For the past 5 weeks I have been busy working in the basement.  I have been putting off writing about it because it is the same old story which involves removing loose cement, wash it, fill in cracks and holes with hydraulic cement and then paint it.  It took awhile for me to get started on this project again.  The thought of having to find a place to move all the “junk” was just enough to put me in a funk during January.  I finely started cleaning up the area by making a trip to the Restore in Baraboo, WI so I could drop off some donations.  Then I made a trip to take my Mom out to lunch for her birthday and drop off a blanket rocker at my sister’s place.  This trip eliminated another item out of the basement.  Next I broke down my worktable which is a plywood sheet and 2 workhorses.  After that I needed to find an area to move the stationary bike, router table, dehumidifier and varies other small items.  Once I finished that I could finely move on to the real work.

Last night I put the final coat on floor but there is still ¼ of the unfinished basement floor left and ¾ of the north wall to do before I can cross this project off my list.  The floor section I have been working on was divided into 3 sections.  I just could not figure out a way to paint the floor as one unit without painting me into a corner where I could not get to the basement sink to clean up or to the stairs without stepping into paint.  The first section I painted was in front of the staircase, next in the northeast corner and last along the north side of the staircase.

Last weekend I started to clear out the next section of floor to be worked on.  This involved defrosting the chest freezer (which badly needed to be done away) and moving it temporary to the newly painted area in front of the stairs.  Tonight I plan on buying shelving to setup in the painted northeast corner.  Once the shelving is up I will move all the paint cans and laundry supplies out of the unfinished basement’s northwest corner.  I plan finish cleaning that corner this weekend then I can start working on finishing the wall.  It is hard to believe that I might finely finish this project!

A 2009 Checklist

I wrote in my last post that my next project was to thoroughly clean my house. Last Saturday, I spent time washing all the surfaces in the kitchen that included walls, floor, cabinets, and appliances. Before putting back all the notes and magnets back on the refrigerator, stop long enough to review the notes and found this note named “NEXT YEAR 2009 TO DO LIST”.

Reviewing this list has brought back memories and there are still many unfinished items.

1. Finish Swan: Years ago I brought my Mom a topiary swan frame from http://www.topiaryinc.com/ and used sphagnum moss to fill out the frame. She received this one Mother’s Days. In 2008 the Kickapoo River flooded town of Gays Mills, my Mother was lucky the yard, garage and basement were flooded but not living area of her home. The topiary swan was sitting in that dirty water and all the old sphagnum moss was removed and need to be replaced with fresh moss. I did finish working on the form in the spring of 2010 and it now back in her garden every summer.
2. Put together the Turtle: Another topiary frame, Rittenhouse use to sell a turtle basket frame. The turtle was finished in the summer of 2010.
3. Fix electric outlet hole on the outside of the house: The hole until this year plugged with a broken shovel handle until this summer. I filled it in with foam but need to fill in the remainder of it with wood putty. This is the wall I stripped off the paint and will finish next spring or summer.
4. Paint dryer hole cover: Before I brought the house the washer and dryer were placed in the northwest corner of the basement. A previous PO finished the north side of basement and the washer and dryer were moved but the old dryer vent was never closed off. I filled in the vent hole sanded it down and painted late 2008. So I must have made this list sometime in the fall of 2008.
5.  Make Bamboo Trellis: Completed in the spring 2009, this is the trellis which I weave my squash vine through.
6.  Wash unfinished south basement wall: completed in 1/3/2010
7.  Fix crack in wall: South basement wall, 2/3 of the wall was finished early spring 2010 and the remaining wall this spring 2011.
8. Fix Cracks in floor: Complete over the 2009-2010 winter. See Moisture and Water Problems Part 3 
9. Paint Finished Craft room floor: See #8.
10.  Wash Closet Walls: Not done closet show in Moisture and Water Problems Part 3 
11. Paint Closet Walls: See #10.
12.  Shellac Closet doors: My bedroom closet has wooden bifold door which only ½ of the bifold door is done.
13.  Hang Closet door: Not done do to #12 not being completed.
14.  Lay out garden around telephone pole and box: Still on my To Do List but other things become more important so this keeps dropping down on the list.
15. Call for a Watch Dog before digging up the garden around telephone box: Waiting for #14.

This is the fourth winter I been working and the basement and hopefully the last. I found that if I just put waterproof the basement as a project and had to wait four years to cross it off my TO DO List it would be discouraging. So I have been breaking down large projects into smaller projects so I feel like I accomplished something.

Things are Moving Along in the Basement!

The floor along the east basement wall is now painted. I finished putting the fourth coat on the floor at 4:50 AM on Tuesday before going to work. Now I need to allow the paint to cure one week before I can set up my shelving.

Last night I started to move the jelly cabinet and other items so I can start to prepare a new section of the floor for paint. I noticed there is an area by the chimney which needs a coat of hydraulic cement before I can start painting it. So I will do that over Labor Day weekend and then I can paint it the following weekend. I cannot believe I might finally finish working on the east basement wall section this fall and I will be only six months late of my goal. I still will have the 2/3 of the north wall left to do and that is where the laundry tub, washer and dryer are located.

PS: I done painting the deck but need I want to put out the new furniture and put the hanging baskets up before I show it off.

Slow Going but I am still progressing forward.

We did not get the forecasted rain until early Saturday morning so I spent Friday evening putting the first coat on the remaining balusters and called it a night. We had intermittence rain over the weekend so I needed to change my plans on working on the outside of the house. Saturday morning in between going to Mineral Point’s Farmer Market and doing laundry, I prepared the basement floor for painting. I first vacuumed the floor and then washed it. It took many buckets of clean water to clean a 15 x 8 square foot area. The rain did help me find where water was coming in the floor’s south corner. I applied hydraulic cement over the leak. I now need to wait a week for the cement to cure before I can start painting the floor.


Later on Saturday I removed the glass panes from the storm window on the wall I am stripping and also stripped it of paint. The storm window’s lower joints needed to be glued back together. The bottom section of the window has some rot in it and some time this week I will be applying wood harder to those areas. After I fix that area and fill in some other areas with wood filler, I can prime it and reglaze the glass panes before painting it with the accent color “Hodley Red”.

Sunday was again spent canning and freezing vegetables. I canning another 4 quarts of Amish Dill Pickles and preserved my first ten 12-oz jars of Dilly Bean this year. I did find time to make an eggplant and zucchini casserole and roast cherry tomatoes for a pasta salad. I love the “Roasted Cherry tomatoes and Garlic Pasta Salad”. It is a great way to use all those cherry tomatoes up, I found this recipe in Martha Stewart Magazine last year believe it was in the October issue. Look it up because it is a keeper.

Updated 8/23/2011: The recipe I wrote about is called "Rigatoni with Roasted Tomatoes" from Martha Stewart halloween 2009 special issue, p. 114.  I looked for it on the her web site but it must not be posted anymore. 

Weekend Projects

I spend the weekend working on the painting the basement walls and I finished putting on the fourth coat of Watertite paint on Sunday.  The "aged pearl" color sure brightens the basement up.  I still have the small wall with the electrical panel and the northeast corner left to paint this summer.  I can start paint the wall with the electrical panel on Wednesday but the northeast corner needs to cure until Sunday before I can start paint it.

Once I finished painting the wall I can pull up the drop cloths and plastic and start preparing the floor for painting.

While waiting for the paint to dry in the basement, I spent Saturday afternoon hand sanding the railings on the right side of the picture. I thought I would be using my power detailer sander for this but the head was to large to fit in between the railing going down the stairs. It took me 6 hours to do that small area. I try to working on it Sunday when the deck is in the shade but wearing a dust mask in a Heat Advisory was just too much. The deck can just wait until the weather is cooler.

Finally I Am Back to Working on the House.

The garden is now in maintenance. So all I need to do there is pick the produce, water it, weaving the squash & cucumber vines in the trellis and tie up the tomatoes. I also stop selling plants at farmer's market the last weekend in June. This allows me an extra half day on the weekend to get other projects done at home the rest of the summer.

I took Tuesday and Wednesday off this week to get a good start on two projects to be done this summer. The first is to finish waterproofing the basement. The basement project was put to a halt late February when the paint in the upper southeast corner started dripping down the wall. See "Painting the Basement" more information. I spent the both mornings painting the wall, so now have 3 coats on the south wall and 2 on the east wall section. Watertite paint recommends 3 to 4 coats on cement wall. I plan to spend my weekend mornings down there painting on the last coats this coming weekend. I still need the paint the east section of the wall with the fuse box and water softener tank in front of it. I need to do some repair on those sections because my hydraulic cement failed to bond in some areas.

On my afternoons off this week I started to sand down the deck to the bare wood. I finished sanding any area I could get my 5" oscillating disc sander into by 7 PM on Thursday. All I need to do is use the detailed sander on the remainder of the deck and if necessary do some hand sanding before staining it. I pick out a Benjamin Moore semi-transparent stain called Dragon's Breath which nicely compliments the Brookline Beige on the clapboards. I would like to paint the deck railings similar the front porch. I would like to paint the spindles with the Brookline beige and the hand railing with the Tarrytown green but I am waiting until I see how the stain color looks on the deck floor. I hope to finish sanding the deck this weekend hopeful the 90F weather will hold off until Monday.

Painting the Basement

The weekend was again a putting one step forward and well maybe 3 steps backwards. Saturday I spent time in the northeast corner of the basement putting hydraulic cement over the areas I cleaned up last week. I had 2½ bucket of cement that was not enough to finish the job. Monday, I will buy two more buckets to finish the job next weekend.


Next I started cutting in the edges and covering the insulation with the paint. It looks much better if the insulation is the same color as the wall. I completely painted the unfinished section of the south wall; it stills needs another 3 coats to completely waterproof it.


The outside corners of the basement have had condensation or frost developing there when the temperature drops outside. The weather has been mild (for winter) most of the week and I been checking for water drops or frost all week and found none. So when I started to paint on Saturday, I assumed everything would be OK. The temperature dropped into the low teens last night and the water droplets started to form and drip down the wall. I was beside myself on how to stop it. I gave up and went to bed and found this in the morning.


I just wanted to curl up on the conch and vegetative all day but around 10 AM I figured out that if I used my heating gun to dry the paint I could keep the rest from dripping down the wall. I took a dry paint roller and rolled over the drip area to remove the drip marks at the top of the wall and started the heat gun. It worked and what was left dried and it warmed up around the upper 30’s to low 40’s so the condensation has not redeveloped. I wished I would have thought of this Saturday night, it would have saved me a lot of trouble. I will need to giving up painting until the night time temperatures are in the 40’s and that will not be until mid or late March.

I decide not to spend all Sunday on the conch instead I pull the turkey carcass from the freezer and made turkey soup, whole grain bread and Spicy Roasted Butternut Squash with Smoked Sweet Paprika. The Spicy Roasted Butternut Squash with Smoked Sweet Paprika is from KalynsKitchen.com, I used regular paprika but I can’t wait to try it with smoked paprika.

While doing all that cooking and baking I was trying to figure out what project I should work on next until I can go back to painting the basement. My first thought was to divide the closet in the front bedroom; this room is my sitting & TV room. I want to divide this closet so I can have a linen closet opening in to hallway next to the bathroom. Then I remember that I need to replace the screen in the screen frame for the back porch door. I also need to finish shellacking the bifold doors for my bedroom closet. The doors are one of many unfinished projects and this one is about 4 years old. Before Christmas, I was trying to finish off many of these projects before the family came for my brother's birthday in December. Since it will be awhile before I can paint, it is time to finish off a few more unfinished projects or as I call them UFO (unfinished objects).

Rewriting and Basement Update

The electrician finished looking over the wiring and fixed problem areas. He wired my bathroom exhaust fan, removed the 220 electric stove's outlet and replaced it with a 110 outlet by the stove. He added an outlet by the microwave, so I no longer have it on an extension. I asked him to replace the 2 plug outlets on both ends of the kitchen to 4 plug outlets. I could never get the back porch light to work; now it works. Last Christmas a received new fixture for the porch from my Dad and it looks great. Last thing I requested was an outside outlet near my gas grill so I would no longer have to run an extension through the porch window to run the rotisserie.


He never did find what was causing my TV screen to go black but the TV worked normal this weekend. My father, who is a retired electrician, said he may have tightened a connection when checking the house wiring and that may have corrected it. When I talked to him last Wednesday, I mentioned that I noticed condensation on the electrical pipe bring the outside line to the fuse box. When he opened it up, he found that there was no insulation place up the pipe. The warm house air was traveling up the pipe meeting the cold outside air causing the condensation. He remarked that in some cases the water drips back on to the circuit breakers. I had fiber glass lying around the basement from all the work I am doing and he used it to insulate the pipe.

I finished insulating the 7½ inch space between the sill and first floor in the unfinished basement section. Replacing the fiber glass with the foam board and spraying foam over the sill has cut down the heat loss in the basement. While working down in the basement I took sometime to clean out the dryer’s exhaust vent. I was reading that if your clothes are taking longer to dry than normal your vent may be clogged. I pulled the hose at the dryer’s connection on Saturday and it looked good. So I put it back together and assumed it was ok. But for some reason on Sunday, I went outside and lifted the vent cover and found lint completely covering the wire screening. This time I pulled the hose apart on both ends clean and vacuum everything. I will not be using the dryer until later this week so I will not know if this corrects the problems.

The weather been in the 30s and 40s since Saturday and so the thaw has begun. The repaired basement walls are holding up fairly well but I found some minor leaks. I applied more hydraulic cement over those areas and maybe I can start to paint the walls with waterproof paint next weekend.

It has been a while since I lasted put out a Post.

Well, what have I been doing these last two months? Beside the holiday stuff, I cut in a bathroom fan before the first snow fall and I am still waiting for the electrician to wire it in. I raked the roof four times between December 8 to December 28 because I was worried about ice dams forming from all the snow on it. We had a thaw on December 30 to 31 and the roof was fine but the gutter downspout near back porch froze solid and water was running on the outside so I spend 2-3 hours with a heat gun defrosting the downspout the day before the thaw.

I finely put back the shoe base molding; it was pulled off over 6 six years ago when I was refinishing the wood floors. Before I could lay the molding down, I filled the larger gaps between the floor and baseboard with foam insulation. Allowed the foam to dry, cut off the excess then applied a bead of caulk before nailing the molding it place. This has cut down on cold air drafts and made the house feel warmer.

I also finished a project I started last winter. Last winter I was working on the storm/screen door to the three season porch. I finished stripping, painting, and hanging the door last March but never got around to painting the storm window for it. I finished painting it in October and replaced the screen with the freshly painted storm window.

These last two weeks, I have been back in the basement working on another unfinished project waterproofing the basement. I started working on this last winter and wrote about it in "Moisture and Water Problems, Part 1 -3". I finished cleaning the exposed south basement wall and 3/4 of the east wall. I cleaned the areas with wire brushes attached to an electric drill. I put off a lot of loose cement. Here are some pictures of the cleaned walls.


Last Saturday, it took 6½ 10-lb buckets of hydraulic cement to fill all the holes in the prepared walls. Next I plan to buy 2" sheet of foam board insulation and cut it to size fill in between the studs above the fountain to the basement ceiling. I was using the spray foam but that been to messy, the foam would fall in on itself and on the floor. Using the solid foam board and filling in the cracks between the board and studs should work out better.

That is what I been doing on the house these last two months. I will try to be more current on my posting this year.

Moisture and Water Problems, Part 2

I may have solved the water problem but does not mean that the moisture problem is under control. I define moisture as humidity not standing water. I might not have water in the basement this year but my house has always been humid. Some people might be thinking the house is to air tight but this is a house build in the 1930’s and still has no insulation in the wall. When you touch the outside walls they are ice cold and you can feel the drafts coming out along the floor and baseboards. I would think there would be plenty of holes for the humid to escape. I will admit that I do need to put in a vent in the bathroom and kitchen. The bathroom is on this summer's To DO list but the kitchen will wait until I remodel it.

So what could be causing the moisture problem in the house and basement? After talking to a long time residents, I found out there are springs in the area and beside that there is a creek running through the property behind mind. So all the water draining through the ground passes the house and toward the creek and with the possibility of springs in the area the ground water is close to the surface. Here is a picture showing what happens, when we have a heavy down pour in back of my house. This happens at least three or four times during the year. Last year I saw a waterfall from the creek to the tree showing on the right side.



The walls in the unfinished basement have the paint popping off the wall from the water vapor passing through the walls. The areas are also having a white power building on the wall as show in the photo below. I started to clean the exposed cement wall with a wire brush to remove the loose cement, paint and mineral build up on the walls. I brought wire brushes that I can attach to my drill, it did a good job. After I removed all the loose material I covered area with hydraulic cement. Hopefully this will reinforce the wall and stop the moisture from traveling through the walls. Any cracks found in the foundation also were filled in with the hydraulic cement. After all that, the walls are covered with a waterproof paint.



My goal was to finish the basement over the winter but there are always delays and of over estimating what you are capable to get done. The complete to do list was:
1. Paint the floor in the sewing room and the unfinished section with Watertite paint
2. Finish drywall the closet in the sewing room where the oil tank was. This involved waterproofing cement wall, insulate the wall with Styrofoam, hang drywall, and install a closet organizer.
3. Repair exposed cement wall and paint them with Watertite paint.

The next post will show what I finished.