Meet Mike.

    In my March 22nd blog entry, I mentioned that this season I will be helped by three new friends: Bob, Mike, and Matt.  I've already introduced Bob, he is the boiler tech who is scheduled to return in July and complete the boiler install.  Now I'd like to introduce Mike.

     Mike is my friend, his primary business is sealcoating driveways, but he is also quite good at drywall and masonry work.  I was planning to start using him next month when we complete the foundation repair on the North side of the house.  With the unexpected loss of Robbie last week, I bought Mike up to help me finish the sheetrock in the piano room.

     I'll not lie, it felt a bit strange working with Mike instead of Robbie, but Mike did a great job! We hung the last of the sheetrock and then Mike did the first coat of tape & mud.  We left the bottom strip of sheetrock off until the floor repairs get made just in case the height of the floor changes due to unexpected surprises.

      Here are a few photos from this morning:

 

By the way if anyone in the Orange, Rockland, Sullivan, or Pike County areas needs a good sealcoat guy who uses top quality oil based sealer and does neat professional work, call Mike at (845) 469-SEAL

I lost my friend.

 I’m not sure how to write this blog entry, I don’t really know how to say this. Robbie has passed away.

I found out yesterday and I hoped it was a mistake, but I just got confirmation from his cousin.  He’s gone. 

     Anyone who has read this blog for the past 5 years knows that Robbie was my friend and my worker.  Robbie could do anything. His specialty was tile and stone work, but he did masonry, framing, roofing, plumbing, sheetrock, etc.  Hell, Robbie could do anything! I met Robbie nine years ago, he had his own business and my boss hired him to re-model the office at our shop, and replace all the windows. I was so impressed with his work and the speed at which he completed the task, that I asked for one of his business cards:

When a car crashed into and destroyed the detached garage at my house back in 2012, I hired Robbie to re-build it. His price was unbeatable, and the garage was completed within three days. He repaired a section of the foundation, and widened the garage door opening by framing out custom swing out barn-style doors.  From that point on he was my guy for construction and home repairs.  In 2014 I had Robbie install hardwood floors in the upstairs of my house. The results were amazing. Since then he has re-tiled two bathrooms for me, done plumbing repairs, rebuilt a deck and gates at my sons house and installed some very nice railings on two staircases. 

  When I bought this 1861 Lackawaxen house in 2016, one of the first things I did was to get Robbie up there to get his opinion.  I remember how he looked at me after assessing the damage. His eyes got big and I feel like he  wanted to tell me that I had made a mistake buying something this bad, but he said we could fix it.  Robbie is responsible for at least 90% of the progress that was made on this house. It would not be where it is today if not for him. He was truly an amazingly talented man. For the past five spring/summer seasons, we worked on this house every weekend.  We worked side by side, just him and I.  I learned so much by working with and helping Robbie. Most importantly we developed a great friendship.  I got to know Rob’s family and he got to know mine. My wife Robin was always referring Robbie to her friends and relatives who needed work done.  

       The coming weeks and months of working on my house without him are going to be tough. He’ll no longer be there to show me how to do things and help me to do them. He won’t be there for me to ask his advice and to tell me what materials to buy.  But the hardest part will be that I’ll no longer have my friend there to talk to, to laugh with, to work along side of.  I’m going to miss you Rob. May God wrap his arms around you and may your soul be at rest.

Fritz

https://www.lsvpmemorialhome.com/Obituary/4965/Robert+J+Pilgrene

https://www.gofundme.com/f/843jv-funeral-expenses-for-robert

Here are a few photos of my friend Robbie.

Curb appeal

   For the second time since buying this house, I decided to address the issue of how the house and yard look from the street. Back in 2016 I got a chainsaw and a chipper and cleaned up the front somewhat so you could see the yard, but there were still two big stumps and a ton of fallen timber that was too big for the chipper.

   Well, yesterday I bought in the big guns. I hired my friend Steve to clear it all out once and for all. Here is what the place looked like before we did anything:

     Fallen tree trunks laying everywhere:

    Then we arrived with a track loader equipped with a grappling claw:

   
    Steve got right to it:

     Remember the "conjuring tree" which became a stump the first year, well there are no more stumps in this yard:
         

    The end result is fantastic, I just need to spread grass seed and keep up with the mowing now. Here's a before and after of the view from the shoulder of the road:

A choice to make

       I may be getting a bit ahead of myself here, but what the heck. After the sheetrock is spackled & sanded,  and the walls are painted in the piano room, the floor will need to be repaired.  The plan all along has been to repair it only where needed.
     As you can see in the photo below, the floor in the piano room was done with a 6" square porcelain tile.  All except for the area where the piano was on the right, and where a built in piece of furniture was along the back wall. Furthermore, there was / is a hole in the floor where five tiles are broken and the plywood below them is soft.
 

     We found roughly thirty (30) brand new matching tiles for this floor down in the basement.  The plan was to repair the hole in the floor and pull up the wooden section where the piano was and replace all sections with brand new matching tile.

   That was the plan until today. You see, today my boss was kind enough to give me (free) 130 square feet of eastern white pine hardwood flooring.  Now, I'm kind of toying with the idea of ripping all the tile out and putting in some wood flooring.

   

    The pine planks are 7" wide tongue & groove.  Yes, it is not the style of wood floor that was originally in this 1861 house, but neither is the porcelain tile.  The wood would look so good, and would compliment any wall color, whereas the tile has a pale pink hue to it that severely limits the decor of the room.  I still have to run it by my wife Robin and see what she thinks, but I'm leaning toward the pine.

Gyp - some

      Well we got all the gypsum drywall up on the ceiling. We got the north wall opposite the kitchen pretty much done too.  We had time to finish it all, but I'm getting very forgetful in my old age and I forgot to buy more drywall screws.  Yeah, we ran out of screws. I'm a dummy.

    I also bought the luan underlayment for the kitchen floor, as well as the vinyl floor itself.

5¢ escutcheons

       I went up to the house this morning and insulated the piano room.  I also re-positioned the radiator in the hallway where it will permanently reside. Upon sliding the feed and return pipes through the floor and into position, I noticed the need for some escutcheons. You know, those round decorative bits that cover the hole in the floor.  A trip to the local home improvement store resulted in my purchase of exactly what I had feared: Cheesy chinese plastic horse-crap escutcheons with a split in them to fit around the pipes and a horrible simulated chrome finish.
      At two for a buck, I bought a bag. I looked for alternatives, I really did.  For the much smaller 1/2" pipes there was a flimsy one piece chrome one that was made from some type of metal rather than plastic, but also was made in china and looked like crap. For the bigger 1"  -> 1.5" pipes there were these god-awful looking hinged nightmares that I did  not even consider.  So, I took my pair of plastic donuts back to the house and confirmed that they look like crap and then threw them in the garbage.

         A google search revealed that there are nice ornamental bronze/brass ones out there, but they cost around $25 each and are a week away if I order them now.  I have 8 radiators to re-install and plumb, so thats $400 for fancy escutcheons!
       I thought about buying a chunk of bronze and making my own since I have a lathe in my garage.  The cost of bronze was more than I expected, so I considered getting aluminum and using that.  Then it hit me!  It might seem real stupid, but at five cents apiece, I have to try it:  aluminum soda cans!

It took only seconds to make one, so I made ten. Then I ran back to try them out on the radiator.

Truth is they look ok, not great, not amazing, but ok. They look better than the plastic donuts, but I might actually order the nice bronze ones and swap them out.

   

Piano room prep.

      Hot day today in Pennsylvania! Had to cut it short today after just four hours of work, but that's ok we got a lot done.
      Rob sealed the new floor in the hallway,  he installed the last piece of chair rail in the kitchen, installed a deadbolt on the back door, and helped me install all the new studs in the piano room.
      With all new 10' studs in the ceiling, I installed the octagon box for the ceiling lamp and ran the wiring from the light switch.

        The last thing we did was to "sister" the  five sideways studs in the north wall by using 2 X 3's nailed into the faces of the studs. The two conventional studs on the left side were then bought to flush using strips of 3/4" plywood. Lastly a new 2 X 4 stud was added on the right side .

      I was planning to insulate the back wall, but the heat was affecting Rob's breathing so adding fiberglass to the situation was not advisable.  I will insulate during the week on a cool morning. Then next weekend we hang the sheetrock!

     Edit (6-8-2020)
          Nice and cool this morning, so I ran up to the house with three and a half rolls of the itchy stuff. Forgot to bring scissors or new sharp razors, so cutting it was treachery!  Got the ceiling done and most of the back wall. I need one more roll to finish it.