It's Cool, But Is It On The Level?

Stable flooring application requires a level substrate. The closet in the studio was anything but, so I poured a couple buckets of self-leveling compound in there and was both amazed at how glass-like the finish was and appalled by how little distance two buckets of this expensive stuff goes. Time constraints being what they were, we laid floor in a semi-level closet. Eh ... heh.

Quite White

What do you do when cats pee so much and in such concentrated areas that the urine seeps through the underlayment and into the subfloor? You paint everything white with an oil-based shelac called Kills. Seal it in, baby.

Here's a funny story ...

You might be wondering why a row of bricks are missing from the wall above the sliding glass door that leads from our dining area to the front deck. No? Well, I'll tell ya the story anyway. It seems that the original builders didn't use the correct support structures to hold the concrete deck in place. As a result the deck has slowly sagged, and with it the entire house in that area. The solution is to brace the garage opening, jack up the wall, remove the bad wood (rotted out by bad drainage, animals and a longstanding heater leak) and replace it with an engineered beam suitable for bearing the existing load. Jacking the wall without removing those bricks (and the sliding doors) could be a disaster, so better safe than incredibly depressed at having one more, new huge project to take on.

"It Is A Dream I Have"

It was an exciting day indeed when I was able to order then pick up the radiant panels and flooring for the studio. We decided to go with a floated floor of Australian Cedar. The planks are quite thin and are NOT nailed into the subfloor. The wood is "manufactured," not a laminate, which means it has cross hatches of wood topped with several millimeters of real Australian Cypress: enough for a few sandings if warranted down the line.



The point of this is to create an extremely dimensionally stable flooring which will resist expansion, warping and cupping in the face of radiant heat exposure. Floating the floor gives it an added advantage of being able to move independently from the expansion and contraction of the panels themselves. This is not the studio. Its the living room. I wanted to expose the materials to humidity levels within the house for several days prior to installation.

A Different Kind of Tracing

So this is what an electrical engineer does on his day off. My father-in-law was kind enough to spend a few hours getting to the bottom of a wiring situation I created for myself by not properly labeling what I was taking apart and rearranging in the studio ceiling. Lesson learned. Since Norm helped get to the bottom of my problem I thought I'd return the favor and post a bottom of his.

The Family that Plays Together, Stays Together

Me, first day no longer feeling sick.



Jess, first day back after BEING sick.



Jane, first day GETTING sick. Feel better Jane!

Skinless and Bones

I wanted to share this moody shot of the loft space in the studio. I created this for extra storage and possible use during sessions. The next step was to rip out the closet framing to allow space for the tape machines and mellotron AND a stairway up to the loft. I believe I will install an gnome door in the loft for attic access. That will allow me to get rid of the dangerous and dangerously ugly pull down attic door in the hallway ceiling. Here's a shot of the closet after today's rip-out.



Next we paint the floor with KIllz and install the Homasote panels.

Contemplating Horses

Insular Communities

Far wall and ceiling of studio space after finishing install of the insulation. I think faced insulation looks pretty cool. Kraft paper facing is very rustic. Its like the folk art of insulation.

Chim Chimney

I've lost quite a bit of time working on the house these past two weeks due to the type of virulent cold/flu bug one encounters in the halls of the local Elementary School. But drag myself to the house after work I did on many a sinus-plugged eve. One of the things I (think) I accomplished was my first chimney sweep. Ours has three outlets, one for the oil burner and one each for the two fireplaces. The mold issue in the basement was so severe that when first investigating the chimney after ownership I was able to tell which outlet was which simply by smelling the airflow. Blech.

Give Them What They Want

A lot of you have been writing in with requests for more shots of me working. "Where's Weeks?" "Give us the gun show!" More action shots of the hair." Well, here ya go. Some shots taken by Jessica while I was installing the draft channels in the newly created cathedral ceiling for the recording studio. Contrary to what one might think, air needs to pass freely from the outside into one's attic space and then be allowed to escape. This keeps moisture from building up between construction surfaces, which creates mold. It also stops your roof from getting too warm in winter, which causes snow melt that leads to ice dams.This is why ceiling insulation is so important, not to keep cold air out, but to keep hot air in and away from the roof. At least that's what some drunk guy told me.

Why Drink Rotten Eggs?

This, friends, is what you buy when the guy who previously owned your house decides to dig his well several hundred feet deeper into the bedrock than would seem necessary. The further down into the bedrock a well goes, the more sulphur seeps into the drinking water. That sulphur smells like rotten eggs, especially when the water is heated up for, say, bathing. Sanatoga Water Conditioning installed this Water Right Sulfur Filter in less than an hour, It hooks in directly after your pressurized holding tank. The water passes from the tank into the cylinder, which is a giant carbon filtration unit. The carbon leeches out the sulphur and disposes of it every 12 days or 1000 gallons at the programmed time. Neat AND essential.

Two Nude Boots

<

Back in 1993 my last summer job (college) was working in a recycling plant. I had to pull out bits of stuff that didn't belong on a conveyor belt filled with larger bunches of other stuff. Or vice versa, as the day would have it. All sorts of weird stuff would show up. Dead cats, bags off rotting fish ... people will throw anything into a dumpster bin at night. When working with cardboard it would go down the belt into a metal pit which would squish it up and allow for the front loader to move it out. Every so often the pit would get jammed and somebody would have to jump in there and kick the cardboard free. Once while doing it my brand new work boots got stuck while the front loader was moving in. I was on the blindside of the loader and was steadily being smooshed between the moving press and the front loader jaws. Suffice to say I lived. I crapped my pants, but lived. Anyhoo, these black steel toed boots (pictured above) are what's left of the shiny black numbers I donned for that job. Note the steel plate in the center. That is meant to be embedded in the sole of the boot. Both plates slipped out this past month. Time for a new pair of boots.

Enter these fashionable steel toed numbers!





Why steel toe? Because I am very lanky and awkward and manage to scuff and grind everything beneath my ankles into oblivion in record time. Pus I drop shit on my toes and like to step on nails.

Goin' Postal

This is what the joists of the studio space looked like when I finished removing the drywall, insulation and plywood. The ceiling height and boxiness of the room were not ideal for a critical listening environment ('scuse me while I don my white lab coat), so after consulting a builder (our wonderful neighbor up the hill) I decided to go ahead with a plan to cut out the current joists, cut them down to 6 feet and re-secure them at a slighter angle for a downward pitch towards the back of the room. This would reduce parallel surfaces, unwanted reflections and make a shit-load more work for myself. It would also allow me to create a neat little loft storage space for gear to the right of the room above the bathroom. With several joist removed and about four of them cut and repositioned, things are looking like this:

Neigh-bors

These are our neighbors directly across the way. They like to range about on odd days. Tonight as I was driving home with Lei on my lap they were backlit across a misty field by a glowering purple treeline. There is a lot of mist around here. Much cooler than a smoke machine, I might add.

Satan's Little Helper

This is my faithful worktime companion Leila. She likes to eat grasshoppers and dig at worms.

Brown Bomber

Livin' out in the styx means ya gotta have wheels. Being poor does not make realizing this need easy. In fact it leads one to purchase a late 80s Blazer from an ex con drug addict who sweats a lot, acts cracked out and, while driving you around, sees a cop, mentions that his license is revoked and makes you drive the way home all the while talking about how good a relationship he has with said cop. This particular truck belches fumes, has an exhaust leak that sounds like an early model pace maker, leaks oil, lacks reverse lights, had a dead battery, gets about 12 miles to the gallon and sounds like one of those tricked out double muffler jobbers you see all those douchebag white guys in Philly driving. I love it (even when, after ten minutes of owning it, it ran out of gas on the freeway with the gas meter reading an eighth of a tank full).

Tearin' Out On High

So yeah, after throwin my back out fillin that damn (wonderful) trench, I decided I could stay on rest hiatus no longer than three days. As soon as I got back to tearin' out the soon to be studio's ceiling my back felt loads better. Maybe I'm developing some sort of symbiotic relationship with the house a la Burnt Offerings.

Ditch Witch

We paid Parker Wastewater to dig out a 10" wide, 2 foot deep, 60 foot long trench behind and on one side of our house with the understanding that a correctly installed French Drain system would ensure a dry basement. The house is a split level, the lower level being more than 2/3rds underground in some areas. The previous owner had a big issue with water penetration. We're planning on making the bottom floor our master bedroom so we're taking a number of steps to create a lower level that breathes well and resists water penetration and condensation (and thus mold and its related health and allergin issues). I laid the pipe, connected it to the lowest grade downspout and leveled the pipe so that it sloped about 1/4 inch every 4 feet from the pipe's high end.



Then Jess and I hauled 7.5 tons of 2B stone fill up the hill and dumped it over the length of the pipe. This took two days of ultra intense labor.









A layer of drainage fiber was placed over the stone followed by a layer of topsoil.

By any means necessary

This little guy is the underground drain through which all rainwater gets diverted from our roof. The previous owner, rather than scope out the septic and figure out the problem, nursed the system by installing a greywater option that dumps all washer and kitchen wastewater into the downspout line. The dishwasher and washing machine water likely ends up here but we're not brave enough to see if either device actually works! The greywater "system" is simply a diverter valve on the "stack" from the kitchen area.

Up periscope(s)

Here's the completed work (prior to being buried in two inches of 2B stone fill). The funny thing is that the "real" problem with the septic was a clog at the header pipe, the pipe which runs from the septic (the tank that collects, holds and breaks downs the solids) to the drain field (where all the liquids flow out). These photos don't show the work that Parker Wastewater Consulting, Inc. did to remedy that problem.

Shovel in hand, bird in bush

This past weekend I jumped into the hole, dug out the dirt and gravel and started the excavation and repair of the septic "T." The above reveals a bit of that work.

Goin' Septic

We purchased this house via short sale. The easiest way to describe such a transaction is with the phrase "no negotiating." The property was sold for less than its market value (the only way we could afford it and the area) in order to get it off the bank's books and prevent it from going to Sherif's sale (which the bank actually tried to do after accepting our offer!?). The bank wouldn't take any less than the amount owed them on the loan, which meant if we came up with that we could purchase the place "as is." Why mention this? Well, its why we purchased a place with a non functional septic system. Above is a shot of the hole the previous owner dug to find the drainage T which feeds the drain field. In doing the digging the pipe was torn in three spots. The shot shows the hole refilled by sediment washed in by rain.

Our new place

Howdy!

I wish I had thought to do this blog sooner. The photo to the left is not a great representation of our home in its "virgin" state. We're about two weeks into the demo process. One 30 cubic yard waste container has come and gone, filled by yours truly. All ham radio antennae have been carefully removed from the roof (part of that pile of recyclable metal in front of the garage) and the gutters have been transformed from a series of oblong terrariums into a free flowing drainage system that actually moves water away from the foundation of the house (more on that later). This, friends and onlookers, is the new Weeks homestead and future location of what was known as Hexham Head Studio.