Aside: Nature and the Miracle of Love

One of the nicest things about living in our neighborhood is the natural environment: mature trees, lots of squirrels and bunnies, and even the occasional possum (unfortunately). But in late September, we got a surprise visit from a beautiful hawk; he hung out in our front yard for a few hours before leaving under cover of darkness:

While the hawk provided a bit of excitement in the front yard, the real action was in the backyard. Apparently the sight of our new addition is putting the local wildlife 'in the mood.' While admiring our framing work, I looked out the window to see two squirrels taking turns humping each other (the fluff-balls can be seen in the red circle below):

Yeah, that's right - I said that they took turns humping each other. I can only assume that they were here to try to recruit my dogs into their deviant lifestyle. This is an assault on my marriage!

Day 3

Today we started out by going to the Depot to look at flooring, get some more lumber, and check out what the base of our new door is going to look like so Slumlord Jim and I could frame out that wall. We decided last night that the best thing to do for the sloped floor was to level it out using 2x4's cut at the correct angle placed on 1x4's at 16" spacing. Then we'll lay down a plywood subfloor, and we're planning on (pre-finished) red oak hardwood flooring to match the rest of the house. Unless we go with green indoor-outdoor AstroTurf carpeting; I'm still arguing with the Mrs. about that one.

We tested out the shimmed 2x4 idea by trying it for the north wall. Slumlord Jim clamped on a 2x4 to use as a guide for his circular saw, and the angled cut worked pretty darn well. So, we went ahead and framed out the whole wall on top of them; you can see what the shims look like below.

Close-up of the North Wall Shims

After finishing the framing (wow, done already?), we decided to go ahead and put some sheeting on the exterior. But after we put up the first piece and realized how expensive it was going to be to cover the whole structure (aside from the cost of the plywood itself, it takes an awful lot of nails and compressed air!), we figured one ought to be enough. I figure Global Warming kind of negates the need for insulation. So, here it is, our sunroom, ready for siding!

Sunroom: Day 2

We finally ordered the windows and doors last night from the Depot! The corporate 'Bid Room' gave us a pretty good deal (almost 10%), plus we got another $200 off for signing up for their credit card. Not bad - better than we expected. We probably won't get them in for another few weeks, though...

Today involved a little bit of re-doing some stuff from Day 1 (when Carpenter Pete's involved, that's where the 're' in 'renovation' comes from); as I hinted at before, we had to replace the corner posts because of some minor wood rot at the base. Luckily, a handy-dandy floor jack made quick work of the posts; the Mrs. thinks that the new ones look at little bit better, but I can't really tell the difference.

<- Before

↓After

After swapping out the corner posts, we were able to frame out the windows for the back wall fairly quickly. Slumlord Jim and I made individual frames for each window, and then slid / pounded them into the existing spaces.

Slumlord Jim Preparing to Frame Out Some Windows

This went pretty fast, so we moved on to framing the south wall. We discovered pretty quickly that the floor isn't level (to drain water away from the building, so we ripped up a 2x4 at an angle to shim up the base plate to level, and then we framed up the wall in place. We got through one of the window frames on this wall before calling it a day; we'll get the others done tomorrow, and then try to strategerize a plan for the north wall (the one with the big, fancy door).

Kickin' Up My Feet While the Safety Inspector Makes Her Rounds

It Has Begun!

The back porch job has finally started! On Labor Day, we demo'd the existing ceiling (including pulling out the old ceiling fan and about a million nails) and framed up the back wall. I already managed to accidentally hack through the old wiring with the pry-bar I was using to bring down the ceiling (no big deal, though). And somebody grabbed the ceiling fan, which I had put out by the street, within hours. We didn't finish framing out the windows, because once we got to this point we decided we wanted to get taller ones (we added 4" to them).


Not a bad start, though we'll be replacing the old corner posts with some new ones, which will be a pain. But the other two walls should go up pretty quickly after that, and then it'll be time for closing up the exterior and wiring while we wait for our windows and doors to show up from the Depot...