Tuesday, September 1, 2015

Back to working for ourselves for a change

Lately we spend lots of time helping friends on various projects.
We decided that September was going to be our month to ourselves.
That mean we are not helping anyone else working on whatever, but instead we are going to catch up on things that need to be done at home.
Sorry friends, but I must address a couple things on the house before the weather turns too cold.

My first order of business is to fix two damaged part on the house, a corner eaves and the bottom corner of one of the garage window.

On the outside corner by the electrical entrance, the eave has been chew up and birds have been nesting

Cutting back the eave and that is what I found inside.
The birds have long fled the coop but left an egg, it is leaking.
Any idea what kind of bird that is??

Cleaned up the space, best I could, clean up my cuts square and made a replacement piece. I'm using pressure treated lumber and treated all my cut pieces with end cut preservative. Not too worry about rot down the road, but want to discourages insect and birds to chew on it. I will also use special expanding foam treated to repulse insect to seal that space.

Cut cleaned up, new piece made to fit, complete with dado in the back 
to capture the bottom plywood.

The other area that I need to address is a bottom corner on one of the garage window. 3 years ago, I cleaned up most of the rot and put in some exterior putty, but that did not held up very well, rot is still happening and the putty is crumbling away. Time for surgery!

Wood is still rotting and the putty is flaking off.

Removing the putty.
Looking for good wood.

I must remove all trace of rotten wood or it would come back to haut me. So I keep cutting back until I hit solid wood.


That is how far back I had to go to find solid wood.

Once I was satisfied that I found solid wood, I treated the whole area with
PC-Petrifier, a wood hardener (liquid epoxy) that penetrate and harden wood.
I generously applied the stuff as per the instruction: Saturate the wood well.

My secret weapons: PC-Petrifier and paintable end cut preservative

All my new pieces of wood are ready and have been treated with the end cut preservative.


Tomorrow everything would be dried and I will start the reconstruction with epoxy for the window frame and construction adhesive for the eave. Once everything is sealed and dried, I will paint the affected area.

Down the road I intend to replaced the two garage windows, so this corner repair is more than adequate for now. A few years ago we replaced the remainder windows in the house, some had been previously replaced by the former owner, but they used vinyl insert and left the outside wooden sashes in place. My new ones have vinyl brick mold so would not rot.


A couple years ago I had to completely replaced the sill on one of the wooden sash on one window, it was rot beyond salvage. This is how I did it.

Removed the whole sill piece, saved a small section for the profile 
and made a new sill, complete with drip edge cut under.


Cut back until found solid wood on both sides.

New sill piece installed and both end pieces installed.
Once painted, it blend in and should last a long time.

As described earlier, I followed a similar method, making sure to saturated the wood surfaces exposed with epoxy (similar to PC-Petrified stuff) before rebuilding the frame.

Tomorrow I should be able to finish this project.
Then, ... I have a ''few things'' on my list :-)

8 comments:

  1. Good work, Bob and good for you for establishing logical priorities!

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  2. Two questions Bob
    1- does the eave angle continue on to the left towards the electrical power inlet? It looks like a good spot for snow to sit at all winter. From the pic it looks like it's an addition added on to an existing roof.
    2- Do the windows have any flashing at all? That rot reminds of the window frame I have rebuilt in the past due to no or poorly installed flashing.

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  3. Bob,

    I feel for you, damn I hate that kind of work. Has to be done but what a PITA.

    My guess is we will repaint this spring and I can see a couple of places we repaired the last time we painted will need it again. Our problems tend to be more sun related than water but....the two together can cause some mischief.

    ken

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  4. Hi Ralph
    1- no it stop before and yes darm good spot for snow to back up... and it does.
    There are two roof lines, the main roof (that corner is a part of it, and the front bump out.
    2- Good questions, will have a closer look. The ones I replaced are correctly flashed. The wood framed ones were done previously by former owner.
    Judging by the new patio door in the back which we had to re-installed correctly, I'm guessing those windows are not installed as good as could be (being polite :-) I'm slowly revisiting these windows one at a time inside and out.

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  5. Thanks Patty, that's what I thought too. Right now the Blue Jays have monopolized the feeders but there as been Robins around before.

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  6. Hi Ken, ain't that the truth! Not my favorite kind of work, especially in that weather, but necessary work...
    Ah, the joy of home ownership, there is always something to do :-).
    In our next phase of living we are planing to go to a retirement community where all we have to do is "Live" and everything else is done for us :-)

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