The main house beam should have been upgraded before we did any work here but since the roof was already leaking, we decided to do that project first, which evolved into a much bigger project than we originally thought. Now, almost two years after starting the roof project, one year after finishing it, we are turning our attention to this thing:

Double beam - our main beam

Our beam is a double beam consisting of 2 2×8 each with blocking in between. The load bearing wall from the second floor lands just to the side of the one set of 2×8, essentially sitting on the blocking. This has caused the beam to slightly twist and the load bearing wall to sink a bit which is very noticeable on the first floor. The span between the posts is also too long.

To fix this, A. has been spending days doing calcs and looking through Simpson’s Strong Tie catalog to come up with the plan. So far we know we will be putting in 3 additional 2×8 LVL under the load bearing wall, moving the posts a few feet to even out the spacing and doing an elaborate hanging, double post design in front of the stairway. We will cut in new footings and put additional 2×8 LVL beams underneath the beams around the stairway.We are hoping with the right timing we will only need to do minimal shoring. The load bearing wall is the only part where we will need to remove the old support system to add the new.

I am not really looking forward to this project, although I am looking forward to the piece of mind when it is all done. This is because I have reached the point in a home remodelers life where I am more interested in finishing all the interior spaces, like the kitchen cabinets, holes in the ceiling, bathroom, new rooms upstairs, etc. I do hope that we can recruit family members to help out with this beam project as it will require lifting heavy things overhead.

I think between this project and the exterior siding, 2012 is pretty much laid out for us. I don’t think we’ll have money to do anything else and we won’t have time and energy either.

Once the heat was working, we shifted our focus to the PV system which we have to install and commission by the end of the year to get our buy back rate and Focus on Energy incentive. After crunching the numbers and looking at how much we can afford we decided to go for the biggest system we can fit. Originally, A. had selected all black Sunpower modules with Solar Edge inverter but we recently learned that they are not compatible. Because we are very concerned about aesthetics – the roof is very visible and only at second story level – we wanted to stick with the Sunpower module, as the only all black module on the market so we ended up going with Enphase inverters. That means that each module has it’s own little inverter which helps maximize our production on a partially shaded roof. After some disagreements with the city inspector, who interprets code erroneously and who enforces his interpretation of the code, we are finally ready for commissioning today. The utility is coming out this morning. We have sunny skies and should be pumping watts back onto the grid.

PV system on our roof.

Making electricity

We are really happy with the look (minus the ladders) and I am glad we didn’t decide to go with a differed modules with white dots. People actually comment on how great and beautiful it looks.

In other news:

Little Eastside Bungalow gets a Christmas Tree this year:

Good for anything car.

Real, my style tree

Off into the New Year…

Back gable all done

A better look at the soffit. The vents are only installed to provide a top vent for the air space behind the siding and don't actually vent the roof.

Our next project will focus on finishing the boiler installation. It is definitely turning to fall outside, the air is dry, the nights cool and we have already dipped down into the 40′s. We have family coming to town the end of September and should knock the heating project out by then.

In other news:

We bottled the beer. It seemed low in alcohol content but it had been 3 weeks so we decided to go ahead and just get it done. Washing 60 bottles and sanitizing them is a quite a chore. Much more work than canning. Hopefully I did a good enough job and the beer will be somewhat enjoyable.

A. bottling the beer

I also participated in another art fair. The Walk in the Woods at Hawthorn Hollow by Racine was quite enjoyable. I made a little bit of money and it only rained a little bit. I also shared the space with another potter friend and that was much more fun than hanging out by myself.

Our booth at the fair

Looping the PEX through

Yup, that would be moi pounding in some PEX

In other news: We made our first batch of beer last Friday. It looks like this:

Waiting for the right temp on the grain mixture.

Loading up the carboy

To finish out our brewing day, we went on a brewery tour at Lakefront Brewery in Milwaukee, ate a fish fry and listened to the Brewer game on our way home.

And I had my first art fair which as wet and I made a loss. Let’s hope it can only get better from here.

My booth at the art fair

About 1/2 of the main trunk.

The heat transfer plates come without holes so they need to either be drilled or punched. We went for the punching method and A. found this punch for sheet metal. Since the aluminum is pretty thick, the small handles don’t give enough leverage and the design easily contributes to jamming ones hands. So we just stuck some conduit pipes on the handles to extent them which makes the hole punching process an easy job for me to handle.

The punch with extended handles

I do this over and over while A. puts up the plates.

A hole punched

This is what they look like installed.

We are pretty excited about this stage of the project. We are done sistering all the joists on the south side of the house and we are about 1/3 done with installing the plates. With some motivation today we might get this side close to done. This will set us up well enough that if the weather starts turning, we can finish the installation in a few weekends and have heat. We figure that we can make it through the shoulder season with just this side of the house having heat. The other half is smaller and has only the bedrooms and bathroom where we don’t need a lot of heat, especially during the fall. We can work on the northside on those rainy weekends we’ll have in the fall and heat is only going to go into the bedrooms for now since we will want to replace the subfloor in the bathroom.

And an update of butterfly:

This is what hatched out of the pupa. A Black Swallowtail Butterfly.

This is what the gable looks like after 3 days of working on it.

Close up of the siding, trim and sash color. Looks nice I think.

And I worked on stripping, sanding, priming and painting one of the basement windows and wells.

Another basement window, but this and worse is what I started with today.

With one coat of paint

Sash with glass removed, sanded and primed.

And here is a picture of my newest pet on its way to a butterfly.

Pupa!

Back gable siding progress

This is about 1 weekend worth of work installing siding. I have already spent countless hours painting the siding and there is also some hours cutting the angle on one end of the boards. The installation process takes a long time as it involves measuring, cutting, checking for fit, recutting,… then priming the cut, waiting a bit for the primer to dry and then install the board and repeat the process. It doesn’t help that its on the second floor so we can’t work on several areas of the house at the same time. So far I am really happy with the color combination.

Color combo

We are hoping that we’ll get a bit faster at installation as we get more practice but unfortunately, we won’t get much faster at climbing up and down the ladder.

Our 3rd big project will have to be our PV system which we don’t have much choice but to get done this fall. Wisconsin legislature has drastically cut funding to the Focus on Energy Program, although it is clearly obvious that this program has created jobs (both ours to an extend) and made the tax payers more money than it costs them. The program’s administration has also been awarded to an incognito non-Wisconsin company. (Talk about keeping jobs in Wisconsin) Even though our incentive is approved, the program is expected to run out of funding before the end of the year. We were also approved for a special rate from our utility company in a capped installation size program and have only a certain amount of time to install our system. In a way, a bit of pressure is good for us so we’ll just get this part of the project done. With out increased electricity cost (electric kiln) it will feel good to offset that use with renewable energy.

All black Sunpower modules on top rows.

We are planning on installing the all black Sunpower modules. This is one of the highest efficiency model that provides the best aesthetics. Since we only have limited roof space and want to maximize our production, we opted for these although they are more expensive. Installation should not be too complicated. With the standing seam metal roof we’ll be able to use S5! clips to install the rails onto which the mods mount. We already installed a second meter socket and the electric wiring should also not be too complicated.

And here’s a pic of my newest pet:

A swallow tail butterfly caterpillar.

Finally finished painting the porch furniture and sewing the cushions.

New old patio furniture

The potato bed is built and planted:

The apple  trees bloomed and even the pair seems to be alive:

This is the disease resistant Liberty

One of the new apple trees, Haralson or Honey Crisp

Work on the siding is going slowly but we can see a bit of progress every weekend. Working around the weather and baseball isn’t always easy but we have a basement project, sister the floor joists, to fall back on. The garden is doing fairly good and there are still a few things that need to go in.

Finished trim on dormer window

I have been getting a few more things done in the garden. We borrowed a truck from Andy’s co-worker and hauled a load of compost from the city compost site. I used a large portion of it to build a hilled bed for potatoes. If all goes well and the mice don’t eat all the potatoes, we should have a good storage crop this year. Other than that, I am just trying to get the garden planted.

New "raised" garden bed for potatoes

We did do some other projects this spring that aren’t at our house. A. grandparents needed help roto-tilling their garden so we went up there last weekend and helped them. For mother’s day, we planted a garden bed in front of A.’s parents house as a surprise for them. It was quite the reaction.

I was also really busy firing a bunch of my pottery which is now waiting for new owners on etsy.

Some things on the list for this weekend are reinforcing the patio sofa and making cushions for it. And with the potential rain in the forecast, we might find ourselves working in the basement on the floor joists.

Posts which I primed today and wire.

I bought some flat bamboo privacy fencing that I will cut up and wrap around each post. I think that will be a much better look that the metal posts. I also bought the trees yesterday: Honey Crisp, Haralson and a Collette Everbearing Pear. I hope to plant them tomorrow but it depends a bit on how much rain we will get tonight.

A. also worked on the window trim for the upstairs window. It looks really good.

Almost ready for siding to go up.