This house fights you

The first guys we hired to do some work on our house years ago thought it would be a quick and easy job. Putting in two exterior doors. The short morning job turned into an all-day project as they discovered one odd quirk after another – non-standard sizes, odd angles and weird framing. About halfway through the project, when they realized what they were in for, they said, “This house fights you. You really have to fight back.”

It’s fought us at every turn for 13 years – office, bathroom, kitchen, plumbing, wiring, windows, doors. So we weren’t too surprised when we found that all of the perimeter boards on the deck had to be replaced. That was the house, fighting us again.

That was just a warm-up. This morning we woke up to another surprise – no running water. We checked the breaker boxes and the pressure tank. All fine. It’s been dry here lately and that can sometimes run the well down a bit. We did run the sprinkler system for about 20 minutes last night. Dean thinks the submersible pump is either plugged or burned out. We finally found a pump guy who works weekends and he’ll be over this afternoon.

This house always fights. We just have to keep fighting back.

But there’s progress:

The final load from yesterday.

It’s level and we’re thirsty.

New steps.

Posts for the roof and railing are in.

We had planned to either go boating or go to the cherry festival today. Instead we’re sitting around waiting for the pump guy. Darn, no water to drink – fortunately the wine fridge is stocked.

Deck, Day Two

Our house's motto should probably be, "why the hell did they do it like this?" Because that's what we hear every time we do a remodeling project. The outside of the front deck had a thin fascia made of some crappy fiberboard nailed to the beams all around the edges. So when that was ripped off, of course all the supporting beams around the outside were rotten. It was pretty much like putting a sponge on the outside of the deck all around the edge. We had thought those boards would be okay, but they all need to be replaced.

So a little setback and a bigger bite out of the budget, as always. 

We're filling this thing up today with all the construction debris. Not sure if they'll get to the posts for the roof and railing today after all. And we still need to get the hog panels . . .

Deck, Day One

The back deck - just starting the demo. Dean and I are ripping things apart but we're leaving it to the pros to put stuff back together. We know our limitations.

The new back deck - these guys work fast. They did this in an afternoon.

This joist is a thing of beauty. The front deck is now level and properly supported on cement piers.

Today the posts for the roof on the front deck will go in. For Dean and me, it's dumpster day, hauling the remains of the back deck around front and into a dumpster trailer. We really know how to have fun on vacation.

Deck Demo, Day One

It’s outdated, useless, ugly and rotting. No, not Pat Robertson. Well, him too, but mostly our deck railing. 

We started our deck remodel project this weekend with demolition on the railing and the outer decking boards that needed to be removed since the railing supports went through them. 

Before:

As is always the case with projects like this, it turned out to be a lot harder than we thought. Some of the supports were bolted on and they were a real pain to remove. Then the nails. We know from previous remodeling jobs that the local dump will only accept construction debris if all the nails are removed. Yes, they’re really, really picky about garbage. It has to be sorted into particular types – this would be “inert – non-compostable” by their standards. And yes, they inspect the garbage to make sure it meets their high garbage standards and gets dumped into the proper section. So even if you hate your job, there’s someone who has a worse job, and that would be the person who has to inspect every load of garbage that goes into our city dump.

So I spent all day Saturday and most of Sunday pounding and pulling out rusty nails and then sawing the sections up to fit into the truck bed. We not only have a beautiful view of the lake, but we can also hear the louder boats and jet skis. The lake was beautiful all weekend. So we got to see and hear people out there having fun while we pounded, hacked and sawed under the hot sun, and our boat sat lonely and unused on our shore station.

Sunday morning I had the truck full so Dean made a trip to the dump while I pounded and pulled the nails from the last pile of boards and sawed them up to truck bed length. I finished the last one, went inside and opened the fridge. Oh, pinot grigio. You look delicious but wine and a chain saw are not an advisable combination and we have more demo to do so I reached for the iced tea instead. Then the phone rang. It was Dean at the dump.

Dean: “Stop what you’re doing, and don’t be mad.”

Oh boy. “Okay, what’s the deal?”

Dean: “Ummm . . . we didn’t need to pull all those nails. They don’t make you do that any more.”

Apparently they changed their rules last fall. I could have chain-sawed those boards to truck bed length in about an hour Saturday morning. Instead I spent most of the weekend pounding out and pulling out what seemed like about a million rusty nails. For no reason. We could have been out on that lovely lake most of the weekend. Instead of . . . pulling rusty nails under the hot sun.

I put the iced tea back. Pinot grigio, come here. We have a date. On our partially-demoed deck.

If our budget, patience and strength all hold out, we might demo the back deck, too. Which we can do in about an hour. Since we don’t have to pull all those friggin’ NAILS.

After day one: 

We're using chairs and potted plants to keep the dogs away from the edge. 

Next demo day - Wednesday. We'll take down the pergola, remove a few more boards and get all the stuff off the deck. The contractors show up Thursday morning, and Dean and I will be their crew - they gave us a break on the project since we can do the stupid stuff. Like pulling nails. 

Smoked Salmon, Round one

So how did the smoked salmon turn out? Pretty damned good.

Marinated overnight in low-sodium soy sauce with just a pinch of brown sugar, then patted dry and dried in front of a fan for about four hours. Ready to smoke.

A combination of alder and applewood goes into the cocktail shaker.

Two temperature probes - one for the internal temperature of the salmon and one for the ambient temperature of the smoker. We want to keep the ambient temp around 160 - 170.

Fire it up.

Riley's on salmon watch. The bear was, too. Probably smelled the salmon. We could hear her moving around in the trees, and she popped her head up a couple of times.

Done after about two hours.

Next time I'd like to get more smoke on it so I think I'd start the cold smoke earlier and let it just smoke without heat for an hour or so, then start the heat. But it was pretty damned good.

Smoked salmon, an aquarium pump and a cocktail shaker

So why did a cop follow Dean home last week? It involves an aquarium pump, smoked salmon and a cocktail shaker.

I’ve been trying to perfect a salmon smoking technique. I’ve tried using our smoker, but I need to keep the heat very low. When I turn the heat down, it stops smoking. When I turn it up so we get smoke, it’s too hot. We decided we need a cold source of smoke so we can control the smoke and the heat separately. Dean Googled and came up with a cheap and simple way to make a cold smoke generator – drill holes in the bottom of a cocktail shaker, put a pipe on top and hook an aquarium pump to one end.

He picked up a cocktail shaker and aquarium pump, and gave them to a friend who does a lot of HVAC work who was going to make the metal tubing for the top. When he got home from this errand, the first thing he said was, “A cop followed me all the way home. That was weird.” We live eight miles out in the country, so yeah, that was a little weird. Until I figured from the cop’s point of view, it looked like this:

A guy in an eye-catching shiny sports car drives up to a bar, but he doesn’t go in. Instead he gets out of the car holding a small package and walks up to another guy in the parking lot. He holds the bag open, the guy looks inside and nods. If the cop is close enough to overhear any conversation, the words “smoke” and “smoking” are featured prominently. As in “oh yeah, I can get some good smoke out of this.” He hands the bag over and they go their separate ways.

Dean: “Oh crap, he thought he was watching a drug deal.” Just then his phone buzzed – a text message from his friend. “A cop car followed me all the way home – WTF?”

Dean doesn't drive the 280Z every day, but it's the only one in town and it definitely draws attention. He can probably expect to attract some unwanted attention from the cops every time he drives the Z in the near future.