Motu's blog

Motu's Blog

12/30/07 Stuff 10/22/07 Restoring Planters 10/21/07 Snow Pictures 10/14/07 Hail Pictures 9/8/2007 Metal repair and Painting 9/6/2007 Basement Window well metal repair and painting 8/27/07 Drain spout and expansion joint filler 8/25/07 Expansion joint strip 8/17/07 Patching concrete 8/15/07 Shelves 8/12/07 Colombian day 8/3/07 Shelves 7/28/07 Patching Concrete 7/27/07 Sliding Window 7/25/07 Painting the Deck 7/24/07 Painting the Deck 7/23/07 Rail on Deck 7/22/07 Rail on Deck
	Sunday December 30, 2007
	Back from India and finally recovered. Monika is in Barranquilla learning driving and getting her teeth fixed. It snowed heavily on Christmas and on the 27th - I had to cancel all plans other than getting the car fixed. The deck is full of snow, so no Super Bowl party this year! Yesterday I made some potato-stuffed paranthas (Indian bread) and ate two of these for lunch with yogurt and some lotus stem pickle. (alu parantha, dahi and achar)
	Monday October 22, 2007 Restoring Planters
	I got couple of metallic planters when Renu was closing her office. They were nice but old and had rust at the seams where moisture had attacked them. One of them leaked (had to clean the carpet fast!). Here are pictures of the first one I worked on. Both inside and outside are rusted and spotted. I cleaned it out with water first and then with steel wool. I put metallic tape on the seam - bottom first and then at the top. This is what it looked like after the cleaning and then after the taping. Now the best part. I sprayed it with paint both inside and out and voila! (You can (barely) make out the metallic tape in the first picture.) The second planter - a bit larger than the first one - before pictures And after pictures. And finally with the plants back inside them. These are the before & after pictures of the same planters And finally - as they look after completely drying and rearranging.
	Sunday October 21, 2007 Snow Pictures
	It started snowing early morning - first snow of the season. They said 3" total but I think we already have 2 " and will have more than that. We did get about 4" total. This is the Oak tree loaded with snow - It had one big branch broken in the 2005 snow storm; I went out and shook off the snow as much as I could. The snow is heavy, wet and sticks to the leaves; overloads the branches and breaks them - a few trees in the neighborhood are going to have broken branches tomorrow. The baby tree is okay - It had already lost all the leaves prior to the snow storm and is in very good shape.
	Sunday October 14, 2007 Hail Pictures
	It started raining yesterday and then it hailed for 20 or 25 minutes. Monika got the camera and took some pictures. The tree in the front has turned red - it turned a little yellow first and then red. We have the fall colors right in our home and around our sub-division.
	Saturday September 8, 2007 Metal repair and Painting
	After a long day Friday and today, the last window well is also finished. This is how it looks now. Some close ups of some of the areas including the worst holes - they look pretty good now. Overall a pretty hard job, I got cuts on two of my fingers - the tape is very sharp and you can get a tape cut - like a paper cut. Now for some beers and some US Open Tennis finals on TV.
	Thursday September 6, 2007 Basement Window well metal repair and painting
	The window wells are in somewhat bad shape. There are rust spots and holes in all three window wells. The one in the middle is in really bad shape with a few big holes. These window wells were not treated too well when installed, especially the middle one. I first cleaned them a little bit and sprayed them with Rustoleum metal paint (4 cans for 3 window wells). I soaked them quite a lot so that the Rustoleum can get into the metal and stop corrosion from now on. After 3 or 4 weeks I finally started working on them. I first removed the screen windows - they have springs at the top and bottoms that you need to push in and then try to twist out the screens from the frame that they sit in. From left to right - you can see the little holes and rust spots in the bottom two thirds of the wells. Here's a close up of a real bad area. I used a metallic tape - a roll of 50 yds of metal tape with a sticky back. I cut them into small pieces if the spots were small and large pieces for larger areas and covered every thing that I could see as a rust spot or hole. It took about 5 yds each on the first and second window wells. The third one is the worst one, and we are still working on it. I guess it would take about 15 yds of the tape or more. Monika helped me starting with the second one. The first one took about 3 hours, the second one 2 and the third one will take about 7 or 8 hours. The window well looked like this after it was 'taped-up'. This is the same view as the top three but now completely taped up. Next, I used another coating of Rustoleum metallic paint. Below is the result - it's the same window well in all these pictures. Finally I sprayed lots of spider killer all in and around the window area and pushed the screen back in its slot. Here's the view of the finished window number 2. Here are pictures of the worst window well - We are working on it currently. This has some big holes - here are some close-ups.
	Monday August 27, 2007 Drain spout and garage expansion joint filler
	This turned out to be harder than I thought it was going to be. I was able to cut and then fit the flex-a-spout over the french drain pipe by twisting it and pushing it downward but then I couldn't fit it over the drain spout. I then took it off and fitted it over the drain spout but then I couldn't fit it over the french drain. I then unscrewed the drain spout from the side of the house (in two places) and then tried it again. Same thing. So then I first fitted it over the french drain and then (now that the drain spout bottom was unattached) pushed the drain spout through it and finally pushed that to screw it back on the top. But where at the bottom it was being held by a metal bracket and a screw; I couldn't line up the screw correctly. I had to get Monika to help me and then a few tries before it lined up and finally I screwed it back in. I also screwed the flex-a-spout into the drain using self tapping metallic screws. Phew! Before and after pictures. This was a good job. Well lined up and fitted - if the bottom (french drain) comes loose, I will use duct tape to secure it. I also straightened out the drain spout - it was bent by the original installer. Then I started cleaning out the space between the garage and driveway - pretty hard as the space is very narrow. I discovered that it wasn't all straight and clean (and dry) - it was crooked with chunks of concrete jutting out here and there and lots of mud. This is the right most edge - you can see the concrete edges jutting out in the hole (left edge of the pic); this is the middle of the next slab. Before putting in the expansion strips, I sprayed the holes with Round-up and insect killers. The strips don't really line up. I had to break them in spots to make them fit better. Some more pictures of the finished work. I am not happy with it as some parts of the expansion strips are not level with the garage floor. I have to figure out how to cut those to that level and what if anything I can do about the gaps between the strips and the concrete - its too narrow to fit another strip and wide enough to be noticeable. I may leave it all as it is for the winter and then try to fix it in the spring!
	Saturday August 25, 2007 Garage Cement space filler
	It took a lot of effort to find out what this stuff is called. I searched the internet a lot and then I emailed Jerry and emailed Tim on Askthe builder.com. They finally replied and said its called expansion paper or homasote or fiberboard. When I went to Lowe's they said its called expansion joint or expansion filler strip. They only carry 1/2inch sheets (they are 4 inches wide and 5 feet long) - so I have asked the manufacturer - 'quikrete' if I can find any 1.25 inch thick strips or if I can use two strips together. I will wait for their response. The guy in Lowe's didn't know if I could use two of them together or not but there doesn't seem to be another way at this point. In the meantime I filled some cracks between slabs on the driveway and fixed the space between the corner slab and the house - it was missing the expansion strip - I don't know if it ever had one or not. pic 1 Expansion strip installed The old gutter spout doesn't quite fit into the french drain I also bought a drain spout fixer called flex-a-spout - it's a plastic sleeve that goes over the gutter and then can also fit over the french drain that I have by the side of the house - I may have to cut it really short as the drain spout and french drain are next to each other - they just don't fit very well, so some of the water doesn't drain through the french drain. The flex-a-spout has to be fully extended before cutting and installing - it's almost 4.5 feet long.
	Friday August 17, 2007 Patching Concrete
	I started by breaking up the edges using a hammer and a cold chisel. Then using the hammer flattened out smaller imperfections. See pics below. It wasn't too bad - working with the cold chisel and hammer. Pic 1 edge towards the wall Pic 2 this edge has a big gap There were gaps under the step - big enough that I pushed little rocks into the holes to fill them as much as I could before filling it all up with the cement. Little rocks were used to fill the gap under the step Yep, this edge had a big gap - all the cement I had chiseled off went into the holes along with some rocks. And then using a regular wood chisel; I scooped up the cement and pushed it in the holes, piling it on as much as I could, I filled up the holes with cement. The cement was quite soft and easy to work with - almost like mashed potatoes. I realized that for the bad/deep edge and surrounding area, I could have used a small trowel - it may have done a better job in leveling or smoothing out the flat area Finished! Here are the before and after pictures. I will wait and see how it all looks after its dry. There is a small issue with this process - I had pushed in small pieces of rocks in the hole prior to applying the cement. I started noticing some cracks around the cement again in May/June 2008 - So, I chiseled off the loose cement pieces and then reapplied cement on October 1. The issue is - there must be a better way to pack the hole - with some other material maybe? I need to look into this since the hole was there again this year - hopefully not too much water is going next to the walls (only from rains and snow melt I assume) - but if there was a better mechanism or material to pack into the hole, then the cement won't settle and develop cracks in a year's time like it did. The other - expensive alternative is to break the steps and redo them - not my cup of tea - will have to pay someone a lot of money to do this. Here are pictures of other spots that I also fixed.
	Wednesday August 15, 2007 Shelves in Basement and Garage
	Finished Finished Finished! Finished all the shelves and hooks and boards and hanging nails, etc. in the basement and the garage. Everything is much more organized, cleaner and neater. Check out the pictures. Pic 1 Notice the shelves as well as the utilized space under the steps. Pic 2 On the other side - shelves for tools and stuff. Garage space - shelves, hooks, nails to get everything off the floor! More nails to hang shovels, rakes etc.
	Sunday August 12, 2007 Colombian day in Morse Park, Colorado With David, Ingrid and Gabriela

	Saturday August 3, 2007 Shelves in Basement
	Pic 1 Started working on it on Thursday and by Saturday evening had the following done: 1) Put Plywood covering up the areas where the shelves were going to be - also to cover up naked spots 2) Put one large shelf and three smaller shelves by the door I first went to Lowe's as they had told me they will make up to 5 cuts if I bought the plywood there. But their saw was broken. So, I drove to Home Depot and a guy there helped me pick two plywood sheets and then I told him the first one I wanted cut at 85" - he did that fine. Then I told him that the next was at 31.25" but I wanted it cut so that I get the good side - (one of the side was a little smashed up). He said sure and cut it. I was sure he had cut it incorrectly. He took out a tape measure and said," Oh shit!" I had to make several runs to Lowe's to buy 1and 1/2 inch & 1/2 inch wood screws (with shelving brackets) and then 3/8 inch wood screws. But by Saturday night, a lot had been done. Monika helped me from time to time and at critical points where I needed another set of hands. And today on Sunday, I had to make another trip to Lowe's to buy more shelving brackets. And now (afternoon) the basement project is all done. Now, there are four shelves by the door and three shelves under the large shelf inside. I also nailed the plywood on the other side of the door as well as drove some nails under the shelf to hang brushes etc. I also moved the electric cable that was sort of hanging in the storage area (see the white cable in pic 1) and cleaned up all of that area. Next on the agenda, more shelves for the garage. Need a beer before I start working on that.
	Saturday July 28, 2007 Problem with Concrete and stuff
	Pic 1 Pic 2 Just under the front steps, the concrete has shifted and broken. See the very bad spot in the corner in pic 1 and the whole crack running under the step in pic 2. Pic 3 Pic 4 Pictures 3 and 4 show the other corner and the middle of the crack. The bottom part of the step - the walkway has settled causing the break in the cement. The sinking down is about an inch and a quarter (1.25") - as in the picture above. Pic 5 Pic 6 Pic 7 Pictures 5, 6 and 7 show broken areas on other cement blocks that make up the walkway. So the problem has to be fixed by 1) Chiseling out the holes and breaking off the excess cement on the step that has warped. 2) Then filling it with a cement filler. I have already bought a container of cement filler (1 qt) from Ace Hardware and a wire brush to clean up the holes after I chisel them. I need to buy a 'cold chisel' - yes, that's what you need to break up the cement. This last picture has a different problem. The filler between the driveway and the garage is rotting away and I need to find out what it is called, where to buy it and how to replace it. Pic 8
	Friday July 27, 2007 Fixing windows that won't stay up.
	Pic 1 Pic 2 To fix the window, first I had to take out the screen window. The screen window bottom is as seen in pic 1; and the top is as seen in pic 2. Pic 3 First the glass window needs to be raised. The top of the glass window has a lock and a latch as in pic 3. 1) Unlock the window (move the metallic pin out with thumb or finger) and raise the whole window a little bit. 2) Unhook the window by moving the latch out (on both sides) - the latch is a white metallic latch just behind the pin in pic 3. The window will then swing open (downward). 3) Move the black latches on the screen windows down (both sides) as seen in pic 2. This will unlock the screen window and you can use the plastic tabs to pull it out of its track on top. 4) Lift the screen window out (over the open glass window) Pic 4 5) Go to the back of the window (I had to go out to the back) and unlock the window by moving the plastic latches out as seen in pic 4 - I needed to use a screw driver from the back while Monika held the window inside. 6) As shown in this picture - Using the special window tool 1. Rotate rod slightly to the right. 2. At the same time, pull rod downward. 3. slip rod away from the pivot lock shoe. This basically removes the spring and sash out of the plastic thingy (pivot lock shoe) holding it in place. I had to use WD40 to loosen the spring a little. 7) Now that the sash and spring are out - hopefully without losing grip of the tool on the spring 1. Pull rod down 2. Rotate to tension - I added two or three more rotations clockwise I also lost the spring from the grip of the tool a couple times - In those cases I added several rotations until it felt tightening to the point where it should be on the other window mechanism where I didn't loose the spring when I pried it out of the shoe. I probably added 12 or 15 turns clockwise to get it to a tight enough feel. 8) This needs to be done on both sides - adding 2 or 3 rotations to both springs - then insert the window by a) Holding the glass window and aligning the plastic latches next to the holes for them to slide in and b) locking the latch by using a screw driver to push it in (from the back) - If it doesn't go in, you may have to rotate the blue plastic thing (pivot lock shoe) with a screw driver to align it in a way that the notch in the plastic latch will fit over the groove in the shoe. c) Do it on both sides and then d) Raise the window to click in place e) Make sure the white latches at the top are in and are holding the window in its groove Now try to see if the window slides up and down well and stays wherever you want it to stay I) If its too tight - loosen one or two turns by rotating the spring counter-clockwise II) If its too loose - add two or three more turns by rotating the spring clockwise. Test it again and if it works then 9) Open the window as in step 2 10) Place the screen window behind the glass window and maneuver it in place at the bottom to match pic 1 on both sides 11) Push the plastic screen at the top in place and move the black latch up to lock it in place on both sides. 12) Raise the window to click in place and make sure the white latches at the top are in and are holding the window in its groove Yes, this is hard but with two people working to do this it wasn't too bad. It took between 20 to 30 minutes for each window. One of the windows was loose for the last 6 or 7 years, the other one got loose just last month. When I inquired at Home Depot and Lowe's for the 'Tension tightening window tool' that I had found through several searches on the internet - the people didn't know what I was talking about and basically told me that I have to replace a perfectly good window. I am 100% sure that the window replacers have this tool otherwise they wouldn't be able to install a window correctly! I eventually bought the tool off an internet site for $25.
		Wednesday July 25, 2007
	Final pictures from the back of the house.
	Tuesday July 24, 2007
	Ok now the whole deck has been painted and everything is done under the sun. These are the 'after' pictures. Overall the rail looks pretty good and it is firm and secure now. The whole deck is almost dry, I will remove the newspapers stuck on the wall, later in the evening and put the deck furniture back where it belongs. For now, here's how it all looks. Monika worked about two hours with me to finish it. Total time spent about 5 or 6 hours. Not too bad. Used less than one gallon of paint - maybe about three fourths of a gallon.
	Monday July 23, 2007
	The bottom of the rail - now finished; the first picture is the front side and the second picture is from the back. You can see the crack in the second picture. You can also see that the rail is now a little further up front than when it was broken (see in the first picture below). I have started painting the deck again so, I will fill the crack with wood filler and paint it today. I drove to Home Depot and bought another can of Behr Redwood stain number 9, a box of wood filler and some masking tape.
	Sunday July 22, 2007 Figuring out how to fix the railing on the deck
	So what happened is - the deck has a railing and one of the rails has become unscrewed at the bottom. The wood has broken - on the side of the corner railing - it wasn't centered and after years of use it finally splintered. Actually last year, during the blizzard, as I shoveled snow and tried to push it through and under the rails it came off. So, how do I go about fixing it? Well, I will unscrew the two screws on the sides of the bottom platform and see if the whole thing will swing off or not. If it does, then I can try to put another screw - but more in the center or really in the center this time! Then I can use some wood filler for the hole/splinter and sand it off and stain when I re-stain the whole deck later on this week. Well! It didn't work. The platform swings out but not enough for me to put in a screw from the bottom. Yikes! So, I unscrewed the top of the Railing which holds the platform in which the tops are screwed. But the screws to take out the top platform are hidden under the tops of the other two tops of the side railings. I started to unscrew those tops to get to the screws for the top platform where I wanted to work but soon realized that I would need to unscrew another 16 screws before I would be able to expose the screws I need to get to. See picture below. 1,2,3,4 are the areas where there are 2 screws each - so there are total of 10 areas or 20 screws that I would have to take out to undo the 4 screws under the corners of the platform in the middle picture in order to fix one rail! So I unscrewed the top of the rail (the bad one) and I drilled another hole in the bottom - right in the middle (marked with the big X) and I screwed the rail on to the screw sticking out of the bottom by rotating the rail by hand! When it was tight, I pushed it under the top platform and put the screw back in it securing it tightly. Then I screwed the top of the railing. The two small xs are the bottom screws that went in last. Phew! That was quite an education that I may never use. Now where is that cold beer - its 100 plus outside in the back where I worked.

	Copyright © 2007 Raman Jalota. All rights reserved. No part of this electronic publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, recording or otherwise, without the written permission of the author.