Monday

I had planned to write this evening about the joys of epoxy putty. I had it already half-written in my mind: sure, it's a bit of a mess to mix up, and something of a bother because you can't mix very much at one time lest it harden before you use it all, but other than that it's really easy to use. I was going to write about how smoothly it comes off the knife, how well it sticks to the wood, and how easily it takes the desired shape.

The thing is, I had forgotten that it was Monday.

Helmut von Moltke the Elder, the Prussian general, famously remarked, "No campaign plan survives first contact with the enemy." Well, it was a war out there today, and the enemies were a brisk wind and the epoxy putty itself. It was uncharacteristically stiff from the moment I mixed it, it did not want to come off the putty knife, it resisted sticking to the wood, and the wind kept blowing it off my knife and down to the dirt below. After a futile struggle, I ended up smearing it on with my hands, wetting it down with alcohol, and slathering it into some semblance of the desired shape with the putty knife. 

Frankly, this is how epoxy putty is sometimes. Although I am always very careful to mix equal amounts of each part thoroughly and start with absolutely clean knives, some days it simply refuses to behave. I used to think this was a sign of the epoxy's getting old, but this stuff is still pretty fresh.

Whatever the cause, I have found that on days like this it's best to stop struggling and come back to it the next day. So I did, and I will.

As annoying as epoxy putty can be, it is nonetheless an essential material, because it is by far the most durable and effective patching material there is for wood. Bondo is another such good material, and it is preferable for patching large, relatively flat areas because it is cheaper and quicker to work with. Because it hardens so suddenly, however, it is hard to shape effectively, so you end up with a big blob that must be extensively sanded to shape. This makes it problematic for trim. 

Epoxy is fairly easy to shape, today's difficulties notwithstanding. It doesn't shrink or sag as it dries. It's resilient, flexible and easy to sand. It can fill large gaps in one application. With careful shaping, it becomes absolutely indistinguishable from wood once it is painted, and it stays that way more or less permanently. In my experience, no other exterior putty can make all these claims.

Here's a bonus wildlife picture I took today. I hope you enjoy it.

Freestyle Clamping

So another day passed with no work on the project. I got myself out there, got up on the ladder, and was just about blown off it by an icy gust of wind. I said to myself, "Well, Sunday is a day of rest." I got down off that ladder and did just that.

But have no fear, gentle reader. I do have a little something in reserve to talk about. When I was describing the repair of the misaligned trim on the belt course earlier, I left out one detail, mainly because I couldn't find the related photograph. I subsequently did manage to dig it up—it was lodged in the far recesses of my cell phone camera—so I can enlighten you now.

I discussed the use of liquid epoxy to salvage wood destroyed by sun damage. The lower left trim board, the one lying a half-inch below where it is supposed to be, was not particularly sun-damaged, but it was damaged by the movement of the house when the foundation sagged; the end was splintered thoroughly about six inches back. I epoxied this board simply to glue all the splinters back together, and because wood not sun-damaged does not absorb the epoxy as readily, I drilled small holes to get the glue everywhere I needed it. 

When I did that, however, the weight of the epoxy caused the splintered "fingers" to spread downward, making the jog between the trim pieces even larger and thwarting my need to consolidate the board. I needed to clamp the fingers back together, but there wasn't an opposing surface on the top side of the board where I could put a clamp jaw. So, I used a nifty trick I picked up along the way.

I butted a scrap piece of wood tight against the piece I was gluing and screwed it temporarily in place. Then, I tapped a shim wedge in between the two pieces to snug the fingers together. After the epoxy had cured fully, I removed the screws and the scrap piece. The shim was of course epoxied on, but it came off easily enough when I slid a putty knife between it and the trim.

So there you go: a neat little trick that just may come in handy some day, as it did for me. Use it in good health!

It's Movie Night!

Well, the weather has been bad, I've been sick, and tonight we went to the Angels' home opener. They lost, so I'm not writing about that. So it's Movie Night!

In the future, I plan to post films actually relevant to the subject, such as instructional films. For my first attempt at linking video, however, I will provide some pure entertainment: a stage fight between our two boy cats Adam and Benny. Sounds lame, I know, but it's actually pretty entertaining. 

Adam's a young Maine Coon, still only nine months old in this video but already huge. He's considerably bigger now, five months later; the breed continues to grow until they are 5 years old. He's like having a small, tame bobcat in the house. Benny is a tabby American Shorthair, streetwise, pure muscle. Adam and Benny are the best of friends, and they love to tussle like this. It looks like they're trying to kill each other, but they never leave so much as a scratch. They put on a show like this every day for us.

Oppressive Comments Regime Deposed

When I set this blog up, I didn't look closely at how the comments were to be handled. When I started to hear back about difficulties in commenting, I found I could post my own comment without a problem.

The thing is, I'm a registered Blogger user, so I got right past all the barriers that were there to keep out the hoi polloi without noticing them. Happily, at last my wife Lydia investigated the matter and smartened me up.

I have removed all barriers now, so posting a comment here will no longer be like buying Sudafed. In the "comment as" dropdown box, simply choose "Anonymous". I'd get rid of that box altogether, but that doesn't seem to be an option.

Giving Back to The Community

We here at the Farm House are deeply civic-minded, and so after the fashion of the big office building developers, we have provided a Public Art Installation for the beautification of the neighborhood and the stimulation of passers-by.

We call it Hawk Buffet.

Hawk Buffet, detail. Metal, wood, rope, acrylic and seeds. 2007.

 

Of Lignin And Zombies

To review: Our Friend the Sun degrades unprotected wood by destroying its lignin, which is the stuff that stiffens its backbone. Without its lignin, a piece of wood isn't much good; as I observed earlier, it has a consistency similar to stale cornbread, which only goes to figure, since most of what is left of wood once the lignin is gone is carbohydrate. 

When this happens to structural wood, it's best to replace it if possible, as I did with some of the sash on the second floor [see Journal]. Nevertheless, wood in this condition is still salvageable, and with a Victorian, making do with what you have is often the simplest and most economical option, because you're not likely to find a suitable replacement at Home Depot. Our contractors had to have everything they used milled to order, and while they left a lot of this wood behind, they left none of what I need on the south side. So rehabilitation of what's there is the only option.

Rehabilitating lignin-deprived wood is actually quite simple. All you do is replace the lignin with epoxy. I use Abatron's LiquidWood, which is specifically formulated for this sort of use; it has the consistency of corn syrup, and lignin-deprived wood soaks it up like stale cornbread soaks up milk. 

The next day, when the epoxy has cured, what you have is zombie wood, once dead but now re-animated to do your bidding. The only difference is that zombie wood is not out for brains; it only seeks to return to its former usefulness.

Of course, a problem remains: it looks like zombie wood.  More prosaically, it looks like it did before, but shinier. In truth, it is now a piece of fiber-filled plastic resin, more durable and resilient than wood; it is certainly restored structurally, but it still needs to be restored cosmetically.

For that, I use another two-part Abatron epoxy, WoodEpox. It's a bit of a pain to use, because it's rather messy to mix together, and you can't mix together more than a few ounces at once, so you have to keep stopping to mix more. On the other hand, it is very easy to work with in terms of applying it; it comes off the putty knife easily, can be feathered out very thinly, and it will not shrink or sag. It also sticks very well, especially to cured LiquidWood, is extremely strong, and is easily sanded. Because it hardens via reaction and not evaporation, it can be applied in any thickness. Simply put, it's neato.

So that's my next step, restoring the original profile of the belt course trim using WoodEpox and my wits. And a putty knife.

New Chapter of The FH Journal Published

Volume IV, Chapter 5: "Home in Pasadena" is now available over at the Journal. 
It's a real stemwinder! 

The Sun Is A Cruel Master, continued

My friend Nik, who's lived in Pasadena for several decades, likes to call Pasadena "The Sun's Anvil." Boy, is he right about that. It's not that the weather is so hot here; there's just something about the geography and weather patterns that makes the sun seem closer somehow.

This is the attic belt course trim (the proper term for the trim grouping we've been discussing), over to the far right where it meets the eave. It is quite clear that where the wood is shielded from the sun by the eave for most of the day, the wood is still perfectly sound (I've sanded it lightly to uncover the wood). Moving leftward, as the trim emerges from the protection of the eaves, you can see its condition degenerate. I can't imagine a clearer illustration of the effects of sun on wood.

The sun heats the wood, causing it to expand. It cools off at night, only to be heated again the next day. At the same time, its ultraviolet rays are working on the paint, slowly destroying its elasticity. Soon enough, this one-two punch causes the paint to crack, and then the sun really gets after it, attacking the wood with UV rays directly. Over time, this destroys the lignin, which is what holds wood together and gives it rigidity and strength.

This isn't usually catastrophically destructive with siding, because it only presents one face to the sun, and it is backed with other wood that absorbs some of the heat and draws it away from the surface. The earlywood will slowly weather away, but the denser latewood will remain largely intact. This is why weathered wood has a pronounced grain pattern.

Exposed trim pieces do not fare so well. They get hotter, and the damage goes deeper, eventually reaching all the way through. At that point the wood is quite vulnerable to physical damage from any source—an insect, a squirrel, a falling pine cone—because there is really nothing holding it together but force of habit.

The Rest of The Story

Here is a photo that supports my theory of the cause of the half-inch jog in the line of the trim running along the bottom of the south side tympanum. The red arrow points to the location of the jog, pictured previously; it is clear that to the right of the jog (towards the foreground here), the trim inclines upward, whereas on the other side of the jog the trim is more or less level. The fact that the settling at the foundation traveled so far up the structure indicates an alarming corruption of the integrity of the house's structure.

Victorian architectural precepts dictated that a structure of this type be light and stiff. The Farm House has relatively small rooms, and all the interior walls are load-bearing; this allowed the builder to use smaller, lighter framing members than houses built later typically had. This light, cellular structure gave the Farm House the rigidity it needed to ride out 126 years of earthquakes and stiff winds, but it obviously was not enough to avoid significant injury completely.

That is why it is absolutely essential, when undertaking the restoration of any old house, to secure the services of a good building engineer, one who is fluent in the language that old houses speak. Ours clearly read this situation as easily as you are reading this, allowing us to avoid a lot of misery down the road. Of course, here in California the employment of a building engineer confers another significant benefit: it allows one to renovate the existing structure under the State Historical Building Code. Simply put, this allows the specific prescriptions of a licensed building engineer to override the codes that would otherwise apply, as long as the engineer makes the case that his prescriptions will result in a structure that meets current safety standards.

That's crucial with a Victorian structure, for it allows remedial construction to be done in a manner congruent with the way it was built, thus avoiding character-destroying alterations that would otherwise be required. In this case, it allowed the installation of a light steel cage to restore rigidity, rather than wholesale replacement of framing members with larger, heavier ones that would have necessitated extensive replacement of the exterior cladding, as well as heavy alteration of the window and door casings.

On the other hand, it also leaves the scars of the original injury on the exterior, diminishing in a small degree the house's beauty of form and of fitness [see Journal]. Then again, perhaps this is only proper. A fine old house such as the Farm House should be allowed to bear its signs of age with dignity; it should be allowed to continue to tell its stories for us to learn.

The Farm House Speaks

I've done what I can to repair the mess I showed you all in the last post. It's hard to tell from this angle, but if you compare it to the previous picture, you can see that it's a big improvement. Once it's all puttied and painted, it will look swell.

Except, that is, for the bottom edge. Both those boards are now firmly butted up against the piece above them, but the board on the left is apparently wider than the one on the right. One would naturally assume that this is evidence of a repair, but at its other end the board fits properly. If this were the result of a repair job, then, why would someone take care to do a neat job but not take the care to install a properly-sized board? Then again, why would someone build such an obvious discrepancy into a new house? 

I think the answer to this riddle is simply that the house has changed shape somewhat since it was built. A lot of things can happen in 126 years, especially considering that the Farm House spent 118 of them sitting right on the ground. According to our building engineer, the ground under that corner of the house settled considerably; it seems likely that the trim piece to the left followed that downward movement, leaving its partner behind. I'm willing to bet that if I removed the trim pieces in front of these boards, I would find that the board the left piece is butted against has also shifted downward, and the left and right pieces are the same width after all. Supporting this theory is the fact that the trim pieces above the boards curve upwards to the right of the picture. In fact, I bet that these discrepancies are what first led the engineer down the path that ultimately led him to conclude that the house had settled in that corner.

We've all heard it a million times: "If these walls could talk. . . ." Well, walls do talk, especially in an old house like the Farm House. They tell many stories of the events they have been through and the people who have lived within them. If you take the time to understand what they are saying, you can learn a lot about the house's history;  more importantly, you may learn important things about its condition. The discovery that the house had settled so much in this corner pointed the way to repairs that were crucial to the house's structural integrity. 

Listen to your house, and it will keep you snug and safe for a lifetime. Ignore it, and it will surely find a way to get your attention.