Walnut threshold

The photo shows the 8/4 walnut stock that I used to make the threshold for the patio door. The piece on the right is the actual part that I fabricated from the larger stock on the left.

It's a fairly hard wood but not difficult to work at all. Not super hard like the exotics from Brazil or Africa. And it's domestic which I believe is a better way to go. Cost $70.

Walnut is a common wood for gun stocks. This is american walnut as opposed to black walnut which is denser and more expensive. It's more coveted as well.

The table saw was the only tool I needed to make the piece. It took about half a day to get everything ripped down and shaped. It is basically an L shaped piece.

Threshold profile

I used a mixture of 30% sparr urethane and 70% Teak oil to finish the piece. It came out very nice and so far is repelling the water very nicely. Nice vid here. Thanks Izzy!

There was an inch and quarter gap between the deck and the door sill that needed to be filled in. I found some pavers that fit perfectly in the space but I didn't have enough to do the job and I couldn't find any more of them anywhere. I was at The Stone Center looking for the pavers when the guy said he had a solid piece the right thickness.

Walnut threshold and sandstone sill

There was lots of sandstone that was the right thickness but none were long enough. I needed about 64" x 5" to fill the gap. I ended up getting about a 30" long piece that was 18" wide for $20. I had to buy a diamond blade for the circular saw to rip the stone down to 5" pieces.

I had not sawn stone before and it wasn't too difficult with the new blade. I wet the stone down every minute or two. The job went better than I anticipated. The weakest part is the joints where I used some colored mortar to join the pieces. I've never laid a brick in my life so I didn't have the slightest idea how to make the joint. It's alright though, maybe not perfect.

Solar powered lights

New door

The soffit is replaced the fascia is up, everything is caulked and painted now.

We also added an exterior flood light and an outlet that is solar powered as well.

Old window

It's good to be utilizing the door now. It's very convenient and beats walking through the garage to get to the deck. At night the glass allows the light from inside to illuminate the deck and so it helps out with the outside lighting as well.  It's very quiet as well. The music can be fairly loud inside and you do not hear anything thru the door whatsoever.

I'm very happy with it.

Eave Progess

A bit hard to see, but soffit and fascia have been replaced.

The cedar siding has been replaced with Hardie Plank, which is a cement product that won't rot.

The Hardie Plank is pretty easy to work with. You can score it and break it easily with 90 degree cuts. Long angled cuts call for the circular saw.

Before the new siding, I took down the old cedar siding to the original gypsum siding. It doesn't seem plausible, but that is an actual exterior product that is still available today though I haven't seen it used anywhere.

I put up a piece of 1/2" rigid foam insulation over the existing gypsum board. Over that I put up the Tyvek wrap that allows moisture to escape. The Hardie Plank was installed over the top of the insulation and Tyvek. This was the arrangement suggested by the Tyvek website.

The soffit and fascia board are new out to the corner of the roof. The old gutter is now deleted and won't return. The soffit around the corner is also rotted and needs to be replaced as well, but a scaffold will have to be rented for this.

A drip edge will also be installed wherever there is new fascia. Presently there is no drip edge anywhere on the roof.

The Hardie Plank isn't very expensive, but it's hard to haul. It needs to remain flat or it will break in half.  Luckily I have some racks that I used to bring it home with. I did end up breaking one piece by trying to carry it flatly instead of vertically.

I don't anticipate ever needing to revisit these two eaves and siding areas again. It's not that your house gets wet, it's that it doesn't dry out that causes the issues.

The gutters caused all of the problems in this area of the house. They weren't even necessary since the lower roof is directly under the upper one. I believe they were added to hide older damage of the fascia boards.

Gutters really cause more problems than they solve. I never lived in a house with gutters growing up. It was never an issue. Rain falls, period. Gutters or a lack there of don't mitigate water issues.

On the disclosures when we purchased the house there was an incident with some water infiltration in the basement that had been mitigated a few years ago. Guess what, the gutters were in place then, didn't make a difference.

I'm fairly certain the flooding happened after the front yard was tilled and new sod and landscaping cloth was installed, because the house was over twenty years old when it happened. Something changed, but it wasn't the house. It was in the landscaping. Compacted clay can become nearly as impermeable as concrete, especially if it was baked in a drought period. Heavy rains probably came a year or so later, quickly soaked thru the sod hit the landscape cloth that was lying flat against hard clay and the water probably just sheeted, parallel to the surface.

The ground has an amazing ability to soak up water and hold it. Thousands of gallons can be held in just three or four inches of ground. But if the soil is compacted or is paved with concrete flooding is inevitable. Yet most of the time people think that flooding happens because storms are increasing in magnitude. This is not the case. There is more and more hardscapes and more clearcutting, especially near the coast where large rain events often occur. More pavement equals more flooding. To mitigate flooding we need to decompact the soil and leave large trees in place. There is an old adage, "The desert is a flood waiting to happen."

Ugly eaves

When you find interior products used in an exterior application you had better investigate because it's probably just the tip of the iceberg.

I found a piece of medium density fiberboard (MDF) behind the gutter on the second story. Needless to say it was waterlogged and inhabited by ants. There is also a piece of interior trim running the perimeter of the soffits all the way around the house. I've pulled lots of bright nails out of the fascia board as I've been taking it down, more interior product.




It's hard to see, but there is a piece of romex running on the exterior under the eave to flood lights. This is a code violation. There's a good reason romex has to be enclosed. Squirrels had gnawed the casing off of the wire. A good way to start a fire.



This is where the two sections of the house connect for a split-level.

Here is a shot of the old exterior grade gyp board they used to use. I don't see it used these days, however it is still around.

Between the rafter tails where they extend beyond the exterior wall I am adding 2" of rigid foam insulation. I will seal the cracks with expanding foam insulation.

When the contractor sprayed the foam insulation against the roof deck they did a good job of sealing everything from the inside. But out on the eaves where the angle pinches down it is hard to reach, even with the wand.

Here you can see where the foam blew out against the exterior at the eaves. From the inside it is sealed and airtight but as you can see there is still room for more sealing.

I've filled these voids with rigid foam and expanding foam. The rigid insulation adds another R10 to the system. The foam prevents air flow, moisture and bugs moving into the interior.

For new construction all of this can be accomplished during the construction phase with all spray foam insulation and it makes for a nice tight envelope which saves lots of $$$ on heating and cooling.

Not Pretty

Since we bought the house, I've known that the soffit was rotted out underneath the valley where the garage is attached.

I haven't been able to address it because of the very steep slope and rough terrain that was beneath that area. Since the deck has been extended out over that tough terrain it is now much easier to work on the eaves there.

Today I got started demolishing the rotted out sections. The gutter had to be taken down and it's the main reason for the problem as well.

The fascia is toast, and a lot of the soffit has to be replaced. Some of the rafter tails are in bad shape and need replacing. But the rafters are okay and the decking is in good shape.

It's not in too bad a condition. They went to great lengths to hide the damage which was mostly the fascia. It would have been as a simple or even easier fix to just have done it right.

It's what I've come to expect though. I've found lots of shoddy work throughout this house that could have been just as easily done correctly. It's laziness. Cutting corners never saves any money, in the long run.

On the upside, I will be able to add another couple of inches of rigid foam insulation before I button everything back up. This will add some significant R value to an otherwise weak point in the wall system that I could not reach from the interior.

The air sealing that I did last year was visible after removing the soffit and it was a good job. I didn't see any voids or crevices that air could be moving through, I'm happy to report.

Being able to seal and insulate from the exterior will be a bonus that I didn't think about until I had the eave demo'd.