Master Bathroom Tile Repaired!

We are in that fortunate season at the Roediger House when I have time and am also inspired to work on checking items off the always-present to-do list. The photo above can showcase one of those matters: for 12 years now, I've had to slowly watch the disintegration of the tile grout in the master bathroom...

...ultimately leading to a completely dislodged tile right in front of the sink.

A little background: the first major project I undertook with the Roediger House, after buying it in 2003, occurred in late 2008 into 2009: demolishing the old kitchen and very sad bathrooms on the back of the house and building a completely new and much-expanded kitchen area and several bathrooms. My general contractor, Peter R. Laroque of Mocksville, NC, was mostly good and I was pleased for 90 percent of it all. Ah, but as the project neared its conclusion all those years ago, there were elements that he did not finish up as he should have. One of the persistent problems has been in the bathroom tile work, where there was cracking and loose tiles occurring within a year or so of the job wrapping up.

Over the last week or so I reached back out to Todd Sink of Amazing Tile by Todd to come take care of the loose tile in the master bathroom. Mr. Sink installed the backsplash in the kitchen in 2017, which looks great even still. He does very nice work and he is able to offer terrific craftmanship without gouging the customer...a rare combination especially when one is looking for skilled expertise in a city environment...and in an old house like this.

Mr. Sink was here last Tuesday, to take up most of the center tile so that he could grind and clean the quickset from the undersides, and he dug out most of the rest of the grout throughout the floor. He set the tile that afternoon and returned on Wednesday to fill in the grout. It's amazing to have the floor whole again, and especially to no longer have tile rockin' and rollin' underfoot!

Meal No. 2579: Sous Vide Ribeye Steaks

Last Friday I suppose I was still in a sous vide mood and mode, and this time I had a couple of lovely (but a bit thin!) ribeye steaks to cook up for dinner. With garlic, shallots, and fresh thyme and rosemary from my kitchen herb garden, the steaks got to a perfect medium-rare temperature before I put a finishing sear on them in a hot iron skillet.

Crispy roasted broccoli and homemade red-skin mashed potatoes made it a terrific week-ending feast.

After some lingering showers that morning, the afternoon had been almost like a surprisingly sunny day in February: it was rather windy, almost blustery, with a distinct chill in the air. If I'd been looking for a merciful end to a brutal winter back in those late months of that most-hated season, I'd've relished the day, I'm sure. But it was a shock to the system after an early spring filled with lovely days. I took it as a mercy that my quarantine task jar produced some indoor kindness when a chore slip was drawn during morning coffee: "Roofing Estimates."

The roof is now around 11 years old and had been completely replaced as part of the 2008-2009 renovation and addition project. While the shingles might be rated for 30 years, my general contractor at that time did not paint or seal or protect the edges of the underdecking and they have absorbed a lot of moisture along the roof edge. So one problem is rotting.

Another issue has been leaking around the center front dormer, allowing water to drip down the inside front wall and emerge, sometimes almost in a stream, through seams in the ceiling drywall of the second floor main hallway. I've got a picture and brief word about that in this post-Hurricane Florence blog entry from 2018.

I'd say the most pressing matter requiring the attention of a roofer is the condition of the rubber roof that lies beneath the decking of the second story balcony porch. I have no doubt that we'll get into overlapping complications: the roof part needs to be replaced and possibly rebuilt to achieve a better slope; the guttering along the porch is definitely in need of correction and probable replacement; and we have to make sure we eliminate drips and run-off that are compromising the columns beneath them.

So it's going to be quite an undertaking and I've had a couple of false starts with unreliable roofers over the last year or so when I've been of a mind to get cracking on this. (For instance, the last guy showed up to check it out in order to work up an estimate, but he was sort of drunk, plus it was actually months after he'd missed our original appointment. And then I never heard from him again.)

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"Sous Vide Steaks," from J. Kenji López-Alt, Chief Culinary Consultant of SeriousEats.com. [Published 03 March 2010 / Updated 13 April 2020]

Upgrading the Side Drain Set-Up

On the north side of the house, along the kitchen addition that was finished in 2010, it was necessary to build a retaining wall because of the elevation of the foundation and how the property slopes gently upward from front to back. (Some pictures of before and after can be found within this blog post from May 2019.) Tucked in a small alcove back there are the two heat pumps. In order to properly drain run-off from the backyard and along that side of the house, there is a small drain pipe right in the corner of that retaining wall, to carry it all down to the front of the property inside the retaining wall alongside the original house structure. But over these last ten years, all this run-off seems to have gradually eroded the ground under the outermost heat pump, and it has begun to lean rather distinctly (as shown in the photo above).

Last summer I worked to build up the edge along that trough to stave off the continuing (and literal!) decline. That was just a temporary fix, and on my to-do list has been to work on a better drain setup back there...and that's the slip drawn from the quarantine task jar back on Monday, April 6th. It proved to be a three-day project! But I appreciate the challenges and the learning that go along with these do-it-yourself endeavors.

You know: like trying to determine the slope and marking it off correctly so that there is effective drainage along the new line.

And then just trying to be smart and resourceful about tying it all together. This also allowed me to connect the gutter downspout at that back corner of the house into the drain line, instead of running out free along the retaining wall.

For a number of years, I've had a loosely-buried plastic drain pipe serving to channel that water. Now I think I've got a better set-up:

I'm not satisfied with how I finished out this project and still need to do some thinking and designing to manage the backyard run-off.

The slope is much too gentle to also install a functional French drain, but perhaps I'll still dig out a gravel trough to help with issues of standing water that have developed over the years. At the moment, this second drain tray (foreground of photos above and below) is too high to receive any drainage but it does help to seal off the upper end for now. Over time, I'll figure out how to create an open drain at grade, perhaps by forming almost a mini-culvert there once I decide to toy around with cement again.

Balcony Porch Repair

Balcony as seen in September 2014
(attic windows were being restored)

Another project tackled earlier this month by Kenny Schrader and his brother Jake (from Kenny's Carpentry) began with a single small rotted piece of trim at the base of one of the front "boxes" at each corner of the balcony porch above the front door. It turns out that, when my general contractor Peter R. "Pete" LaRoque of Mocksville, NC, renovated that porch in January 2009, he and his crew did not build it to last. It was disheartening to find how much rot had occurred since it appears to have been built with untreated lumber, not wrapped in tar paper, not well primed or sealed, and not well-protected with the paint or stain he used. Here's what Kenny uncovered:

By the time we dug down into it, it seemed best to rebuild both porch boxes as well as the front railing.

One good outcome of this: Kenny built into the face of them a design closer to what my architect Sam Binkley had envisioned and drawn all those years ago...and I also got him to make the rails easier to see through. I like watching what's going on when I'm out there!

Of course, these are only primed at this point, and on my future agenda in the next six months is to get the whole house painted. But I am awfully glad we could rebuild these with this design, instead of what you see in the picture at the top of this blog entry:

Window Sills and Rotted Siding

Make no mistake: I absolutely love the Roediger House. It is a fantastic place to call home and, as time passes and more of the needed projects get checked off, the more awesome this dwelling becomes. This past Sunday morning, in the quiet of a city summer weekend morning, I was outside while Sumner ran around checking all his usual squirrel and chipmunk spots for activity, and I reveled in the tremendous good fortune of where I get to live. Of course there's much more on the to-do list, including exterior mildew removal and a fresh new paint job, plus all the summer landscaping I've not yet gotten around to.

One thing that definitely increased the livability of the Roediger House was the huge renovation and addition project of 2008-2009, with Peter R. "Pete" LaRoque of Mocksville, NC, as general contractor. After he and his crew were done, I had a spanking new gorgeous kitchen, four great new bathrooms plus a new powder room, a laundry room, and a rebuilt butler's pantry with all the original cabinetry put right back into place. (Exterior painting, a full new HVAC system, and a new roof were also all part of Pete's work.)

As I've said before, I thought Pete was great for 90 percent of the job, but his excellence waned as we got to the end of that massive project. I ended up mostly unable to pull him back to correct problems that emerged in the months following the completion of the punchlist. It's also disappointing to see problems surface all these years later that were the result of some shoddy attention to detail. (One of those recently emerged when the new shower doors were being installed.)

Pool Table area in attic - rotted window stool
(replaced by Kenny in November 2016)

Well, during Independence Day week, Kenny and Jake Schrader of Kenny's Carpentry were here tackling some of those issues, which included rotted window sills/stools on the new part of the house! I reckon Pete used untreated wood that was not properly primed and then was cheaply painted...and here we are only about eight years later and I've had Kenny replace two large ones and one small one (and he also took care of a rotting original house window stool, outside the dining room).

Dining Room Window

The guys also have been spot-replacing some of the original clapboard siding that has rotted over time:

New Shower Doors, At Last!

The first major renovation and addition project that I undertook after buying the Roediger House began five years after I moved in, and was completed in the late spring of 2009. That included four full bathrooms and I wanted some roomy and sizable showers in them. Only this summer have I finally gotten around to having shower doors installed!

Alas, thanks to what appears to be poor tile installation by that project's general contractor, Peter R. "Pete" LaRoque of Mocksville NC, the main upstairs bathroom shower door is still not yet installed, because the tile on the shower door jam was poorly mudded...and broke when the guys tried to drill for the door hinges.

Keyless Entry

Yet another overdue task on my house to-do list was getting a locksmith in to do some work. Ever since the kitchen addition was completed in 2009, there's been a mismatch in exterior door locks: the rear kitchen door to the grill patio did not work with the same key as the other doors. I'm willing to lay the blame for that on my general contractor for that project, Peter R. "Pete" LaRoque of LaRoque Construction (Mocksville, NC). He didn't care that the lock didn't match.

I also wanted to put a keyless codepad deadbolt on the door coming in from the parking lot. The Roediger House has so many good friends who regularly come and go, plus I liked the idea of being able to come in with groceries or from yardwork without having to have my keys on me. Also, over the years, a lot of various contractors have had keys to the house. Now that most of the major work is done, I wanted to reset all the exterior door locks to up the security protections. With this keypad, I can enter temporary codes when needed, and then take them back out. Another bonus is that any departing guest can lock the deadbolt from the outside, whether that guest is gifted with a code or not. That's a nice feature of this new lock.

So, Aaron-Elliott Locksmiths from here in downtown came in late June and rekeyed the locks, installed the new keypad lock, and switched a couple of interior deadbolts for rooms upstairs that I'd changed the assigned use of. So far, so good. It's a much more workable system.

Porch Repairs, At Last!

It was just over a year ago that porch rot at the front steps finally manifested itself with a hole in the decking. After a second hole was punched by foot traffic, I simply moved the planters from my mother's house into strategic position over them in hopes that I'd soon get these things fixed. A little over a year later, I finally have.

Jake Alspaugh has now replaced that whole section of flooring in front of the front door, and it's been primed. He'll paint it in another week or so.

He's already put additional rubber and seal so that the run-off from the upstairs porch will now channel into the gutter, instead of between the gutter and the fascia board. It's really cost me dearly between the failure of my general contractor Peter R. "Pete" LaRoque to correctly install this, and with my own lethargic attention to it in a timely fashion.

Jake has also replaced a few rotted clapboard pieces along the porch on the south side of the house:

And he's remade the coal chute window well cover that's on the north side of the house, and covered it anew with a rubber topping:

Meal No. 1006: Thanksgiving on the Half-Year

Just over five years after I bought this wonderful old Roediger House, I undertook some major renovation work on it, with Peter R. "Pete" LaRoque as my General Contractor. The designs by Sam Binkley, my architect, included removing the original one-story add-on kitchen (it was bare, basic, and perhaps 12 x 12). We also removed the old bathrooms on the back of the house as well as the mudporch. In the place of all that, I not only got a very nice new master bathroom and a new guest powder room, but also a grand open kitchen area.

Tonight marked exactly five years since I was able to make the first meal in that new kitchen space, which I have spent the last five years loving immensely and spending much time in. And, as you can tell from the meal blog entries, I've enjoyed making lots of meals in those intervening years.

Coincidentally, tonight was also the occasion of the annual "Thanksgiving on the Half-Year" dinner event that I've been hosting for the last few years. That holiday meal is so fantastic and, while it's important that it remain special as a holiday feast, it seems a shame to have it limited to only a time or two around Thanksgiving and Christmas. So Memorial Day is the excuse for whipping up all that great food and serving it to a table full of friends.

Beef Tenderloin in Wine Sauce

Herb-Roasted Turkey Breast

Turkey Gravy

Beef Tenderloin

Wine Sauce with Garlic, Mushrooms, and Onion

David Venable's Apple and Bacon Stuffing

Corn Pudding

Layered Green Bean Casserole

Slow-Cooker Sweet Potato Casserole

Everything (except for the creamy horseradish sauce)

I'm so glad to have the dining room back in service.

I also got around to making the carrot cake that just seems to belong with this meal:

Generally, I tell whoever's coming to not bother bringing anything, but it doesn't mean I'm going to stupidly turn down something like a really good home-made key lime pie, which tonight's guest Michelle was kind enough to make and bring. Here it is alongside a slice of the carrot cake.

Finally, I'd like to note that today marks the third anniversary of the arrival of the wonderful and amazing Cyprus to the Roediger House, and given the uncertainty of her actual date of birth, today gets celebrated as what is believed to be close to her fifth birthday. The RoHo is much better with her in it.

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"Oven-Roasted Turkey Breast," Betty Crocker: Holiday Entrées, Sides, Brunches, & More, November 2001, p. 22-23.

"Beef Tenderloin in Wine Sauce" (p. 296) and "Spicy Horseradish Sauce" (p. 295), from The All-New Ultimate Southern Living Cookbook. Compiled and Edited by Julie Fisher Gunter. Birmingham, AL: Oxmoor House (2006).

"Layered Green Bean Casserole," a long-time Jones family favorite.

"Sweet Potato Casserole with Pecan Topping," from Southern Living Slow-Cooker Cookbook. Birmingham, AL: Oxmoor House (2006), p. 234-235.

"Cornbread Stuffing with Apples and Bacon," from David Venable. Found online.

"Blue Ribbon Carrot Cake (1981)," also known as "Best Carrot Cake (October, 1997)," from Southern Living. Also found online. The recipe I follow was recommended to and shared with me by John & Ebbie Linaburg of Woodstock, Virginia.