Closets and Chimneys

Anyone who has done just a smidgen of renovations knows how easy it is to have “project creep” – one thing here leads to something over there – and on it goes. This whole renovation has been one of those – remember this started out to be a simple change of kitchen linoleum – but that was four years ago….

 

We’re trying to remodel a closet – but, now we’re stuck at the front door?

So, we have the front sheathed and you can see the waterproofing membrane placed against the rim joists before the concrete was poured to keep the wood from rotting.

Now waterproofing is wrapped over the sill and a  polycarbonate sill pan is placed to ensure that everything is protected.

And the front door is popped into place. This is a Plaspro insulated fiberglass door.

So finally maybe we can get back to that second floor closet?

To refresh your memory – this is one of the front eave areas adjacent to the master closet. It was configured as a cold space. The insulated wall to the left was the interior bedroom wall. This area was open to ventilate the roof structure. You see the white bucket? That was used because the roof was rotting from leakage around the chimney. Well, we gotta fix that.

First we’ll address that little pipe with aluminum foil over it. Not sure what that was for, but we’ll lose the tin foil and fix it right.

I cut out the bricks and installed some new ones and mortared them into place. This chimney will only be used for the direct vent fireplace, so it will have it’s own piping running through this space.

It seems it’s hard for me to stay in the closet.

So up on the roof we go and repair that rotting roof deck. I’ve replaced the decking with some pressure treated wood. Look at that fantastic flashing job! Could this be why the deck was rotted? Hummm… When you install the decking around the chimney please leave a space between the wood and bricks. This allows expansion and contraction of the wood and possible rotting issues. The flashing is what keeps the water out – not how tight the deck is to the bricks.

I took some measurements and ordered a 20 oz copper flashing kit on-line from

Copper By Design 

This place does beautiful work and if you follow the link you’ll see why copper flashing should be used.

Here’s the part that’s called a cricket. Because my chimney sits in the middle of the roof, it’s prone to all kinds of water issues – which is what caused my roof deck rot.

Of course that entails some dusty cutting – with my converted circular saw that OSHA would not be too keen to see. The diamond blade cut the mortar between the bricks easily.

Here is the front pan and side roof flashing installed.

And here is the step flashing (The part under the shingles) and the counter flashing mortared into the brick joints. The kit didn’t fit perfectly, and needs some tweaking, mainly because it’s such an odd-shaped chimney. But it’s leak free and will let me get back to that closet project.

All in all, it was a two afternoon project.

Stay tuned.

 

Master Closet – It’s complicated

After finally getting the major bones of the staircase in place, now we can turn our attention to the master closet on the second floor.

This is where we will start. Well, sort of – I had re-insullated the ceiling and put recessed halogen lights up there…but becase we I don’t have a clear plan – this will change. The window is a two foot octagon, and it’s a little weak. I plan to put a stained glass window in here when I’m done, so we need something a little more substantial.

So just pop in a new larger window – no problem.

Of course, it can’t be that easy.

Time to get back outside.

To put in a new window for the closet, we have to make some adjustments on the other side of said window. Besides we’re gonna put some limestone here. As I strip off the old aluminum siding I see what was there before.

Kind of a neat pagoda style door pediment. Very cool – but odd for a house like this. Looking at the structure that held this in the wall I suspect this was removed by 1940.

Too bad I have stone going here. This would have been a pain to recreate – but what fun!

Here’s my technical scaffolding set up for putting up plywood sheathing.

I might add my front yard is looking pretty spiffy! I’m particularly fond of the rusty rebar roll. Looks like I’ve got some mail in the mailbox! Classy!

Why pay an architect big bucks when you can tape up a cardboard cutout. Yep, a three-foot window ought to do the trick.

So now that we know what we’re doing, we can go back inside.

 

We’ll strip off the drywall and see what we’ve got. Well there was a little insulation and that’s about it. Framing is minimal so we’ll make an upgrade. Piece of cake.

The framing is in place for the bigger window.

I brought the 1/2″ CDX plywood down past the window opening on the outside and waterproofed the sills with a little protectowrap.

I used Marvin Integrity windows for the two large octagon windows since they don’t open and will have stained glass in them.

Then just continue down with the sheathing and house wrap.

 I’ll spare you the session of yucky removal of the soffits and fascia boards. The box ends of the eaves will be reconfigured and clad with Azek, as will all of the trim.

Of course, now we have to deal with this.

The front door. It’s wood, it’s warped and leaks air and water like a sieve.

OK, you’ve convinced me to replace it.

But first we have to make a good home for that new door.

Hey, I thought this was about a master closet?

I told you it’s complicated.

Stay tuned.

Steep Bungalow Stairs #6

Well – it’s time to finish up the preliminary stair project. Preliminary? Why sure – you don’t think I’d finish the stairs when I have so much more to do. Remember, this has gone from a simple cosmetic upgrade to a full home reconstruction. We’ll get the stair functional and move on to the next area – we’ll start finishes as soon as I get all the structure and mechanicals updated. This will include all new wiring – plumbing and HVAC systems. Oh, and my dear wife Francia – who has never asked for a single thing has one request. A basement woman-cave with steam shower and whirlpool tub.

Yes dear…

Man, I get tired just thinking about all this stuff…sigh.

One of the problems with the new stairs is the lower angle clipped the closet door, making it impossible to use. The solution is to remove the door and shift the frame over to gain some clearance. Here’s the after.

The office wall is being reframed.

Since I have the space, I’m extending the closet all the way under the staircase.

This will give me about 10 feet of floor space.

On the kitchen wall side the area where the chimney was is reinforced with a header.

The bottom of the stairs has the first floor bathroom. So to keep the design coherent, we’ll do the same at the top.

We’ll inset the door with the same obscure glass we used for the bath.

This is the new configuration of the walk in closet – looking from inside out. (Don’t worry – it will change again before it’s done)

The kitchen wall will be the placement for the main appliances in a modified galley layout.

The office side after the closet door was moved.

Now focusing on the closet for a while we’ll tackle whats behind the doors that access the front eaves of the house.

Behind door # 1  Yikes!

Stay tuned we’ll make something of this place yet.

Steep Bungalow Stairs #5 The Plan

So now we know what we’re up against. It won’t take much to make a better (and safer) set of stairs. But it will take quite a bit to create a good comfortable set of stairs – and make it work in our limited space.

Let’s make a set – shall we?

First the new and final (I promise) plan for the upstairs.

The red shows the original wall location and top stair position. We’ll worry about what to do up here later.

Now on to making the stair stringers.

Here’s a good video showing how to lay out your stairs.

You’ll need a framing square and some stair gages – or a piece of wood clamped at the right spot.

I’ve made a short run of stairs before – but not 18′ – yikes! no margin for error here. So I decided to make a Masonite template.

I feel much better now. The template allows for mistakes before we get to the big dance.

The problem you might have with a long run of stairs is finding nice straight 2X stock that has limited knots and checks. So Instead of using standard dimensional lumber I used LSL – Laminated Stand Lumber. You can read about it here.

I laid out and cut the first stringer only – just to make sure. Here it’s in place so I could finish the top detail cuts.

The top detail cuts. Here you can see my “cheater blocks” The skinny one is the thickness of the stair tread. The thicker one is the floor joist to top of finished floor. I use blocks like these to make sure there’s no mistake on measuring the complicated cut of the stringer at the top. Usually this top cut is pretty simple, but I’m incorporating the stringer on top of a supporting wall, so it’s a little more complicated.

Once the first stringer is cut, all you have to do is trace the one to the next. You can see my Masonite template on the ground.

Two down, one to go. You can see that I used a circular saw to cut the primary cut and then the jig saw to finish the corners to prevent any over cuts. After all three were cut I clamped them all together and belt sanded the surfaces to be identical.

Obsessive? Why sure.

Also, I used this.

This is a set of jigs – one for the rise and one for the run cuts. I screwed these into the stringer to make the saw cuts with the circular saw perfectly flat and level. In the picture, the lower jig is laying on a piece of wood to show how it was placed on the stringer.

The two stringers that go next to the walls have to have spacers added to give clearance for the 3/4″ skirt board and the 1/2″ drywall. Adding these before you attach them to the walls will make your life so much easier when it comes time to finish off the stairwell.

Now all we have to do is attach the stringers to the walls and level the pair to make a nice safe support for the treads. The third stringer will be added after the two end stringers are in place.

Now you can see the top cuts on the stringers that I laid out with the cheater blocks. The stair stringer lays on top of a supporting wall for the living room, so in my opinion it’s stronger than the 6 nails in the other one. Also the stringers are attached to each side wall stud. It’s built like a tank.

The first sub-floor down. You can see the cheater block on top of the stringer. There will be a 1/2 plywood underlayment and then 3/4″ hardwood on top of that. This will allow the top stair tread to be incorporated into the floor, making it seamless.

Here is the original stringer location and the new. By moving the wall over we gained 6″ of run at the bottom of the stairs.

This is what all that hard work was about. You can see the original stair elevation compared to the new. The new stair stringers will give us an 11″ tread and a 34 degree incline. Sure beats 45.

Can I get an “Amen”?

Sorry for the long post – but I just wanted to get this out of my system.

One day I’ll get to make something pretty.

One day…

Steep Bungalow Stairs #4 The Investigation

So we have really quite a puzzle on our hands – how to make this stair with a longer run and the only possible way to do that is on the second floor – drat.

I had already framed and drywalled what I thought would be the new upstairs closet. I figured out those tricky ceiling angles and taped and mudded this to finish.

I put in the electrical and a nifty pocket door.

So since the new stair is going to be 30″ deeper up here – by my calculation I’ll have a roomy 15 inches at the top of the stair. Crap. I have to have much more.

So let’s just rip it out – again. You can see the new/old switch box dangling there. The pocket door newly installed is now gone. So I wasted some coin and a lot of time on this one.

This is so therapeutic! Had a bad day? Feeling a little frustrated? Why grab a crowbar and annihilate a walk in closet – makes one feel so much better!

We’ll deal with the odd angles and headroom issues somehow. But for now let’s just live for the moment – and not overlook the structural steel beams hanging up there.

To make the staircase work we’ll have to move the wall back on the bedroom side around 4 feet. We’ll have to pick up a point load for that structural steel beam so it sets on a floor joist over a perpendicular load bearing wall. Which is right where the post has been placed. Enough of this building stuff.

On to investigating the staircase structure.

This is the office side of the staircase. As you might have noticed, I’ve given up on making that wall work – the bookcase was built, installed and then promptly removed, along with the rest of the plaster lath. Oh, and that closet? I spent a lot of time making it smooth and painted just so. I added some additional height and a hanging system.

Only to end up tearing the whole thing out. This is looking from the kitchen side. The office closet is nothing but some sticks in a bucket and bags of pulverized plaster.

Here’s a good view of the rise and run of the stair – I told you it was nearly 45 degrees. Actually in this photo the rise looks even greater than the run. I get tired just looking at this thing.

This is a closeup of the stair stringer throat measurement. The minimum for this should not be less than 3 1/2″. It’s pretty close. What isn’t so hot is the saw overcut. These are areas for potential splitting and stair stringer failure.

Uh-oh this is where things start getting a little scary. This is not how you hold up a stair case. Let’s count all the nails together, shall we? 1-2-3 … if we’re lucky we have 6 nails that have some holding power in these stringers. Would you like to prance up and down on your staircase with 6 nails holding you up? I didn’t think so. Yes, it’s only 6. And they had the opportunity to fasten it to the stair well side walls – but they didn’t.

Let’s see this from another angle.

I think I’ll name this staircase “Death Wish”

Hang in there gang — we’ll make something out of this yet.

Steep Bungalow Stairs #3 The Search for 7 – 11

Sounds kinda like a B movie, don’t you think? I have to admit, trying to explain this stair project is more of a head scratcher than the project itself.  I’ll do the best I can -

The 7-11 reference is to a 7″ rise and 11″ run. My goal for a nice usable staircase. For your notes most stair builders figure R (rise) + TW (tread width) should equal 17″ to 18″.

The very first thing you should do is take a look at  the SMA (Stairway Manufacturers’ Association) Visual Interpretation of the International Residential Code for stairs. If you’re going to modify your stairs, you might as well do it to code.

Here’s  a link

There are lots of resources on the web for stair building – this Stair calculator will  help a lot.

There are some basic terms that you must know and they are always going to be with you – like them or not.

Rise = this is the elevation from the 1st finished floor to the 2nd finished floor. It will not change – you can’t make it change – unless you add inches to your 1st finished floor. I say finished, because you must know the measurement of the total rise. Not a guess, not an estimate – the exact measurement. We want a good staircase that won’t hurt us, right?

Run = This is the length of the staircase. It’s the problem that most of us old home renovators struggle with – the longer the run the more options we have. We like to have an unlimited run – we would be free to have that stairway to heaven. Well, almost.

Headroom = This is the other obstacle that old houses face. People must have been really short back then. You need a minimum of 6′ 8″ clearance.

So let’s see how I solve this puzzle.

Let’s start with the basics of my problem stair case.

Rise 117″ or 9′ 9″   Run 117″ or 9′ 9″ these are measurements you really don’t want in a staircase. This gives you a crisp 45 degree angle of incline. Can you say stairmaster? Remember we have got to find more run to make the stair work. We can’t do anything about the rise. It’s 117″ and will always be.

The bottom of the stair is in direct line with the only finished room in the house – the bathroom. The landing requirements by code are the width of the stair tread, in my case that’s 36″ The yellow level on the floor is at 42″ to the bathroom door, so we should be able to gain a few inches for the run here. Let’s put 6″ in the “New Run” bank.

 

This is the original layout at the top of the stairs. We have 45″ for stair to closet wall. It’s adequate now – but we need like 30″ of additional stair up here. Yikes!

You can see that the pocket door entering to the bedroom is at the top of the stair run. To the right you can see the closet wall. We will have some major changes to make this a workable staircase.

So let’s get a saw out and cut something! A little investigational surgery to see what we can do to get more “Run”.

This is looking into the bathroom. Of course I had just finished the walls for this area – new closet pocket door and reconfiguration of the bathroom layout - then I decided to tear it all out and put in the staircase. As I have lamented many times – freestyle renovations has its  consequences.

This was the second layout of the upstairs. Again, before the staircase decided it needed a new look.

Yes, this was finished – and yes I tore it all out and did it a third time. More on that in a later post.

Let’s say just for giggles we can steal 30″ or so up here – That’s what we need.

Time for some comparative calculating. Using the above calculator here’s the possibilities. I think we have enough room to get our 9’9″ run to something more like 12′ 10″

We’ll start on the easy part first. Here I’ve stripped drywall and the casing from the door and removed 7″ from the left side of the opening.This will allow for shifting the opening to the left and gaining the 6″ for the bottom of the stair.

Sometimes I hear people comment “They don’t make em’ like they used to”. That may be true for some but not this particular ‘carpenter’ in 1935. Looks like he used a beaver to shave this “header” down to size.

You can see the additional framing members for extending the wall at the stair landing.

The top will be much more challenging. This is why.

Here’s a side view of the upstairs closet looking into the bedroom with the door wall facing the staircase to the left. The problem is this is a 1 1/2 story Bungalow and there are height limitations at the top of the stair.  You can see the angle of the roof encroaching on the headroom. This will be tricky indeed. We will have to move the closet wall back 30″ or so and deal with the angles of the roof.

Let’s give it a rest and strip the stairwell.

Time for some more doodling to make that staircase be all it can be.

Stay tuned.

Steep Bungalow Stairs part 2 or Homage to Victora Elizabeth Barnes’ Kitchen Chimney

Sometimes you know you travel in a parallel universe.

As I toil alone on this renovation, I often think that I am the singular soul on this planet that must bear this remodeling burden. But no, as I read through some of my favorite blogs I see that others are (self) inflicted with the same challenges. And it brings comfort – not a lot but some….

If you have some time, please peruse this recent post by Victoria Elizabeth Barnes.

Now where were we?

The steel angle header is wrapped with drywall. You can see the header rests on the stair side walls that are load bearing to support the floor joists.

I found a better picture of how the original stair was configured with the handrail being blocked by the door opening. This, by the way is not legal – code wise.

Now we’ll take a detour of sorts. This is the Homage to Victoria.

Let’s demo a chimney

Here is the obstacle on the other side of the stair we’ll be ripping out. Now is a good time to get this 2′ X 2′ dude out of our future kitchen.

So here I’ve started the demo upstairs. Removal is pretty easy – one brick at a time. The square tile thing in the middle is the flue tile. These dogs are pretty heavy. This is a 28′ run of chimney, so I gotta get my ‘A’ game goin’ here.

Second floor chimney gone! You can see the 45 degree angle staircase in the background. We’ll fix that puppy – you’ll see. And just a glimpse of the 450 pound cast iron Bateau bathtub is sitting there waiting to be placed in the master bath.

Now down to the first floor kitchen side. Of course before we got to this point, I had finished this with nice new smooth drywall. Oh, the pangs of ‘freestyle’ home renovation.

I did find remnants of some original wall paper. I’ve found a few fragments around the house. I must say they were pretty bright and very stylized in 1935.

I wish I had all those nifty buckets that Victoria had at her disposal. When she said it was an awesome experience – she was so right! If you have an unused chimney laying around – go take a whack at it – you too will be amazed.

Do you notice that little mini-sledge on the pile of old mortar? That’s all you need to bring one of these guys down. That and a lot of 5 gallon buckets.

So now down to the basement.

And now it’s all gone!

Now with the chimney removed, we can redesign the kitchen for the third time.

The removal took about 22 hours over four days working alone. Not as bad as I though.

But that included cleaning the remaining brick and stacking them behind the garage for a future project. What is wrong with me?
Next year I’ll be 60.

Man, I gotta start drinking non-caffeinated diet coke.

Next post will have the beginning of the staircase redesign.

Steep Bungalow Stairs – how to make them less so…

OK – so it’s been a while since I’ve posted a new ambitious construction project on this old house. Lot’s of things are going on – I’m working every day on some less than photogenic elements – like insulating knee walls in the second floor utility room. I have unfinished projects on every floor, so  I’m giving up on trying to post in a chronological order.  I though we could start on a project that was one of the elements that changed this house from a renovation to a total rebuild. It’s not finished yet, like everything else, but it’s getting there.

Let’s take a trip back in time, shall we?

We took possession of this house in August of 2009….so long ago. We haven’t moved in yet…I’m working on it. So how could it take 3 years and counting to renovate? Misadventures my friend – check out the title of my blog. This is what happens when you freestyle everything and make house renovations a hobby.

Here’s how a renovation takes so long— you change your mind.

So this was the original idea for the first floor bedroom that we will make into my office. The wall was humpy due to being plaster lath. My first thought was that I’d just smooth it out with a little ‘hot mud’. A type of drywall compound that sets by chemical reaction (like plaster of Paris) instead of the pre-mixed air dry stuff.

After a few days of fiddling with that, I just wasn’t feeling it – not flat enough. So – just slice out the plaster lath and see what we have.

Since there was so much room under the stairs that wasn’t being used – why not make a nifty book case or something….

OK

So I poped together a little cabinet and painted it all up… of course this all takes time. This photo was taken in the kitchen… see the little Styrofoam cups pretending to be pendant lights? And the cardboard cabinets mocked up for space planning. Don’t worry – I won’t use any of those designs when I reconfigure the kitchen for the third time. Besides, this was before I decided to tear out that far wall and make a sun-room.

Make the cabinet then just slide it in and make some trim…simple enough.

And here’s the back of the cabinet. Notice the stair stringer in the upper left hand of this picture? It’ll play an important role in a future post.

So we’re finally getting to the stair part of this post. The previous photos are important because it will prove positive that I’m nuts. You’ll see. This stair is positioned on the other side of that wall we just put that nifty bookcase in.This is the stair case leading up to the second floor. Typical for an old house. Tread width about 8 1/2″ with a rise nearly to match – so nearly a 45 degree angle going up those stairs. This will never do.

Time to spring into action….

Lots of things wrong with this staircase. You can see that originally there was a door here leading up to the unfinished attic. One of the previous owners just finished this off with casement trim and called it a day.

Let’s tear it out.

And here’s why. One, I want a clean wall transition around the ceiling, the corner and up the stairs. It’s not pictured, but the handrail had to stop 3 feet from the bottom due to the door casing being in the way. Second there’s no header over the door. Can you say levitating ceiling? Those floor joists are just kinda hanging out.

Here is the removal of the header – actually just a 2 X 4. Not doing a thing. I’ve gotten rid of all the door structure so that I can make a smooth uninterrupted wall surface up the stairs. So let’s add some support for those poor floor joists.

This will do the trick. Here we’ve added a 3/8″ X 6″ X 6″ angle steel header. I notched this in and screwed in place. This will add the support that was lacking before.

Hang in there fellow renovators – I’ll be posting how you can tame that steep staircase and make one more civilized.

It won’t be easy – but it’ll be fun.

DIY Valentine

Most of you that follow along this little adventure know by now that I love renovations – the more complicated and challenging, the better. Cost is no object – time is not a concern.

But really when you clear all the sawdust, the tools and debris – when everything is painted and arranged just so… all you have is a house, nothing more than just some walls and a roof and a shiny thing or two. It’s only when you add love does it really become a home.

The most important reason I renovate is that I love my wife more than I could ever express in words or actions. It is my renovation, but it is our home.

Sleep
I love the puzzle of the hollows and valleys of our bodies ~
how they fit together as we sleep.

The sweet sensation of the being ~
the texture and contour of your skin as you
lay beside my soul.

How bones and flesh contain the one so dearly loved ~
and the comfort given, as touched in the still of night.

Words fail to express that which lies within so deep ~
the touch of heaven that lays beside me,
each night, as we sleep.

With love, Curt

Happy Valentine’s Day everyone.

Back at it – Wall Sheathing

Greetings fellow renovators and spectators. Well, the time has been slipping away again. So I made a promise to update the blog – and then failed to deliver. Not due to progress on the house – I average 10 hours a day there 7 days a week. Yikes! What an obsession. As this project has unfolded it evolved from a simple cosmetic adventure to a total, no holds barred complete reconstruction. Thus the name of “mis-directed remodeling”. But we continue…

I wanted to back up a little and address the exterior project that paralleled the window and door installation. Totally pointless to most readers, unless you are doing the same.

I instructed the framing crew to place 1/2″ CDX plywood at the intersection of the old house wall and the new roof. You can see the 2 pieces of ply with the roof flashing here. The problem was they used 5/8″ ply instead. Now 1/8″ difference might be ok for most…   But not me.

So five hours later I have the correct thickness plywood in place with the proper roof flashing.

I feel so much better! Don’t worry, those skanky eaves will be replaced.

The reason for all of this fiddling is that the exterior wall in this 1930 bungalow has no exterior sheathing – just the wood clapboards. The interior of the exterior walls have 3/4″ tongue and groove sheathing – so it’s built like a tank. Only on the inside.

The idea with the plywood is to remove the existing aluminum siding (the green stuff) and replace with Hardie cement siding and limestone trim.

Here’s the beautiful view my neighbors have of our project. No wonder they’re gone a lot. The original house had an unfinished upstairs – so large vents were placed on either side of the window. These were partially blocked when previous owners converted the upstairs to living space. Now I’ll do away with them all together.

Of course no remodeling is complete unless you rip off the fascia boards and rafter tails. This part is a PITA especially when you’re 20′ in the air. There’s a lot more going on here than you might realize. Since we’re changing the way the roof is vented we have to add soffit and ridge vents to properly vent the roof sheathing. It’s important this is done correctly. You can see the new vent chutes that are in place to bring air in under the roof deck to be expelled out the ridge. The rafter tails were just toe nailed into the roof rafter and were sagging badly after 70 plus years. Plus rot and insect issues. No fun. Plus no window header was installed, so that roof had to be jacked up to get a proper header in over the window.

I fabricated a new set of eave outriggers that would be attached to the roof rafter making a much stronger eave assembly.

The new outriggers will allow for adding the fascia boards and keep them straight. These are much stronger and will add support to the roof.

This is the start of the fascia support. This is 1X8 pine that has been primed. If you look closely you will see the first  3 feet next to the roof is an AZEK trim board.This waterproof material will keep the rain from rotting it out. After all of the fascia is up, it will be overlaid with another 1X10 AZEK trim board to make it weather resistant.

The whole exterior of the existing building will be covered with 1/2″ CDX plywood. This will give a strong and flat base for the new siding. I made a jig on the scaffolding so I could put up 4X8 sheets of plywood solo.

The plywood also acts like a type of rain screen. The spaces between the clapboards and the back of the plywood will allow for it to dry if moisture gets in. Trapped moisture is a major problem in modern home construction. Old houses rarely had rot issues because they were so drafty and many uninsulated – water could get in and out quickly. Not so in today’s homes.

After the plywood is on the housewrap goes up, just like new construction. The only bad deal here is that the windows were already installed. If I had known at the beginning I would do all this…sigh.

The detailing is critical on the housewrap. Always think like water. Bottom pieces go on and then the top overlaps. I was able to get the window details ok, but not perfect. Drip caps over the windows are a must.

So the saga continues….