Renovation & Design

Renovation & Design

Attic hatch in garage ceiling an issue

QUESTION: A previous column of yours has me thinking about my own garage. It is not attached, the walls are 10 feet high and I have finished insulating them with R12 fibreglass. The ceiling joists are covered with three-quarter-inch sheeting to provide a floor in the attic storage area. I have no intention of insulating in between the 2x6s forming the top cords of the homemade trusses below the roof sheathing. The roof has two vent caps. Access from below is through a five-foot-square opening that I plan to fit an insulated, two-part door-like affair into. I have started to insulate the ceiling with R24 and I will cover that with vapour barrier and panelling. The walls are covered with vapour barrier and panelling already.

Sometimes I heat the garage with my small construction heater. With what I've done already, that takes the chill off enough to work in there in all but the coldest weather. I rarely park in the garage, but that may change. When all is done, I may use it more often in the winter.

Is this arrangement acceptable without constant minimal heating? I could install a fan controlled by a dehumidistat if you foresee a problem. -- Peter Knip

ANSWER: Heating an uninsulated garage can cause significant moisture problems and premature deterioration to the roofing. Heating a properly insulated garage with adequate attic ventilation should not be a problem, but there still may be some concerns to address. I will elaborate on those and offer some guidance on proper insulation and ventilation techniques for your garage attic.

Adding insulation and air/vapour barrier to the ceiling of your garage will create the conditions for a proper attic, rather than just an open-truss situation below the roof. If this garage area is unheated, the attic insulation will help keep the garage a little warmer due to natural daytime heating on sunny days. This may only be a minimal advantage but should pose no additional problems for condensation as long as the attic has adequate roof and soffit vents installed.

If you add temporary heat, there is always a chance of moisture issues from condensation after you turn the heat off, but that should be easily managed. Opening the vehicle door and the passage door for a short period of time after you turn the heat off will remove much of the warm, moist air built up during the heating cycle. It will also cool the interior of the garage more quickly, allowing you to notice and wipe up any excess condensation forming on windows or other areas.

The attic should be mostly unaffected by periodic heating as long as it is well sealed, which leads me to the biggest concern with your plan. Insulating and sealing an attic access hatch the size you are planning may be difficult. (I am assuming you are using the large opening for easy access of larger items that may be stored in the attic.)

There are a couple of issues with that proposal. Firstly, the homemade trusses installed may not have sufficient strength to store large, heavy items that can fit through the large access hatch. If overloaded, this can cause bowing and structural damage to the garage roof and ceiling. If you are only storing light items like Christmas ornaments, storm windows and other seasonal items, that should not be a problem.

The main concern I have is with the difficulty in properly air-sealing such a large opening. You must ensure that the entire perimeter of the opening and any gaps in between the dual doors are well sealed with proper weatherstripping, or you may get excessive air leakage in through those gaps. The top of the access hatch should be covered with an adequate thickness of moisture-resistant insulation like rigid polystyrene, which may create very thick, heavy doors. If you are painting or doing other moisture-producing activities in the garage in the heating season, that moisture will find its way through any gaps or poor insulation.

Also, if you open the large access hatch during these activities to get storage in or out of the attic, you will be pumping a large amount of warm, moist air instantly into the attic. This warm air will quickly condense on the underside of the roof sheathing and create frost when the hatch is closed if the temperature is below freezing outside. Having a small, well-sealed hatch is preferable because it limits the potential for air leakage, especially if you do a good job of installing your air/vapour barrier on the rest of the ceiling.

The final consideration for your attic is to avoid a common DIY mistake, and often one made by professional insulators as well. When you install insulation in between the ceiling joists, you must ensure it does not block the area above the soffits. Too often, this area is stuffed with insulation, as amateurs mistakenly try to eliminate air intrusion into the attic at all points. You definitely want to let as much air as possible in through the soffits, which will be necessary to create a good convective air flow to push any warm air that leaks into the attic out the roof vents. The attic insulation must cover the top of the exterior wall plates but should never extend beyond that point.

The easiest way to ensure that this area is not blocked with insulation is to install air chutes and/or insulation stops around the perimeter of the attic. These can be homemade out of leftover plywood or OSB sheathing, or purchased at a local home centre. These should be installed in between the rafters around the entire perimeter of the attic, ensuring that a minimum space equal to half the width of the rafter 2x4s is left above these components.

If all this is done well, and the hatch well-sealed, the current roof vents should be adequate to handle normal moisture that may gain entry to your attic from your periodic heating before it condenses and creates moisture problems.

Ari Marantz is the owner of Trained Eye Home Inspection Ltd. and president of the Canadian Association of Home & Property Inspectors-Manitoba (www.cahpi.mb.ca). Questions can be emailed to the address below. Ari can be reached at (204) 291-5358, or check out his website at www.trainedeye.ca.

trainedeye@iname.com

Ari Marantz / Ask the Inspector
October 23

Renovation & Design

Bulb is beautiful

Of all gardening activities, planting bulbs is my favourite. It is satisfying on so many levels.

For one thing, bulbs are pretty much surefire things. As long as you don’t push them into soggy or waterlogged ground, they are going to do what they are supposed to do perfectly.

The range of flower colour is also phenomenal. Think it through and you can have knockout colour in your garden from the first light of spring to the start of summer.

Pick the right kinds of bulbs to plant (I’m thinking of ones that naturalize and form endless colonies) and you are rewarded with a repeat performance year after year.

There is also something of the magic of a caterpillar-to-butterfly metamorphosis that happens with bulbs that makes the planting process so engaging: You push this odd-shaped object in the ground, cover it with soil, and it sends up an amazingly beautiful flower.

In The Everlasting Man, G.K. Chesterton argues that just because something is predictable and happens every day, such as the sun coming up, doesn’t make it any less amazing. I feel the same way about bulbs flowering in spring.

Anyway, let’s look at some interesting planting strategies you can put to work this fall to give a terrific splash of colour next spring.

 

Paint with bulbs

Ever since I met Jacqueline van der Kloet, one of the Keukenhof’s top designers, I tend to think of bulb-planting as the botanical equivalent of paint-by-numbers. Bulbs are so dependable, you can use them to put colour on the ground precisely.

Van der Kloet showed that not only could she create great blocks of colour by planting masses of red and yellow tulips or rivers of blue muscari, she could also make subtle, painterly schemes.

She makes clever use of hyacinths, dotting them in regular patterns and surrounding them with great naturalizers like Fritillaria meleagris, scilla and ornithogalum.

You’d be surprised, for instance, how good a checkerboard pattern various shades of blue chionodoxa can make.

You could mix various shades of hyacinths to create something similar. Try yellow “City of Harlem” with peach-coloured “Apricot Pattern” and burgundy “Woodstock.”

 

Hot and trendy

The tulip everyone is talking about is “Orange Angelique.”

It’s a tulip, but it looks like a peony because the flower contains so many petals, all a soft apricot colour.

The problem is, “Orange Angelique” is no longer easy to find. Suppliers underestimated demand and packets of the bulbs have been flying off the shelves at garden centres since mid-September. Good luck if you manage to get some.

A better pick, in my opinion, is the classiest tulip of them all, “Spring Green,” one of the viridiflora group, all of which have a distinctive green stripe. Pick up a few packets of Lemon-Lime Twist (mix of “Spring Green” and “Yellow Spring Green”) and you have a breathtaking display.

 

Blue on blue

You perhaps don’t realize how many shades of blue muscari there are. When you put them together, the subtle shifts in tones and texture can be very attractive. There’s Muscari paradoxum and Muscari neglectum, Muscari latifolium and Muscari armeniacum, not forgetting great cultivars such as “Blue Spike,” “Valerie Finnis,” “Big Smile” and “Mount Hood.” The nice thing about muscari bulbs is that you get a lot for not a lot of money.

You could do something similar using shades of blue crocus; you just have to remember to keep an eye on flowering times — snow crocuses bloom earlier than the large-flowered ones. So “Whitewell Purple,” “Firefly’ and “Blue Pearl” go together and “Remembrance,” “Striped Beauty” and “Purple” go together. Mix them all together for six weeks of colour.

 

Black and white

Snowdrops fit perfectly under the low, umbrella-like canopy of laceleaf maples where they bloom magnificently in spring and are shaded by the trees’ leaves in summer. But snowdrops look even more striking when they pop up among the dark leaves of black mondo grass. If you are lucky enough to have a Himalayan birch (Betula jacquemontii), then plant some black grass under it and push dozens of snowdrops into the grass. The black-and-white contrast is wonderful.

 

The allure of alliums

You must find room in your garden for the Star of Persia (Allium christophii). In fact, plant half a dozen for more impact. But the most talked about allium at the moment is “Forlock,” which has purple ball-shaped flower heads that look as if they have been given a buzz-cut.

But I reckon there will be much more demand for white-flowering alliums, especially “Mount Everest” and the more dainty A. neapolitanum. There is also a delightful combination package available this year called “Double Bubble,” which is a mixture of white and purple alliums. Very stylish.

 

— Postmedia News

By Steve Whysall
October 23

Renovation & Design

Getting to the bottom of the clutter problem

In principle, basements are wonderful -- an area where sports gear, housing supplies, games, toys and unused furniture can be stored far from the more carefully appointed living areas of your house.

But if you're like most people, your basement doesn't fulfil its potential. Over time, it has probably become disorganized and as good a place to lose things as to keep them nicely stored.

"So often, I see basements that have got out of control," says professional organizer Andrew Neary. "Things are scattered randomly, items are buried in piles and half of the stuff has just disappeared under clutter."

Neary has a series of steps that can be used to infallibly impose order on even the most messy basement.

His first step is to remove everything from the space. This might be done in stages, but ideally, as much of the basement should be done at once as possible.

His second step is to clean the vacated area. If repainting is needed or there are insect or pest infestations, now is the time to deal with them.

The third step requires sorting everything that was removed in step 1 into categories -- sports equipment, cleaning supplies, toys, games and whatever other categories fit the case at hand. If there is anything you really don't need, now is the time to discard it. Be tough with your inner pack rat, because the less stuff you have, the easier it is to keep it organized.

Step 4 requires some imagination, a stage that Neary calls zoning the basement. What will go where? The most important consideration is how often you use each item. A bicycle used almost daily should be near the entrance of the basement, for example. Christmas ornaments and other seasonal items can be farther back.

In step 5, you're going to have to buy organizers so everything has its own place. Shelving is perfect for a lot of canned goods and cleaning and other house supplies. Hockey equipment, garden rakes and the like can be hung on hooks on the wall. Work tools need a storage cabinet. Transparent boxes can hold smaller items while ensuring they're easy to locate. Hazardous material such as flammable sprays, solvents, some cleaning fluids and paints should probably be stored in a cabinet that can be locked, especially if there are children in the house.

Home Depot and other stores have many products that are perfect for storage. Perhaps Neary's favourite brand is Rubbermaid, which he says offers fairly inexpensive products that are well made and easily assembled, including some that are lockable and perfect for storing hazardous stuff. You want to know that you can lock things up and walk away knowing that things are safe.

Once the organizers are bought and in place, the items you removed from the basement and plan to keep can be put in their appointed spots.

If you're going to have a handyman's corner for woodworking, painting of furniture and doing repairs, Neary has some special counsel.

"Anyone who's working on projects should have an area that's well ventilated and well lit," he says. "You need very strong overhead light, ideally coming from the ceiling, so you have really good lighting on whatever you're working on and you're not bumping into lamps. Accent lights are for the living room, never the basement."

Neary says dedicated places for each tool is crucial. "Every hammer, sander and plane has to have its own location or you're going to be losing track of what you have.

"I've had clients who've had half a dozen drills because they've repeatedly lost drill bits and attachments. My mantra is: 'Buy once, store properly and have things forever.'

"There are many tool cabinets available to ensure good storage, but simply using hooks on the wall can serve equally well," Neary says. "The point is not so much esthetics as functionality. If you group your tools by function and keep them in their place, you're organized."

The important points for the basement are safety and functionality, Neary says.

Your basement is like any other part of your home. If you want to enjoy it, it has to look good and it has to serve your purposes.

If you want it to contribute to your quality of life, it has to be neat and organized, and all the things you've chosen to keep have to be accessible.

Simple stuff, but people easily forget it.

-- Postmedia News

By Charles Enman
October 23

Renovation & Design

How to touch up your house for the market

At some point in a homeowner's life, there comes the time to sell.

Maybe it's a transfer to another city. Maybe it's time to move up to something bigger as your family grows. Or maybe the kids have moved out and you need something smaller for your retirement. You are downsizing.

As a contractor, I've gone through this process several times with my clients. Homeowners only ever do this once, and it's one of the most difficult things to come to grips with. It's overwhelming for many people and emotionally wrenching to leave a home where you've created a personal history.

The key to downsizing is allowing yourself enough time by starting well in advance. Not planning on moving for two or three years? That's perfect; it gives you enough time to first de-clutter, then make necessary repairs, before you put your house on the market.

The best advice I can give is to de-clutter before starting any house repairs. Having your contractor work around furniture you're going to get rid of anyway just creates unnecessary delays and stress. Do yourself a favour: If you're going to get rid of furniture in the downsizing process anyway, get rid of it before you begin any repairs. If you're going to be passing on furniture and collectibles to family members, do it now. If you're putting things into storage, or donating to charity or selling it at auction, there's no time like the present.

Depending on the age of your house and how well it has been maintained, certain kinds of repairs or cosmetic updates might be needed to help the sales process.

For example, let's look at a house that's 50 years old. There's a trend to gut and modernize kitchens and bathrooms to make the house more desirable to prospective buyers. So a lot of sellers will spend money to do an inexpensive upgrade on their kitchens, hoping to get a better price.

I'm here to tell you that if you have a 50-year-old house, odds are, a prospective buyer is more interested that the house was built solid and has a big lot. In other words, presenting your house as a well-maintained 50-year-old house is more important than trying to disguise a 50-year-old house with some modern renovations.

From a buyer's perspective, she knows that any recent renovation is built into the selling price of the house and, given the choice, would prefer to do the renovation after the purchase -- to her taste and budget -- than get stuck with a brand-new kitchen that doesn't work for her on many levels.

So presenting your half-century-old home as well maintained might consist of plaster repairs to fix cracks from normal house settling, or fix any part of the house that shows more than average wear and tear. Let's say there is a vinyl floor that has seen better days. It's an easy upgrade that will help demonstrate that the house was well cared for, and won't blow anyone's budget.

When it comes to cosmetic repairs, there's one aspect of selling a home that always works: removing the layers of interior decorating to give the house an open, neutral look. This includes removing dated wallpaper, carpets and possibly draperies or blinds. That is tough to do for many homeowners who've spent the last 50 years maintaining, decorating and customizing their homes to their taste.

Painting walls and ceilings is essential in the repair and selling process. There are some other not-so-obvious benefits to painting. It neutralizes odours from years of smoking, or cooking odours and other smells that might draw attention. It's also one more way to demonstrate good effort in ongoing maintenance.

Generally speaking, if your home is in good repair, it will get a higher price (assuming the real estate market is healthy). If you've put in a new furnace, or repaired the roof or had the chimney repointed, that all shows consistent upkeep of the home and investment in the property. That's the really valuable evidence homebuyers should be looking at when purchasing a home.

What kind of repairs should you do before you sell your home? Well, that depends on your budget -- and your conscience.

I'm talking about "lipstick and mascara" -- the renovations that are coverups that are being done to trick the buyer. Yes, trick; that's the truth, isn't it? It's one thing to roll on a new coat of paint to freshen up a room; it's another thing altogether to put on a fresh coat of paint to cover up water stains on a ceiling that gives clues of a roof or flashing problem that needs repair. That's where the conscience comes in.

Unfortunately, in my experience, new homebuyers are often more impressed with the nice colours and scents that realtors suggest you fill your house with, or the staging that you might have had done, and, of course, by the new cupboard faces and granite countertop you had put in to spruce up the place. They aren't as likely to notice the less glamorous upgrades, such as closed-cell spray-foam insulation behind the mould-resistant drywall. (They can't see that, so take photos.)

-- Postmedia News

Catch Mike in his brand-new series, Holmes Inspection, airing Thursdays on HGTV. For more information, visit www.hgtv.ca.

Do you have a question about home renovations? Email mikemakeitright.ca.

By Mike Holmes
October 23